Half naked Sith is half naked...

So blogger has a new user interface, looks quite nice and I usually hate changes but this is really good. I just wonder if their posting tool still screws up the whole html code. Will have to check on that later.

I woke up way too early today, so I went to Tatooine and did some daily quests for the event. I'm still annoyed that I couldn't get the complete set for Praven or Khalindora. Only the belt and the chest is missing. *sniffles*

But while I was there I rememebered I wanted to make screencaps of Praven for a wallpaper. I definitely needed a new one. So yep... that's what came out in the end:

I absolutely love the boney ridges they have on the chest (back and elbows too), must be a girl thing but I would like to know what they feel like... and yes, I know curiousity killed the cat. ;D

And if I wasn't so lazy I could have worked on his hair but I basically did this when I came home after a job interview and the server maintenance was still running. And sheesh, I should know better to save in between... when I was done my computer froze up. 

Oh, in case someone wonders, the text in the middle is the Sith codex. I definitely need to do a wallpaper with Khalindora having the Jedi codex in it... one day.

I also worked on a wallpaper that has my Marauder Sidice in it... mhmm, might take some time as I'm not really happy with it.

And I still hate it that there is no tool like the "WoW Model Viewer" for SW:ToR. It's such a pain that I'm limited to in game screenshots and that I can't position the models the way I want to. I would have loved to have Praven cast lightning storm in the background but I'm not able to press any buttons for spells once I hit CTRL+U. So I would need someone else to make a screenshot while my char casts something. ;(

There isn't much else I could write about, Bioware still hasn't fixed the sound for the German client. Not that I really care since I use the English client and everything seems fine. My Imp guildies also switched to the English client so they have sound in the warzones... it's really so annoying not hearing anything in there.

That's it for today... I'm off to bed.

Doing laundry and getting to level 25...

Right, I'm supposed to write a blog post about how to do laundry and get to level 25 today... yeah well, no of course I'm not. But one of my guild mates asked me if I could write an entry on that topic. ^^

Actually this is a bit of a mixed post, I couldn't really decide on what I wanted to write about. And I thought I would spare the male readers of my blog with an entire post of half-naked pictures of my Praven. :D

However this post does contain some girlish squee, so be warned, time to hit the "back" button now.

After losing way too many warzones on Friday I thought I would do some questing and get my Shytra her love interest... Torian Cadera. Ever since I saw the videos of him on Youtube I wanted my merc to have him. Trouble was, Shytra was only 31 and hadn't even done the first chapter of her class quest, so I had to do that first.

Wasn't really hard, even though she had no real tank for a companion. The boss was way too easy compared to all the other class quests I did before.

So with barely 32 Shytra could name herself "Grand Champion of the Great Hunt", and what I didn't know was, you meet Torian actually on Dromund Kaas during the celebration ceremony.

There he is, the only one not wearing a helmet, so I immediately recognized him during the sequence.

After a couple more quests, you get send to Dromund Kaas again (deja vu?) by Mandalore to kill a certain shadow beast.

And look who Shytra met again:

Obviously that isn't from a real sequence, I just moved her closer to him. ;)

So yes, you meet him twice before you get to Taris, which is actually the planet you will get him as a companion once you finished the class quest there.

And here was my next problem, Taris itself is suggested from level 32-36. I used to go there being 35 or higher with all my other imp chars. Shytra was 32 when she set foot on Taris (the things you do for love) and it was quite challenging. I really needed to watch my way, not ending up pulling aggro from 10 mobs.

I really really liked that part of the quest line. Sometimes I'm just too romantic but that was a really cute scene.

This is after the last quest and just before Torian tells Shytra that he needs some time alone. I'm not going to explain that because of spoilers.

But in the end Shytra successfully finished the whole classquest line on Taris (she was level 33 during the last fight) and got Torian to join her crew. And now my merc is happily in love with her Mandalorian warrior. D'awwww! ;)

Shytra showered Torian with gifts on Saturday morning:

He's really quite easy to gain affection with. ;D

Also fitting for my mercenary stuff:

Qyzen talking about Mako, another companion of the mercenary. I totally didn't get that crossover between Republic and Empire because when I had that dialogue with Khalisha, I didn't know about Mako at all.

Sometimes I do miss playing with Khalindora. And I still think she's gorgeous... *glares* even though Martin calls her monster, just because I choose the tallest female model. :/

And I'm closing this post with something rather funny:

Pretty much self-explanatory. Some juggernaut liked my healing with Praven.

And 2 warzones later I ran into the same guy again:
Guy: Praven my healing hero.
Which sort of had me facepalm in guild chat saying that I have a fan. And as my guild leader pointed out, thank god, that guy didn't know that I'm a woman. ;D

Parting ways...

I actually dreaded writing this post because it makes me sad in a way. In all my time playing MMO's I've never deleted a character that was above level 15. And the day before yesterday I did... my Shae is gone. *cries*

Honestly, I never thought I would feel so sad about it, but I did. She was level 47 and had all her crew skills maxed out, most of her Cybertech recipes were epic, which took ages to get. *sniffles*

Not to mention she had orange bracers and an orange belt, and overall her gear was great for her level. *sobs*

But oh well, I needed another character slot as I wanted to level a Sith-marauder and my only options for deletion where Shae, Kaela or Khalindora. I couldn't bring myself to delete Kaela because she's level 50 and I had put way too much time into gearing her and buying things for her.

And there was no way I could delete Khalindora, I might not play her so much anymore but she used to be my favorite character and holds so many fond memories of her PvP times.

So Shae had to go...

I will miss her and the time I invested into playing and levelling her.

Loved that screencap, she's not fat, look at that bum, she was a gorgeous guardian. ;)

Her replacement was also called Shae:
Not half as pretty and I don't know why but I couldn't really warm up to her. An when I couldn't sleep on Tuesday night my mind went wandering. And then I remembered that I didn't need to play a race to 50 in order to get it for a class. I could also spent 1,5 million credits.

The result was:
Say hello to "Sidice" my new Sith-marauder, yes, he's Chiss. Was it worth the money? Hell, yes, I love playing him.

Gotta love the abs he has. I'm sure he will help me get over the loss of Shae. And he's light side just like Praven. ;)

However to compensate the 1,5 mio credits I spent I need to do some daily quests again. Should take me about a week to get it back. And then I can ponder if I want to spend more money on the legacy stuff.

Who would have thought...

...that I love healing as a Mercenary even more than healing as a Sith-sorcerer?
Honestly, I was pretty sceptical at first because the only reason for me to level a merc was because of their stylish animations.

But with the complete change of healing mechanics since patch 1.2, healing with my sorcerer feels not quite right now, it doesn't feel fluid anymore. While healing with the merc is just plain fun. *pew pew*

The best way to describe it is, when Praven went into his first warzone with level 11 I felt completely useless. I had no hot, no shield and no force bending that allowed me to shorten my dark heal to 1,5 secs. And now healing with him feels like that at level 42. I mean yes, he has the shield, the force speed, the AoE heal and the channeled heal but still... it feels static and clumsy.

It's not so much the fact that I can no longer heal myself against 3 bad DD's but I feel so squishy and helpless most of the time, it's frustrating. And I hate to see my guildies die because I don't have a fast heal anymore. The only warzone I still have fun playing him is huttball because of his utilities (force speed, shield, pull). The rest is just... meh. :/

With Shytra I'm not a fan of huttball but I love each and every one of the other warzones. True, if I come up against a good DD I'm also dead and there is no way for me to survive on my own. But usually I can get the attacker down to 50% before I hit the ground.

And with Shytra it was amazing to heal at a low level (14). I couldn't believe how useful she felt compared to Praven when he was little.

That was one of her very first warzones at level 14, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that she put out that much healing.

What did my guildleader say, "Welcome to the world of real healing!". I wouldn't really call it "real" healing. It's just different from healing with a sorcerer. And while yes, you might heal more with a sorc, it's just because of the shield and the hot the sorc has that gives you a higher amount of healing. Take that away and I'm sure the numbers would be quite equal.

Sorc healing to me feels (or felt before 1.2) like healing with a disc priest and a druid. You throw your shields around, hot every one in sight and then use your other spells.

With the merc I need to have my 30 charge stacks up and then heal as much as I can before I have too much heat. It feels a bit like healing with a paladin so it's obviously different from a sorc but not that much harder.

However as people seem to be obsessed with the amount of healing they put out (I'm not! I said it before, I rather heal like 75k in a game that we win than heal 300k in a game that we lose.) my newest challenge is beat sorcs in healing!

But I need to watch it and not to lose myself in that challenge, otherwise I will be of no use as a teamplayer.

And it's not an easy challenge either, I know that if I could play an identical warzone with Shytra and Praven, my Praven would always outheal Shytra by far. But hey, I need challenges.

I felt really bad for this sorc healer, he healed more than me and did more damage than me, yet it was my little Shytra who got more MVP votes in the end. And the one he got was from me. ^^

That's better, more healing and equal damage. ;D

Hehehe, that's a screencap from yesterday. The sorc was amazing, I basically healed more but he had a decent amount of damage. Got praise from him that I'm an amazing healer and gave it right back, he was really good but so was the whole team.

And finally it happened again and this time I have the screencap to prove it! 6 MVP votes from my teammates (7 being the highest you can get).

It's not the highest amount I have healed in a voidstar game. I think the highest was 243k or something but I was really close to the Republic sage that's why I kept this screencap.

And as a bonus, here is my little Shytra, she's level 24 right now:

Khali vs. The UI editor

With patch 1.2 came the new ui editor, I already mentioned it in my last post, and during the weekend I sat down and fiddled around with it.

My old UI on patch day:
Had to use this screenshot, someone kicked me up there during a huttball game. ^^

First try with the UI editor, wasn't happy with it. (Someone remind me to never make a cap on the fleet, had to edit out all the names. -.-)

We are slowing getting there, but as usual not 100% satisfied, typical me.

That's what my UI currently looks like (and yes, I still haven't chosen any keybindings). Mhmm, need to see what else I can tweak around. ^^

Oh yeah, I also wanted to post my "Legacy" family tree:
Kinda funny how it says that Praven's race is human, he would be pretty upset if he found that out. Small explanation to the whole thing, Khalindora is Praven's spouse. I just love star-crossed couples, so a Sith and a Jedi have to be the ultimate thing for that. And yes, I know lore wise this would probably never happen, but I still couldn't resist the temptation.

Also Sha'khali is an ally of Praven (let's not get into that) but it might explain why Khalina is Praven's daughter. Khalisha is Khalindora's older sister and actually Shytra is supposed to be the child of Praven and Khalindora... I couldn't put her directly in line, the legacy won't let me. So in the tree she shows up as Khalindora's daughter.

On the left side are Kaela and Shae, as I haven't put them into the family tree. Shae might get replaced and I'm not sure I want Kaela in my family tree. So far she doesn't really fit in there, and neither does Shae.

What's the use of this you ask? There is none... so far, and I'm not sure if there ever will be but it's fun to play around with it.

Alright time to play and kill some Rep players, or infect them with the Rakghoul virus. Tihihihi! ;)

Friday the 13th...

As the SW:ToR servers are currently offline for maintenance again... I have time to write another blog entry, before I flop down on my couch to watch the 2 new eps of Game of Thrones.

Right, so we got patch 1.2 yesterday, at first everything seemed pretty normal when I logged in. But the little in game bugs started to crawl all over me... after a couple of hours! ;)

At first I got annoyed with the new UI editor, I mean yes, it's ok, you can scale and move your UI stuff around. But why can't I turn my char portrait, name and class off? I mean, I know what I play and what my char is called. And why can't I scale my buffs/debuffs seperately? Also why does there have to be some tiny little space on the left and right quickbar? Khali does not approve!

Then one of my imp guildmates complained about having sound problems upon entering the warzones. I didn't have that, the only thing I had, was that awful annoying speeder sound on the Imperial fleet. Horrible! So I figured must be the German client... pah, NO! After playing PvP for a couple of hours I got the same sound bug, not hearing any sounds in the warzones. Really really annoying!

And yes, here comes the WHINE (does anyone have some cheese for me?), what the hell was Bioware thinking with the healer changes? They just plain suck, it's not so much that I heal less now but I can't even keep myself alive against 1 DD? That's ridiculous! And from what I heard in the level 50 bracket it's even worse because everyone dies after about 5 seconds. Why oh why did Bioware have to change that? I mean where's the fun if you die that quick? But hey I don't have to worry about force management... I'm dead before my sorc runs out of force. xD

That means for me I'm not going to heal anymore. I feel sorry for my poor Sha'khali but that's the end of it for her. I might play with Praven from time to time with my imp guildmates but I will no longer heal alone as a random in a warzone. So it's Khalina's time to shine from now on.

Oh yeah, for those who read my post yesterday... it's true "no more Voidstar gap jumping":

I guess it will be one of those things that are going to be remembered fondly in convos: "Remember when we still could jump that gap?" And then probably everyone will say that they could do it. ;)

Then a couple of words on the whole "Legacy" system. I had level 42 with my legacy, not that it did me any favors, from what I saw level 25 would have been enough. I just don't get what my social rank has to do with the whole legacy thing. I mean you need social X for some legacy features? Seriously? *shakes head*

Also you have 8 character slots for each server and there are 9 different races, from which you can unlock 5 for both factions (Mirialan, Miraluka, Chiss, Sith pureblood, Rattataki) if you played one of those races to level 50 or pay 1,500,000 credits. Dammit, I only have Mirialan and Sith! I need more character slots!

Yesterday I also said good-bye to Chanelle and welcomed Shytra to the family, my new Mercenary. At first I made her human, but then I remembered I had unlocked the Mirialan race for Imperial side... so here she is:
She's currently level 15 and waits in the cantina of Kaas City. I wanted her to become another healer but with the current changes I might just spec her DD, to have an outlet for my frustration in PvP. One-button-smasher class... perfect! ;D

I did love that you get sprint from level 1 on now, speeds things up quite a bit. I'm nearly done with Dromund Kaas but ugh, Balmorra waits for her then. Need to do more PvP with her. ;)

And Bioware just announced that the servers won't be back till 1am my time. I just love how Bioware changes the maintenance times around all the time, at first they said the servers would be down from 9am-1pm then it was 1pm-5pm... servers came online around 4pm only to go down around 5pm and now the maintenance will go on for another 7 hours. ;D

Anyway, I will enjoy the official SW:ToR forums for a while, gotta love those threads in which everyone whines and complains and pulls the "I pay 13 Euro for this game..." joker.

Not that I care much, I got an email this morning from Bioware that I get a free month and a free tauntaun pet (I was quite sad yesterday when I realized that I would have to pay 1,200,000 credits for the baby tauntaun they implemented with 1.2, as I had no VIP lounge access.).

And I close this post with a bonus screenshot of Shytra on Hutta:

Today is the day...

Right now the SW:ToR servers are down for the scheduled maintenance as we get patch 1.2 later today. I'm really excited to play the new warzone "Novare coast" in a couple of hours. And I also worry about how bad the healer nerf is.

And in the last minute Bioware made the announcement that rated warzones won't be implemented with this patch. You also won't be able to queue with 8 mates for warzones. Doesn't really surprise me because from what I read on the test server barely any rated warzones opened. They need to get this live along with cross-server queuing, because some servers are nearly dead as no one is playing on them anymore. So cross-server transfers are badly needed or just merge the ghostserver with bigger ones.

Anyway I had a list with stuff I wanted to do before patch 1.2 went live:

• Make 10,000,000 credits
• Buy a Korrealis baron mount (2,000,000 credits)
• Buy white color crystal (2,500,000 credits)
• Buy magenta crystal recipes (750,000 credits)
• Get level 40 pvp set for all my lowbie chars
• Stock up on purple and cyan crystals
• Get Sha'khali to valor rank 60
• Get Shae and Khalindora to 50

Hm, not a long list at all... however I only managed:

• Buy magenta crystal recipes (750,000 credits)
• Get level 40 pvp set for all my lowbie chars
• Stock up on purple and cyan crystals

I could have bought the mount and the white color crystal, however I decided against it. Since I couldn't get to 10 mio credits I won't waste what I have. I will need my credits for the legacy system. As for getting Shae and Khalindora to 50... I saw no reason for it, because it's very likely that Shae will be replaced by a Sith pureblood Jedi and I barely play Khalindora these days, so no point in rushing her to 50 either.

And hopefully I can finally send stuff from my rep chars to my imp chars via ingame post. I'm getting sick of flying with 2 chars to Nar Shaddaa using the neutral auction house.

I already said good-bye to my style of healing last night, playing my last warzone with Praven. I will definitely miss it, and I just hope I can adapt to the new way. If I can't, all my healers will face the same fate as my druid did in WoW, ending up not being played anymore (I hate changes!).

There is another thing I will miss:

That jump was one of the things I wanted to accomplish... I never did. I must have tried over 30 times and always failed. And I truly admire those who managed it. In all the warzones I've played I've only seen 2 players successfully jump that gap. It looks easy but it isn't.

[By the way... the song is BALMORRA, THE FORGE which belongs to the 28 songs I mention a bit later in this post.]

I only read that they changed it with 1.2 so I can't confirm it 100% as I haven't been playing on the ptr and people write a lot of bullshit that isn't true (e.g. you can romance your master as a sith sorc). But if it's gone then damn I will miss that challenge.

I chatted a couple of hours with a former rep guildie yesterday and he reminded me to check out the new pve/pvp armor models... god, a lot of them look awful.
But take a look for yourselves:

LINK TO DULFY'S PAGE [NEW ARMOR MODELS]

*shudders* And I thought the scarecrow helmet for the inquisitors looked ugly.

What else? Ah, yeah, I pushed Khalina, my assassin, to level 40 yesterday and respecced her. So she's now a tank in dps gear. I only played 3 or so warzones with her (was too tired yesterday to do more) but it's definitely fun. Have to see if I will keep the spec or change it again.

*purr purr purr* Ain't she sexy? :D Yeah, I keep repeating myself but god, I love this set. ;)

And then I want to mention something I actually wanted to write a whole post on. I love the SW:ToR music, have always been a sucker for epic music and the soundtrack for the game just rocks. However I don't have the collectors edition of the game and unlike the WoW soundtracks you can't buy the SW:ToR one on iTunes. *sniffles* So I only get to hear it when I play the game.

However not all songs are on the disk that you get with the CE. At the beginning of December Bioware/EA released another 28 songs on their Facebook page. I'm no longer on fb and I don't intend to ever come back so I had to search far and wide to find a page that had those songs.

And research girl that I am, I found a page:
28 SW:ToR songs on Gamona's website

The last download link is wrong, so you need to fiddle a bit with the URL to get it right. ;)

I think that's it from me for today.

Bonus screenshot (Sha'khali gathering datacrons on Dromund Kaas):

Mixed stuff...

First of all I updated:

"My characters so far..."

Up to date levels and portraits.

After an eight hour levelling session, my dearest Praven finally made it to 40. It all started with me wanting to finish the class questline up to the point where he gets the title of "Lord" and then it just went out of hand (or I went over board with it). But at least he can wear the gorgeous level 40 gear. And he finally met Ashara, so it's just a matter of "gift companions" till their romance progresses. ;D

I have the same screencap with Sha'khali... one of these days I need to do a manip with a lightsaber fight. :)
Oh yeah, while questing on Taris you get to meet "Thana" (what a b****). And of course as a male char you get to flirt with her... not that it leads to anything. I still need to finish the quest line with Sha'khali and then Thana's story will have a different ending. *evil grin*
Praven meeting Ashara. ;)
Still find it unfair that the guys get such a pretty and exotic love interest. :D

What else? As all healers will get quite a huge nerf with patch 1.2 and since I only have a Sith sorc and a Jedi sage (who probably get the biggest nerf of all when it comes to healing in PvP) I want another healer. And as I recently play a lot on the Imperial side it will be a Mercenary healer.

I actually wanted to play a Bounty hunter quite early on, must be because of the awesome trailer. But so far I didn't really have a chance. When I first created an Empire character I went for the Sorcerer as I liked healing with my Sage so much.

However I need to wait till they release 1.2 as all characters will get the ability
"sprint" from level 1 on (currently you get it at 14). But until then I just fiddled around a bit with the character customization. So here is what my Merc would look like:
Yes, red hair... I usually hate it with a fiery passion, can't really explain it. Well, hahahaha, yes, I could but it would make no sense to anyone save for my friend Azurite. So no need to explain it.

I would have given her blonde hair but the "blonde" in SW:ToR doesn't really look blonde and for once I didn't want to go for my usual white hair thing.

Also it's too bad that the "face paint" options are so limited but oh well, nothing I can do about that.


Slim and lanky?

Or curvy and cute?

Need to ponder about this... it might also change completely depending on the Legacy thing that comes with 1.2. So she might end up not being human at all... but I won't create another Sith (I mean yes, as a Jedi I will, but not as a Merc).

We will see, Praven ended up looking completely different from what I first posted here. Then again the post I made back then was for a Juggernaut and not for a Sorcerer. How the hell should I know that I would play another sorc. ;D

I also need to come up with a name for her but not another variation of "Khali" that's for sure. As much as I like my nickname my Merc will get something different.

And I will close this post with my panorama of Alderaan:
Picasa will mess it up again with its compression, so I really only slapped it together. Not 100% satisfied with it, as usual, I did so many different pano's of Alderaan and I still haven't found the one where I would say "Yes, that's it!". :(

Darth Sha'khali

This post was actually supposed to be for Thursday... but then I just couldn't be bothered and neither could I find the enthusiasm to post something for the last 3 days.

Anyway I finally finished the class quest with Sha'khali on Thursday:

So yes, she is a Darth now... they give you the title of "Darth Nox" but obviously if you let the title show you just get the "Darth" in front of your character name... so in her case "Darth Sha'khali".

And I got annoyed with the scarecrow helmet, so I hid it. My Sith gal also finally wears the Champion robe, sheesh that took ages. I'm not having much luck with tokens in my PvP bags.

I wished I could have taken more screencaps of her last class quest but for whatever reason sometimes you can't make caps in videos. Hate that!

Taking her place in the Dark council, after she killed Darth Thanaton. What an act, first he sends his bullies which you need to kill and when you finally get to fight him and beat him.... he flees. So you have to fight him another time and on Thursday my internet hated me... with a vengence. I got disconnected twice in the last fight, cue for one of my guildmates to give me the name "Darth Disconnect" it definitely fit. ;)

The rest of the Dark council members, just before they declare you becoming a Darth.

So after having finished the Consular and the Inquisitor class quests, I can't really say which I liked more. Both had it's ups and downs, boring and exciting stuff. However the person who came up with the "Travel to Dromund Kaas... travel to the Imperial fleet... travel to Dromund Kaas... travel to the Imperial fleet" thing... should be fired. What the hell was that person thinking?

And Sha'khali is still not Battlemaster... nearly rank 59 now... and I'm not sure how much longer I have before they release patch 1.2. *sigh*

Martin also solved the mysterious disapperance of his brother from SW:ToR, he's playing the WoW MoP beta. Along with some other people I know... well, explains why I was mostly all alone on the Republic side. Do I miss WoW? Not yet, I do miss some of the people I played with.

Am I happy in SW:ToR? Over all I can answer that with a yes. Some days are amazing and sometimes I feel like an outsider... on both my Rep and my Imp guild. But no matter what, I'm sure if I look back in a year or so, I will treasure the time and the fun I had. ;)

Bonus screenshot:

Frogdogs score!

Eh, yeah, I said I would do a screencap of Khalindora scoring in huttball, yesterday. I did a cap today...
*laughs* I promise a better one soon. ;D

However that game was quite special and I couldn't really focus on doing a lovely screencap. Why? I had to play against 2 of my guildmates from the Imperial side. I didn't really look for their names today, I usually always do, but not today and I just saw them when I killed one of them.

Well, there was no way in hell I could lose against them. Private battles are way too much fun and I even scored one of the two goals. Tihihihi!

So here is the statistic, and you can guess who was the imp that killed me the 3 times I died. And you can also guess who I did my damage on. :D
But in all fairness one of them was 15 and the other one 31, had they both been 47 like me I wouldn't have stood a chance against them. And I was lucky because whenever I had a certain assassin backstabbing me one of my team mates came to the rescue. ;D

Although it did remind me of the days when I had to play against them, fortunately back then they didn't know who I was. And I rather play with them, then against them, that's for sure. ;)