At some point, I'm going to be running my group through a little F&D action (my players have characters from all three settings), and I'm pulling together an idea that will have them going to Taris. They will be going to search for a holocron/jedi cache/bait, and things will go down hill from there.

My question is, at the current point in the timeline, what condition is Taris in? I know it was bombarded way, way WAY back when...then the Republic tried to rehab the planet, to which the Sith Empire said "No way, this destruction is a monument to us.", and now all I can find is references that its 'on the mend'. Well, how far along is 'on the mend'? Is the whole planet rebuilt, but mostly vacant? Are there still out of the way places where PC's could be dry-gulched...I mean...'Find valuable artifacts of the Jedi order'?

To my knowledge, the online RPG game "Star Wars the Old Republic"(SWTOR) takes place approx 300 years after the video game "Knights of The Old Republic" (KOTOR) during which the Bombing occurred. During SWTOR it's still mostly ruins everywhere, but a few colonists are trying to set up basic/primitive settlements. It's got a couple story missions about finding and smuggling artifacts. Some disputes with Original natives returning and clashing over land disputes. No radiation fallout, but quite the outbreak of Rakghoul plague. I don't know if any of this helps since technically that all was still around 3000 years Before the Battle of Yavin, but from the little info gleaned form the wiki: Here , it just does not seem it ever recovered to its former glory.

Honestly if it were in my campaign (and I have been toying with sending them there), I would just stick with ruins, artifacts, rakghouls, maybe stick a Mandalore clan there (since its nearby), and call it a day. Actually, now that I think about it I would say perhaps some areas have been built up right over the old ruins, which could lead to a classic lower level dungeon delve to find ancient lost treasures.

Not that it is canon anymore, but according to game Empire at War (which had the first post KOTOR depiction), Taris had been fully rehabilitated by the time of the Empire (well... to a point) and had returned to an Ecumenopolis status.

In the current Disney cancer canon Taris had suffered an unstated devastation in the long past (silent nod to KOTOR I guess) which had levelled most of the ecumenopolis, however by the time of the Galactic Civil War it had been mostly rebuilt, but with huge swathes of the surface reduced to toxic swamps and the atmosphere was heavily polluted with plume of yellow smog visible from space and the planets poor living in makeshift tenements made from ruined starships and shipping containers, while the wealthy lived in Coruscant-style skyscrapers. It is one of the most populated and urbanised worlds in the Outer Rim.

I have played SWTOR, and I'm fairly familiar with the condition of the planet at that time. But as you pointed out, that was 3k years before the current timeline. One would assume that the planet has gotten more than just a 'lick and promise' since then. I'll throw the PC's a warning about the rakghouls, mainly as a red herring, but I have something special planned for them. It's going to be a trap/set up/first encounter with a Nemesis that should haunt the campaign quite nicely...

If I recall correctly, in one of the Legacy of the Force novels, Boba Fett visits it. Essentially fully recovered and officially the rakghoul plague was defeated, not overly polluted.

I'd like to change the view point a bit. At what condition it needs to be to optimally fit your campaign?

Taris was mentioned in the Tarkin Novel, set before A New Hope & I believe it was still pretty much a ruin then.

Side note: Condition: Taris, or just Taris'd, should be the SW equivalent of saying FUBAR.