Creature Handler Archive

Hey Vertexon

Nice article! I'm thinking about persuing the CH profession, hope it works out!

D00b

Oops.. persuing <> pursuing..

Vertexon,

Very nice post. I am trying it myself and I am really excited to get there. I play a fair amount but I am not a hardcore gamer so it may take me some time. Right now I am at Exploration2 and Hunting1...but I am chugging along. Hope to get the CH in the next week or two if I can get the mask scent to work a little bit.

Thanks for the guide.

On the issue of selling/trading: there are basically two types of creature pets. Tamed and manufactured. A manufactured pet is one created by a Bio-Engineer, and is basically an unusable item that you carry around in your Inventory. In Beta you could drop them on the floor of your house (where they'd just sort of stand there and look around). They can't be trained or used for anything until they're tamed, however. Think of them as being like a house deed... only for a creature.

A Tamed pet is either a wild baby or a manufactured creature that someone with the appropriate skills has Tamed. In the case of a manufactured creature, there will be a "Tame" option on its radial menu in your inventory. Thus, anyone can own a manufactured creature (i.e. to resell to a Creature Handler), but only someone with the appropriate Creature Handling skills can use it.

Creature Handlers with the Group Management IV skill gain the "Transfer" command, which allows them to permanently transfer ownership of a tamed pet (that's out in the world) to another Creature Handler.

This has been a source of a little debate on the boards. Some people (like me) feel that it's very important to have a skill barrier to creature pet ownership... period. Other people feel that Creature Handlers, not Bio-Engineers, should be the "pet merchants," with the ability to sell/give creature pets to any other player in the game (whether they have invested in the appropriate skills or not). In the films, we did not see tame bunnies and squirrels following everyone around the city streets. Tamed creatures were somewhat common... but not THAT common. In addition, letting everyone have a creature pet would significantly diminish the value of investing in the Creature Handling skills.

With regard to healing creature pets... any player can do it. If you're in a group, it's often quite useful to have your fellow group members helping to keep your pets healthy while they do their thing.

Hey Vex, thanks for all the great info man. I have afew questions for you. Is it worth it to max Exploration AND Hunting or just fill1 up as fast as you can to get to novice CH? Are the benefits worth the time? Cause Im at expIII and huntII and its just a grind getting scout exp. Mask Scent is great but only where there are aggressors around.

Where can I go to get good exp so I can level up out of scout and into Novice CH... its taking forever to harvest. The parties Ive been in are mostly missions runners.. where the heck is a good spot to hunt?

-thanks

Awsome post Vertexon!

I have been wanting to be a creature handler from the begining, almost got to it in beta but didn't make it. Closing on it now though!

I can't wait though now that I read your post I understand it even more. I look forward to have some little budies soon

One thing you didn't cover is selling/trading pets? It seemed like there was something in the game for that, at least an entry in the bazzar for creatures. What about Bioengineers creatures? Oh and on healing, can a group member heal your pet or are you the only one that can?

Thanks again!

Devmage

Ramdane: Novice CH requires BOTH Explore IV and Hunting IV (the xp grinding is bad isnt it) plus it requires another 17.5k scout xp on top of that to obtain Novice CH so from where you are now it will take 57500 scout xp to reach novice CH.

Oh and as a note im not too far behind you only about 8k from explore III and i have hunting II

Yintan Baka - Zanbrak Scout an aspiring CH/Ranger - Bloodfin

I agree with you completely Vertexon.

The way I invisioned it to work, or the way I'd like to see it work would be to allow it in a very scaled way. In other words a tamed creature you transfer to someone else cannot being above X difficulty in training. In other words a very weak pet, so you could give someone a pet for the RP value of it. A non CH should not be able to order a pet to attack anything. I think that would be the coolest way of doing it.

Then of course I think CH should be the one to tame and train the mounts. Though we still don't know how this is going to work.

On a positive note I got Hunting IV last night, so 15k to Exploration IV and 17.5k to CH left to do hurray!

Devmage

Hi,

Thank you soooo much for your help. I cant wait to become a Creature Handler! I am on my way to it right now. I loved your article and used it alot. I found out a lot of things I did not know about. You have been very helpful and explained every thing perfectly. I hope we meet soon.

--Delbo Pira

Future Creature Handler on the server Scylla

One thing to note about the above guide is the change to the "pet perma-death" rule. As i'm sure most veteren CHs are aware, pets will not be subjected to perma-death when death blowed. Instead, they will receive a reduction in stats. This is not, as of yet, in place, but will be entered into testing in the next few days, and likely hit the live servers shortly after that.

Might want to make some updates to this thread. and post a sticky if you can.

Just one point for now:

Creature difficulty is not viewable until you reach Master Scout. Note this is not something CH skills will give you. I think this is flawed and should be in the CH tree but currently does not work this way.

There are more but I am sure if you give it a proofread you will findsome areas to correct. Be nice to get something like this hosted on Alakazam or Stratics.

Thanks for the kind comments, everyone. I'm happy people are finding this helpful.

Yeah, an update is definitely in order once we have the upcoming patch. I was hoping to hold out until Mounts went live, but I don't think it's going to wait that long.

bumping a guide