Avian Gamers Network

So are you going to start suggesting that the Force is a metaphor for hallucinogenic drugs now?!

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X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Ha! Not quite - note the phrase 'free-love.'

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Liro
"The english language is not a wedding gown, it doesn't get better the more lace you add. It is instead a thong. Less is more." From /.
I need to remind myself of this regularly.

Story
Yesterday I did a marathon session, going all the way from Black Sun Territory to finishing Coruscant with Antare, in one go. Ended up going to bed at around 2.30-3am. At the end of Coruscant, I got my ship and was then somewhat surprised to be told that I was going to Ord Mantell. "Ord Mantell?" I thought. "Surely you mean Taris?" But I went to Ord Mantell anyway and, it being a starter world, I figured it would be dead easy. Well, it appears that there is a section of Ord Mantell that you would be wise to avoid if you're just starting! There was an interesting point where I was standing in the Cantina in Fort Garik thinking "This is exactly where Arianae [my smuggler character] would be standing were she logged in. Wouldn't it be cool if the two of them could be on at the same time and chat." (In terms of the Legacy system, I have imagined that Antare is the father of both Antan and Arianae). It was mentioned somewhere, when discussing the future of the legacy system, that one of the things they'd like to see at some point is having your characters interact with each other.

When I got back to my ship at the end of the Ord Mantell visit, there was a little surprise (I shan't spoil the story for those that haven't done it yet). It wasn't entirely unexpected, given the conversation I had prior to leaving the ship, but it was rather cool that they put it in. I should also mention that the Ord Mantell visit was part of the marathon session.

Today I did some grouping with Cyrus on Coruscant, I did a bit of Taris, and Mant and I did the Esseles. It would be cool to do more grouping, particularly groups of 3 or 4. I'd also like to go explore other peoples' ships at some point. I know that there's nothing to do on them but the fact of going on someone else's ship is cool! By the way, while I remember, it is interesting that the Knight and the Consular ships are the same but some of the things have been moved around a bit. Such as the intercomm, for instance, and C2-N2 stands in a different place.

Crashes
Touching wood here, but the crashes seem to be reducing. I tend to get one or two crashes to desktop each play session (and experience tells me its a good idea to reboot before starting again) but BSOD seems to be a rarer occurrence. This is good because I don't like hard resetting my computer.

Crafting
I still need to put together my accounts for January but, when I do, I'll let you guys know just how well my business is going.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

So, the business accounts for my crafting in SWTOR for January can be found here. It says Antan's sales as Antan was the only one crafting for the month but in future it will reflect the combined accounts of all my characters.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Story
Antare is now about as far through the story as Antan, which is about half-way through Taris. Getting to Legacy is going to be a long old slog as I have Taris to finish, followed by Nar Shaddah, Tatooine and Alderaan. Plus any other surprises they decide to throw in. I may go back to just doing class quests for a bit until I get slightly less depressed about my lack of progression!

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

I started just plowing through the class quests as I had started to outlevel things again, and was able to finish that up, get my legacy, and then go back and do the content that I wanted to.

What are you going to have your legacy name be?

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

Oh, just the usual character surname, although I perpetually worry that someone else will take it before me!

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Story
I have now finished off my class quests on Taris and have moved on to Nar Shaddaa. It feels quite wrong moving on without having completed everything but I'll go back and finish it off when I've got Legacy. Doing just the class quests has its advantage in that I can work through it quite quickly but it also has the disadvantage that leveling is slower and so things get increasingly harder. Good if you like a challenge, bad if, like me, you don't! Still, I can take an extra couple of quests here and there to add to the XP and Nar Shaddaa missions will grant more XP than Taris should have so I may level quicker anyway.

Crafting
Before I venture too far into Nar Shaddaa, though, I need to do a bit of crafting. Antare is now reaching the upper limit of the goods that Antan can craft so I need to work on that for a bit and upgrade Antare's Kit. Having done a month's worth of crafting and reported the results, I need to make a few improvements to my spreadsheet. I have a week of non-gaming time coming up so I may use it to throw together a database, which would handle this sort of data better than a spreadsheet. I'm not sure whether to knock up a web interface, which will take a lot of work, or have a play with OpenOffice Database, which I've never used before but would probably require less work.

I find it funny that I'm putting together accounts for a game. I generally find reading accounts very dull (probably because their subject matter never relates to me) but putting together accounts for a crafting business I run in a game I find fascinating. Must be the mathematician in me! I suppose it's also interesting in that it's a good way of working out how well I'm actually doing, rather than just randomly making and selling things (where I could, unknowingly be making a loss).

Combat
I'm still doing combat wrong! Not as wrong as with the Consular, but still wrong. I mis-time skills, or waste the wrong skills on the wrong enemy. I do have a good starting combo that works for most situations: Force Leap, Force Sweep, Master Strike, Blade Storm. The first covers the ground and builds focus. The next is an AoE that stuns most things and seriously wounds the majority of the minions around. The Master Strike is fantastic for knocking HPs of your main baddie, though I often waste it on minions. And again, Blade Storm, which costs no focus, thanks to the Leap charging it, is a good HP killer. Then I get down to charging focus.

Where the target group is your general mob, this is fine. The difficulty comes against the bosses, where I need to properly tank. I have a good Heal over Time (HoT) skill that I either use too late, and so need to use a medpack anyway, or waste when it's not needed. I also don't seem to be hitting the right combos to get the best damage. I need to build focus and the skills that do that are low damage. Sundering Strike also has an effect that reduces the targets armour, and this stacks, but I don't use it effectively enough. I also don't know whether to use a generator in the off-hand (I still don't know what that actually does!), a focus, or a shield generator. I have passive skills that improve the effectiveness of a shield generator, so it would make sense to use that but I don't know how the benefits compare.

One bonus I've discovered though is that Kira seems to be an excellent DPS. She also always seems to have nearly full health so she either has some special heal ability or I'm doing most of the tanking. She also has some excellent AoE skills, which quickly take out the minions in a group whilst I'm tanking the main guy. It's almost disappointing that I don't get to take them out myself but that's how it is as a tank, I suppose.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Combat
More stuff that I meant to write yesterday. I have a skill, called Resolve or Resolution or something, that allows me to quickly recover from being stunned, knocked down, choked or whatever. The problem is that I'm usually looking at my action bar, wondering why my skills aren't working properly, before I realise I'm being held under this effect, by which time the damage has been done. I'm getting better at spotting this and reacting to it, especially for those beasts that I remember impose such an effect.

Riposte is a skill I don't really understand. Its animation makes it look as if it's not that powerful and it doesn't appear to deal much damage. Most of the occasions that I use it is because I've accidentally hit the button! Apparently, there are some skills later on that cause Riposte to give defensive bonuses, but it doesn't appear to have much other use.

Force Kick looks cool but is one of those "interrupt" skills that I never seem to be able to use at the right time!

Stims. I collect lots of stims but never use them. Like medpacks, I see them as consumables and therefore not to be used unless really required but I'm sure there should be a proper strategy as to which ones to use, and when, and which to just sell.

Mods
There are to types of mods that I need but can't make: the "mod" mods and the "armouring mod" mods. I assume these are both made by Cybertech? For the time-being, I either have to get these mods by loot or buy them from vendors (the main thing that I tend to use my commendations for).

Well Duh!
I had a "Duh" moment today. There has been many occasions where skills have disappeared from my action bar due to, in the fits of battle, me accidentally clicking and dragging the skill off the bar instead of just clicking it. I often wondered of a way to prevent that. Today I remembered the option to lock the action bar. It was a real /facepalm moment as I came across that option previously and thought "why would anyone ever want to do that?"! Well Duh!

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Crafting
Did crafting on Antan yesterday to get him up to producing the latest stuff that Antare can use. Did that and modded up Antare. Also had a go at OpenOffice database. It didn't really do what I wanted so I'll either stick with spreadsheet or custom build a web database.

Today sold an Advanced Fort Enhancement 3 (purple) for 18k!

Story
Today I got Antare about halfway through the class quests on Nar Shaddaa and did some side quests on the way. He's now level 23. The bosses are getting quite tough to do but still managable. I hope to get the rest of that and Tatooine done by the end of the weekend. May even work on some of Alderaan. We'll see how it goes.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Story
Completed class quests on Nar Shaddaa with Antare. Just two planets to go until Legacy! I'm now stuck though as I need some serious help defeating Valis. He has 8k HP, which, usually, I can deal with but he has some awesome powers that I just can't do anything about. Best I've managed to do is get him down to about 4.5k HP. If anyone is able to log on tomorrow afternoon (US time) and help out, that would be great. Then I can hopefully get Tat done over the weekend.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

X2, I can help you out if I see you online.

Story
I had a go at levelling to see if that would make it any easier to defeat Valis. I've completed most of the missions on Nar Shaddaa and am now level 25. I have a speeder! But I can't defeat Valis! Given up for the evening now (it being half one in the morning). Gone to bed!

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Force push + Jedi = win



The funniest part was when you would get so paranoid that you would call me the right name and then switch to the wrong name haha.

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"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
Douglas Adams

This sounds like it's a private joke. Does Cet have a history of calling you the wrong name?!


For those of you holding your breath to find out whether I've managed to defeat Valis, there's an update coming but I'll post tomorrow.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

My real name is Peter, and the brother closest in age to me is Patrick. Having two names beginning with P led to my parents calling each of us by the wrong names, constantly. They then didn't learn their lesson, and had a Matthew and a Mark. So Matt and Mark are referred to by each others' names all the time.

_________________
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

Story
DF was on when I logged in Antare on Saturday so I got him to help me kill Valis. As Ryric was level 47, it ended up being a quick and easy fight! I got him to show me the ships for smuggler and trooper as I've only seen the Defender so far. They're all quite cool. The smuggler ship is classic! Although the turrets don't exist yet.

Following defeating Valis, there was a quick mission to Tython relating to Kira's background. There then followed a few conversations where I decided to pursue the romance options, which resulted in a good snogging, which was fun! It seems game cutscenes have now mastered the art of character interaction; the kissing animation was pretty good. All in all, though, I find the flirt options to be quite cheesy. The clue there is in the word flirt, which, by definition, suggests cheesy. I'm sure the voice actors must have struggled to say some of those lines with a straight face! Also it's kind of hard to go from a non-relationship to kissing in just three conversations without it being slightly silly. And, I suppose, to an outsider, real relationships are cheesy anyway!

I do often wonder the impact of choosing a certain conversation option and what impact that may have further down the line. I half expect, every time I use Force Persuade, the result to be "Jedi mind tricks don't work on me" and for what could have been a peaceful resolution to turn into a hostile situation (in the same way the Charm spell tended to, when it wore off, in the D&D games). I half expect, when using a flirt option, to get my face slapped, or for a romance option to have difficult consequences later on. But then, this is Star Wars and Star Wars tends to be pretty black and white when it comes to moral options. Most of the story "surprises" I have been able to predict to some extent. And the greatest surprises have lead-ins that give you plenty of warning if you're of a cynical disposition like me.

So, I thought "Hurrah! With Valis dead, I can now continue my story". Well, that didn't quite happen. I went to Tatooine, took my first mission and died in the first fight! Even the ordinary mobs are getting hard. The bosses, I'm forced to use interrupts against, or I die very quickly. I have a few options: I overlevel - possible but could lengthen the time it takes to progress; I learn to do combat properly - I could improve but there's a limit to what I can do, more on that later; I upgrade my armour - this I need to do anyway and will certainly help; I group up - fine in theory, in practice I play at different times to everyone else. In any event, progress is not going to happen quickly. So I spent the rest of Saturday logged in as Antan and did some crafting.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Combat
I seem to have got to a point in the game where the bad guys start to use killer abilities. Previously it was just a case of each of us doing a bit of damage to the other with each round and the victor was the one who didn't die first. Later on, the bosses started using "controlling" attacks, such as stun or choke, but I could get out of those with my resolute ability and often the damage was not great. Now, they have killer abilities, which I have to interrupt or they take out half my health. This causes me difficulties because I either don't get to the interrupt fast enough or it's still cooling down. One partial solution to this would be to put the interrupt ability, Force Kick, on my main action bar and access it by key press rather than using the mouse but this brings in another problem:

My abilities could be roughly considered to fall into six categories:

• Focus Builders
• Big Hitters
• Damage Reduction
• Healing
• Interrupts
• States (Stances, Sprint, Vehicles etc.)

In combat, I use the Focus Builders and the Big Hitters most often. These, therefore, are the abilities that mostly fill my main action bar. The rest go in the extended action bar. As I fight the bigger baddies, I make more use of the Damage Reduction, Healing and Interrupts, and will need quick access to them. I can't put them all on the main bar as there's too many of them, and I can't not use some because so many have long cool downs. In short, I need a better way of accessing, or at least organising, my abilities. I could key bind the slots in the extended action bar but I don't really have an convenient keys on the keyboard to use. I could use shift and a number key but that would either be awkward or require two hands, neither of which is really desirable. What I'd ideally like is the ability to stack multiple abilities to one slot and pressing the key would activate whichever ability is not cooling down. I also need to be more clever about how I use my abilities. I use Force Stasis as a Big Hitter, for instance, when it also works as an interrupt. If I were to alternate it with Force Kick, I may have less of an issue with the bosses using their heaviest abilities.

Crafting
I have now found a couple of worksheet functions that mean I can do everything I want, relatively easily, in my crafting spreadsheet. So I no longer need to look into using databases.

I've been trying to level Antan's crafting as quickly as possible. At the very least, I need to have him keep up with Antare's progress. I may also complete Arianae's story on Ord Mantell and start training her up as a Cybertech so I can get all the mods and armouring mods. Finally, I either need to find a good source of general heavy armour (Antare himself is a Synthweaver but I've done very little crafting on him) or get some more orange armour that I can mod up. I've got an orange robe and lightsaber, but that's it.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Round up
Last week was mostly spent doing crafting on Antan and space missions on Antare. The dailies on the space missions give pretty good XP and the missions themselves are not hard to do so I've been able to push Antare up a couple of levels by just doing that. Antan's crafting is now at a stage where he is able to craft items that are above Antare's level. So by the start of this weekend (where weekend starts at Friday lunchtime - ah the joys of flexible working!) Antare was as modded up as he could be.

Story
I've completed my class story on Tatooine. I duelled a Pureblood Sith and persuaded him to join the jedi! Pretty cool. Tatooine is huge. I was worried that the class story, like for the previous planets, would take me to every sector of the map. If it did, it would take ages and that was very disheartening. As it happened, the class story was actually pretty short and only covered a small section of the map.

I actually solved my previous dilemma of the mobs* being too hard. As Antare had gained a couple of levels, he was at the top end of the level band for Tatooine when I started the session on Friday. I'm sure modding up would have helped but overlevelling seems to be, by far, the best mechanism of making the fights easier!

I then got on to Alderaan. Before doing so I had read the advice that DF quoted in this post: http://www.avian-gamers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=130706#p130706
I headed to Fleet and respecced as I had been constraining myself to the Defence tree. Possibly as a consequence of this (or maybe I'm getting more daring, or just plain better at combat) most of the mobs I've been fighting on Alderaan I've either been at level or underlevel. This has lead to some very hard fights (I won one with just 2 HPs left!) and I've died I few times but it's not been too bad.

Alderaan is gorgeous! The world builders clearly put a lot of effort into it. It is also huge. You have no idea how incredibly, mindbogglingly huge it is. I really hoped that the class quest didn't take me through every sector. And, as I've (I think) nearly completed it, it doesn't. Plenty to explore at a later date though.

I am now approaching what I believe to be the final duel of the planet. And after that, it'll just be a few mop-up missions before I get my Legacy. But I have a problem. I am now underlevelled! (I've obviously been fighting pretty well!) I'm unlikely to complete the mission without levelling up a couple of levels (or dying lots and getting lucky!) or grouping. I'd prefer to group as it's more fun and saves me the hassle of doing extra missions. Grouping is also unlikely, so if it doesn't happen today I shall spend the week levelling and try again next weekend. I have a separate post to make about grouping. I'll post on that later.


* Should they really be called "mobs"? Given that "mobs" is actually short for "mobiles"; the mobs in SWTOR are rather more static than that!

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Story
So I got up to level 30 this afternoon by doing some space missions. I thought I'd give the Alderaan class boss a go, despite being underlevelled and, if all else failed, I could leave it and come back. As it happened, I won. I died a few times in the lead up to the fight and Kira was killed half-way through the boss fight, but I won! Alderaan class quest finished. I then figured I'd have the Big Bad Boss to deal with before getting Legacy. Just as I was figuring out what I was going to do about that, Dolent came online and I got him to join me. The upshot of all that is:

I now have Legacy!!

The thought process went something like this:
Me: I have a surname, how cool is that! ... Is that it?
Little voice at the back of my head me: Well of course that's it! What else were you expecting?!

So I wandered around the Jedi Temple on Tython for a bit thinking how cool it was to have a surname and then wondered what to do now. Having spent so much effort over the last several weeks to get to this point, getting there is a bit of an anticlimax and the immediate aftermath gave a sense of feeling lost. So Dolent, Cet and I then went off and did a flashpoint, which was really fun. I also discovered that they group up regularly on a Sunday at a convenient time for me. I was going to lament about the lack of people on but grouping one day a week satisfies my requirements and I may finally be able to level up some social levels!

I have a bit of a choice as to what I do now. I can either take Antare back to Taris and start doing everything at my leisure (although, given the size of some of the planets, I may start to get bored of that) or I can start working on Arianae and at least get her as far as Fleet where I can get her to start crafting.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Arianae
It occurs to me that I've yet to write up my escapades of the weekend before last. Having now got to Legacy and secured my surname, I haven't done much with Antare. I'll take him back to Taris and complete that but I'm in no rush. So instead I decided to work on my smuggler alt, Arianae (her name should have been Ariane but someone had already taken that, Arianae was the closest I could get to it; the pronunciation is the same).

I was just doing the class quests on Ord Mantell but I was starting to underlevel so I figured I'd just go back and do everything. I completed Ord Mantell and Coruscant, and got my smuggler ship at the end of it. What has impressed me so far is how different the story is to that of the Jedi. In all the previous games, even if you didn't start out as a Jedi, that's where you ended up and so the story has always been along those lines. The smuggler story looks to be completely different. And that's rather refreshing.

Flashpoints
On the Sunday of the weekend before last (I didn't play during the weekend just gone) I grouped up with Cetera and Dolent and we ran Esseles. Twice! They were both trying out dark side characters and were just getting to Coruscant. I joined in with Arianae. It was interesting to watch the dark-side options play out (I always go light-side). It also gave me the opportunity to play with the various conversation options and we discovered that some of the things the smuggler says are really funny. It's a shame that it's not always obvious which options are going to be the funny ones though, which has probably resulted in me missing a lot of them in standard play. Also a lot of them are said straight. I still would like to see some "Captain Mal" style tongue-in-cheek humour that's not necessarily said straight. Alas, this seems to be unlikely or, at least, the gems don't occur that often. It's clearly something they're happy to write though as a lot of Kira's lines are like that. I suppose the difficulty comes where a lot of the humour comes from and interaction between people and, where you can't predict which interaction route the player wants to take, it's easier to go with more generic responses.

Crafting
I have now completed the accounts for February. They can be found here. I've made only a small profit. This is for two reasons: Antare had some rather large expenses; and I was being lazy and not updating my spreadsheet with production costs, which meant that it was indicating larger profits than reality. You'll notice, however, that I have more than doubled my sales income over January and this was without really concentrating on crafting, other than to assist levelling.

I may spend a bit more time crafting-to-sell this month and see how well I do. I'm curious to see how quickly I can pass the 1 million credits mark.

Also, if I can work out a fast, easy way of producing graphs for the web, I may start doing some charts of resource cost variances, income-over-time and the like.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

I was actually back home at my parents' place this past weekend, so neither of us were available to group with you. So sorry!

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Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!

Oh I wasn't playing either. I was at my parents recovering from a hospital op, so it was all well planned really!


Antare
Today I took Antare (who is now level 31) back to Coruscant and solo'd all the Heroic Areas as they were the only bits I had yet to do. I tackled the world boss, SDO, in the Old Galactic Market sector, thinking it would now be a fairly easy fight, and to my surprise, I died almost instantly. This is clearly a boss for a large group. I found a YouTube clip of it being tackled by a group of level 20s (or so the description said). It took 15-20 of them to tackle it and most of them were dead by the end of the encounter!! The rest of the Heroic missions (whether 2 group or 2 group) I solo'd without much issue.

Most of the loot was useless to me, except there was a nice Orange lightsaber with a different look and sound to the one I currently had. So I swapped all the mods (at a small cost of 5k!) to the new one. It is quite cool that there are different sabre designs although it's a shame that they don't show up when you do the preview.

Space Combat
I've also discovered that when you do the lower level space missions as a higher level char, you get extra bonus missions than when you played it at lower level. For instance the Fondor escort now, with Antare, has a bonus mission to destroy the frigate turrets and the first space station assault one now has bonus missions to destroy turrets on the frigates and to destroy the space defences.

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X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)

Epic Flashpoint
The Saturday before last Cet and Dolent were on at the same time that I so happened to log in. We decided to run the Taral V Flashpoint. I think both Dolent and I were underlevel for it so it was hard to start with. We eventually got through it but man was it epic! Took about three hours to do and it was one in the morning before I realised it! Good fun though.

Mess Around
Last Sunday I logged on and there was no one around. I eventually got bored with crafting so I logged in on Antare and took him to Ord Mantell to collect all the Datacrons. I quickly discovered that missions on Ord Mantell are not available for the classes that start on Tython, even the dailies. In getting one of the datacrons I needed to get over to the separatist stronghold island. I decided to go there by crossing an exhaustion zone. Got within a pace of the opposite shore before I died!

I then decided to climb the outside of the volcano. This I managed to do although I very much doubt it's intended as I kept running in and out of scenery! I eventually got to the top and had the pleasure of seeing the base inside from above. I jumped in, as there was no other way of getting down, and died. I rezzed at the base medical point and decided to spend the rest of the evening seeing how made mobs I can pull agro on at once. I reckon I had about 20 npcs shooting at me at one point and it was barely denting my health (Antare being level 31 at this point). It was really cool! I got some good screenshots too that I may upload at some point.

_________________
X2-PB

Pathfinder Kingmaker Campaign:
Gednan Malithanar - Wizard (1)
Dukin Thunderstrike - Ranger (1)

Star Citizen: - https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/
AntanKarmola on their forums

Star Wars: The Old Republic: - Not really playing
Antare Karmola - Jedi Guardian (32)
Antan Karmola - Jedi Shadow (21)
Arianae Karmola - Gunslinger (20)