From Novice to Master - How to Become a Master Scout

[Aedales]

From Novice to Master - How to Become a Master Scout

From Biophilia's PreCu Scrapbook

Guide compiled and revised from bailey from the SWGEmu forums.

Version 4.0 (15 July 2004)
By Brisc Rubal
Scout Correspondent

This is version 4.0 of my From Novice to Master Scout guide. Due to the number of changes since it was first written, and despite many updates to it, I have gone ahead and almost completely rewritten this guide, based on changes made to the game, as well as my expanded experience. Version 4.0 includes all of the changes since the Publish 9.1, which went live on July 14, 2004.

My sincere thanks go out to the hundreds of dedicated Scouts who post on the SWG Scout Forums. I’ve liberally sprinkled your ideas throughout this guide, as your help has been critical in keeping this information accurate and informative. Thank you all so much for your assistance.

If you are new to Scouting, read this guide – it’ll answer most of your questions. If you’re an old hat to Scouting, read it again. You may learn something new from the latest version.

Brisc Rubal
July 15, 2004

INTRODUCTION

So you want to be a Master Scout? Excellent choice.
I'm sure you've read your manual and the maybe even some of the guides on the profession you've found online. I'm sure you're thinking "how hard can it be? All I've got to do is wander around the woods killing everything that I see!"

Well, you're half right.

Having earned the title of Master Scout after 11 grueling days last July hunting across the wilds of Naboo, I wanted to commemorate the event by aiding all of you novice Scouts who go to sleep at night dreaming of earning the title of Master by providing some insights into things I've found that work.

Since last July, I've been playing and replaying all of the different professions that I've enjoyed, taken part in PvP, led a guild in victory in the GCW, and tested a Dark Jedi. My experience in the game has touched on nearly every profession, crafting to combat. I hope that some of the lessons I've learned will aid you in making the game more enjoyable.

I've broken down this guide into the topics that I wished I had some help on while I was out hunting. I hope this is easy to read, and I also hope that it will answer most of your questions about becoming a Master Scout and how to survive out there in the field.

THE BASICS OF SCOUTING
(Skip this if you're already a Scout or have read my Novice Scouting guide)

For an overview of what you need to know as Novice Scout or new player to Star Wars: Galaxies, please see "Brisc Rubal's Guide to Novice Scouting". This can be found can be found at the top of the SWG Scout Forum.

So what's the point? Why become a scout? Simple - you are one of the few nearly self-sufficient folks out in the galaxy. You can do nearly everything you want by yourself, you are an indispensable part of any group (if you choose to join one), and you are the basis for the most popular elite professions.

Scouts have a number of skills that make them critical characters: We can create camps, allowing people to heal and rest up out in the field. We have the ability to harvest bones, meat and hides out in the field - which are always in high demand by nearly every major crafting profession. We have the ability to use traps to slow down creatures and help bring them down quickly. As we progress through higher levels, we can mask our scent to skirt around dangerous animals and aid in milking or DNA sampling (if you are a Bio-Engineer), we get a bonus to our burst running, and we increase our speed up and down steep mountains and cliffs. If you think running fast isn't that important - try hunting Nightsisters on Dathomir with no Terrain Negotiation skills.

STARTING EQUIPMENT

As a starting scout, you'll need a couple of things. First and foremost, get yourself a weapon (we'll get more into this later). After that, make sure you've got a generic crafting tool. You can't make traps and camps without one. If you can afford one, pick up a Weapons, Droid and General crafting tool instead. You'll need one of these to be able to make a "design schematic" for use in factories (if you want to make crates of traps and camps for convenience sake).

As a starting scout, you'll be able to make the lowest level traps (Wire Mesh and Lecepanine), and the Basic Camp. Once you get out in the field and start killing animals, you'll get the materials you'll need in order to build these traps and camps.

Always have some traps and some camps available. You'll never know when you might need them.

We'll talk more about weapons, armor and combat professions a little later on.

DOWNSIDES TO THE SCOUT PROFESSION

The largest downside to scouting is simply that nearly everyone has the novice scout skill. And with the advent of harvesting foods, mask scent foods, and harvesting droids, many folks don't bother much past novice scout, or a few boxes in the hunting tree. But it is important to remember that there are more benefits to Scouting than just harvesting. But, as with anything in SWG, what you get out of Scouting is based more on your goals and your personal play style than anything else.

There are many players who do not choose scouting, but have it forced upon them. Some of the most popular hybrid and elite professions, namely Bounty Hunter, Creature Handler, Ranger and Squad Leader, all require significant scouting experience. So many who are not on a path to become Master Scouts will be crowding you for XP or AP. Don't worry - you can still make it.

Also, please keep in mind - Scouting is a NOVICE profession. It's skills are designed to give you a good grounding in the game and in the PvE (player versus environment) style of game play. It will not make you the best PvPer (player versus player), nor will it give you the ability to cut wide swaths through every creature you come across. But it will give you the starting point to select professions that will enable you to do those things. Many of the best PvP and PvE templates in the game have Scouting as a primary component.

[Aedales]

COMBAT AND SCOUTING - CHOOSING A COMBAT PROFESSION

I have completely rewritten the combat profession section of this guide, because there are some important things that I feel need to be covered for Scouts that deal with both the ranged and melee professions. I've divided the sections into "Ranged" and "Melee" combat types.

Ranged Combat

There are three major ranged combat professions - Rifles, Pistols and Carbines. Some of the elite "hybrid" professions, such as Smuggler, Bounty Hunter and Commando, require portions or all of the marksman skill set, so they can be included under these headings.

Pistols are the fastest (without outside enhancement) ranged profession, but they are also the weakest in terms of livability. Carbines are very good at attacking NPCs with their Knockdown/Dizzy attacks and the multiple area attacks, but they don't have any specific weapons that make them stand out from the crowd. Riflemen are the premiere ranged attackers at this time - the stun damage that most creatures and armor are vulnerable too offered by the Jawa Ion Rifle; the T-21 with its heavy armor piercing modifier allows for three times as much damage; the Laser Rifle, when well crafted, can reach in excess of 800 max damage - all of these make Rifleman the best ranged profession. In addition, a rifleman only needs to find 7 additional "rifle speed" enhancing attachments to "cap out" their max speed. This means that a rifleman with +97 rifle speed (a Master Rifleman has +90 alone, +95 if he's also a Master Marksman) is firing 1 time per second with any rifle below 8.0 speed. In addition, there are foods that provide increased accuracy (such as Citrus Snow Cake) that make up for the rifles low accuracy modifiers at short range.

If you plan on mastering a combat profession, I would also suggest that you take the time to read through that profession's forums. There is plenty of good information there, much more than I can put into this guide.

If I were to make a recommendation based on my experience, those who want to make Master Scout part of their template should choose Rifles as their primary combat skill.

Melee Combat

There are four primary melee combat professions – unarmed, one-handed sword, two-handed sword and polearm. You graduated from these to the Teras Kasi, Fencer, Swordsman and Pikeman elite professions.

Melee professions are much different than their ranged partners. Meleers are the tanks of the Galaxy. They're not great a dishing out large amounts of damage, but they can absorb much more than their ranged counterparts. With their knockdowns, and their high dodge, counter attack and block modifiers, they are much more survivable, particularly against tough creatures that would tear a ranged fighter to shreds at close range.

The important things to keep in mind when choosing a melee profession is speed. Since meleers don't have highest damage weapons in the game, they rely on damage per second – the faster they can swing, the more damage they can dish out. So the faster weapons and the more speed powerups and skill attachments you can find are important.

In terms of PvE, the most powerful of the melee professions is the Swordsman. Most creatures that you'll attack are vulnerable to Blast damage (Power hammers do blast damage), and with the speed available with weapons like the Scythe, you'll be able to tank and take down the most dangerous creatures in the game, including Kimogilas and Krayt Dragons. Fencer would be second, with their stun batons that most creatures are also vulnerable to. TKs and Pikemen are less effective in PvE, but are also good tanks. Pikemen require significant help from speed attachments in order to reach their speed cap, and their reliance on damage over time weaponry (DoT weapons) make them less attractive than Swordsman. TKs are very powerful duelers, but in PvE, they are less desirable. However, their speed makes them very effective and many Rangers choose TK as their melee profession of choice.

Overall, however, if I were to recommend a melee profession, I would recommend swordsman.

OTHER COMPLIMENTARY PROFESSIONS

Medic

But simply having a combat skill isn't enough. You're going to get knocked around out there, whether it's at the hand of a biggie - like a Rancor, Fambaa, Krayt or Kimo - or a little guy - like a Gnort or a Chuba. Being able to heal yourself in the field without waiting for twenty minutes in a camp or hospital is important. Spend the 15 skill points and the 100 credits and get yourself trained in Novice Medic. You probably won't need to advance much farther than novice in the medic field if you don't want to - but having it will make life much easier. If you do decide to advance, training in First Aid and Diagnosis helps to increase your heal speed and healing ability for both damage and wounds, so train these up first. Visit the bazaar and pick yourself up some stimpacks Bs and you should be able to heal yourself quickly enough to catch up with most attackers.

Entertainer

As a compliment to the medic field, here's another skill that's good to have: entertainer. I know what you're thinking. "How can a badass Scout like me dance around like a Cantina Girl?" The answer is simple: it increases the amount of time you can spend in the field. Being able to heal your mind wounds quickly, and being able to heal your group's mind wounds in a camp will not only increase your camping XP, it will make you more self sufficient - only needing to go into town to get rid of Battle Fatigue (which, unfortunately, you can't cure in the field). This is especially critical when you are on a sparsely populated planet like Endor, Dathomir or Yavin 4. You are most likely going to find yourself alone - no medics, no entertainers. If you've gotten hurt, you're going to have to fix yourself. Being able to do so will cut back on a lot of downtime.

Artisan

Finally, having novice artisan helps to round out your initial skill set. Being able to survey and sample for resources gives you the ability to make some of the higher end traps that require metal and polymer that you can't get by foraging. Like being a medic or entertainer, you don't really need to advance very far in this field to get the benefits.

So here's the tip: Pick up a combat skill, medic, entertainer and artisan to round out your scout. Remember, if you don't want one of them, you can always ditch it later - you'll definitely have to as your advance in the skill trees of the hybrid and elite professions. For me, Artisan went first. It will be followed by Medic and finally Entertainer. But for now, making it to Master Scout is aided by having all of these skills.

[Aedales]

WHAT PLANETS SHOULD I HUNT ON?

The decision of where to start your climb is not particular important – most planets are good. But there are some things to keep in mind, personal preference being the primary. All of the starter planets are conducive to scouting.

I'm partial to my home planet of Naboo. The wildlife is plentiful, the views are spectacular, and there are enough low level spots for leveling that you can move very quickly up the lower tier combat boxes as well as the lower tier Scout boxes.

The advanced planets will enable you to move much more quickly through the Exploration and Hunting trees. But be careful - many of the planets out there, like Dathomir, Lok, Endor and Yavin 4, are not places to go alone as a new player. The starting worlds, like Tatooine, Corellia, Naboo and Talus, are excellent for beginning, seasoned and Master Scouts. Player Cities have also made hunting in the wild much easier, as you will be very hard pressed to not find a safe haven in the wilderness on a buildable planet - if you look hard enough.

Personally, I never needed to step foot off Naboo to make Master Scout. This may not be the best thing for you, especially if the exploration bug has infected you. Since I first wrote this guide, I've visited every planet and hunted on them all. Of the starter worlds, I find that Talus and Naboo are the best, as they both are not nearly as crowded as Corellia and Tatooine. You'll find more pristine, less traveled areas on these two planets then on the others. Player cities make finding pristine areas even harder, but those two planets still have the greatest amount of green space.

For the upper end planets, my two favorites have been Dathomir and Yavin 4. Both have high level mobs, good mon(k)ey making opportunities and because of nature of the planets you rarely deal with large crowds of people. However, some of the planets generally experience more lag than others. Dantooine is notorious for lag.

SCOUTING EXPERIENCE - TYPES AND DISCUSSION

There are three major types of XP that are important to scouts.

First, is "Scouting" XP. This is used to get you through the Exploration and Hunting skill trees.

Scout XP

NOTE: Hunting and Exploring use the SAME types of XP. So when you train up Explore 1, you lose the XP you had towards Hunting 1. You'll need to earn the same amount over to train up your Hunting Skill. I didn't realize this until my first training session.

Scouting XP is the easiest XP to get. You can get it one of two ways. One way is to kill an animal and harvest the meat, bones or hide. Different size and different types of animals create different amounts of XP. The general rule of thumb is the tougher the victim, the greater the XP. The other way to get XP is by using /maskscent, a skill you gain after reaching Exploration 2. I'll talk about /maskscent in the "Scout Skills and Modifiers" section.

Which is better to train first? This is a debatable topic, but I favor Exploration. First, exploration gives you the ability to run faster up hills, and also gives you increases to your burst run ability. These are important, and very useful. You also get access to /maskscent, which provides you with another means of gaining Scout XP, which you don't get by moving up the ranks in Hunting. Hunting helps you in harvesting animals, and in determining which are dangerous and which are docile, as well as which are likely to kill you when you attack them, and so on. You'll increase the amount of hide and bone you take off an individual creature and you'll also get a creature to-hit bonus. But the downside is that training up hunting never will give you a new means of gaining XP. No matter what your opinion is on Mask Scent, it does provide you an extra means of making XP and this puts it over the top in my opinion. You can increase your creature harvesting through use of a droid or using Veghash to make up for the difference until you go up that tree.

So what should you hunt? You need to be hunting medium sized animals that con either blue or white and you can kill without being severely hurt, if you aren't buffed (we'll talk about buffs later). When I was grinding through the last few levels of the scouting tree, my three favorite Nabooian animal lairs to stumble across were Nightspiders (spiders), Hermit Spiders (more spiders), and Ikopi (deerlike creatures). All of them yield good XP for the time it takes to kill them. They are by far the best lairs to hit when you are soloing. In a group, hit whatever you can find that you can take down without getting severely hurt or having it take forever. One example of a good low level creature that provides low XP is the Gnort. Gnorts are easy - usually one shot kills for anyone near the top of their marksman skill and definitely for a novice elite combat professional, and they spawn amazing numbers of creatures from their lairs

There is always a debate on whether or not to hunt for the bigger creatures. While Belle Bolls, Jaxes, Fambaas, Tortons, Greater Desert Womp Rats, Kimogilas, Krayt Dragons, Rancors and the other big creatures do give great XP, you must balance that on the risk you take in attacking them, and the amount of time it takes to bring on those down. Sure, you'll get 2000 scouting XP for stomping on a Kimogila, but it will take you two hours kiting it or 20 minutes in a fully buffed group - and if you mess up, they can one hit kill you. In that time you could get three times that much XP on a nest of Ikopi or Hermit Spiders.

Trapping XP

As a scout, you get a number of schematics that let you build traps, we'll talk about each trap in a moment. These help to disable and slow down animals by affecting their HAM pools, or their ability to move. This is one of the easiest forms of XP to get. You simply craft the traps, and lob them at your target. If they hit and take effect, you get the XP. Additionally, you can lob more than one type of trap at any single victim - meaning that, for example, if you have the ability to craft 6 traps, you can gain 6 times the XP for every animal that you attack at a minimum. A Nabooian Nightspider, for instance, provides 50 XP points every time you hit one with a trap. Meaning that a single Nightspider can earn you 300 XP points for trapping if you use all your traps. 10-15 Nightspiders per lair means finding one wild Nightspider spawn and killing all of the spiders in the lair can earn you a whopping 3000 XP! You'll blow through trapping quickly. Generally, wild spawns tend to provide more creatures per lair than missions do, so expect fewer spawns from a mission generated lair than one you happen upon in the wild.

You can tell the difference between a mission lair and a random spawn by the name of the lair. A regular, non-mission lair has a generic name, like "An insect mound" or "A Rotten Log". A mission lair has the specific name of a lair, "A Gnort Lair", or "A Capper Spineflap Mound". It's usually bad form to kill a mission lair, but non-mission lairs are fair game.

Another often cited tactic is to grab a friend or two, and attack a large creature. The larger creatures offer the opportunity to make significant trapping XP off them in a short period of time. The average Fambaa or Torton yields 400 scout XP PER TRAP. So if you can hold out from getting killed instantly, you'll be able to pull 10k+ XP off of a Fambaa during an average fight.

In addition to the ability to get easy XP, you also get survival XP for crafting traps. It’s not much, but it makes a difference when you are grinding out that last bit of Survival to make master.

Traps also are useful in helping to take down creatures that you normally couldn’t take out. Scouts can solo white, yellow and (rarely) red creatures with the assistance of their traps, especially if they are using a rifle. Make good use of them!

THE BIGGEST MISTAKE PEOPLE MAKE WHEN USING TRAPS....is to try and trap something that is totally above their trapping skill. Now that many people with master-level weapons skills are mastering Scout for whatever reasons, they've been having serious trouble with trapping. Here are a few tips for someone having problems:

• 1.) Don't trap something that con's white or yellow to you if you've got Traps I or II: If you're a master TKA, you are going to able to one hit most creatures out there. But those higher level creatures that give the best trap XP aren't going to be trapped by your rinky-dink little Wire Mesh. So you need to remember your roots and go back to the lower level critters. If you use the trap macro I outlined above, even if you're only trapping spiders, you'll level pretty quickly.
  
  2.) Don't simply use one kind of trap over and over and over: If you're throwing 15 wire meshes and none of them hit...well, that should tell you something. Don't do it. You've got two schematics to start, and you gain another 4 when you hit trapping 2. Use all of them - every single one - every time you go out trapping. This will maximize both your trapping XP AND your chances of a successful trap.

[Aedales]

Trap Types

Adhesive Mesh - A trap containing some form of compressed mucilage based adhesive. This trap is thrown at a target creature. If the adhesive mesh successfully traps the creature, the target will become immobile for a short time and will suffer significant damage to its action pool.

Glow-Juice Trap - A small container of natural bioluminescent liquid. Splashing the target with this material has the effect of making the target more visible to ranged combatants, reducing the target's defense against ranged attacks.

Phecnacine Dart - A small Phecnacine tranquilizer delivery system. This object is thrown at a target in combat. When it strikes something, it releases a thin mist of poison. The poison will cause the target's movement to slow significantly.

Stink Bomb - A small container filled with the natural musk of an animal. The musk has a repellent smell and can cause a target to become distracted. This has the effect of making the target more vulnerable to status effects like stun or intimidate.

Glow-Wire Trap - Similar to the wire mesh trap, but this trap has been enhanced. The wire mesh has been strengthened and treated with a bioluminescent goo. The target will become more vulnerable to both melee and ranged attacks.

Wire Mesh Trap - A small canister packed with a fine and somewhat sticky mesh. When it strikes the target, the mesh entangles them making movement more difficult. This has the effect of reducing the target's defense against melee attacks.

Lecepanine Dart - A small dart delivery system, ingeniously crafted from natural organics. The tip is coated with a light Lecepanine poison. This object is thrown at a target in combat. If it hits, the poison will cause the target to become drowsy and slightly confused. This has the effect of making the target dizzy as well as causing a slight decrease in the target's mind and action pools. This weapon cannot kill and only works on animals.

Noise Maker - A special device that emits annoying noises. When thrown at a creature by a sufficiently skilled scout, the trap will cause the target to become stunned. The raw shock of the noise will also cause a large amount of damage to the target's mind pool.

Sharp Bone Spur - A spur fashioned from natural organics. A knowledgeable scout can throw this at an enemy creature, placing it in a perfect spot to cause pain. This has the effect of damaging both the creature's health and mind. However, the effects are never fatal.

Wilderness Survival XP

This was the hardest skill for me to master, because it takes the most time. Thankfully, the Devs have heard our requests and have provided us with other means for getting Wilderness Survival XP. You can get survival XP from camping (as before), fishing (based on the size of the fish you catch) and making camps and traps (the amount of XP is twice the cost of the resources that went into crafting the item). Each camp you make has the ability to get you XP - with the levels varying based on the number of people who visit it, the amount of healing that takes place while its up, and how long its up for. Basic camps are limited to approximately 360 points of XP, and Multiperson camps can get you about 640. Improved camps generally max out in the 800-850 XP range.

The quickest way to boost your survival XP is to group. This isn't always possible though, because every group I've been in has had more than one scout, and they've ALL wanted the camp XP. The most common cause of contention between members of groups seems to be over who gets to setup the next camp.

There's an easy way around this: bring an artisan friend camping. To get my last 5000 wilderness XP, I joined a friend, a weaponsmith, on a crafting trip. Every time he stopped to sample, I healed him - sampling takes away action XP and can be healed by a medic - and then danced to heal the mind wounds my /tendwound skill gave. In no time, he was getting great samples, and I was getting great camping XP, without needing to wait 15 minutes to get the max XP.

In addition, if you are out in the field and have a camp setup, keep a look out for folks passing by. If they enter your camp - even for a few seconds - you'll get a little bump up in your XP. I usually give a shout with my coordinates to let anyone who may be around know they can come stop by to visit my camp and heal - and give me that needed wilderness XP.

Camp XP speeds are generally not affected by the type of camp. A basic camp will generate the same XP as an Improved camp does. The difference is the caps. If you are camping in a group, be sure to remember the caps. If time has gone by and you've gotten some good healing in, but you aren't completely healed yet, take down that camp and put up another. This way no XP is lost.

Another great way to speed through camping XP, if you can do this, is to have your Player Association friends hold their meetings in your camps. That way you can conduct business, but also get some XP for it.

Camp Types

To make this stand out a bit more for those just looking for this info - Camp XP totals:

Basic Camp (Novice Scout): 320-360 XP
Multiperson Camp (Survival 2): 620-640 XP
Improved Camp (Master Scout): 800-840 XP

[Aedales]

MACROS AND HELPFUL TRICKS

These macros and helpful little tricks of the trade should make your experience scouting and leveling less frustrating.

Harvesting Macros

As a scout, it helps to setup harvesting macros – you'll be doing a lot of harvesting. Do this by going into your skills sheet (CTRL-A), clicking on macros and typing in the command. I have used three harvesting macros:

/harvest meat
/harvest hide
/harvest bone
/loot

Having these readily available will speed up the harvesting process, and help keep other scouts from stealing your kills if they are quicker than you in the group. Most of them won't have a macro setup and you can beat them to the punch. Throwing loot in there ensures that if the creature has something that you can loot - like teeth and bile off a Rancor, or armor segments or pearls off of a Krayt - you'll get them too.

Trapping Macro

This is an easy macro that helps with trapping. In order for it to work, you've got to set up each of your traps or camps in a quick bar slot. It doesn't have to be your primary, anyone will work.

Write out this macro and place it in your first quickbar slot. (F1 - this is considered toolbarSlot00 to the system). Then add in other slots for your traps:

Code: Select all

 /ui action toolbarSlot01;
 /ui action toolbarSlot02; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot03; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot04; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot05; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot06; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot07; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot08;
 /ui action toolbarSlot09; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot10; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot11; 

For each quick bar slot from F2 - F12, drag a trap up there. Now, each time you hit F1, you'll queue each of those traps up in your attack queue, and rack up the trapping XP.

You can also use the alias command for this as well.

AFK Camping Macro

If you're hoping I've got an AFK here, you're outta luck.

I didn't write this guide to provide you all with a means of frustrating yourself, or wasting your time. And that's all that AFK macroing the survival tree will do. There are a number of extremely easy, fast ways of getting through the Survival tree, and you don't need to be AFK to do it, as you'd know if you read my discussion of Survival XP.

Camp/Trap Crafting Macro

This little macro will help out when you're grinding through those camps (or any other crafting profession). It does take a bit of tweaking to get working perfectly.

The macro I am providing here is setup so that it allows you to craft anywhere – even if you are using a Weapons/Droid/General Crafting tool and are near a crafting station.

This is designed to use the last 4 slots on the bottom row of one of your toolbars, and requires 4 crafting tools. The last slot at the end is for the macro.

The part that requires tweaking is figuring out exactly which schematic on your datapad is your camp (or trap - if you're using traps to grind) schematic. Ballpark the number, and then add or subtract until you figure out exactly which schematic is the one you want.

Code: Select all

/ui action toolbarSlot20; 
 /selectDraftSchematic 10; 
 /pause 5; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /createPrototype practice no item; 
 /createPrototype; 
 /pause 2; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot21; 
 /selectDraftSchematic 10; 
 /pause 5; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /createPrototype practice no item; 
 /createPrototype; 
 /pause 2; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot22; 
 /selectDraftSchematic 10; 
 /pause 5; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /createPrototype practice no item; 
 /createPrototype; 
 /pause 2; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot23; 
 /selectDraftSchematic 10; 
 /pause 5; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /nextCraftingStage; 
 /createPrototype practice no item; 
 /createPrototype; 
 /pause 2; 
 /ui action toolbarSlot19

This will speed up your camp crafting tremendously. All you've got to do is make sure you're fast in double clicking on the resources and you'll be through survival in no time.

[Aedales]

SCOUT SKILLS AND SKILL MOD DISCUSSION

I want to give a quick talk about each of the skill mods and skills we receive here.

Burst Run Efficiency – As you increase in the Exploration tree, you gain this modifier. It does not increase your speed running or your recovery time, but it does decrease the HAM costs for using /burstrun, which makes it more useful – particularly if you're close to getting incapped.

Creature Harvesting - As you increase in this skill, you are able to harvest larger amounts from creatures.

Creature To-Hit Bonus - This is a bit controversial, as it only applies to ranged attacks. The modifier gives a small bonus to your ranged weapon accuracy when attacking a non-NPC target.

Trapping - Increases your likelihood of successfully trapping a creature.

Camping - We are not 100% sure exactly what this skill mod does, however speculation indicates that it decrease the amount of time you need to spend in a camp to gain the maximum XP. It really is not noticeable, however.

Creature Knowledge - This increases the amount of information that you can learn about a creature using the /examine function. At Master, you can learn a large amount of information, including whether or not they'll deathblow and what kinds of hide and meat you'll receive from them when they're harvested.

Terrain Negotiation - This increases your ability to run up slopes and across rugged terrain. It doesn't affect your speed over flat land. TN only works on your running speed until you reach +50. After +50, your TN is applied to your crawl speed only.

Mask Scent

After near constant attention from the Devs for a number of months, mask scent is finally working as it was originally designed. With each patch, mask scent seems to get a bit fluky, and then settles back to work more or less properly.

Maskscent is based on your Mask Scent modifier. It originally was based on your camouflage modifier, but this was changed as of the addition of the Ranger skill /conceal (which now uses that modifier). The equation used to determine a successful /mask scent takes into account your MS modifier, your speed (whether walking, prone or running) and the relative creature level of the creature who is trying to detect you. So as your MS modifier increases (with each level of Exploration), your chances of successfully getting XP and staying safe with mask scent increase. But it is also important that you are around creatures of a similar level to you. A novice scout running around on Dathomir is going to complain loud and long that his mask scent is useless and doesn't work, while an almost-Master Scout will be running around Lok doing the bunny dance because he's almost leveled and not had to do anything for it.

If you are having difficulty with mask scent, try two things - first, use it against creatures closer to your level, basically meaning ones that you would have odds on actually defeating if they attack you when you're unbuffed. Second, change your speed. Going prone and walking both modify your mask scent prospects by between 5%-35% over running. Slow down, creep slowly and you'll start seeing some XP spam on your window. Also keep in mind that the larger the group of reds, the more likely it will be (statistically speaking) that your mask scent gets broken. Each time you get within the striking range of a creature (based on their ferocity) you will be "checked" to see if the creature broke your mask scent. 10 creatures mean 10 checks, and with the bit of randomness that is added in to account for luck, you may just get sniffed out - even against low level creatures like Kreetles.

Previous changes to mask scent have increased it's usability. It no longer breaks on yellow "non-aggressive" creatures. It has been tiered so that Master Scouts don't need to wait the full 60 seconds to remask after a failure. It does not break upon entering combat anymore.

Forage

Forage is an underutilized skill that is granted to Scouts. Similar to the artisan "sample" skill, foraging allows you to scrounge the immediate area for food and drink. This food and drink provides different buffs, such as temporary strength increases, HAM penalty reducers and other effects that have multiple benefits. At this time you don't receive XP from successful forage and these remains a request of the Scouting community.

You can also forage lairs, which provide you with interesting items such as bees and eggs. The eggs are useful in some kinds of crafting, and can be sold. Bees can be placed into a creature habitat craftable by artisans. While these don't benefit you directly, they do provide some interesting visual affects and may make you a few bucks selling to loot collectors.

The Scouting community feels that Forage has not lived up to its original design premise, which was to create incentives for Scouts to explore the landscape. We are working hard with the Devs to turn forage into a useful feature that provides useable loot and food items in line with the player crafted consumables that have become a key factor in the game.

Milking

That's right boys and girls! Not only are we Scouts, we're also dairy farmers.

This sounds funny, but milk is one of the absolute most sought after harvestable materials. I've heard cases of 10k worth of milk going for a million credits on Bloodfin, and averages nearly 200 CPU.

This is primarily because it's time consuming to get. Almost as time consuming as fishing (I won't go into fishing here).

First of all, you can only milk herbivorous creatures, so don't start trying to make nice to a lady Rancor. Second, as one would expect, you can only milk female creatures. In order to milk a creature you need to be mask scented, as well.

One good tip for milking is to get two destroy missions for the type of critter you're trying to milk. Get them close to each other, then run back and forth milking every critter you can between the lairs.

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EVERYTHING ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TO BE AN EFFECTIVE SCOUT

No Build Zones (For Camps)

The vast majority of no build zones have been removed from the game. You now are only limited in placing your camps to areas within the Municipal Zones of a city - generally within the city boundaries, and areas near lairs. This has been a great boon to Scouts, as you no longer need to travel hundreds of meters to be able to heal.

Equipment - Weapons and Armor

I don't want to get too in-depth in a discussion of the merits of armor and weapons in the game. Each profession has its pet weapons and its idea of what's "best". But I'll give you some general things to keep in mind here.

But first, armor. Armor is an important thing to consider when hunting. Do you need it? Not really. Buffs make it easy for a Scout to level without armor. But as you go up the trees and start attacking tougher things, you need to start looking at it.

The two best kinds of armor for Scouts are Ubese and Composite. Composite is the best kind of armor in the game period, but it is frequently made with high Kinetic resists. This is what you want to pay attention to, the resists on the armor to Kinetic damage. Most critters do this type of damage (as opposed to energy for NPCs), so the higher Kinetic resists the better.

Your average composite that's worth anything has Kinetic resists of about 80%. The downside to Composite armor is that it has generally high encumbrances – often you won't be able to even wear it without buffs.

That's where Ubese comes in. Generally Ubese armor is similar in terms of Kinetic Resists – generally between 74%-79%, but where it excels is in its encumbrance costs, which are usually half those of Composite. Many Scouts use both types, and switch off depending on what they're fighting.

In terms of weapons, it is critical that you know your weapon and you KNOW YOUR PREY. Many of the higher end creatures have resistances to many common types of weapon damage. If you always stick with your T-21, you're going to waste a lot of time shooting at a creature with 90% energy resists¦especially if the creature is vulnerable to stun and you've got a Jawa Ion Rifle available. Always know what you're going after and carry a wide enough array of weapons to be able to take advantage of a creature's vulnerabilities. That's the difference between a good Scout and a great Scout.

Buffs

I know that this is a sore subject for many people, but it has become almost required that in order to progress quickly in any of the skill trees you'll need medical enhancements.

Doctors provide buffs to your HAM pools that enable you to double and even triple your Health and Action pools and secondaries. Dancers are able to buff your Mind pool and Musicians can buff your secondary pools.

If you are a low level Scout, you don't need to worry too much about buffs. As long as you are hunting low level creatures and pay attention (or you followed my advice and picked up Medic) you won't need buffs. But if you start trying to level quickly – say, by hunting Kimos on Lok or going Krayt hunting on Tatooine, you'll get killed quickly without them.

Buffs range from 6k to 12k for a full set of 6. Entertainment buff prices vary significantly, and are often unnecessary if you've got the right foods available (see the next section).

Food

There are a number of foods that provide major increases to your abilities as a Scout (and as a combatant) that you should always have nearby, if not on you. Having these foods available will make you a much better hunter, a more successful explorer, and can even keep you alive.

Scout Specific Foods

Name Type Benefit Description Benefit Duration

• Gralinyn Juice Drink Creature to-hit bonus +7.5-11.5 12-25m
  Travel Biscuits Food Terrain Negotiation +8-12 12-25m
  Jawa Beer Drink Mask Scent +7-12 12-24m
  Dweezl Food Trapping +7.5-12 12-25m
  Veghash Food Creature Harvesting +11-18 9-18m

Of these foods, the one's you will use most often are Veghash and Jawa Beer. Travel Biscuits are mostly utilized by folks who don't intend to go up to Explore 3 and max out their Terrain Negotiation skills. Good Veghash easily pays for itself in only a few hunting sessions.

Must-Have Foods
Name Type Benefit Description Benefit Duration

• Citros Snow Cake Food Attack Accuracy +15-25 16-32m
  Exo Protein Wafer Food Damage Reduction +10-18% 10-25 attacks
  Synthsteak Food Damage Reduction +17-31% 22-50 attacks
  Pikatta Pie Food Dodge Bonus +16-19 16-32m
  Thakitillo Food Defense vs. Knockdown +30-50 9-18m
  Ahrisa Food Increased Focus +150-250 30-60m
  Blue Milk Food Mind Heal +295-495 Instant
  Vagnerian Canape Food Increased Focus/Will +255-375 8-17m
  Vasarian Brandy Food Increased Mind/Focus/Will +110-200 30-60m

Some of these goods are more useful during PvP. Citrus Snow Cake helps against those pesky fencers, but also helps low level riflemen in hitting their targets when hunting. Synthsteak is like free armor, and Exo Protein Wafers are the less filling (same great taste) version of Synthsteak. Pikatta Pie increases your dodge – especially useful if you are a meleer. Thakatillo is also useful against TKMs and Carbineers with their knockdown attacks, but is also useful when attacking critters that like to KD – like Kimogilas.

Ahrisa is critical for increasing your focus, particularly if you are a Zabrak (with a low Focus point maximum), as increased focus decreases the cost of special attacks on your mind pool. Canape is a good quick increase to focus and willpower, but not as useful as Ahrisa because it lasts a fraction of the time. Brandy is critical if you have not been able to get mind buffs from a dancer or musician. Blue Milk is useful (if you've gotten a mind buff and don't need the Brandy) for instant heals of your mind pool.

Managing your stomach contents (I know, it sounds funny) is important as a Scout, because if you die, your stomach contents clone along with you. It's also important to ensure that you're able to eat food in the middle of a fight if necessary. In addition, some of these bonuses from food stack, and they last longer than it takes for your stomach to digest them, so you can eat an additional piece to get an even larger buff (this only works on the HAM enhancing foods, you won't get more of a benefit from eating the stat enhancing foods twice or more.)

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Harvest Droids

We have available to us droids that harvest creatures for us – saving us time, giving us a slight boost to our harvesting abilities, and allow us to harvest in combat (so if we take a while to kill something, our prey doesn't "poof" before we can harvest it).

My thanks go to Razhlok Lightningskull from the Scout boards for providing me with the information for this section of the guide.

In choosing a harvesting droid, check that the quality of the module your DE is crafting1 will give you some bonus to harvesting (around 3% per module). You want 6 modules (the maximum) for your droid.

You will need to program your droid to harvest. First you pick what you want your droid to harvest - the four options are meat, hide, bone and random. Then you must program a harvest command. When you start to program the droid, a question mark will appear above your droid's head. Type in a command - for example "harvest". An exclamation point will appear over your droid's head indicating it has accepted your command.

Next, create a macro entitled HarvestCorpse, and either place it on your toolbar or alias it to your keyboard.

An easy one could look like:

/loot;
/tellpet harvest;

You can also choose to program your droid with other commands (attack, stay, follow, store, etc) using the same method. To name your droid you need to program your droid by saying his name prior to the command. For example, programming the "Stay" command would require you to say "Donkeylips Stay". Do this for three commands and the droid "learns" its name. Once it knows it's name, you can go back and change the command to simple "Stay".

To use your droid in the field pull him out of your datapad. Engage your target normally. When it's dead, active your harvest macro. At this point you may target your next kill, while your droid goes out and retrieves the goods.

After you droid harvests the corpse you will receive a message stating a droid has harvested X number of resources from the creature.

At some point your droid will run out of power and will need to be recharged. In this case you will need to have a droid battery. If you /examine your droid, you will see just how much power your droid has remaining. Droid batteries are pretty easy to come by on any DE vendor's site or even on the Bazaar. I recommend buying them in crates.


Mounts and Vehicles

Mounts and vehicles have made our planets much smaller places. What would have taken a Scout forty five minutes to traverse now takes 10. Areas that were very dangerous are now simply scenery along your travel route.

There are a number of different mounts and vehicles, each with benefits and drawbacks. I won't discuss them specifically, but I compare the two. The biggest drawback to vehicles is that they are destroyable and that you are unable to attack while driving them. Mounts can be healed and you can use basic attacks on them. Mounts, on the other hand are slower and require feeding, but they generally can't be killed permanently. The choice of whether to use a mount or a vehicle is largely personal, but most folks opt for speed and use their vehicles almost exclusively.

As for gameplay, the adding of mounts and vehicles has made mask scent an important tactic for quickly leveling Scout. Non-powergamer Scouts are still going to want to earn the Scout XP from hunting. But the quickest way to level the Exploration and Hunting trees is to grab a speeder and Mask Scent on a high end planet like Yavin 4 or Dathomir. Ride around the critters - who won't be able to keep up with you - and get XP for each successful mask scent.

Keep in mind - you can't mask you scent again while mounted. So you may need to set up a macro to dismount you, re-mask scent and then mount up again.

Some Scouts have been able to hit level 4 in both Exploration and Hunting in just a few hours of zooming on their vehicles. Using a macro, it's easy to mount, reapply your mask scent, and dismount. There's been some considerable debate about this tactic in the community, and the general perception is that this is a semi-exploitive move. It's not recommended that you do this, but it is a tactic to level.

MON(K)EY MAKING

Scouts need dough, just like every other profession out there. Food, Armor, Weapons, Spice, Cantina Girls, they all cost money. So what's the best way for a Scout to make cash quickly?

There are two - selling resources and missions.

Resource Selling

The more hide and bones you can get, the more you can sell in the bazaar. And once you start hunting with a passion, you'll get more hides and bones than you can ever use to build traps and tents. Share the wealth. Tip medics with them (they always need organics for their crafting) and sell them on the bazaar. You'll make pretty good cash, especially the larger the lots you sell. Here's my quick pricing guide for hides and bone:

• 1.) Sell in even number lots: Don't sell 538 hide. Sell 500. It makes it easier on your for computing the sales, and easier on the crafter, as well.
  
  2.) Know your consumers: Take the time to talk to the people you're selling your harvestables to. If you don't know anyone, wait until your material sells on the bazaar and then ask the person who purchased it what they're looking for in terms of stats. Each crafting profession relies on different stats beyond the overall quality.
  
  3.) Know the market: Figure out what the average price your goods are selling at. Talk to your fellow Scouts and Rangers who are selling their goods (make sure they're on your server – each server has a unique economy).

The most important thing to keep in mind about selling harvestable materials is that THE MARKET SETS THE PRICE. If something will sell at 100 CPU, then sell it at 100 CPU. If something won't, then don't sell it at that rate.

Some servers have a much greater inflation rate than others. Prices widely fluctuate, so you need to know your server, and your customers.

If you know what they're looking for, you'll be able to provide it to them at rates they'll be willing to pay.

If you do sell on the bazaar, you are going to want to put your wares up on bazaars in high foot traffic areas. Theed, Moenia, Bestine, Mos Eisley, Coronet, etc. That will get your sale more visibility and its where most people turn when they can't find something they're looking for from a player vendor.

Running Missions

The other means of gaining money is running missions. Delivery missions are fine - for artisans and entertainers. But they don't pay half as well as destroy missions, and you aren't going to get Scouting XP by taking the kiddie their prize for the best picture in the "Draw Lord Vader in the Shower" contest. You will get it for going out there and killing animals.

Destroy missions are great for getting both XP and money at the same time. They're fairly simple, go to the waypoint, destroy the creatures and destroy their lairs.

Explorer missions provide us with a monetary incentive to do the things we already do. Some of them can be very tough, but they can also be a great way to get out and see the galaxy. There are two types of missions given by these terminals - hunting and recon. Recon is exactly what it sounds like...you get paid to take the mission and run out to the Waypoint. Once you get there you are successful and get the cash award. Generally these missions are 3k to 5k away from where the terminal is, so expect a good hike. The hunting missions are much more difficult, but provide better compensation. They require you to kill between 15 and 45 of a certain type of creature. Be careful: they are EXTREMELY specific. If you get a mission to kill Spineflap Soldiers, you can kill Spineflap Guards until the cows come home and you won't get any credit. They HAVE to be the same critter the mission calls for. Each time you kill one, you'll get a spam letting you know how many more you need to kill to complete the mission. The other difficulty is that you don't receive a waypoint for the mission - you need to find the creatures yourself.

The higher end hunter missions can go for 10k credits and above...so while they are time consuming, they also are very lucrative.

Grouping

This is a difficult question, because it goes more to the heart of the game than any of the above. If you've followed my tips, you've got a nearly self sufficient character that won't need a group to advance. But is this fun? It can be. But that depends more on you and your playing style than on the limitations or structures of your profession.

Luckily for you, your Scouting forefathers were able to make a significant change to the game mechanics. Grouping was much tougher on us older Scouts, because when the game was originally designed, only one scout could harvest from a creature. This led to a lot of "ninja harvesting" and gave Scouts little incentive to group. However, we were able to successfully lobby the Devs to change the rule. Now, Scouts in groups are ALL able to harvest from a creature - instead of having to line up and rotate the harvest. However, as an offset, you only get 60% of the resources you would have gotten if you had killed the creature solo. With this system in place, the choice of whether or not to group or not group comes down to your personal desires, and not an artificial requirement.

I've found that when I was in a social mood, I enjoyed grouping with my friends to go hunting. But when I was in a mood to make money or just explore, I played the loner.

Going solo offers you the advantage of being in control - you pick what to kill, when and how. You get 100% of all the resources from harvesting creatures, and building the camps. And you don't need to worry about courtesy, etiquette and all that jazz. But it can get awfully lonely out there all by yourself. And you'll never get good camping XP (unless you are willing to wait 15 minutes each time) to get the full amount from your timer.

In the end, as a Scout, you don't really have to group often to make it to Master Scout. But if you never group, you'll be missing out on a lot of the fun the game has to offer.

Solo Groups

This is a new big trend in grouping. In order to get the higher paying missions, or the tougher missions with larger creatures, many groups are formed that are intended to be for "soloer". You get the XP bonus from being grouped, you get the ability to pull higher missions from the terminals, but as long as none of your fellow groupers are within 1000 meters, you will receive the full payout. This is an easy way of leveling and making money quickly.

Where to Run Missions?

This seems like a funny question, but it's important, especially if you're running missions for money. Larger Player Cities have the option of becoming "specialized" city. Cities that have the "Stronghold" specialization give players on their militia a bonus to defense. Cities that are "Medical Centers" get a bonus to buffing and wound healing.

The most important type you're looking for is "Improved Job Market". If a city has this kind of a specialization, you'll get higher payouts from your missions. A 7400 credit Quenker mission is now 8500. A 27k Mokk mission is now a 33k Mokk mission.
"Improved Job Market" player cities are usually busy, popular places.

CONCLUSION

When I originally wrote this guide, I promised beers in the Cantina. Well, I've got about a zillion beers to buy. I enjoy sitting in a cantina and having someone say "Hey! I read your guide!"

I hope that this little (well, not really!) guide to making Master Scout has answered all of the questions you may have about the Scouting profession

[Aedales]

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