Bio Engineer Archive

well i've tried for 3 days to get a sample of mutant rancor and cant.... i'm a master BE and have a full set of +52 Mask Scent and +52 camo clothes on so they cant smell me heh... but i can get a freaking sample. cant someone let me know what i'm doin wrong plz.

By anychance are they over level 50?

Since I am not sure what the cap is for DNA sampling anymore(where you get another failure chance or just cant sample)...then I am guessing thats the reason.

I hate that cap myself.

I mean you sample away most everything, and then on something you get the message "You do not get a viable sample" then after a few more times you either make the thing upset or you kill it....And you dont even get a sample.

Nice system....just goes to show that we have a greater chance to fail Sampling...

We have a skill that may or may not work from usage....even then it only has a percentage chance of working on something even if the skill works....and a chance based on the skill capping that it will not yield a viable sample.

oh well...our Bio-Engineer characters are morons compared to real world Bio-Chemists so I guess doing russian roulette sampling is normal.

All I can do is tell you what I do and hope that helps a bit.

First off, get a speederbike or X34. Make a macro that dismounts you, starts the dna sampling and remounts you into the vehicle in one button - this saves a great deal of messing around re-targetting and so on. Also, make a macro that dismounts you, applies maskscent and remounts you as well, this also saves a lot of messing around). Next, wear decent kinetic resist armor and use spice and/or dancer/musician buffs to get your mental stats up - this compensates for wearing armor and allows you to make maximum use of the limited opportunities you will get to actually take samples. I use Muon Gold myself, getting it by the crate is easy and it gives you more personal flexibility than buffs.

Now, I always go to rancor valley - an area west of the northern outpost (I never remember what its called, lol ). A bit of driving around and you will find a mutant rancor spawn in 30 mins or so usually. Here I use one of two different tactics depending on what seems to be working on the day. First try is to just slowing drive up to the spawn - the rancors will get a chance to see through your mask scent as soon as you get within 60-64m of one of them. Sometimes you get lucky and manage to get through all 5 chances without being spotted. At this point you can usually just drift up to the rancor you want to sample from and start grabbing. You will get about 1 sample per 3 tries (rough guess, I never keep count, it would be depressing). If you get aggroed just speed away as you'll already be on your vehicle thanks to the handy macro mentioned earlier.

Usually though, you'll get spotted on the way in. If this happens peace out and drive off until the rancor stops attacking, use your maskscent macro and try again. Sometimes you'll be able to catch the rancor that came after you before it gets back, in which case grab a sample if you can. Most of the time it'll get back though and you have to try the approach all over again. If you fail 5 or 6 times you can try the drive-thru aggro approach. Drive into the middle of the spawn at full speed - its just about guaranteed that one of them will use its AoE attack and get the whole spawn fighting itself. At this point you can either just sit back and wait, or join in a bit with bleeds to get a couple of them killed faster. The important thing is to keep maskscent up and make sure to stay as close to the middle of the spawn location as you can. As the rancors get killed, new ones will slowly spawn and, with you already in the middle of them, you have a far smaller chance of getting spotted before being able to sample at least once.

Last thing - mutant rancors are slow and difficult to sample from, coming away with a dozen samples I consider a very good nights work. Also try to go for bull rancors if you are looking forhigh end damagestats, as these are far far easier to get close to.

LoL I personaly like the way I sample mutant rancors I find it fun. Basicly what I do is use no masksent at all. I find the one I want to sample, high even stat bars. Walk around the group of them till he is the closest one to me. Then I go running in and let him agro me, I then turn around hit peace and let him chase me and beat on me. The whole time I am healing like a madman and being melee class I can take a few hits. He thengets tired and turns around, stops attacking and starts to walk back. I then start sampling him. SureI die doing this some times but I don't wear armor so decay really isn't an issue. I get alot of DNA doing this and it's fun too.

A +52 maskscent outfit? Geez, what a complete waste of tissues and credits. You do know your only benefiting from +25 of that don't you?

The cap is CL75 for sampling - not 50.

Mutant rancors are fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, agro, run, come back, fail fail, get one sample, die, come back, fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, agro, run, come back, fail, fail, fail, get one sample, die, come back....

repeat.

My way of sampling Mutant Rancors is both exciting and brings hours of personal amusement.

Step 1.

Locate a covy of Mutant Racnors

Step 2.

hit burst run

Step 3.

Run through the Mutant rancor and aggro them all.

Step 4

Wait for the dummies to kill each other

Step 5

Sample the winner to death.

Why do this you may ask?

Easy when they are very low health they walk away from you no matter what. Just dont bleed them and unequp your weapon. You can then sample it to your hearts Content.

Also something funny abou them beating the snot outta each other, you can also pop a few shots into the ones that are close to dead and harvest them for meat or whatever.

Persistance and sheer bone-headed stubbornness is 9/10ths of DNA Sampling from high level critters, the other 1/10th is skill. Also make sure your bag isn't full (it's amazing how many people get nailed by that, myself included )

Keep at it and you'll get there (it also seems to get easier the more you do it, but I don't have any hard data on that).

You guys do it the hard way. First and foremost, you will NEED patience!

1. Find a group of Mutant Rancors.
2. Park your bike in a safe spot about 70 meters away from the Rancors.
3. Mask scent and Prone.
4. Crawl towards the closest Rancor SLOWLY. You can do about 5 meters at a time at the beginning, but when you get within 30 meters I'd do 1 meter at a time, then pause for 2 seconds, then go another meter.
5. If Mask Scent wears off, stop and apply again, pausing for another 2 seconds afterwards.
6. Once you are within 15 meters of the closest one, stop, pause 2 seconds.
7. Now you are ready to sample. 3 quick steps. STAND, SAMPLE, PRONE. Then pause. If the Rancor did not notice you, pause for5 seconds, if they do notice you, pause for about 10 seconds.
8. If you get aggro, Stand, Burst run towards your speeder, mount and speed away, then come back and repeat.

Hope this helps!

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Recently a lot of my Mutant Rancor sampling has been done from inside one of them.

Tachnically, I think that means they have sampled you

1/3 of your sampling is successful with mutants? I'm going to be really angry if that is true. I get maybe 1 in 8 attempts successful, and as far as I can tell, a master BE is a master BE. It is not unusual to have 10 or more attempts go by without a success.

Mutant rancors will break your scent alot of times even if you crawl. I've found that just walking up to them and if I get about 25m I can then make a dash to the 15m mark then sample. Crawling and all that doesn't really seem to make much of a diff to me. I actually had better success with the above mentioned method more than I did with crawling.

As for sampling them, it's all about being lucky. I've gone on streak where I failed 25x in a row, where other times I've gotten a good 8 in a row. Keep at it, you'll get some eventually.

Once I started crawling with mask scent and pause often, I have been sneaking up on these mutant rancors to sample 100% of the time. Only time I get agro is when I sample and they don't like it. Before then I used to walk/sneak up on them and aggro about 50% of the time.