Shiny New Art
On Twitter, DiscoPriest - artist of the Disciplinary Action and new Space Cadets comics - announced an art giveaway, in which she’d redo your SWTOR character in the style of a Space Cadets character. Sadly I did not get in on the contest (don’t ask me why!) but I still wanted one, mostly after seeing Asros and Fynralyl sporting theirs on Twitter and the guild forums, so I did it the old-fashioned way - I commissioned one. It was well, well worth it! I opted to get one done of my new Jedi Shadow (more on that in a sec), Jentra. Here’s the before… (click any of the pics below to enlarge)
And here she is after becoming a total Space Cadet:
So cool! Thanks again, DP - love ‘em. If you’d like to get one of your very own, here’s the easiest way to do so - the cost is $20.
Take a screenshot of your character at the SWTOR login screen. (You can use the same screenshot button that works in-game - for me, that’s Print Screen.)
Optional: take a full-body screenshot in-game. I apologize to Disco for the shoddy quality of my in-game pic (controlling the camera over a remote connection is nigh impossible!) but she did extremely well all the same.
Send the pics, along with a short email requesting a Space Cadet-style avatar, to the artist.
She’ll take care of you from there!
Shiny New Character
As you can guess from the fact that I didn’t get Kyzur cadet-ized, I’ve switched away from playing him. The Sage playstyle is okay, but it just wasn’t clicking with me. Unfortunately, it took me about 20 levels to figure that out. At that point, I was so close to unlocking my Legacy that I figured I may as well just go ahead and do it - and that’s what I did.
(A side note here about my Legacy. For no apparent reason, my original choice of Legacy names (Cygma, as in Sigma, as in Kaiser Sigma) was not allowed by the Legacy system for no apparent reason - and neither was any other spelling of it. I wonder if it can’t be five characters long? Seems kind of arbitrarily short. So I went with a backup - Epsilon. It took a little bit to grow on me, but I got used to it. About 75% of the way to Legacy Level 2, to boot.)
Jentra, my shiny new Shadow, just got to Taris. Yes, that means I’m now one of those people with multiples of the same class - but the Shadow and Sage play so differently they may as well be different classes. Just to ensure it’s not a total repeat, Jentra’s making different choices than Kyzur did in many places, even if it’s just seemingly inconsequential dialogue. As a result, she’s developed a definite anti-Imperial leaning, and is less likely to be your staunch, stuffy, upright Jedi. If Kyzur represents the Jedi Order’s guiding voice, Jentra is its striking arm.
FOR GREAT JUSTICE.
A Lesson on Lizard-men
So I’d complained on Twitter that, starting at around Tatooine but definitely noticeable on Alderaan, Qyzen Fess seemed a lot… squishier. I also had a much easier time pulling threat from him if I was spec’d for DPS. Getting some upgrades on Tatooine seemed to help his survival and threat somewhat, but I still had to bubble the green dude every time I got a chance. When I got Jentra, I was happy to have Qyzen again at a low level, where he’s very, very tanky.
Then I noticed something: a little green icon in his buff bar, for Trandoshan Regeneration, his “tank stance.” And then I realized that I hadn’t seen that icon when I was playing as Kyzur since, oh, sometime on Taris. Later on, after several groups, I resummoned Qyzen - sure enough, Trandoshan Regeneration had turned itself off for no apparent reason.
Learn from my mistakes: always make sure your tank is actually in tank stance!