Bio Engineer Archive

Mastered BE for the third time yesterday (woo!) and went out to make myself a nice novice CH pet. I adapted a recipe that I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with and here is the end result:

CL12 Gurreck

Admittedly, it's not much different - just an extra 44% resistance to acid - but my question is, since this is no longer a non-ch pet and the method was identical to the so-called 'exploit' method should this pet be allowed? Does it fall under the same category?

NB: Please do not argue semantics about my use of the term 'exploit'.

Congrats on MBE for the 3rd time, I did it myself for the 2nd time about 2 weeks ago

Bearing in mind that I don't see the uber cl10s as that big a deal, I don't see this as a big a deal either.

It should be interesting to see what people who are strongly against the uber cl10s feel about this pet. It is a ch pet, with an equivalent of the stats of the uber non-ch pets, and the SP investment is negligable...

Assuming they disagree with this pet too...at what point does it become a good balance of SPs to CL.

If they agree with this pet, does the investment of 6 SPs for novice CH make it alright to use this? (I say 6 points rather than including the scout skills too as my personal template already has the pre reqs for CH, and they are pretty common for anyone who has scout skills in the first place.)

For want of a better term, what do the 'extremists' who want CH pets as useful, and non-ch pets as mainly crappy mounts (hence extremist because of the extremes between the two pets) feel is appropriate for a starter Non-CH pet. This is a grey area and I don't really see how their arguments can allow for this pet at 6 SP investment either...

Message Edited by MiddleOfNowhere on 03-21-2005 12:41 PM

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Alico wrote:

I'd love to know what 'recipe' you are speaking of.. I can control up to lvl 22 pet and I can't seem to make anything decent under lvl 38. I have studied the faq page, looked around the forums, and studied some of my own findings... I'm still not coming close to figuring this out. I spent last night with a spreadsheet I made from the faq, a notebook writing down all my DNA samples, and then started cloning and working my butt off. Needless to say I came up with nothing except pets I can't use...

I have sampled Endor and Dathomir to death... I love BE however I'm starting to feel a little frustrated. Ok /rantoff I feel better now... thanks for listening!!!

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I've been battling with myself as to whether to reprint the recipe. I'm worried because if I do, there will be a large number of people who take up BEing simply to produce these pets and to abuse the poor suckers who have the money to spend upto 2 million credits getting one.

Skin only effects the min level of the pet. In other words each skin has a minimum CL. I think the levels are listed in the FAQ.

nah don't post it. If someone wants a pet like this bad enough i say let 'em work for it.
As to if this pet should be allowed, i'd say it's fine simply because the main problem with the CL10 monsters is that you don't have to spend any skill points to use it. This pet on the other hand, requires the owner to pick up at least novice Ch to use. If they don't alreay have the scout branches, you're looking at quite a few skill points to have that pet. If they do have the trees already, they're still looking at 6(?) skill points spent to be able to use this sort of thing.

Grozzer Agoutt
Kauri
MBE/Sentinel

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"Skin only effects the min level of the pet. In other words each skin has a minimum CL. I think the levels are listed in the FAQ."
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I have become convinced that this is NOT a true statement, and in fact I believe that we probably need to amend the FAQ. My recent work with low level pets, including the CL1 pets I made and the CL9 and CL10 pets with armor revealed a lot about creature skin during my experimentations.

I believe that there is more to the skin than just a minimum level, I think there is also some sort of hidden CL bonus that each skin adds too. I have used a particular DNA template with a durni skin and I get CL8, with a gurreck skin I get CL10 with the same template, I use the same template again with a razor cat skin and I get CL11 or 12. If that template is capable of being as low as CL8 (proven by the durni skin), then why would a minimum skin of CL10 like a razor cat come out at CL11 or 12?

When working with a certain template frequently over time, as is common when trying to hit a consistent CL like CL10 or lower, you will see these results when you try different skins. I have some templates that I will not even bother trying with a razor cat skin because I know that this skin, even though it is a minimum of CL10, will likely get pushed past that mark and end up CL11 or 12. Instead I use a CL2 or CL5 minimum skin that never fails to give me the CL10 or lower result that I want. There are some templates I have used where even a CL5 skin will push the final pet CL over 10, so for those I stick to the CL2 minimum skins and I don't have to worry.

The same principle applies to the higher level skins and higher CL pets too.

It's hard to notice if your templates aren't pushing the edge of the CL you're at. If your template is "low" enough then the minimum CL will kick in easily, but if you push your templates a little more, perhaps with more experimentation, you will start to see the skin affect the CL in ways apart from the minimums.

Anybody who would spend 1-2 million on a pet like this is odd. Ive seen pets with HAM like this, resists like this and AR1 around the 20 lvl going for 200k...... Maybe ive just been lucky at finding BE shops previously though

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Kelderek wrote:
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"Skin only effects the min level of the pet. In other words each skin has a minimum CL. I think the levels are listed in the FAQ."
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I have become convinced that this is NOT a true statement, and in fact I believe that we probably need to amend the FAQ.

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That's fine, and would be enlightening if true. But please provide some data to back this up.