Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: I'm in agony....I need recruitment into the BE profession.
- Is it unwise to have a BE character that posesses absolutely no combat skills?
- Is it unwise to give up master Shipwright to persue BE. (Bad financial decision for sure).
- Does BE seem like a job or a labor of love? (Shipwright feels like work to me, but WS doesn't).
- If you have an advertised vendor....how hard is it to sell your creations these days?
- Is it hard to keep track of all your ingredients? (i.e. DNA, meat, etc.)
- What other professions do most BE's decide totake on?(Combat or other crafting?)
Thanks for any input that you provide.
I suppose that any crafting profession can seem a little like work at times....even as a Bio-Engineer, the orders can be overwhelming ever so often. The thing I have to impress upon you is make sure that no matter what profession you take up, make sure that it stays fun for you....otherwise, you will get burned out.
Good luck in whatever you decide.
1. Is it unwise to have a BE character that posesses absolutely no combat skills?
I'm a CH/BioE/ranger tracker.
the advantages:
ability to train and use pets
limited combat viability
CL, special1, and special1 displayed on /examine of wild creatures
tracking distance/direction on wild creatures
maskscent skill maxxed for DNA sampling
the disadvantages:
no vendor
no survey skill
limited combat viability
low harvest rate (kills x harvest / time)
no ability to sell finished products (tailor/chef)
2. Is it unwise to give up master Shipwright to persue BE. (Bad financial decision for sure).
I don't get much call on TC for a BioE... but having a shipwright in your pocket is nice. financially, many BioE's can make a healthy living selling tissues to tailors and chefs. my vendor items all expired at 1 credit per item, but your results WILL vary.
3. Does BE seem like a job or a labor of love? (Shipwright feels like work to me, but WS doesn't).
tissues seem like a job. pet crafting is frustrating, confusing, and a lot of fun.
4. If you have an advertised vendor....how hard is it to sell your creations these days?
these days: shouldn't be hard... we see a lot of threads inappropriately placed in this forum asking for our products. in the past?: I sold nothing, so I dropped merchant/artisan.
5. Is it hard to keep track of all your ingredients? (i.e. DNA, meat, etc.)
DNA? yup. I have houses filled with DNA. the new inventory sorting (which the devs haven't finalized, thankfully) makes it harder to sort DNA, which is listed by QUALITY, and not by donor/etc. meat, flora, etc? not so bad (as far as organic go... inorganics are MUCH easier to handle, since they can be AFK sampled or harvested). fish is never a lot of fun to collect in quantity, and eggs/mollusk aren't much better.
6. What other professions do most BE's decide to take on? (Combat or other crafting?)
since BioE requires scout 0040 and medic 0004... and since scout 4040 is ALMOST a requirement (for maskscent as well as terrain negotiation), CH is a common profession to add. since artisan is NOT a pre-req, it hurts to spend 15 skill points, plus survey and vendor skills. chef and tailor are commonly added professions so that consumer-ready products can be crafted. master scout or some ranger skills are common for DNA sampling BioE's, but not required.
combat? lots of options here. some BioE's rush headlong into personal risk to harvest their own meat/etc, while others eschew combat. if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly: if you're looking at combat, don't settle for less than an elite combat profession... marksman: rifles 2 isn't going to be enough.
my BEST advice: start a BioE on a new server. don't worry about mastering... just get novice BioE (quick work) and try the basics of the profession: DNA sampling, tissue crafting, and clone creation. even at novice level, you'll get a good snapshot of the profession.
abandoning a traditional crafting profession for a crafting hybrid like BioE is a big step. a successful WS or SW (as I'm sure you know) require significant resource stocks to make high quality products, and those stocks don't spawn in a month's time. before you void your existing wealth in inorganic crafts, try the basics of the profession out, and see how the organic resource world suits you. meat and such can be in prohibitively high demand on some servers, and in low supply on others; something to keep in mind when you consider the switch.
I would also add that if your desire is to possibly specialize in making pets for your BH, you will find the Meditation line of TK priceless. There are very nasty diseasing and poisonous creatures to DNA sample in getting the right specials and resists forpets. Consider this when evaluating an added benefit to pet making.
A very nice BE template might look this:
Master BE, TK 4-0-0-0, Merchant 4-0-0-0, Artisan 0-0-4-4, Scout 4-0-4-0
MBE isa given; TK for meditation line to get rid of Disease/Poison, Minor hunting abilityand Power Boost, Merchant to add global visibility to your vendor, Artisan for survey of flora items andScout for Terrain Negotiation, Harvesting and most importantly Mask Scent.
Further,invest in Bio-Engineered enhanced clothing that gives the maximumMask Scent bonus andfind a Master Artisan to make you some good Jawa Beer for addedMask Scent bonus.
That's all I can really think of.A full on combat template isn't necessary but, it helps in certain circumstances. The CH abilities are only marginally helpful but, that's my opinion and that may change after the CURB.
samijx wrote:
Hello again guys (gals too)
Here are some questions for you BE experts:
- Is it unwise to have a BE character that posesses absolutely no combat skills?
Not necessarily. What your character WILL need, however, is at least exploration 4 and mask scent clothing. I have one character, master bio-engineer and master pikeman. The melee mitigation probably helps me live once in a while, but most of the time i just go out sampling with only what i need (clothing, brandy/canapeand maybe my pike so the mitigation works) and figure that if it is a difficult mob i will just die-clone if need be. In fact, i often set myself on peace when going hunting for some things that i might be able to kill because i don't want to kill them as it keeps me from sampling dna.
- Is it unwise to give up master Shipwright to persue BE. (Bad financial decision for sure).
pretty opinionated decision. I would say no, but i love making pets. Financial yeah it's a horrible decision and the disadvantage is that you can't be making the "cool, new, cutting-edge stuff" for people. However, the pet-making isn't "new" but still has yet to be really figured out and there's still alot of stuff we dont' know yet, so it'll be a personal decision either way.
- Does BE seem like a job or a labor of love? (Shipwright feels like work to me, but WS doesn't).
Labor of love for me, or at least the pet-making is. chef tissue making is kinda a drag and i wish stuff would sell faster, then it might be more fun. To me sticking resources in a factory and waiting for resource spawns isn't fun though, or at least not as much fun as seeing what i can make pet-wise. Similarly to your WS making your own weapons, i find it fun to make non-ch pets (for myself) and seewhat kinds of screwy things i can do with the system to make my pet more monsterous.
- If you have an advertised vendor....how hard is it to sell your creations these days?
it's kinda advertised...i have a collective list of chefs which i advertise to every so often. i just put a bunch more pets on the vendor today, but my pets have sold reasonably well, and i've gotten a few special orders which i've done too. I'm on kauri server btw.
- Is it hard to keep track of all your ingredients? (i.e. DNA, meat, etc.)
DNA is fairly difficult to keep track of because each sample is unique and so they dont' stack. The other resources aren't hard to keep track of most of the time because for chef stuff it's either meat or flora, and so long as the tailor tissue stuff(which i haven't done much of) stays organized,it's fine.
- What other professions do most BE's decide totake on?(Combat or other crafting?)
We generally run the gambit. I myself am half pikeman half bio-engineer (with about 4 skill pts to spare), other people take on another crafting profession or merchant, still others take TK or pistoleer or something else still. I am one of only a few people left in this game who still has one char i believe (at least among us 1yr+ people), so some people may have picked up be and something else non-combatant, and like yourself have a completely combat alt.
samijx wrote:Here are some questions for you BE experts:
- Is it unwise to have a BE character that posesses absolutely no combat skills?
- Is it unwise to give up master Shipwright to persue BE. (Bad financial decision for sure).
- Does BE seem like a job or a labor of love? (Shipwright feels like work to me, but WS doesn't).
- If you have an advertised vendor....how hard is it to sell your creations these days?
- Is it hard to keep track of all your ingredients? (i.e. DNA, meat, etc.)
- What other professions do most BE's decide to take on? (Combat or other crafting?)
Thanks for any input that you provide.
I'm not a long time expert, not even an expert at all, but I'll give my perspective.
1) My BE has very low combat skills. He's part CH and Pistols 4 in Marksman. None of which is helpful against a level 50 critter. Combat <> BE
2) No opinion
3) BE is a labor of love for me. I think anyone who is an engineer at heart will enjoy making pets.
4) I make anywhere from 250k to 1m a day selling pets on my vendor. I then get plenty of orders from people looking at my showroom. In the last week I've either sold or have orders for 5m in special orders. I try to keep a variety of pets on the vendor, I've had a couple of people buy a lower end pet then a week later come to me asking for a high-end one.
5) Yeah but I'm disorganized by nature. The lack of individuality in DNA labels really stinks.
6) A lot depends. I have a chef/merchant friend so we're sort of symbiotic which allows us to each do more of what we want.
samijx wrote:
Thanks for the inputs.....keep them coming. I was thinking of the benifits of a Master BE, Master Doc, Scout 4 0 4 0. The doc can make great components for pet stims,cure his own disease/poision, self-buff for those dangerous encounters,and heal his own wounds...plus the mask scent stuff. Additionally, if the money gets tight, I could camp in coronet for an hour and buff players. How does that sound?
This is my exact template and is by far my favorite. In regards to selling my wares, I have a dedicated merchant I go through.
samijx wrote:
Hello again guys (gals too)
I have 2 accounts, one is a crafter, the other is combat. Just so happens that my crafter has JTL, my combat doesn't.
I'm loosing interest in SWG fast. My combat guy is working on getting MCH back (Currently 4 4 1 1 ), mainly because I remember it was fun,but regrettably weak. (Praying that the CU fixes that).
I've mulled over the thought of my crafter (Master Weaponsmith, Master Shipwright) dropping Shipwright and start working on BE. I've never tried BE, and if I decide to stay with SOE (Providing the CU helps BH's and CH's) I'd like to make my own pets. I already love making my own weapons.
Shipwright took me over 6 million credits (to gather resources) and about 2 weeks time to master. Now...I've made my money back plus 2 million credits, so I guess the investment isn't such a drag, but still worthy of note.
Here are some questions for you BE experts:
- Is it unwise to have a BE character that posesses absolutely no combat skills?
- Is it unwise to give up master Shipwright to persue BE. (Bad financial decision for sure).
- Does BE seem like a job or a labor of love? (Shipwright feels like work to me, but WS doesn't).
- If you have an advertised vendor....how hard is it to sell your creations these days?
- Is it hard to keep track of all your ingredients? (i.e. DNA, meat, etc.)
- What other professions do most BE's decide totake on?(Combat or other crafting?)
Thanks for any input that you provide.
I love your post. These are well-considered questions from someone who is taking acareer moveseriously. Quite frankly, I think the type of post is a hint that you might enjoy being a bioengineer. You seem to like thinking things through, and you are considering making the change for a labor of love, rather than a financial decision. If you had been on Gorath, I would have offered to help you.
In answer to your questions:
1. It isn't unwise, but a little combat is helpful, especially in gathering meat. However, if you already have a combat alt, you can accomplish the same thing by making sure your alt has harvesting skills. Some defensive ability might decrease the number of times you have to clone if you are sampling high-level creatures. However, a high-level combat character isn't necessary, since you really don't want to kill those creatures anyway. Templates vary greatly, depending on your ability to take care of your needs with your alts.
2. You imply that you already know the answer to this. Shipwright is definitely a more profitable profession. Most of the people on this forum will argue that BE is infinitely more fun.
3. I haven't read all the replies you have received, but I'd be surprised if anyone with a primary character BE would consider it anything other than a labor of love. Some of us think of it as a hobby. Others would call it an obsession. Tissue-making is a job, and it supports some of us. Creature-making is an adventure. Don't hope to make your living by creature-making, but hope to have fun doing it. BE is also an exercise in frustration, but what worthwhile hobby isn't? If WS didn't feel like work compared to shipwright, then BE definitely will not feel like work. NOTHING in BE is simple and easy. Every product has its challenge, if only how to obtain a large quantity of meat high in three stats.
4. I think with the exception of non-CH pets, most of us sell more by special order than on a vendor. Some of us have successful tissue vendors, but some of us have more special orders for tissues than we can supply. My pet vendor isn't even viewed often. My tissue vendor is always empty. Actually, neither vendor is really mine. BE's have a hard time obtaining a vendor if they have a template that is useful in other areas.
5. Yes, especially DNA. I have so many labeled backpacks that I wish I could nest them. DNA doesn't stack, so it gets scattered between locations. It is hard to get some of our other resources (eggs, milk, fish) in any large quantity. I'm sure you had the same problem with shipwright. It isn't fundamentally different from the problem BE's face. DNA's label doesn't give you enough information to figure out which DNA it is, so we are constantly examining. (I proposed a solution to both of these here:
New Architect Proposals6. There are several different templates, but most BE's have scouting skills along with BE skills. For combat, pistoleer seems common, since it gives the range versatility needed in sampling and provides some degree of melee defense. Some of us like to keep some CH skill, just to enjoy the fruits of our labors. BE's can't use any of the products they make. All are directed to other professions. Some like enough medic to use stim B's to get us out of a scrape. Most are not double-masters, since so many other needs arise, but a few BE's are and seem happy with the result.
Again, the tone of your question makes me think that you might be a good candidate for a BE. BE is unlike any other profession. It is the one profession that lets us create a unique product. Making master is probably the longest grind you will have done. Then even as master, truly mastering the profession will take much longer...perhaps years longer.
Let us know what you decide. I'd like to see what happens.
Message Edited by Hylidex on 12-23-2004 09:31 AM
If you dont mind paying the often crazy prices scouts ask for meat its fine, i find though when there isnt such a good spawn of wild or reptilian meat I cant get anyone interested in harvesting so do it myself, tk makes it easier thats for sure
2. Is it unwise to give up master Shipwright to persue BE. (Bad financial decision for sure).
Dont know, Hear shipwright isnt a lot of fun, personal choice
3. Does BE seem like a job or a labor of love? (Shipwright feels like work to me, but WS doesn't).
I like it a lot, i like that it combines being out in the wilds with crafting so that your not constantly stuck infront of a station in your house
4. If you have an advertised vendor....how hard is it to sell your creations these days?
I dont advertise that much and my stuff sells pretty well, usually a master BE tag will bring you a LOT of business from /tells which can then become regular customers, they then pass your name on etc etc, thats how i get most of my work, but my vendor still sells well.
5. Is it hard to keep track of all your ingredients? (i.e. DNA, meat, etc.)
swgcraft.com god bless it
6. What other professions do most BE's decide to take on? (Combat or other crafting?)
i have tk (master) and BE (master)
samijx wrote:
Thanks for the inputs.....keep them coming. I was thinking of the benifits of a Master BE, Master Doc, Scout 4 0 4 0. The doc can make great components for pet stims,cure his own disease/poision, self-buff for those dangerous encounters,and heal his own wounds...plus the mask scent stuff. Additionally, if the money gets tight, I could camp in coronet for an hour and buff players. How does that sound?
I just read through your list of answers. I really believe it is representative of BE opinions. If you notice, there are lots of template possibilities, but almost everyone agrees that the real reward of bioengineering is the profession itself. The suggestion to try it out as a novice on another server is a good one.
Also, if you do go with BE, be sure to come back here and read all the stickied threads. This forum is as useful as any at this site.
