1. Make sure you are connected to the Star Wars: Squadrons servers with zero chances of disconnecting. This will become important later on. if you are having trouble connecting, moving closer to your internet route is the best suggestion I have at the moment.

2. Have an idea for the alien head you want to use. Because you will be grinding a lot for it (1200 units of currency per alien skin) and can’t get refunds it’s best to make a choice you won’t regret. You can always go back and grind for another.

3. Grind for XP in solo AI vs fleet battles. It doesn’t you win or lose since you still get the XP, Make sure you remain connected to the server throughout the match. Once you are disconnected, you essentially miss out on gaining any XP for levels and have to quit and start over (thus you also miss out on gaining the currency necessary to buy cosmetics like alien characters). If you don’t want to sit down and play through EVERY battle, you can just boot up the fleet battle session, minimize the game, and essentially let the battle play out while your character idles - you won’t risk getting booted out of the game session for idling. Depending on how fast you level up and how frequently you complete fleet battles while connected, you should be able to complete this within a week or two; 1 hour of fleet battles (which is like two game sessions) per day. Some days are Bonus XP days for squadrons so seize them while you can!

4. Repeat step 3 and keep leveling up until you get enough currency to buy an alien skin (1200 units of currency)

5. While still connected to the internet, customize your pilot however you see fit alongside whatever cosmetics you'd like for the character - I gave my Twielek character tech gloves and a green pilot suit. For some reason, when playing disconnected from the Squadron Servers, your campaign character and non-campaign (AKA multiplayer) character are separate (and the campaign character can only be human and is not customizable mid-game unless you restart your story progress to square one), but when connected to the Squadron servers your campaign character and non-campaign (AKA multiplayer) character are the same, meaning you can customize your campaign character on the fly. I'm not sure why this is and if someone has an explanation please share it in the comments below. (Should you disconnect, your character will resort back to a human)
>>> If you are starting a new story in squadrons simply, go back to the main menu after you find a place to save and quit in the campaign, select the alien race you want (along with other cosmetics, and things should progress smoothly.

6. Boot up either of the first two prologue missions and your characters' selected species, cosmetics, and voice lines should be present during the cutscenes - if you don't get a cutscene with your character, just restart game as soon as your character is in the starfighter cockpit and the cutscene should play. When your character can when ask your allies to resupply or assist a tiny icon of your character appears.

7. Enjoy!

**Also apologies for any typos - I'm writing this right after a shift at my new clinical job and I will fix them at a later date. Thank you for reading my first Steam guide!