You can click on each image to get a better look if you so desire.
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First off, the balcony. Really, nothing special. As everyone spawns in this area first, I liked the idea of turning it into a lavish welcome area, and of course I had to have the Dread Masters' throne here. Sadly, because of those poles, positioning the seats the other way around wouldn't yield a good view of the area below, and who wants to load in to see a chair with its back facing to you?
Items of note: MCR-100 Miniprobe.
I wanted the main bedroom and office to have everything which my characters would need, from the GTN to cargo bays to the augment table. In an in-universe ideal, the Appearance Modification Station is the closest thing to a make-up dressing table, so the rest of these are just there for convenience's sake more than cosmetic appearances. That said, I rarely use the thing so it may as well just be cosmetic in appearance.
Items of note: Plaguehorn Reek ("Argyll").
Next to the bedroom is the dining room/café. Made sense to me to place this on the balcony rather than move it to the ground floor; You arrive, you go to your left, and you find a nice cool drink awaiting you. What's not to like? As an aside, I do find it amusing that, even though there is a drinks cabinet in-game, there is no decoration yet that pertains to food. There isn't even a tree from which fruit can be plucked.
I kept the rooms leading to and from the elevator pretty much barren in an attempt to make exiting into the courtyards outside all the more impressive.
The first courtyard immediately hits you in the face with a Revan. I've always had a statue there - for the longest while it was the Grand Statue of the Emperor - but the rusty Revan just fits in so much nicer than anything else I've tried. This courtyard also introduces the "Vignettes" which I placed around the Stronghold. In this case, allow me to introduce you all to...
The Cult Drakes!
As soon as I saw the Krayt Dragon skull in the very first video showcasing Strongholds, this idea popped into my head. I adore the little Kell Drakes, and I wanted some means of showcasing them together. This seemed like the perfect way to do so. Whilst nearly everything around them has changed over the course of the last few months, these little guys have always been together.
Capturing every single object in this hangar in one image is nigh impossible, due to the "pop-in range" which speeders have. Basically, dotted around the walls are a huge collection of speeders which I have collected over the years, including the Nomad and Explorer Desslers, both KX-7 and BA-2 Command Walkers, and the Avalanche Heavy Tank. Of course, the main attraction is the 70-B Phantom; since my Sniper has always been one of my main characters alongside my Gunslinger, it made sense to incorporate both of their ships somehow. Whilst I do prefer the Phantom, I like the idea of it being kept "in the shade" instead of being directly exposed to the suns.
The second courtyard is definitely not as impressive as the first, although I did design it with a slightly subtler feel. The plants helped a lot in that regard, and so too did the shaded seating area. Not entirely sure how "subtle" a Krayt Dragon skeleton can be, although if ever a Kell Dragon mount is released, you know exactly where he's going to be situated. Set subtlety up, and knock it down!
The third courtyard is the most barren, although I include it here mainly to give a clear image of the entrance to one of the four small outside rooms, which remain virtually the same across the board apart from a few obvious differences. I will return to focus on the stall in the top-left corner in a few images' time.
Now we move on to the "meat" of this Stronghold: the class rooms. These are rooms devoted to my favourite and main characters across my Legacy, and you can easily identify which room belongs which character before you even enter: Datacrons of the characters' main stat and a Class and Alignment sign adorn each and every doorway.
The first one has of course got to belong to the Smuggler. I wanted this room to have a clustered and cluttered feel, with crates, boxes, and a Dejarik table strewn around everywhere. I do wish that there were some more befitting banners, though. The Republic banners feel very out of place, and I'd gladly take the one adorning Sano Thrica's platform in Temple of Sacrifice.
The second belongs to the Agent. This was always meant to be a direct contrast to the Smuggler room. A dirty dishevelled computer with a clapped-out old data station becomes a clean computer with an equally clean (and strangely Czerka-esque) data core. The clutter is replaced with empty floor space, and - more importantly - the banners actually correspond to the class.
This room used to be devoted to the Bounty Hunter, although since 3.0 and the Guardian's leap to good standing in my books, this room was done over and turned into a Jedi meditation room. I'm far happier with it in this state than I ever was when it belonged to the Hunter, although that's more due to the actual layout of the room being a serious pain in the proverbial than lack of appropriate "Hunter" things.
The final room is that of the Trooper. I decided to turn this into a proper "Squad" room; you get weapons and ammo for training purposes, and you get the chairs and table in the middle for planning and organising. Whilst no longer considered "Main" or even "Favourite" at this stage, I wanted to create this room more as an honourable mention to the class which I devoted more than half my SWTOR existence to than as anything else.
From this point on, most decorations are part of some compositions or vignettes. The least impressive of these, though still worth mentioning, is the "Power Generator" above the second courtyard. The Republic generator, Matrix converter, and Large Field Generators all work quite nicely together; so much so that I've caught at least one person off-guard due to them not seeing the Matrix Converter as part of the set-up.
This is the garden. Perhaps a bit over-the-top with the plants, but at least it makes for some pleasant space to sit. The fountain situated on the right-most edge of the image houses two pets, an Aquatic Mewvorr and Plaguetooth Sleen, being watched over carefully by an adult Aquatic Sleen. Having an adult animal care for a nursery in a fountain sounded like a cute idea, so... there it is.
This is also the only image of the XS Freighter in the Stronghold; there's really nothing to the landing-pad beyond this, so taking a picture purely of this alone seemed counter-productive.
The creature tent actually acted as the "NPC Limit Hitter" until creatures were finally "Flattened" and no longer appeared as NPCs. There are two scenes here: acting on the "nursery" idea of the garden, the two Tauntauns at the back are watching over a Taunlet, whilst the Coastal and Woodland Varactyl are placed to appear to be fighting over a female Grassland Varactyl. The Highland Dewback - the "Duart" of Calphaya's biography - and Kingpin's Rancor are both simply there because I love both of them as creature mounts and will likely always be there.
Finally, the vignette I'm most proud of. This is Tatooine, so of course it would make sense if a bunch of Jawas turned up and started trying to sell their wares. Whilst vendors in their own right (pay no attention to the Blizz dominating the scene), I decided to spruce up their vendor stall by placing a lot of "junk-y" decoration gathering nodes, even managing to incorporate one of the Artifact Fragments' caskets around an already-integrated aspect of the stall. I do wish that there was a "Broken Droid" decoration; I'd love to place one lying down in the corner, and I feel that it would suit this scene perfectly.
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So, this was my Tatooine Homestead. Depending on whether or not the new Stronghold is on Alderaan - my personal preferred planet - I may or may not be doing this sort of thing again in the future.
Time shall tell.
I love the little dragon cult!
ReplyDeleteThat was my favourite too, though I really liked all the little "vignettes" as you called them.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like them!
ReplyDelete