Bio Engineer Archive

Basically there are 3 types of pets according to the use intended. Player verses monster, Player verses player and player verses non player character. Each of these have different areas of concern which will be addressed later. First lets start out with a breif discussion about what is important in a pet and what is not. I rank them in the following order greatest to least.

1. Armor

2. Resists

3. Ham (health, action, then mind)

4. Specials

5. Skin

6. Speed/to hit

7. Damage

8. Range

Lets start with the top of the list and work our way down.

1. Armor. Armor is the pets ability to reduce damage taken. If the pet is taking damage from a source without armor piercing then the reduction is 50% if the pet has that resist. An example would be a pet with light armor fighting another monster. Your pet has light armor and 1% kinetic resist. The monster bites your pet and has a base damage of 100. The bite hit the light armor and since Kinetic is present damage is reduced to 50. Then the 1% is taken off that. So the damage taken is 45. Boring BE part... In order to get armor on your pet, the total FORTITUDE must be over 500. The main slots to account for fortitude is slot 1 40% slot 2 25% and slot 5 25%.

2. Resists are important depending on the type of fighting you tend to do. In PvM, kinetic is the most important. 60% is the cap for kinetic resist and again the formula is slot 1 40% slot 2 25% and slot 5 25%. In PvNPC energy is also very important as well as Kinetic. In PvP the most important seems to be kinetic, energy, acid, electric, heat and now stun. It is important to tailor your pet to the fighting intended.

3. Ham is pretty straight forward in the fact that the ore points you have to hit, the longer you will last. In PvM and PvNPC, the health bar seems to be hit first, then action then mind. In PvP, this may vary. Always leave mind for last due to the fact that you can easily heal that with a simple trick. Boring BE part...In making a pet, the physical bar also increases fortitude, so most of the time you will need to max that bar anyways.

4. Specials. Specials can be a bit tricky. I rate them in this order, Intimidation, blind, stun, cripple, strong poison, dizzy, strong disease, knockdown. As to date, specials do the following, on command means the pet will attempt the special each time you command it to.

Dizzy strike{on command} = dizzy status (target has chance of falling over on posture change, doesn't effect animals or droids)

Stunning strike {on command} = stun status (reduced DPS, weaker version of intimidation)

Intimidation{on command} = intimidation effect (DPS is lowered by 50%)

Blinding strikes{on command} = blind status (accuracy is lowered by 50%)

Knockdown = knock down (seems to have no effect on monsters and rarely works on NPCs)

Crippling strike{on command} = posture down

Strong poison and strong disease is way down on the list of good specials because 99% of fights are over before these specials have time to do anything. They are only good for griefing in PvP. Yeah you killed me but now you have to get your disease cured. See my point?

Boring BE part...In order to get specials in your pet remember the following...Area effect specials will not come thru. This includes area combo, force strike, plague strike and the like. Special two is slot 5, average or greater seems to come thru without much difficulty. But for special one things get a bit more difficult. The slot that mainly controls special 1 is slot 3, but 2 and 4 come into play in some ways let me explain.

Say you are trying to get a pet with knockdown/dizzy. you have merek harvester, barkmite burrower queen, bark mite burrower, rancor youth and SWG developer dna in your bag. You want a pet with 60% kinetic resist and light armor with good hams. Harvester with its 75% kinetic resist and 600+ fortitude is a great choice for slot 1 so you plug it in.

For slot 2 you are at a crossroad. If you use any dna with a usable special one other than the one you want it will disrupt the special one of the pet, so queen is out with its stun and developer is out with it's nerf strike. So you have harvester, bark mite and rancor youth. Now since this slot is 25% of total resist and 25% of fortitude you want the highest of those areas possible. Bark mite with its 60% kinetic and 500+ fortitude is a good choice here but harvester with it's 75% kinetic and 600+ fortitude is a better one.

Slot 3 controls mind, range and special one the most so the highest possible sample with the special you want should plug in here. A very high quality rancor youth sample with it's intimidation would be best for our example.

Slot 4 controls to hit and attack speed the most but is passive to special one and two, after many trials it seems best to use the same critter dna for this slot as slot 3, so we plug in another rancor youth.

Last but not least is slot 5. This slot controls damage and is also 25% of resists, 25% of fortitude and special 2. A average or higher seems to work ok here but the higher the better. For our example we have harvester with its dizzy special 2, 75% Kinetic and 600+ fortitude or developer with it's spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child-stike. Harvester is the best choice here, but with it's high power thus high damage, the creature level will suffer by rising. Now that all slots are full you move to the experimenting stage. Since you just had two critical fails in a row just keep plugging in the same recipe til you can get to the next screen. Now if your master or not, use your points in the same way according to the list of priorities above. Physique first, watch as your fortitude goes over 500 and armor attaches to pet. You can stop now and have a lower creature level just by lower hams alone, or continue to use the rest of your points. The end result should be a pet with 10k+ hams Light armor, 60% kinetic resist with the knockdown/dizzy combo. Now what skin to put this template into.

5. Skins. You can place your DNA template into any skin you have available to you. The only limitations is to the higher level skins that affect minimum level. Graul 30, rancor 35, kimogila 35. Skins are different in the way they react though, and can have a great impact in battle. A kimogila once you tell it to attack will yell and scream for a few seconds before it goes into battle, this is valuable time. Whereas a cat skin will pounce right in and start fighting, cat skins have also been known to keep up with speederbikes as well. Though I love pulling out my rancor for show. It is important to choose a skin that will compliment your style of fighting. If you fight in buildings you need a smaller skin.

6. Speed/to hit. I have no idea if this has any real use or benefit in battle at all. It is controlled by slot 4 and doesn’t appear to do much of anything.

7. Damage I rank almost last though I am always asked for high damage pets. The reason I feel it is totally unimportant is that you may raise the ending creature level of the pet by as much as 10 just by damage alone and that amount of damage can easily be cancelled out by the resists of the mark your fighting. Plus, a pet will never me able to deal as much damage as fast as any mid level combat player anyways. Use the points for HAM and you will have a pet that will be a much better battle partner.

8. Range. Range damage only has one purpose. To be used for grinding CH xp without much damage to your pet. A low level pet with range for example can hit a mark from 50 meters. As soon as you see the hit, you shoot and kill the mark. Your pet takes no damage and you get the CH xp. Thats it. Any pet above a "grinding" pet with range is just annoying and cycling range on and off is random at best.

Well thats pets in a nutshell. Now on to DNA and sampling for all the BE's reading this. Everyone else just skip past this part to section 6 as sleepiness may occur.

Once you have your dna in a skin and it is in your inventory you can resample it. This provides many benefits and penalties. The areas that you used your points will be there in various states. Again you are at the will of your sampling ability as to the quality and quantity of samples. You may lose the pet all together in this process. I have gotten 1 to 6 samples before the pet is destroyed. The trick is to stop before this happens. If you get 3 samples from one and 2 from another, you just got a free pet. Keep in mind that any area you didn’t spend points on will be lower on the second pet. One benefit to doing this would be to get certain specials to come through. Say I want knockdown special 1 from the rancor youth, but the fortitude is only 300 or so and I need armor, I can throw a 600 fort something in slot 1 and 5 and use the youth in the rest. You use your points in ham and get a sample with knockdown/dizzy and a higher fortitude. Now you can plug it into your primary recipe in place of a standard sample the more dna slots you fill with the same specials increases the chance of that special coming thru. Using this philosophy, you can do the same thing for resists as well. Don’t like the dna with 4 legs walking around your house. Make your own. Its fun and easy.

There are a multitude of pets out there. Many have tried many combos and so have I. The following is my list of major players in the BE game. I will not provide combos or recipes because some things you just have to figure out for yourself. That is the fun of the profession. The following is my staples; things that I always have a ready supply of and use for the foundation of most pets.

1. Merek Harvester

2. Bark mite Burrower queen

3. Bark mite Burrower

4. Rancor

5. Rancor Youth

6. Rancor bull

7. Prowling gurreck

8. Surefoot Bracketset

A resource to help you find the dna you want is http://www.swgcreatures.com

As you can see, most staples come from Endor and Dathomir. My current template is BE/DOC. Very handy for poison/disease buffs and the like. With no combat or defense skills sampling becomes an skill itself. I wear no armor, clone at each world I sample on and never roam too far from my ride. The following is my sample macro. The wave is used to sync with the server to massively reduce warping. Change the last line to reflect the mount you use. I choose the landspeeder because I may ride around for an hour just marking lairs before the sampling begins. And on my server I found that landspeeders can be purchased cheaper than the cost of repair. So it lasts longer and is cheaper to go a little slower. More on the economics of being a BE later.

Mask scent clothes do help but not much. I have found though that if you move into a lair and stop when they break your mask scent, then wait and maskscent again you can move a little closer with each break if you dont get aggroed. Eventually you can get within the 15 meter mark. Though lately monsters have been known to burst run, levitate and warp at will. Aggravating but no show stopper by any means. Remember the highest bonus to mask scent from clothes and such is +25 and the highest mask scent you can get is 100. Anything over just adds to your ability to mask while crawling. HA, right. Never have I had the desire to crawl up to and high level monster. Also while out on a sampling run I normally destroy any samples less than high quality and can hold over 100 samples per trip. That leads us to economics.

The cost of making pets.

Travel costs round trip to an advanced planet $4k plus samples = 100+

Buffs if your medically impaired = $10k

Resources if your harvesting impaired = $500+

The ability to make a pet and sell it for less than $50k = Priceless

My primary character is a BH/CH/Ranger, so he can harvest resources with the best of them. As I make my own buffs, that is not a factor. My current price guide is 15k for non-armored pets and 25k for armored pets simply because armored pets come from higher level creatures that are more difficult to sample. With these prices I have no problem selling pets and make a nice amount of money doing it. I have never seen a pet worth over 100k, but I have seen prices up to 2 million credits. This is why I made a second account to start with. Every BE on my server that I found was more interested in profit than customer service or variety. I asked around and the response I got most of the time was "I don’t make pets, I just make tissues, that’s where the money is." One of the arguments that is most stated is that the BE could make such and such amount if they were such and such and could do this or that, if you want to make such and such then do such and such, not all professions should get paid the same. If your interested in making money, charge what you want. If your interested in buying a pet, understand that it costs most BE's around 2k to make 1 pet. Though time and commitment needs to be considered. If you feel the price is way to high, burst run away. If you feel the price is very low, don't be afraid to tip. A good BE can make a great friend.

*Disclaimer: Information in this guide is based entirely or in part on personal experiences and do not reflect the views of this station or its affiliates up to and including SWG, Origin, SWI, SOE,OSI, ABC, NBC, CBS, LucasArt, station.com, my moms uncles friends roommates brother, the state of California, the bloodfin server, the east coast, Cox Cable Internet, Hewlitt Packard, Marlboro, philip morris usa, anhieswer bush, George Lucas or god. No SWG developer was harmed in the making of this guide as dna was donated. All reproductions or transferal of this information or the information provided in this guide must be authorized by said parties and used for the sole purpose of entertainment unless otherwise you don’t care and want to share the information for educational purposes to those that need educational purposes for the purpose of an educational purpose. No cash value is assigned to this guide and is not recyclable in the states of ME, VA, CA and confusion. Information given forthwith may cause drowsiness. Taking more that the recommended dose could cause serious health problems. In case of overdose contact the gaming addiction hotline at your parents home. This guide is not to be used as a dietary supplement. Author of this guide is not responsible for any and all harm that could be caused by using the recommendations or warped ideas of the originator. Names may have been changed to protect the guilty. Results may vary. The term "simple people" is not to imply that simple is people or that people are simple or that simply people are people. No malice was intended to people that may simply be people. Author is not responsible for typos, misspellings, bad grammar, poor judgment, time wasted by readers, information contained within or anything. Wonder Woman is the registered trademark of someone I think and in no way implies that Lynda Carter plays SWG, Originator also is not responsible for any one else using creativity to make a cool toon name in the game.

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