Bio Engineer Archive

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ArthurDentOnBria wrote:

Grinding to Master BioEngineer - all you need to know Part 1 - By Xanda

Overview

Unlike other crafting professions, you will only be able to complete 3 of the 4 skill trees through crafting. The fourth skill tree, DNA sampling, is very time consuming and is difficult to macro AFK since each DNA sample is unique and cannot be stacked. Thus, your inventory fills fast and will need to be emptied often. Sampling DNA is dangerous, and the frequency of aggro is highest at the lowest skill levels. Also, sampling DNA will rapidly drain your Mind bar (particularly for us Zabraks) and that means that you will either need to buy lots of spice or chef foods in order to sample continuously.

Crafting Part 1: What to Grind and How

From Novice BE, grind Constrictor Cloths until you get Tissues I. In practice mode they will offer you 110xp per cloth. Then, grind Micronutrient Supplements up to Tissues 3 (same XP, but less meat required); requires a food & chemical crafting tool. Finally, grind Broad Spectrum Nutrients or Scent Camouflage from there until Master; requires sitting in front of a crafting droid or personal crafting station (not a public one).

Note: when you grind the supplements, use FLORA for slots 1 and 2, and use meat only for slot 3. If you double click on the meat first, it will fill slot 1 and then slot 3; meat is by far the more rare and expensive resource, so double click on it ONLY after the other two slots are filled with the flora.
The total amount of resources is (approximately) 80k meat and 175k flora (this is not exact, but a good estimate). The meat gets very expensive very quickly. Save money by buying the worst meat and flora you can: the macro below prevents critical failures, so quality will not be important. The total XP required to complete all three crafting trees is 510,000xp. Average CONTINUOUS grind time >12 hours.

Crafting Part 2: Macro

I will openly admit that I did not write this macro. What follows for the remainder of this section is a macro written by someone else anonymously. I have used it and found it is outstanding. But, you MUST follow it to the letter. I have posted a couple of quick comments about errors and issues throughout the text. Please read this carefully and fully. I cannot provide support for the macro, but if you read the directions COMPLETELY, it works. Really. To whomever wrote this: thank you.

First, the macro file itself. Go to your desktop (i.e., exit the game). Open up notepad or MS Word and create a text file called "macros.txt" (or any other filename you want as long as you accordingly update future references to macros.txt to your file's name). Copy everything BETWEEN Start File and End File below directly into your blank text file and save.

----- START FILE-----

AutoCraft1: /ui action toolbarSlot00; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft2;
AutoCraft2: /ui action toolbarSlot01; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft3;
AutoCraft3: /ui action toolbarSlot02; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft4;
AutoCraft4: /ui action toolbarSlot03; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft5;
AutoCraft5: /ui action toolbarSlot04; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft6;
AutoCraft6: /ui action toolbarSlot05; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft7;
AutoCraft7: /ui action toolbarSlot06; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /AutoCraft8;
AutoCraft8: /ui action toolbarSlot07; /selectDraftSchematic 158; /pause 5; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype practice no item; /createPrototype practice no item; /pause 2; /ui action toolbarSlot08;

-----END FILE-----

Everything in between the markers beginning with "-----" goes into the file. Note that:

1) There should be no "space" at the end of any of the lines; all lines should end with a carriage return right after the semi-colon
2) There should be no space between lines
3) Capitalization matters! Do not change the capitalization or the macro will not work
Now, save the file. Put this macros.txt file in your StarWarsGalaxies directory, usually C:\Program Files\StarWarsGalaxies by default.

This file creates what are called "aliases". Aliases are sort of like macros...only they aren't stored as macros in the CTRL-A actions list. Aliases are just a way of naming a group of individual commands so that you can then use the alias name itself as a command. If that's confusing, don't worry: it's not important to know that in order for this to work.

Once the attached file is in your SWG folder, you now have to load SWG. Once in SWG, you need to type:

/load macros.txt

If you named your file something else, then replace "macros.txt" with the file name you used. Capitalization matters. Incidentally, I'll go to the Ctrl-A area and create a macro called "LoadMacros" with /load macros.txt so that I don't need to remember this little command in the future).

If you take a look at the contents of the text file, you will see that there are 8 aliases created, Autocraft1 through AutoCraft8. Those "AutoCraft" commands will get your macro working. But just loading these aliases isn't enough...there's one more step.

Here's how to get it all working:

1. Create 8 crafting tools of the type you want to use for grinding. You can modify this process to use fewer, but you may have to adjust the pause lengths so you don't catch up to a crafting tool that hasn't finished the prototype from the last go around.

2. Go to one of your blank toolbars (using CTRL-F1 thru CTRL F6 to go through them).
The first toolbar slot of a toolbar is always referred to in macros as toolbarSlot00. The 12th one is toolbarSlot11. If you show 24 slots on your screen, then they continue on the second row up through toolbarSlot23. Keep this all in mind if you go about modifying the macro file.

3. Drag and drop one crafting tool into each of the first 8 toolbar slots on the top.

4. Create an actual macro by going to the actions screen, CTRL-A, and switching to the macro tab then creating a new macro. In the macro, put the single command: /AutoCraft1

5. Give this macro a name and then drag this macro from your macro list into the 9th toolbar slot (toolbarSlot08). This is critical for your macro to cycle!

6. At this point, you are ready to begin crafting with the macro. It is recommended to be in an uncrowded place to avoid lag, etc. Hitting any key between F1 and F9 will at this point begin the macro chain. The macro boots the crafting sessions and gives you 5 seconds to load all the resources. It will then do a practice session on the item for you. The macro as it is provided here, selects the 158th schematic in your datapad. This is the broad spectrum nutrients for me.

You can get a rough idea of what your schematic number is by opening your datapad, go to the "Schematics" tab, and change the view so the schematics are in a list. Then, count upward starting at ZERO for the first schematic. When you hit micronutrient supplement, that should be your schematic number. However, I've found that technique varies usually by one or two slots. Run the schematic with the new schematic number you found by counting. If making something other than micronutrient supplements, go back to your datapad and find the object the macro is crafting. Then count up or down from that schematic to micronutrient supplement. Add or subtract from your original schematic number accordingly and then correct your txt file. This works rapidly and saves too much trial-and-error.

To change the amount of time you have to select your resources, change the "/pause 5;" that follows the select draft schematic command. The lower you go, the more chance you will have of skipping a "beat" in the chain - but the chain continues. Another trick is to put all of your unnecessary resources elsewhere like in a backpack, so you only have the actual resources you'll be clicking on available in your inventory as you use this macro.

If you actually want to create the items, "/createPrototype practice no item;" needs to be changed to "/createPrototype;" But your inventory will fill fast, just so you're aware.

If you want to modify these things, here's some info on how it works:
The aliases AutoCraft1 - AutoCraft8 get loaded when you load the macros.txt file.

The first 7 of them call the next higher AutoCraft alias.

Each AutoCraft alias does the following steps:
* Clicks on its corresponding crafting tool on your toolbar.
* Selects the draft schematic
* Gives you time to select your resources
* Takes care of zooming through the rest of the crafting screens
* Gives a brief pause to allow things to settle down before moving on
The last step in each of the first seven aliases is to call the next one in line.

The 8th one, however, clicks on the 9th toolbar slot that should contain the macro you wrote which re-executes AutoCraft1 - starting the whole cycle over again. Trying to put /AutoCraft1; as the last command in AutoCraft8 will cause the game to display a message that says something like, "Alias Recursion Buster" stopped execution...which is to prevent an endless cycle of recursion in aliases. So the macro takes care of that.

Message Edited by ArthurDentOnBria on 02-21-2005 03:44 PM

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