Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Arthur's CU testing journal, day 1
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ArthurDentOnBria
Sun Apr 10, 2005 10:35 am
#1
Disclaimer: The things I say in here are based on the current state of things, and the current state of things changes almost daily, so don't take any of this as gospel. It would probably be a big mistake to get carried away trying to make future plans (hording resources, adjusting templates etc.) based on the current state of the game on TC5.
I decided to bite the bullet and start working towards bio-engineer on TC5. I worked my way up medic crafting, and along the way took note of the changes there. There don't see to be any changes in the medical components at those levels. All the usual stuff still applies. One thing I notice is that neither the stim-a or stim-b seem to be able to take the advanced medic components anymore, although I assume that the advanced components will go into something in the BE tree. Another thing I noticed is that although the advanced components require the same materials as before, the power of them has been changed. The power of advanced liquid suspensions seems to be far far below what it once was (difficult to tell exactly since I only have 5 exp point and so-so materials) but still I'm guessing the power of these won't go much higher than 100 points. Also the ABEC's now seem to allow far fewer charges then before. Strangely, the regular crdm's seem to have quite a bit more power then before, but I haven't been able to make advanced ones yet. So far without really trying I seem to be able to make stim-a's with a little over 100 power. b's require factory components, so I am working on those now.
Scout skills has been the tough part for me. When you start out, you can pretty much only kill level 1 and level 2 creatures (like kreetles). Every one of these that you kill yields exactly 1 unit of meat/bone/hide, which in turn yields an extremely low amount of scouting xp. Grouping and taking on higher level stuff is obviously the way to go, but to me it gets tiring after a while *always* having to be in a group each and every time you want to work on a skill.
My plan was to try to work my way up to exploration 2 via hunting, then get the rest via masked scent. Owch, that has proven to be very problematic. Once I got masked scent I headed straight for endor. The odds of masked scent breaking, at least at this low level (exploration 2) seem to be pretty much unchanged, but there is one *huge* difference. With something like a boar wolf or an arachne drone or something around that level (mid-20's) the very instant it breaks your mask scent, it delivers a blow of around 1500 damage to you (assuming you are fairly close to it). I have pistols 3 in marksman and ranged support 1, and no armor, so those with more combat skills would take less of a blow, those with no combat would take an even harder blow then that. Basically what it means is that even for the "mid level" stuff that we encounter on a daily basis as BE's, you'll probably not be able to survive a single hit, and you get no time at all to react to a broken mask scent.
More to come... hopefully I'll be a BE soon and can start reporting on that.
nukuma
Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:15 am
#2
don't bother, I got to novice BE tonight and nothing I craft, tissues, pets, meds, generate any bio engineering xp. It is impossible right now to get past novice be.!!!
droid327
Mon Apr 11, 2005 2:24 am
#3
does it all give medical crafting exp? ouch lol....thats definitely issue #1
LloydPickering
Mon Apr 11, 2005 3:28 am
#4
droid327 wrote:does it all give medical crafting exp? ouch lol....thats definitely issue #1
On the plus side...it may force them to lok at the med/be crafting EXP...and while they are there...
Aleskander
Mon Apr 11, 2005 4:57 am
#5
If you look at the skill sheet, it still calls for BE xp to gain any levels. I noticed this in the tissue tree. Dumbie me forgot to check the med line tho
Dorelli
Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:11 am
#6
OK. I have a big question about this. IF it is really impossible to get ANY part of BE (and I am not doubting your word) on TC-EP3, then how the heck did the person that posted the recipes for the new meds get them?
Or was it all a joke?
-- Dorelli - master BE - bloodfin
ArthurDentOnBria
Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:41 am
#7
Day 2:
TC5 was down much of the day, which cut into my testing time a lot. But I managed to finally get on in the evening, and got 2 more boxes of scout /whew. I'm up to 3-0-2-0 now, with the goal of getting novice BE and novice CH in the next day or two.
In the mean time, I did a lot of exploring using mask scent. I visited some places that I've never seen before, and saw a lot of familiar faces as far as creatures go. So far from what I've seen, creature levels are up quite a bit across the board. In fact many of them are nearly double what they were before. This definitely makes me wonder if a bunch of the creatures that we're accustomed to sampling are going to be "out of reach" for us now. Oh how I miss my +25 mask scent clothing!
Thanks for those who reported the BE crafting xp problem. I just posted something about that in the corr forum, and I hope that they fix it soon. Yes, it sure does beg the question of how that information was obtained doesn't it? The minute I can verify any of it, I'll post it here first.
ArthurDentOnBria
Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:53 pm
#9
furrycat wrote:
Currently the XP you get for sampling DNA is strictly determined by the challenge level of the creature you are sampling. Is there any news on whether this will change given the fact that creatures "adjust" their combat level to reflect the player or group that encounters them?
Hmm, I'm not sure that this is true though. I'm level 6 now, and I still see level 1, 2, 3 etc level creatures everywhere. They don't magically get tougher when they see me coming. What exactly are you referring to here furrycat?
LloydPickering
Mon Apr 11, 2005 4:12 pm
#10
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
furrycat wrote:
Currently the XP you get for sampling DNA is strictly determined by the challenge level of the creature you are sampling. Is there any news on whether this will change given the fact that creatures "adjust" their combat level to reflect the player or group that encounters them?Hmm, I'm not sure that this is true though. I'm level 6 now, and I still see level 1, 2, 3 etc level creatures everywhere. They don't magically get tougher when they see me coming. What exactly are you referring to here furrycat?
I expect its Clicky
basically...the difference between your level, and the creature level determines the dmg they do to you.
Rogue1970
Mon Apr 11, 2005 6:20 pm
#11
Arthuer, rumor has it that the new Varactyl mount is obtained via a QUEST (as well as free to pre-order people). Does this imply that we are NOT getting schems for the new creatures - including the mounts?
I am very fearful pet crafting is not going to be very prevalant anymore, or they have not even started coding it - either way, obtaining pets we should be making and selling from a quest/NPC is insulting....
ArthurDentOnBria
Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:22 pm
#12
That's a good question, and one that I've already requested info on. I have no information on it though at the moment however.
Rogue1970 wrote:
Arthuer, rumor has it that the new Varactyl mount is obtained via a QUEST (as well as free to pre-order people). Does this imply that we are NOT getting schems for the new creatures - including the mounts?
I am very fearful pet crafting is not going to be very prevalant anymore, or they have not even started coding it - either way, obtaining pets we should be making and selling from a quest/NPC is insulting....
furrycat
Mon Apr 11, 2005 9:22 pm
#13
Quoth LloydPickering,
> basically...the difference between your level, and the creature level determines the dmg they do to you.
Partially that and partially the fact that creatures can spawn at differing levels. Firstly from the mission terminal you can take a mission for a type of animal and the mobs' difficulty will match your level when you arrive at the waypoint. Also you can see wild spawns at varying levels of difficulty. There might be a level 1 kreetle wandering around and further on you could see a level 8 kreetle, for instance.
> basically...the difference between your level, and the creature level determines the dmg they do to you.
Partially that and partially the fact that creatures can spawn at differing levels. Firstly from the mission terminal you can take a mission for a type of animal and the mobs' difficulty will match your level when you arrive at the waypoint. Also you can see wild spawns at varying levels of difficulty. There might be a level 1 kreetle wandering around and further on you could see a level 8 kreetle, for instance.
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