Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Making good pets a guide from a fallen master
I am really glad this post is stuck at the top of the board.
I have a practical question. When you do field sampling of wild creatures, how do you keep track of the level of the DNA sampled? I didn't see any level number for DNA. About all I can think of would be to keep a prima guide handy and just look up the creature and dump it as you acquire it into bags labelled with the appropriate level range.
For making clones for DNA sampling its pretty easy. But the field stuff is hard to keep straight. Sure wish CL was stamped on the DNA.
OK I have some stuff of real value to add here that I would like to pass along to my BE bretheren. First Ill state the findings, then I'll tell you how I observed them.
1. There is a strong variance between creature types on sampling success rates and aggro.
2. Sampling high level creatures nets you faster sampling experience than yard trash around cities.
3. DNA collected from higher level creatures, even if it is lower level than the creature type you are attempting, results in increased experimentation range on both the clone.
My experience- I was on Endor and ran intonon-aggro kimo/jax like creature (sorry cant remember the name, was CL25 from the prima guide). I sampled it, and got around 200ish xp per sample at DNA sampling 3 skill level. I was succeeding on the order of 1 in 3 attempts, and getting aggro on success about half the time.
I then sampled DNA from a hillside gurreck. These are aggro, non deathblow. I was getting 400ish xp per sample, so these were much higher CL than the kimo/jax creatures. There was no entry in the Prima guide for them. I succeeded on samplings around 2 out of 3 tries, and success killed the creature about 2/3 times, and not a single time did I get aggro on them. I made a gurreck dna out of the hillside gurreck, and the health/action/mind stat was gimped so it was lower CL than 50.
I then made Blurrg clones with both the kimo/jax DNA and the Hillside Gurreck DNA. I use blurrgs because I am not yet MBE and this yields lvl 50 DNA, useful in making non HAM gimped gurrecks. What I noticed was in general the blurrgs made out of the CL25 kimo/jax DNA had a lower experimentation range than the clones made out of the hillside gurreck DNA. Yard trash DNA around cities (eg rills, worrts, etc) yields about a 7% cap on a blurrg, but this DNA from endor was getting up around 12% or more. SO there is a slight effect on the final clone HAM on the level of the DNA, even when that levell is less than the target clone level.
I have not tried looking at when you sample the blurrgs if there is a difference between that sampled from good clones, and that sampled from bad ones.
Anyway I was really surprised that it was actually easier to sample from the higher level creatures, and it seems that some creatures are just plain stupid and dont notice you much. Also I killed a lot of the Hillside Gurrecks outright on sampling, where getting aggro on the kimo/jax was more common.
I had earlier in the evening gone to Entha with Muon Gold and sampled the worrts, rills, etc around there. I easily tripled the experience per hour on Endor, and I wasn't even using spice there. The basic thing here is your time interval between samples is the same, so 400xp per sample beats out 80xp per sample by about a factor of 5. Even with rest, I was pulling down way more xp on the higher level creatures. The key seems to be finding the right creature to sample...big dumb cats seem like good picks.
Did some more tests on this. Took yard trash DNA (eg worrts, rills etc) and made Blurrgs out of it. First I made some out of the very high quality samples alone, and just randomly filled slots. Then I used above average samples. The cap on the clone's experimentation was higher on the very high quality DNA.
There may also remain a level effect...Blurrgs made from general CL=25ish DNA from Endor seem to have a higher cap on experimentation than clones made from yard trash.
For this reason I have stopped using psyche/fierce DNA from yard trash in final templates...it lowers the overall experimentation on the clone.
Mind does affect the to hit roll.
Action affects the combat speed.
Not sure what physique does.
LokSG wrote:
Not sure what physique does.
Physique affects the health.
Erais on Scylla
"Anyway I was really surprised that it was actually easier to sample from the higher level creatures, and it seems that some creatures are just plain stupid and dont notice you much. "
This is just a quote I found funny and true. But I also think it is how you aproach the creature that counts too. (Wether you use Camo and Mask Scent, and at what time you put it on and upadat it. I don't know if this is impressive to any of the rest of the BE's out there but I thought it was pretty cool at the time.
At DNA Sampling level 2, I was able to take 20+ smaples from 10 or moreGraul Maulers before I was killed.
-Note: I was able to runnaway once while my pet defened me to its death. And when I did die it was one hit no chance. The mauler hit me for 1700 points in one shot. Aleast that was the floating number above my limp body.
My other personal record is 6 samples from one creature before it died.
Sorry, just a little personal bell ringing. There seems not to be that many BE's on my server to chat with so I gave this a post. I really apreciate the guide thought. I have been figuring this out on my own, but this will speed up my progress 100%.
Something else I have noticed atleast for me is if you are a Ch and a BE they power lvl well together. Your pets help defend you while sampling those higher creatures and in turm to get rid of the crappy DNA I train the creatures i make and delete. So I will take a hundred samples of any dna and speed make the animals then train them. The quality does not matter for the basis of xp for engineering, it is all the same. And training is training wild or bio xp is the same on that too. So Making 10 animals is like 2000BE xp and then training them is 1100 CH xp. This is boring grinding to lvl, but it is safer than getting death blown 5 times in a crappy hunting partyand losing all your pets and wasting time getting no xp. We have all been there. It is also a good thing for the times when you dont have long tobe logged in. All you experts probably know all this I am sure. But here is is again for someone starting out that may not have time to readd and play the game too. Like me.
I hope I was not to incoherent in this post. I have a tendancy to ramble in my own mind.
GL to all new BE's, and Thanks to all the ones that have hepled me.
Xrrann
if you want to gain dna sampling experience, sample the garbage around a city that spawns a lot of it.. the simple fact is, quantity is more important that quality.. yeah, I only got 84 points of that lesser womp rat, and could have gotten 148 for a gurnaset.. but I didn't waste 10 minutes hiding from pirates and searching around Lok to get that one gurnaset. If you can do 2 rills back to back, you just made out better than one decently sized critter.
Another tip: if you are harvesting trash, when your mind gets low use the samples to make dna templates and then trash the templates. It's worth a few exp in bio-engineering and costs you nothing.
Lastly... I've done some experimenting and found the following to be true:
1. The bigger the source critter, the better the resultant DNA template...
2. Quality of DNA samples is more important than the value of the individual stats most of the time. so, a womp rat above average sample with 600 total points for mind will get you more mind in the end than a below average sample with 1000 total points for mind.
3. Where you put the peices does matter. There are 2 attributes that make up each stat. And they appear to be in order (wasn't that nice). So add your top 2 values up and when you find the highest score put that in your first slot.. then proceed on.
4. Even the crappiest DNA can produce a good creature by the second or third time around. And here's the really fun part.. you can make a harder pet to get higher DNA to make a lower finished-product. IE, you can make blurrgs and harvest their DNA to make a kicking Khamurra. This is handy, since at CH 0.0.0.0 a player can handle a Khamurra... but certainly can't handle much else.
Good hunting.
Howdy all,
I've been gone for a couple months and am just now getting back into things. Just curious---Does this guide still apply after the last Big Patch? If not, what's changed? Thanks!
--Djibutyyl
Hey Djibutul!
This guide still applies on Live, however there are a HUGE set of changes on Test right now, and a bunch of us are trying to figure it out.
We don't have a whole lot to go on, but experiments abound! Check out this thread for more information.