Bio Engineer Archive

Ok. I am by no means an expert on creature crafting. I've been B-E for a month, and even after reading the guides and using swgcreatures.com the wonderful CL seems to evade me. I ask that either a) someone tell me what the heck I'm doing wrong, or b) please enlighten me with a recipe that will suit my current customer's request.

Request: Twin Pets - CL 35 - 10k HAM, Light Armor, 60% Kinetic, Dizzy, Intimidation (specials can be one per pet or both on each pet)

Attempt #1:

Thinking that Merek Harvesters would give me the Kinetic Resists, the Dizzy, and the Armor, Roaming Desert Borgles would give me the Intimidation, and Mantigrue Reapers would fill in when I didn't have any more Merek harvester DNA I went with:
Merek Harvester/Merek Harvester/Mantigrue Reaper/Roaming Desert Borgle/Merek Harvester

Result #1:
11861/10981/10855 HAM
60% Kinetic, 2% Blast, 2% Heat, 2% Stun, rest vulns, light armor
2.15 Attack Speed, 270-380 Damage, 0.46 to hit with Ranged Attack
NO SPECIALS?!?!?!

Attempt #2:
All right, that result was not what I wanted... So next try I used Merek Death's Head with Merek Harvesters:
MH/MH/MDH/MH/MH
I got the Dizzy, with Strong Poison, 60% Kinetic, light armor, and HAM in the 11k range. Great says I, but then I notice I got CL 55. DOH!

Attempt #3:
Let's try two Mantrigrue Reapers this time, maybe that'll bring the CL down:
MH/MH/MR/RDB/MR
Result: CL44! I got the Intimidation, and the armor/resists I wanted, but the CL is still too high!

So how do I get the light armor and the 60% kinetic (for that matter, the 10k HAM) without going over 35 in the CL? Any suggestions or ideas?

You're going to have to sacrifice. You should be able to get 10K easily for the Health, but keep action and mind lower. Since it seems you're only interested in Kinetic I assume these will be for PVE only. That means the Health part of the HAM is more important them the Action or Mind. Also, what was the damage on these last 2? Lower the damage to lower the CL.

As for the specials, what quality DNA did you use in slots 4 and 5? To get a good chance of getting the specials to stick you'll have to use either HQ or VHQ DNA in those slots.

In your first example:

Merek Harvester/Merek Harvester/Mantigrue Reaper/Roaming Desert Borgle/Merek Harvester

Use either HQ or VHQ DNA in slots4 and 5 (RDB and MH). Then experiment on physique until you get Fortitude over 500 (the Armor threshold). Experiment Prowess if Dexterity is less than Intellect. You'll want Hardiness in the upper 500s or low 600s, Dexterity in the mid 400s and Intellect in the low to mid 400s. For Agression you may want to leave it without experimenting. See where this gets you CL wise and adjust your experimentation points to adjust your results.

Message Edited by Kevm on 06-02-2004 02:15 AM

Yeah, damage was pretty high - like I said, I'm still learning the whole experimentation thing (can't believe BE is the only profession where we DON'T want to make something as good as possible) . Using the MH DNA Hardiness and Fortitude are pretty easy to get to where you suggest (1 point in physique did it every time). Whast should I do with Psychology (i.e. is there any link between it and CL?)?

I'm assuming they are also for PvE tanks (didn't really ask the customer, he just said he'd pay *very* well). Should I use MH DNA instead of the Mantigrue Reaper DNA in Slot 3?

BTW Thank you for your assistance

Well to keep this short here is a recipe I've used to get what you want:

MH MH BW AB MH

If you want a Strong Poison/Dizzy go with

MH MH BW AD MH

Bracci,

Here's my attempt to answer the "what am I doing wrong" question. It sounds like you have a pretty good idea about what to do dna-wise, but imho you're making two mistakes. #1 you are not paying close enough attention to dna quality (imperative in getting specials). #2 you are not being careful with how you use your experimentation points.

If getting specific specials is important, my approach is always to use VHQ samples in the 5th slot and assume that I'll get whatever specials that dna holds. Others have more complicated methods, cool, but that works very reliably for me.

As far hitting the CL that you need, it's all about documenting and refining results and eventually developing an intuition about it. I think the *only* time that I use all the experimentation points that I have, is when I'm shooting for CL 60-70. For every other creature I make, I leave many experimentation points unusued, and actually there are a lot of combines where I do no experimenting at all!

When you are using CL 50+ animals, and shooting for an armored CL 35 pet, what I'd suggest is experiment until you get armor and stop. Do no more experimenting. Write down all the template numbers and produce the animal and see where you are at. In my experience with most MH-combines, that will land you in CL 28-30 range and you'll have your high health, resists, and armor. Then you can decide how much more to experiment and where best to bolster the pet in order to reach the target CL. The other benefit to such an approach is that the next time someone asks you for a CL 28 pet for example, you'll know exactly what to do to produce one

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Bracci wrote:
Yeah, damage was pretty high - like I said, I'm still learning the whole experimentation thing (can't believe BE is the only profession where we DON'T want to make something as good as possible) . Using the MH DNA Hardiness and Fortitude are pretty easy to get to where you suggest (1 point in physique did it every time). Whast should I do with Psychology (i.e. is there any link between it and CL?)?

Back when the BE revamp first came out there was a theory that experimenting on Psychology would lower the CL. I don't think anything verifiable ever came of that. I know that by experimenting psychology will raise your To Hit stat (via Courage) which makes the pet more powerful and may raise the CL.

I'm assuming they are also for PvE tanks (didn't really ask the customer, he just said he'd pay *very* well). Should I use MH DNA instead of the Mantigrue Reaper DNA in Slot 3?

Well, if the pet is going to be used strictly for PVE(where Kinetic is the biggest concern) then the Mantigrue Reaper is giving you a lot more resists than you actually need. The more vulnerabilities that you have in the final combine lowers the overall CL of the clone.

Another thing to consider tho, is that the 3rd slot always tends to be where the 'ranged' attack comes from. A lot of MCH's I know don't like their pets to have ranged attacks since that sometimes causes them not to close and engage the target. Since both the Merek and the Reaper have ranged attacks, you may want to use a lower quality DNA (such as AA) in that spot. This should make it harder for the ranged attack to stick and has the added benefit (in this caseits abenefit) of lowering the Intellect (since lower quality DNA usually has lower stats) and thus lowering the CL.

BTW Thank you for your assistance

Hope this helps

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