Commando Archive
Thread: Cash / XP advice needed . . .
Apologies for the length of this post but wanted to give the background as to why I'm asking for help :-
(originally posted on main forum)
A VERY bad day . . .
Here’s how I spent my day yesterday after qualifying for Novice Commando. Visited every single planet looking for suitable destroy missions. On the main 3 planets I’m getting given lvl 12/13 ones which are far too easy, give very poor xp and very little cash. The next up that I could find were lvl 35/40. These were way too hard and often involved taking out red con mobs with high hitpoints that all rushed me as soon as I hit one of them. Multiple incapacitations later I gave up on lvl35/40 missions.
Not being able to find anything in between I decide to explore a bit. I happened to be on Endor so though I’d take a little look around. Less than 500m from the outpost I found a flying creature (name eludes me) who proceeded to warp on top of me, hit me once, then fly away. This attack has diseased me and 60 seconds later I am left with 1 hitpoint and a massive 899 health wound.
Unable to locate any healing back in the outpost I’m forced to return to Coronet on Corellia where I logged out knowing that when, or indeed IF, I log back in I’ll have a lengthy hospital stay for which I will feel obliged to tip, this being after wasting a not insignificant sum of money visiting every planet desperately trying to find something to kill.
So to sum up my whine :-
* Am I missing something or is it ridiculous that destroy missions jump from 12/13 up to 35/40 with nothing in between?
* There are a few creatures on Corellia that I know would be ideal for me to kill but due to the games wonderfully poorly thought out random spawn system I have no way of locating them apart form wandering aimlessly and hoping to get lucky. Again am I missing some sort of way of locating specific creatures?
* Is it really in the games interest to have a creature that in 1 hit reduces me to 1 hitpoint and 899 health wounds? Regardless of people who will say ‘well you should have had a medic with you’ this type of punishment for getting hit by a high lvl mob is ridiculously extreme, just kill me for god sake.
* I’m now almost penniless. The cost of visting each planet and then returning to get healed has virtually cleaned me out and I’ve still to tip whoever heals me. It seems I’ll be left with no other option than to keep running the lvl 12/13 missions to get at least some cash (about 1,000cr per mission). I’m selling what harvested resources I can but there doesn’t seem to be a demand despite selling at low prices. I’m a little stumped as to what I can do to help my lack of finances and, more importantly, to stop it happening again.
Sorry for the whine post but I needed to get it off of my chest and yes I’m still furious that if I log back in I’ve got an 899 health wound to heal before I can do anything, a wound that I picked up off of just 1 single hit.
I’d be very grateful for any advice on earning cash / xp as well, anything to cheer me up
As I'm working on being a Master Commando I thought I'd ask here for any help / advice on how I can avert bankrurptcy and also gain the huge amount of xp I still need.
Many thanks in advance for any help.
You're doing missions with a launcher pistol, aren't you? *sighs and shakes his head* You know, for the end-all be-all pistol that everyone was supposed to get novice commando for... it's not really much better than the other high-end pistols.
First, missions - Whatever weapon you're wielding affects the difficulty of the mission you receive. at commando 1-1-3-1, wielding the LP, I take down to difficulty 12-14. Nice but the rewards for 'normal' missions cap out at about 2-3k (I am also smuggler and so slice every time for the nice bonus cash). However, when I wield my Flamethrower, I get difficulty 23-25 missions. MUCH better payout but I'm also having to take down Bocatts, Mountain Worrts, Cannibal Dewbacks, and every other godforsaken nasty thing Tatooine can provide. For my trouble, I get between 4-7k per mission (not to mention 2k hvy weapons exp per kill +/- on critters and over 1k exp+credit/item loot on swoop/slaver/assassin/enforcer lairs). Note, I've never seen a mission between the two extremes, but even at novice, the FT hit often enough to make it feasable to do the diff 23 missions (as long as I stuck to people-fighting and kept my armor on)
Second - a warning... I don't know your preference, but I went rebel. and for some innane reason a difficulty 24 rebel mission occasionally includes an ATST. if you're doing faction missions, just use the LP for getting the mission and the FT for giving the impies a housewarming. I'm pretty good now, but soloing ATSTs doesn't seem possible without a rocket launcher sliced to around 10k-14k damage (plus modifiers, bonuses, and getting rid of the 70% blast defense)
Using this method, I've gotten over 100k credits in 3-4 days... and that's after I bought the comp armor, new flame/har and a house. mind you, the exp isn't as good as soloing leviasqualls on Rori, fun & gun at Tusken, or mission runs with a group on Lok/Endor, but the money is mine-all mine.
Lynch, Ambushed by 3 bounty hunters and the bleed caught me before I could DB the last of them.
1) Find an old grizzled commando vet and see if you can get an old flamer/HAR off of them. If not, and you're an Imperial do the Emp's retreat and get a flamer from Vader. Use said P.O.S. heavy weapon to pull difficulty 22+ missions.
2) Novice Pistoleer makes things easier with stacking /healthshot1 & 2.
3) Warning Shot is your friend.
4) /examine is your friend.
5) Buy a DZ70, group with it, and either leave it in town or make sure it doesn't get involved in the fight.
6) War Grondas on Corellia got me through most of Commando. 3K XP grouped. Mission lair will have 6 spawns(including the 2 intial ones when the lair spawns). They're social, have 70% Blast Resist, warning shot makes them run nicely, DoT's pay no attention to resists(for now as I for one am hoping they change that).
Tactics: /healthshot1 & 2 from 64m out. With my LP I was able to get 1K and 800 bleeds going easily. Warn the bleeding one, repeat on the second one running at you ( you may need to run a bit backwards depending of how successful the warning shots were and you're speed). Of course in this pokemon universe we live in I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but that's what I did. After the heavy weapon fix I abandoned this, went to Talus and killed turtles and dinos to get my remaining 3 boxes. Seething Bols are doable at Flame IV, but the XP/Time isn't much more than killing stuff on Talus.
At Master I do a couple hours of seething bol missions to pay the bills. There's higher paying missions but I don't want the hassle. 13K a lair, 6 Seething Bols, good enough for me. Plus it has the added benefit of an Imperial Outpost so faction grinding is easy too.
Get a buddy with a tank, or do like me and get enough CH to carry your own, Sludge Panthers and Grand Wrix are my personal favorites although there are some out there at CH 1-1-0-0 that are probably better strictly as a meatshield.
Go to Lok and run Corsair Missions if your Nym faction needs work or Nym camps. Since I can slice the terminals I get 20-25K payouts on those,a night on Lok will net me 70-100K and 100-120K xp. I've heard of folks doing better, but I hardly ever get incap'd anymore so I don't have a lotta downtime between missions. I usually try to run with a 3-4 man group, good fun, somebody to talk to and a decent amount of cash and xp. More than 4 and you don't get as much return for your time.
EightAces Dave
Corellia, Corbantis
Smuggler/Commando
I just hit Novice Commando as well. What you should be doing for exp... what I do for exp, is go to Lok and run my butt down south to the Volcano. There are herd after herd of snorbals down there. If you get yourself a mouse droid, group with it, and leave it in town at Nym's Stronghold. I am getting 3.5k exp+ from the Elder Snorbal, and approximately 2.4k exp+ from the Mature Snorbals. I usually kite 4 at once, and use my Pistoleer Skills to put nasty bleeds on them. As you and others may know, Snorbals run a tiny bit slower than us, and they also tend to slow down to a crawl after a minute. This allows for multiple kiting instances. Once the Snorbals have slowed, you can start others, and this gives you all the time you need to start up others as the first ones die. Just keep rinsing and repeating and you will level up in no time.
Just to give an example. I made Master Unarmed in 2 days off of this. I was getting approximately 25k an hour using this method of applying bleeds with Healthshot1 and Healthshot2, then once they were about to die, I ran in and punched them in the face. Thats an easy 3.5k Unarmed Exp. It helps if you have at least Novice Pistoleer to do this, as this is the skill level where you attain Healthshot2.
I am in no way a hardcore gamer. I only play for a few hours a day during the night. So in about 3 hours I average about 75k exp in this kill manner.
Now... in regard to your question about making money. I, once upon a time, was a Resource Salesman. I recently retired from the profession as I made enough money to retire off of. Currently I have approximately 3 million credits in the bank to live off of. What I would suggest you do is take the time to look around for a good source of high quality Steel and/or Ore. If you can get good quality material, you can resell for 3-3.5 credits per unit. Say you mine 20k Steel... thats an easy 60k credits in the bank, and it requires no work at all. All you need is a good Energy maker (WInd Power will suffice for 1 or 2 extractors) and a Medium Extractor or 2. A medium extractor, on a good 80% vein of resources will net you about 6-7k resources a day. Given 3 days, you have about 20k resrouces to resell for a big profit. Just take those resources to a major starport, and camp the entrance for a little bit. I usually camped at the Coronet Starport because of its traffic and would shout "Selling 70k Bopto Steel, 30k Bebekag Copper, 20k Ineunn Carbonate Ore!... /tell Salomon if interested!" This may take you a few minutes, but if you advertise yourself correctly, without making yourself seem like an annoyance, some sort of artisan class person will approach you with a /tell asking for a price. Now... you want to start your prices high... say 3.5 credits per unit depending on the resource. If they think it is too high, tell them that you are willing to go a little lower. That usually sparks interest. Also tell them that you will pricematch any other resource seller. This promotes return customers.
At my peak, I was running 16 Medium Extractors, 5 Solar Generators, and a Medium Corellian House. I had return customers out the ying-yang, and had a good reputation across the galaxy. People were upset to see me retire, but it had to be done to satisfy my enjoyment.
I think that when and if the time comes that I will need more money, I will again start up my resource business. I have a good reputation on my server for my sales, so I dont think I will have any trouble.
Also... one thing that you will have to do, is DO the easy missions. I know it is kinda degrading taking a level 13 destroy mission, but it has to be done. 1500 credits is still 1500 credits, and because you can get 2 missions at once in the same general area, that 3k per mission run. Theres your trip to Lok and back from one mission run. Dont put off these missions, they pay off in the end.
I hope this HUGE thing I have written helps you and others a bit. This is just some info I have picked up along the way, and It worked for me. So, try out some of my suggestions, I guarantee it will work for you.
What is this tactic of getting a DZ70 or MSE droid, grouping with it and leaving it in town? Does that affect the xp you get from the missions, and if so, how?
How about two more party members, say one droid and one pet? I know I can only have one droid out at a time, but can I have one droid and one pet out at the same time? Would that be even better than just the droid, xp-wise?
Speaking of pets, do they take a portion of the xp if they assist you in killing a creature?
Beside the "equip a FT", I'd offer this advice...
1) get a non-ch pet like a rock beetle. They give the extra exp and can take some punishment while you pound away with the LP.
2) Move up the FT tree first. The DOT from the FT makes your life much easier, and your pet takes a lot less dmg.
3) For money, take NPC missions. I made a lot of coin on the NPC missions out of the reb base on Rori. With a cowardly gurrek (use a rock beetle or mtn krevol....both are a little tougher) I could roll thru 5k missions without a lot of problems. The benefit of NPC missions is they don't spawn more from the lair. Peg the 3-5 you see, take down the nest, and collect the bling. The xp isn't as nice, but the payouts are quicker.
4) For exp, on Rori, take Torton missions. These are also 5k missions vs non-aggro mobs. They aren't flame resistant and are very doable as you climb the FT tree if you have a decent tank (be prepared to heal your krevol/beetle between spawns. These guys give 3k exp/torton and harvest wooly hide of decent quality. They always have 2 waiting outside when you approach. Send your pet on one and let both aggro the pet. Then flame. If you flame first they'll target you and it's hard to pull them off and on to your pet. After you take down the 2, hit the lair....first shot will pull two more. If you take down those you'll get one more spawn of them at about 1/2 dmg to the lair...again , usually 2 spawn. After those you can finish off the lair. These give more down time, but the wooly hide is nice and the exp is nice. You MUST have a decent tank and should be ready to dole out the heals to keep them up. Tortons don't db, which is nice, but they will target you the moment you stand if you revive right on top of them.
Hope that helps. 