Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Arthur's CU testing journal, day 1
furrycat
Tue Apr 12, 2005 12:01 am
#14
> 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.
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?
> 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.
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?
LloydPickering
Tue Apr 12, 2005 3:58 am
#15
furrycat wrote:
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.
Yeah thats true...I was simplifying things and saying look at the link...but just to comment...it makes it even more complicated for maximum CL levels for sampling...now all I need to do is find a CL1 Krayt!!!
Aleskander
Tue Apr 12, 2005 4:48 am
#16
That would be cool
LloydPickering wrote:
Yeah thats true...I was simplifying things and saying look at the link...but just to comment...it makes it even more complicated for maximum CL levels for sampling...now all I need to do is find a CL1 Krayt!!!
ArthurDentOnBria
Tue Apr 12, 2005 8:23 am
#17
Day 3: A very boring grind session leads (finally) to novice bio-engineer!
I won't go into the boring details, they bore me and I was there, they'd bore you even more, but suffice it to say that at around 1am this morning I reached novice bio-engineer.
Along the way I verified a couple of things:
- The bio-engineer skill trainer is very explicit about telling you that hunting 4 is required
- dna samples seem to be unchanged from what they were (same stats, same values etc.)
- /peace; /sampledna no longer works. In fact /peace seems to no longer work.
- mask scent works fine. With exploration 3 I was consistently able to hide from things around CL 20, had about a 50-50 chance for things around CL 30, and a slim chance against things higher.
I should be able to get novice ch tonight, and tomorrow start some serious combat-testing.
Dorelli
Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:05 am
#18
woot! Looking forward to hearing about the pets in combat ...
-- Dorelli
droid327
Tue Apr 12, 2005 9:13 pm
#19
Made novice BE today.....it seems that, at CL14, they changed scouting exp so you get about 60-80 scout xp from harvesting yard trash....needless to say, it made the grind up to 4x4x very quick when you can score 60 xp with every hit 
DNA sampling seems slower than live, though its just been so long, i might be wrong. I can confirm that all BE crafting gives Medicine Crafting XP now, too
droidekasnightmare
Wed Apr 13, 2005 2:07 am
#20
Just a question about the pleas for help you were talking about; has the pet been taught the /guard command (and does it still exsist?) and did you use it? Because I was using it to good effect yesterday (decided to do some unbuffed/unarmored grinding for smuggler with a toon and had my pet tanking for me) on a live server. The pet interfered and took aggro as soon as I attacked something provided I was close enough to my pet (within 60 meters or so). One thing I did note on live though (since I'm not CH) was that my pet 'stole' from half and up xp from me since it's quite a hard hitter for a lvl 10 (60 unarmed xp vs. 170 unarmed xp, with and without the pet tanking). *shrug* my 2 cents, =)
Aleskander
Wed Apr 13, 2005 4:32 am
#21
droidekasnightmare wrote:
Just a question about the pleas for help you were talking about; has the pet been taught the /guard command (and does it still exsist?) and did you use it? Because I was using it to good effect yesterday (decided to do some unbuffed/unarmored grinding for smuggler with a toon and had my pet tanking for me) on a live server. The pet interfered and took aggro as soon as I attacked something provided I was close enough to my pet (within 60 meters or so). One thing I did note on live though (since I'm not CH) was that my pet 'stole' from half and up xp from me since it's quite a hard hitter for a lvl 10 (60 unarmed xp vs. 170 unarmed xp, with and without the pet tanking). *shrug* my 2 cents, =)
Was your pet grouped? If you look at Arthur's post, he didn't have his pet grouped.
Rogue1970
Wed Apr 13, 2005 4:32 am
#22
I'm curious as to the stats of your first pet and any other intersting pets you have made.
What 'Health' do they have?
Damage?
Speed?
Defenses and how are they listed?
Specials? I know you can't /tellpet specials yet, but have you seen a pet state or poison stick on an opponent?
droidekasnightmare
Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:15 am
#23
Aleskander wrote:
droidekasnightmare wrote:
Just a question about the pleas for help you were talking about; has the pet been taught the /guard command (and does it still exsist?) and did you use it? Because I was using it to good effect yesterday (decided to do some unbuffed/unarmored grinding for smuggler with a toon and had my pet tanking for me) on a live server. The pet interfered and took aggro as soon as I attacked something provided I was close enough to my pet (within 60 meters or so). One thing I did note on live though (since I'm not CH) was that my pet 'stole' from half and up xp from me since it's quite a hard hitter for a lvl 10 (60 unarmed xp vs. 170 unarmed xp, with and without the pet tanking). *shrug* my 2 cents, =)
Was your pet grouped? If you look at Arthur's post, he didn't have his pet grouped.
Itwas, yes. Hmm.. This calls for testing it with him ungrouped tonight.
Message Edited by droidekasnightmare on 04-13-2005 05:15 PM
ArthurDentOnBria
Wed Apr 13, 2005 8:45 am
#24
Well, here is how it went:
My friend and I each had a pet (naturally, he *was* with me after all, lol). We both sent our pets in to attack some rot mite or something. We both started blasting away at it as well. Then suddenly I got attacked from the rear by some random aggro mob. I think it was a giant dalyrake or something. So it being like 15 levels above me, I made a desperate plea to my pet for help, commanding it to cease and desist attacking the wimpy rot mite that was almost dead anyway, and come and save me from the dalyrake. It ignored me 
I commanded it one more time with my last dying breath and it ignored that too
droidekasnightmare wrote:
Just a question about the pleas for help you were talking about; has the pet been taught the /guard command (and does it still exsist?) and did you use it? Because I was using it to good effect yesterday (decided to do some unbuffed/unarmored grinding for smuggler with a toon and had my pet tanking for me) on a live server. The pet interfered and took aggro as soon as I attacked something provided I was close enough to my pet (within 60 meters or so). One thing I did note on live though (since I'm not CH) was that my pet 'stole' from half and up xp from me since it's quite a hard hitter for a lvl 10 (60 unarmed xp vs. 170 unarmed xp, with and without the pet tanking). *shrug* my 2 cents, =)
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 04-13-2005 08:46 AM
ArthurDentOnBria
Wed Apr 13, 2005 12:47 pm
#25
Day4:
Made novice CH and got up to 0-0-0-1, which is enough to train the "group" command. Now the real testing will begin.
I tried collecting dna. It wasn't too bad, but you draw a lot of aggros, and if you are sampling creatures higher than your combat level, they can hit pretty hard.
I made my first pet. Nothing special made from some rot mites andthe wimpy guf drolgs on Talus. The pet turned out CL 11 even though it was made from creatures that were CL 10 and CL 7 and its stats were comperable to the other two. Ugh, not real good. One thing that was *real* dissappointing was that they have sped up the pet growth to facilitate better testing. When you tame a wild baby pet, you tame it, and when you put it in your data pad and then pull it out again it is magically full grown. But here is the kicker... it doesn't seen to work with bio-pets. My baby jax remains a baby, no matter how many times I take him in and out of the datapad Yet another case where BE's are overlooked I'm afraid
Yet another case where BE's are overlooked I'm afraid I hunted a little bit with some wild pets that I tamed. Here are some observations:
The pet worked out really well. I was able to train them commands without problem, and they obeyed the commands for the most part. The one problem I had was that once I told a pet to attack a target, and the fighting began, then told it to attack a different target (that was attacking me) the pet completely ignored my pleas for help. Dunno if that was a singular incident or what but I'll be keeping my eye on that one.
The regen rate on these pets is *real* high. A pet will go from practically 0 health to full health (which is in the case of these pets around 1.2k or so) in maybe 10 seconds after the battle is over. That being the case, I don't see much use for pet stims other than healing during the battle itself. The regen rates for the pets seems to be much faster than my own regen rate. But I didn't take the time to fully study that.
An ungrouped pet is invaluable to a low-level combatant. No doubt about it. The difference in combat ability between a level 5 combatant like me and a level 10 creature is *huge*, to the point where I have no chance whatsoever fighting it, but with a level 10 pet on my side it is actually easy pickings. That is a huge huge boon for somebody leveling. Particularly since combat xp is no longer dependent on how much damage you actually do to the thing that you are fighting. Therefore I don't believe the pet is "stealing" any xp from you. I have not tested various damage taking damage dealing and experience point gain scenarios yet. I will do that later. Mostly I just wanted to get a feel for things tonight.
If any of you guys want to bring me your level 10 pets for training, lets do it soon as it will take them time to grow. I anticipate getting another box or two of CH as it will allow me to try out more types of pets, and levelling ch is relatively easy on TC.
ArthurDentOnBria
Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:10 pm
#26
Day 5:
Lots to report today. First off, they fixed the bug which prevented us from levelling up our tree. Now each box in the tree (aside from dna sampling) requires medical crafting experience.
I levelled up to 0-1-0-1. I can now validate the following schematics:
Medicines:
Bacta Toss Enhancer
75 smelted aluminum
50 reptile meat
100 fiberplast
7 advanced dispersal mechanisms (ADM)
7 advanced resilience compounds (ARC)
7 advanced infection amplifiers (IA)
Stabilizer Enhancer
75 smelted steel
50 reptile meat
75 crystaline gemstone
7 ADM
7 ARC
7 IA
I also verified that I had a stack of steel in my backpack and that steel would not satisfy the smelted steel in the stabilizer enhancers (argh!).
Oh, and I meant to report this before but I made my first batch of stim b's and pet stim a's. Keep in mind that these were made from components that I made when I was at medical crafting 4 in medic, and I combined everything together when I was novice BE box only. Also I didn't use godly components. I lazily satisfied for "decent" stuff. Here is how they turned out:
Pet Stim A: 12 uses 355 power
Stim B: 11 uses 300 power. Note that these say on them that they require a combat level of 15 to use.
Pets:
When I logged in tonight a funny thing happened. I reported yesterday that my bearded jax was just a baby (1/11). When I logged in tonight it was (8/11). Then a few minutes later when I was looking through my datapad is was (9/11). I "called" it, then stored it, then looked again and it was (11/11). yay! I then crafted another pet, and it was (1/11) and remained (1/11) after several iterations of calling it and storing it. And several hours later it is still (1/11). So I have no clue what's going on
Anyhow, here are some battles that I documented:
Me: level 8
my dwarf bantha: level 10, 2205 health, damage 80-190
vrobel: level 14 (con purple)
we attacked a vrobel with my pet ungrouped. Not surprisingly, we got pwned, lol.
vrobel hit me for 508
I hit it for 63
bantha hit vrobel for 143
vrobel hit bantha for 162
My bantha was down, so I took out my bearded jax: level 11 1306 health 130-140 damage
we attacked another vrobel (this time con yellow)from the same lair this time grouped.
group level: 11
vrobel hit me for 341
I hit vrobel for 83
jax hit vrobel for 135
vrobel hit jax for 162
We did a lot better, but still got killed in the end, although it was a close fight.
DNA:
I sampled dna from Rori and Tatooine, and I've run across some of that "unbalanced" dna on these planets as well. I took some dna with my noob skills from "shallow tortons" on Rori (near rebel base). They have 1000 fortitude and their kinetic, energy, and blast resistance is 174, lol. Oh well. Geez.
Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 04-14-2005 12:08 AM