Across 3 servers: 50 Vanguard 50 Assassin 41 Commando 38 Sage 30 Sniper 29 Sage 29 Shadow 25 Sentinel 22 Sage 22 Scoundrel 22 Guardian 21 Mercenary 20 Juggernaut 3 others in their teens that I don't recall off the top of my head, I just know I've got 16 toons on 3 servers. . . .

Ya know, I heard this a lot, so when I got to Alderaan on my Madness/TK hybrid sage, I was expecting to get creamed the 1st time while I figured out what was going on. But I just did my typical "kill a gold" routine with her and she went down easy. Is it becuz I interrupt as a matter of course that she was so easy for me while she gives others so much trouble?

Coruscant -- Senate Market Plaza, downstairs. Taris -- In a line of tents visible as you exit the space port Nar Shaddaa -- On the lower promenade, near the cantina Tatooine -- Anchorhead, in the central market area Alderaan -- Just outside the cantina door in the initial city quest hub Balmorra -- Inside the bunker in Bugtown Quesh -- Inside the same building as the cantina Hoth -- In the "market" area of the main base, just off the elevators that go outside Belsavis -- I don't recall 100%, but I think they're actually IN the spaceport Voss -- I don't recall exactly again, but I know I never had a problem finding them. I want to say they're by the shuttle off-planet. Corellia -- I was always 50 before getting here, so never bothered to look for them.

From the comments on the TORHead page, no one seems to have found them.

The CE vendor up in fleet has a purple-ish armor customization for him with green skin that looks pretty nice for a mere 2K credits. It's number 12. I prefer the number 10 gray look though. I think it's available on Balmorra in the cantina. But anyway... 10-14 all have the armor, just in various colors and skin colors underneath it. Looks like most are actually available on the customization vendor on Balmorra, with a couple on Security Key vendors or the 1 on the CE vendor.

Pretty similar, really. Only thing depends on your style -- you want a ranged pet or a melee one? There is one story fight where the boss drops a lot of bad in melee range and Ashara stands in it and dies if you don't micromanage her well, so for that one I would have preferred Andronikos, but I didn't know about it in advance and I was able to take the boss down without Ashara anyway (he didn't really do much damage outside of the bads he dropped on the ground so if you kited/jousted him he didn't really hurt), just took a long time, so . . . my opinion it's 6 of 1, half dozen of the other.

She usually (though not always) *gains* affection from your dark side choices. My assassin is female and can't "sex her up" but I still have 10K affection with Ashara, and I have the blackest of black hearts. I did use a few gifts, but not that many. You can also gain (IIRC) 320 affection with her per day running just the Belsavis dailies. I don't recall if Ilum adds some (I think it does, though) and I've not yet done any of the BH dailies, but.... yeah, it's easy to gain affection with Ashara regardless of being DS or LS.

I went Sentinel. I'm finding it to be the easiest thing I've leveled yet due to how quickly the mobs melt. I also have a 50 assassin, 50 vanguard, 41 commando, 38 sage, so... I've leveld a lot of different things. I'm currently level 25 on the Sent and my gear's all at level 23, so I'll upgrade it at 27 or 29. Standard groups I leap in and sweep. Kira follow and does her AE, and they all die. I can chain 5 or 6 groups like this before my health approaches 50% and I'll recharge for a few seconds before moving on. Vs. silvers I leap in, pop Overload while in flight, Master Strike, then Force Stasis and it's dead before the stasis channel completes. I haven't even gotten to put my dot on it yet, much less worry about Blade Storm, Riposte, Strike, Slash, etc. Golds do take a bit longer and I'll actually get into the "regular attacks" vs them, but they still tend to be dead well before my Rebuke runs out, sometimes before my Saber Ward drops out. I don't pop the Saber ward until after the Force Stasis channel, though. I am just barely starting Nar Shaddaa, so I'm quite a bit over level for what I'm fighting, and that probably helps too, but then I'm always 24-25 when starting NS becuz I do all the quests on each planet.

How far you are in the starter planet quests has absolutely nothing to do with it. The only thing that matters is if you are level 10. Once you are 10 you can go to the fleet to pick your advanced class. You do have to talk to the quest giver as you enter the main level -- you can't simply talk to the Adv. Trainer. My experience has been that sometimes you can't use the offhand saber unless/until you have a mainhand weapon that says "mainhand/offhand." The noobie vibroblades that only say "mainhand" don't allow an offhand weapon to be equipped also for some odd reason. I've never personally failed to receive a bag after selecting my class, so if you didn't get one I'd call it a bug and report it and see if CS can spawn one for you.

It's a class-based theme-park MMO set in the Star Wars universe about 3,000 years prior to the events of the movies. Servers were recently consolidated, so there are only a few heavily populated ones anymore. You'll see them on the server selection page. I'm looking at torstatus.net now and it looks like for EU English servers, Tomb of Freedon Nadd is highest pop pvp server and The Red Eclipse is highest pop for pve. And if you like RP, then there's the Progenitor. Seems quite good now that the servers are consolidated. Torhead.com, darthhater.com and dulfy.net are where I go for my info. There should be some stickies at the top of the forum with links to more as well. I don't pvp, so I can't tell you much there. For the pve, I enjoy it. I find the flashponts I've done to be engaging and interesting, but I've not done a lot of them either so I've not had a chance to get bored by them from too much repetition either. No differences at all. Perfect class mirrors. A Jedi Shadow is exactly the same as a Sith Assassin, a Republic Trooper Commando is exactly the same as a Bounty Hunter Mercenary. The story quests are different for each class, though, and the Empire does tend to have better looking armor, IMO. Classes vary by your advanced class and spec. Here's the basic breakdown: Trooper / Bounty Hunter - Heavy Armor. If goes Vanguard/Powertech then can be a tank or dps, focusing more on short range and mobility. If goes Commando/Mercenary then can be healer or long range dps. Smuggler/Imperial Agent -- Medium Armor. If goes Scoundrel/Operative then can heal or dps. If Gunslinger/Sniper, dps only. Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior -- Medium Armor. If goes Guardian/Juggernaut upgrades to Heavy Armor and can tank or dps. If goes Sentinel/Marauder then dual-wields lightsabers and is dps only. Jedi Consular/Sith Inquisitor -- Light armor. If goes Sage/Sorcerer can heal or dps. If goes Shadow/Assassin switches to dual-bladed lightsaber and can tank or dps.

Artificers make Color Crystals and Enhancements, so if you make use of the orange moddable gear, they're indispensable for non-Force users as well. Further, they make generators and shields that non-Force users also use. I don't consider an artificer to be optional at all. For me the order of importance goes: 1. Cybertech - armor mod, mod mod, ear pieces 2. Artificer - enhancements, color crystals, offhands 3. Biochem - medpacks, stims, implants 4. Armstech -barrels for the non-Force users and for companions Synthweaving and Armormech I've never found a use for. They do make augments now, but no one cares about them until 50.

On my CM Commando, I love me some M1-4X goodness. On my Shield Specialist Vanguard, it's Elara Dorne all the way.

Huh, wha? On a couple of different characters I have gone to Ilum as soon as I got my ship (level 18-ish) in order to grab the companion customizations I wanted. You just go to the orbital station, not down to the planet. Has this changed in the past few weeks since I did it?

Given that I've got capped out Cybertech and Artificer alts and thus can upgrade any mod that I want at any time, I prefer to get orange gear for my companions. I found that I actually like going back to Tatooine and running the 3 missions that give the "Transparisteel Onslaught" gear. That gives me a heavy helmet, legs, and chest. Light Side vendor has orange boots for 8K credits that look good with that suit, and if you're dark side instead you can also get orange gloves. Otherwise, orange gloves for a companion are semi-hard to find until level 35 and you can grab them off the vendor on Balmorra. Weapons can be got for any companion on Coruscant for 14 commendations, then upgrade at will. Cybertech also makes earpieces. Barrels for weapons I got off whatever the highest current commendation vendor I can use, and they've always been sufficient. From there it's just a matter of finding 2 implants, a belt and a wrist piece, and my experience is that I can usually find something within 2-4 levels of current on the GTN. If you can't upgrade the mods on the orange armor easily, though, then that could make this a much harder strategy.

I only recall chest pieces for commendations on Nar Shaddaa. Am I looking on the wrong vendor?

I completely agree. In a perfect world I like Cybertech and Artifice both, but if I had to go with just 1, I'd go Cybertech simply for the armoring mods, much less their other goodies.

My son did this at 22 on an extremely crappily geared sentinel (lightsabers still at level 11). I came and helped him on my 21 sage. All I did was TKT on him and cast my interrupt on his force blast, and this enabled my son to finish him off pretty easily. He got his butt handed to him several times before he asked me for help, and I watched him once to see where his problem lay -- he wasn't interrupting. He still doesn't, but... I was there and I could do it for him, so it all worked out.

Or you can just save up 8500 credits, get to level 19 and buy the nice blue helmet off the Specialty Goods vendor on Taris. That works too

I don't understand why more mmo's don't take the EQ2 approach. Each skill has a tooltip that goes like this: In PVE Combat does xxx-yyy damage. In PVP Combat does zzz-aaa damage. Then if they need to tweak pvp balance, they tweak the pvp part of the skill, while the pve part is left alone. Seems to work pretty well there. In general the damage numbers are 2/3 to 3/4 of the pve ones, heals are cut about 50%, CC durations are shortened, or simply turned into interrupts. Makes it so that the skills are *similar* in pvp vs pve, so it's not like you have to learn a completely different skillset to switch back and forthe between the platystles, though enough difference that there is a little learning curve. It's still easy enough to pick up and allows complete separation between the pvp and pve nerf/tweak/balance cycles.

Aric Jorgan - Ranged DPS Elara Dorne - Healer M1-4X - Ranged Tank Tanno Vik - Melee Tank Yuun - Melee DPS

Actually, no. You always want as much Willpower as possible, regardless of your spec. You'll always have plenty of Endurance. I never ever used "Force Wielder" mods when leveling up -- always Resolve, and I leveled as and still am a full Darkness spec. Higher Willpower makes things die faster, and when soloing things I really never got below 70% health anyway, unless there was an unlucky add.

Corruption is good if you want to be a dedicated healer. Lightning is good if you don't mind standing still to cast. Madness is good if you like mobility and instant-cast dots. You will always have *some* healing capability as a sorc, even if you don't spec into corruption, so you can help out in a pinch, though you won't be healing flashpoints by yourself either. Personally, I've found that I have had a lot more fun spec'ing primarily into Madness, with a bit in Lightning, far more than when I spec'd completely as a healer, but of course, YMMV. I'm only levle 38 so far and I'm spec'd 0/12/17 right now.

I've done a few different looks. Currently I'm using the CE trooper armor with the level 19 crafted orange "nylite" helm so I can still see the character's face: http://nomadicgamer.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clarisse-trooper-armor-02.jpg I've also got an Imperial dancer's outfit in my vault that I will augment once that's an option and then mod it up and use again: http://nomadicgamer.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/clarisse-full-imp-dancer-02.jpg

I started doing the dailies with my "Tankassin" running with Ashara (dps) using my regular orange gear with the level 49 blue mods that I made myself (I have both a cybertech and an artificer). Ahara is fitted with the same. I've had no problem at all soloing the solo missions, and I duo'd the heroics on Belsavis with a friend with no trouble at all. I did Ilum's dailies and storyline up to where it wants to send you into a flashpoint all solo and easily. I haven't tried the Black hole yet, as my playtime has been very low since hitting 50, but I don't imagine it will be a big deal either. So from my experience, you don't need any special gear to run the dailies at all.

Only by a factor of 10 or so. . . .it's about 100K for the 5 pieces.