Bio Engineer Archive

Hey guys, This might help if you are getting beat up by animals.

I made an alt character (which is quickly becoming my main ) that is master artisan/4404 BE. I didn't make it in time for respec so I had to grind this all maually. As a pure crafter I had some trouble getting the scout xp and going in groups seemed to take forver. This is a helpful way to level up scout much faster and not have to take any fighting skills. This might be beginner stuff for some of you, but here it is:

1)[Pleas keep reading after this heh I promise this is not the only solution]I bought a combat droid combat rating 589 (max is 600 which is better), max arror.Combat level is 18. I got the R3 model which has a ranged and melee attack. Better to get a melee combat droid than ranged (probot is ranged), or at leased that's what worked for me. Bought a crap load of droid stims and batteries.

2) DO NOT GROUP WITH THE DROID. The droid is level 18 so youwant to find animals up to level 18 that are 3-5 levels above you and do not aggro. IE yellow on the map, won't really bother you if you're not ontop of them. I grinded on corelia then moved on to naboo doing gaulama/kaddu. I got missions no problem, diff 15. For example. to start out with when I was level 1, I had the droid kill level 5 stuff and got very good xp. At level 8 I had it kill level 12ish stuff. At level 12 (I stopped at 12 on purpose) my droid killed level 15-18 level things. As soon as you get exploration 2, make a mask scent macro and a dump macro.

mask scent macro:

/mask;

/pause 20;

/mask;

/macro mask;

dump:

/dump

Use this macro so you don't have to keep putting on mask scent. If you get detected or are on mount, etc then dump the macro (I binded these 2 macros so I only have to press 1 key for each) remeber if you have to dump the macro and you still have "mask scent" running you have to get rid of your mask scent before applying the macro again, otherwise it will screw up the timing. If you suspect you have done this press /dump 2 or 3 times till it says "no chain commandsto dump".

I also used ctrl+O and went to the "chat color" and added a sentence colorization (bright red) for "a creature has detected you". This really helps to know when to dump my macro and reapply.

3) Get a good distance away from the nest!and make sure there are no OTHER animals around to aggro.. red=bad, surrounded by yellow is okay but be careful. (droids have an incredible range) Then target 1 animal... tell the droid to attack (there will be a red excalmation over the head of teh target animal) immediatly after (the red exclamation) tell the droid to follow and wait until the animal runs all the way over to you (it only wants to kill the droid) when it gets a few feet infront of you tell the droid to attack. (You have to wait this long because if your drid fights the animal too close to the lair, the other animals will start to attack it. This is bad.) Keep tabs on your droid's health by mousing over it and heal it as needed. This did not make the non agressive animal aggro me at all. Just make sure you DO NOT ACTUALLY GROUP WITH THE DROID. You will still get harvesting rights even ungrouped. You can tap the lair by using the attack/follow right after it. The trick is to pay attention to your distance from teh lair. Let the droid fish the animal as close as possible to you(which should be as far as possible from teh other animals and lair to ensure isolation.)

4) this works because Not being grouped with your droid does not puch your level up to 18. So technically you are a level "5" (scout and BE both give you levels which is funny because you get no real fighting skills) harvesting a level "15". What I did was grinded up hunting 4, got novice BE, but stopped grinding those boxes when I got to around level 12. Then I went back out with my droid and got up to hunting 4 when my level reached around 12. This is because you want to stay at leased 3-4 levels below the animal that your droid can kill because otherwise the xp is not good. I htink you will find this gives you MUCH more xp than even being in a large group (well, unless there is a ranger??) I got 400ish xp for every level 15 kaddu/galam I harvested. My combat droid also managed to kill a level 30 deer looking creature on naboo.. be careful they will break your mask scent.

Dancer buffs are awesome btw

Now I wear a full suit of mask scent clothes, use jawa beer and keep my finger on burst run. burst run efficency food/ TN food (which if you're artisan you can make!) also helps. I havebeen surveying a lot lately. I went to lok, dant, tattoine, naboo and danthomir. Have not been killed yet, only incap 1 time. I am loving being a pure crafter and have been neglecting my level 80 smuggler/CH!

Hope this helps.