Creature Handler Archive
Thread: For Older CH.... Glory of the old days! What was your most memorable experiance as CH...?
I think it was when i first started playing, i was still on tatooine, and got enough experience to become a novice CH.
Then i tamed a cupa. Was my first tame ever. 
Later i was offered a cowardly gurrek, was so big ....i realy loved the size of those felines.
Or was it a gran wrix? Nah, was a cowardly i think, the ones that looked huge back then.
Although a few noteworthy ones I'll put down.My first noteworthy memory is a situation we had in Anchorhead. We had a fellow who was mouthing off to all of the entertainers there, to the Rebels gathered, etc etc, challenging people to duels and pretty much the usual attitude that if we didn't duel, we must somehow be cowardly or weak.
Fine, I took the challenge with my Bio-Engineer/CH/Swordsman (at the time) Jin'lores. All the while, he's laughing at her as if she couldn't possibly be anything worth much, I had no master titles anywhere at the time. I must be weak. Well, I pulled out the scythe blade to which he laughed more. Meanwhile, sitting under the table was my most prized treasure/experiment, A little bearded jax with Arachne Webmaster DNA with range attack. Now, those of you who know BE know that although they were able to use range, of course jaxs had no animations for it.... SO needless to say, this kid had no idea what was hitting him, poisoning him and finally knocking him incapped and deathblown. He shut up after this. I don't even know if to this day he reallized what actually brought him down wasn't my sword.
My second is more of a general memory for both Jin and Taliesen both. One of the things I always enjoyed about being a BE and a CH both was providing for those who aren't handlers themselves and just want a little companion at their side or a faithful mount. I got far more satisfaction out of the dancers who just wanted a little chirpy mascot at their feet, or the artisans who simply wanted a fluffy bantha to ride than I ever did making big 'l337' tanks or taming more agressive animals. They were sincere in their love of simply wanting an animal and the happiness they showed made it all worth it. (I can't even imagine how many little pets I gave away this way, but I wouldn't want it any other way)
On the High Plains of Endor, my Rawls -- Venym, Vyl, and Vypyr -- and I tracked and found the mighty Gorax. We brought it down ourselves. No one else was there, only us. It was a glorious moment. And we had a feast of Gorax flesh in camp by a cliff.
Alsvid -- my Mountain Dewback -- and I would regularly patrol the surrounding regions of Anchorhead, looking for stray traitors. And bury them in the sand when we found them.
Before the galaxies changed (CU), I was probably three clicks north of the Imperial Prison on Dathomir. And there he was! The most beautiful baby animal I had ever seen. I took my trusty Rifle and circled around the lair to the south. I lay down amognst the craggy bushes next to a knoted and twisted tree. Keeping hidden I knocked out the Bulls protecting the lair. Concealing my noticeable civilized smell, I crept toward the baby and petted it gently. Reasuringly, I proceeded to befriend the mighty beast. Skyrmir -- a Bull Rancor -- indeed grew to a very Big Bloke.
Well, i never was a master CH, and regret to this day for not becoming one, as i had a lot of fun when i was a dabbler.
My most memorable experience as a CH was when I rode around on a giant spat named 'Speedy'. Looking down on people as i rode by was priceless. And most people were always asking me 'Those things are still in game?" And being a full grown wookiee, when i stood next to my Speedy, i barely touched his chest. This thing was HUGE!
So there i was on Kash, riding around with Speedy as my guide, when i come across a fellow CH. He saw my spat and immediately asked if he could have it. Considering I had another in my datapad, i said sure, why not? So i gave this person Speedy and from then on, every time i saw him, he was on Speedy.
As soon as I gave him Speedy, i brought out my other GCS and he was looking at me like i was a god (ok, maybe not, but he did say holy crap, how many of these do you have?) And of course, that spat's name was.....you guessed it....Speedy. After that point, we roamed around Kash for a while on two spats named Speedy. And even managed to have the two Speedy's meet at the MO a soon while later.
I miss that spat, wish i could get another.
I can't read all these post right now, I'm feeling a little mushy lol.
One of the most memorable ch days I had, and there were many, was my first graul tame,I was still a nov ch and had the skills finally to have a graul it was probably mid august 2003. Off I went to dath to try my luck. back then there was no armor, no buffs, no ch clothing, and you had to walk everywhere. It may sound lame but it really was just the opposite. I loved those days.
Apon landing on dath i started off to the farnorth west I had explored once before where I saw tons of grauls, rancors, spiders. I always thought of it as death valley. It was a deep ravine that was richwith life and frought with death.
I remember the journey there alone was enough to get your heart beating and your hands sweating, danger and death everywhere, You had to save your burst run for an emergency and use your scout skills to avoid pretty much evrything there was on the whole planet.
After about2 hours I finally arrived, beat up, wounded and trying to keep my cool since I made it to the ravine successfully. As I went down into the dark valley with gnarled trees evrywhere it was a surreal feeling, music playing and the sounds of the creatures spawning and moving close by. about half way I went up top seeing what appeared to be a graul and realising too late it was a rancor and it was coming for be, I hit burst run, defecated in my camo's and headed for the hills. I agroed even more creatues while getting away untill I found myself on my back with a timer ticking down. "whew" no deathblow I lived. I was really sweating, had to wipe my hands take a deap breath and find a place to heal.
I was able to set a camp not too far away and luckily was just close enough to watch sevral lairs of Graulsthere were a couple of different kinds. and I needed a only a regular grauls since that was my max lvl cap. I was shocked to see two babies walking around, lady luck shining down on me.
When I was healed and I had a burst run back I put away my gun and went for baby, I masked my scent and walked up to the lil guy. /tame. Failure. /tame failure. /tame AGRO! he started hititng me and mommy daddy and the aunts and a cpl of uncles all looked at methey're lunch for the afternoon. I hit burstrun and prayed "please dont die" "please dont die". I made it "YES". another escape.
"Ok" "OK" I told myselfrelax one mistake and I would be2 hours away and bumming, I remember being nervous as heck when I went back, baby was still there and I went over to him. /Tameduring the usual messages he started walking under momma's legs, I was thinking "shat" shes gonna kill me. Bang "creature has detected you" i ran but no burst run and my health was already half gone in one or two hits. "damn" I was down for the count but they let me live. I couldn't believe my luck. I sat down waited for my health to get back up and tried for a thrid time. Scent, walk, /tame, failure, /tame ,failure, /tame Success!! yes !! I ran away quickly shaking with delight lol.
I was soo stoked. I camped and trained him what I could,I named him Nitemare, But as a baby he was more cute than fearfull hehe but that would change hehe. I stored him and went for baby number two, and guess what happened tamed first try and I stored him but before I could do anything elsemy scent broke and I found myself surrounded and the sounds of hungry beast evreywhere while I deperatly tried to hit bursyrun, toolate. i was dead. I had no recoarse but to clone, sad i was a wounded mess, forgot to set clobne data, but euphoric on what I went back to civilisation with, not one but two grauls. I was soo pumped. I gave one to my friend who was nov ch also but less skills than I had. he could use it while it was a baby.
I proudly showed him off at coronet and had people and ch's alike asking where i got him. I then realised many ch didn't know where they were and many were afraid to go get them lol. I would return often after that and grab as many as I could. I was developing a good knack for avoiding danger and taming thelil fella's I started selling them for 30k each along with some nice cowardly gurrecks. The money didnt last long just shuttling seemed to soak my cash up. But it was at this time I actually felt like a real CH, I wasn't a master but I was doing things that some master ch's were afraidtoo do lol. I loved it.
That was a day to remember.
My first tame was a Docile Kima on Rori, then i got a second one on Tatooine (I can't think of the name because i haven't been to Tatooine in ages, its the lowest form of Scyk. Dunelizard perhaps?) And then when i had used a few of my pets in real combat i was ready to try and tame a Greater Sludge Panther. I went out hunting for about two days looking for random spawns, and i found a nice specimine. I carefully walked over (I think back then walking didn't cause you to draw aggro) and i failed and had to kill the whole group of them. Eventualy i got one, and he helped my vanquish many Kimoglias, but i soon dropped CH after the slew of nerfs that preceded
With Jedi running rampant, i don't think pets would have any more use in PvP anyway.
Well, my own stable of memories don't go back as far as Launch, or even the Great Nerf of December '03 --I signed onto SWG in April 2004. And I was mentored by a trio of great old names of Bria: Actare Night, Ceko, and the infamous Bounty Hunter, Slacker. Actare's matched pair of bioengineered gurrecks, Sabretooth and Razor, covered my butt many a time when I was still being terrorized by the thugs and snakes outside Kaadara, traveling to and from the settlement where Actare and Slacker had their houses. And yes, the Boom-Boom Room is still there.
At any rate, I have many vivid memories of my own....
- My first Female Kaadu; I named her "Daisy" after Donald Duck's girlfriend. Ceko mount-trained her for me when she got big enough, and I discovered she could swim as fast as she ran.
- The baby scyk Actare tamed for me as an inside joke, in memory of the many times I was poisoned by wild scyks while checking harvesters outside Mos Eisley. I abused that thing horribly! And yet, Li'l Booger gradually earned my grudging respect, and eventually my admiration, and finally a new name: "Flash."
- My first really good tame, the noble ProblemChild, a Female Plains Tusk Cat. Fast, agile, and utterly fearless.
- Wading into a den of Crystal Snakes to snag a baby Giant Crystal Snake... and having the lair erupt around me when my masked scent failed....
- Taming a baby merek assassin from right between the legs of his daddy, all without firing a shot!
- My first Graul, a magnificent level-30 tameable. I went on a long search for him, traveling overland all the way from the Mining Outpost on Dantooine to the foothills near the western edge of the map. When I finally found my first graul lair, it was in the midst of several Graul Mauler lairs! I managed to thread my way between the Maulers, and placed myself in position near the grauls. I killed off the surface spawnwith my trusty lightning cannon, and gently tapped the lair with a pistol, and waited. After a moment, out popped two more adults -- AND A BABY! And now came the agonizing questions: I could barely tame level-30 vicious creatures; do I keep my armor on in the presence of these vicious beasts, or don my taming clothes to improve my odds of a successful tame...? And, do I dare try to tame the baby before killing off his guardians, or play it safe and kill the adults and risk enraging the baby? Obviously, it was a no-brainer. Off my armor went! And with that, a bit of good fortune occurred: The baby wandered away from the adults! Alas; I failed to tame it once... twice... thrice... and on the third time, it flew into a rage. I burst-ran away, then circled back. By then, the baby had calmed down and returned to the lair, and I again waited for it to wander away from it's parents. Again, my taming sequence: Once... twice... and again it aggroed me, but I swerved the wrong way this time and ran too close to one of thenearby Mauler lairs, and one of them attacked the baby and killed it! I was heartbroken. But wait! When I returned to the lair to kill off the remaining adult grauls and tap the lair again, another baby had spawned! Again, I did my taming routine. I failed, but my masked scent held. I failed again; still my masked scent held! And I tried again... and SUCCESS!! Harvey the Baby Graul joined my growing menagerie, and I hightailed it out of that den of death!
- At the peak of my pre-CU career, Ifluctuated betwen an ability to tame level-35 babies and level-40's, and alternated between being able to mount-train pets and tame higher-level vicious pets. With patience, I was able to tame a Gleaming Lantern Bird, a Graul Mauler (whom I named after Lucciano Pavarotti, as a tongue-in-cheek salute to my grauls' throaty battle roars), a Desert Vesp (I named him Draco, andhis pug-nosed visagewas a surprising hit with the ladies!), and a Mantigrue Night Stalker, whom I named "Shadow." It was Shadow who saved the mission for me that put me over the top to Master Bounty Hunter, when my mark slipped into a lake on Rori in an attempt to escape by swimming. I still have a screenie of the corpse of the fool bobbing in the water, with Shadow hovering over him and me kneeling patiently at the water's edge as the treasured words flash on-screen: "You now qualify for training in Investigations IV!" There were others at this level: a Mature Hanadak Rock Smasher I named Percy; a Giant Crystal Snake named Slytherin; a Vesp Scavenger I named B.H.K. (for "Bounty Hunter Killer" for his high resistances to acid and electricity); a Ravenous Torton I named Donatello (after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle); and a succession of Fambaas. It was Talon the Gleaming Lantern Bird who accompanied me on many of my quests for the Hidden Village of Aurilia, flying closely behind me as I raced my swoop across the harsh Dantooinian landscape in search of straggling groups of Sith Shadows. His swift, tireless pursuit was a joy to behold!
- And then, the Combat Upgrade hit, and with it, thehollow victory of finally reaching Master Creature Handler. I could tame level-70 pets, but to my horror, all pets had lost their uniqueness. But yet, I still found some unique pets: My beloved trio, the Three Fates, Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis, my trio of Female Narglatches. They couldn't really do what femal narglatches used to be famous for prior to the CU, but they were enough to help me survive as I finally launched my Jedi career and began my solitary grind deep in the wildernesses of the galaxy. And yet, it was with a heavy heart that I surrendered to the demands of my Padawan training and gave upthe hard-won creature-training skills that I'd held for such a short time. And as the problems with the profession remained, I postponed my dreams of teaching my secrets to my newly-arrived sidekick... until a better day dawned, and I began to dream again of all I'd lost....
And now, it's over. All the hopes for future accomplishments with a new stable of creatures in my datapad are lost -- or at best, put on hold and thrown into an indefinite future. The joys of which I'd only tasted and never truly quaffed, will never be more than a bare hint to me. And for that, I grieve -- deeply.
Message Edited by Iakimo on 11-06-2005 02:49 PM
/bump I love reading everyones feedback!
Hmmmm I think its time to add another story of mine.
AH I remember the very first enraged rancor lair i took down without a group.
Now back in the good old day, before buffs, rediculas armor, and jedi... we used to actually group hunt, unlike the forced group hunting now, group hunting was fun then, because you could solo if you wanted to, (may i add wanted to waste 2 hours on one lair). Anyway, being me... I love being a leader. So back on dathimor people would gather up in the dathimor outpost and build groups to grab rancor missions and run to each lair and hunt. So here I was, novice pistoleer equiped with my trustyscout blaster, and by my side was none other then as i mentioned in a previous post, Buster, my grual mauler. Buster is the one who got me master CH. Without him and plenty of rancors to sloughter I would have never been master CH in the 2 months it took me lol.
were was I.. oh So here i was with buster running rancor missions out of the dathimor outpost, but like I said i like to lead and so I would start the groups. I remember finding a high template brawler to tank and a doctor to heal was close to impossible, but if you got eather one your group was awesome. So i would group buster and build a group of usually 10 or more people and we would all grab high paying rancor missions in whatever direction someone got it first. Then we would all gather and head out on foot from mission to mission. (I remeber we had to all call out how far away our closest mission one before we were able to decide whos to go to next because there was no closest mission WP)
Buster was a celebrity. Everyone who ever hunted on dath knew buster more then me. He was still a baby and he was our main tank. He saved all our a$$es more times then i can recall. I remember others who had gruals would bring thiers out to help buster tank the rancors for us while we took em down. Healing them in between each fight was the biggest pain cause someone had to put up a tent and we all had to sit there and use crappy little stims on them, there was no self regain.
Well here I go, one day I started I group, I remember it like yesterday, me running in my camo pants with my brown cloak on and my scout blaster in my hand. I was close to master then probably about 3234 in the tree, when I was starting a group another CH joined and whipped out his twin grual maulers, boy was i shocked!!!! 2!?!? Yup he was a master CH and he had 2 maulers out as oposed to good ol' buster. So the group ran out killing gaping spiders when they lunged at us, running from fliers... doing our rancor missions. These missions went by fast, cause no one was dieing or healing much thanks to our thunderous threesome who held agro on all the angry rancors eager to protect thier rocky lairs. The night grew old, slowly one by one people signed off and eventually we had no more missions left, except 1 enraged rancor mission. 3 of us sat in a camp, me the other CH and a brawler, when the brawler said he had to leave i figured the night was over.
But then the other CH looks at me and says, "we can do the next mission ourselves, right?" for a moment there I thought he was off his rocker but then a glimmer of hope shined on me and I thought maybe we can take this lair down. So I said ok and we headed over to the lair. We lucked out when there was a bunch of surefoot brackasets there fighting the angry rancors already, and a herd of Malkoc over the hill. We pulled out our great beasts and got ready to take on the Rancors. Things were going great, one by one we took them down, with his medic skills he was able to heal them one at a time enough to keep at least one grual with enough health to hang in there. When all of a sudden a bunch of the angry rancors ran after little ol' me. I ran like a bat out of hell and buster ran in to take them on. Then I realize that my friend was no where to be found cause he also got chased by a few angry rancors, I figured this was it so I ran in to help buster and go down fighting anyway, My palms were wastering and busters health slowly deminished, the rnacors were ready to turn to me. With the last of his energy buster started jolting away to hopefully draw the monsters away giving me enough time to escape, but I I couldnt leave a pal behind, I ran in to help him instead. Buster fell to the ground with a big thunder, and i started getting beat, I knew I wouldnt last all of 3 hits so I started burst running, when over the hill comes one of my friends gruals to tackle the remaining rancor and saved me from my doom. My friend was healing his incapped pal when i waddled over to rest. We put out a camp and started healing our pets and getting ready, he told me about his close call and how the surefoot brackasets saved his butt. We pulled ourselves together and said, we got this far why not finish them off. We ran in strong and started beating the rancors at thier own gang attacking game. But the last few spawned all at once and by then we had not enough health to last, he drops to the ground incapped, and I start to run, His grual and buster run off to chase the fleaing remaining 2 of the 4 rancors left. His second grual falls to the ground and the rancor starts over to me. Alas, I see the herd of Malkocs, so I run to them for shelter, and the rancors got to close, The Malkocs, angry in rage, attack the rancors and I scurry over to my friend. He got up and started healing us and we healed his remaining grual. We help the Malkocs take down the 2 rnacors and head back to the lair were we found 1 wounded rancor frantically guarding his nest. We take him down and start to finish off the lair but no sign of Buster or his other grual, they ran off and we found a wounded rancor, but our buddys are nowhere to be found. Finally after the lair blows, a green dot apears on my screen, ITS BUSTER, he limped back to me, and man was he wounded. We heal up gather our 18k each with much joy and decide we were gunna set out to find his other grual before we logged... sure enough over the hill his grual is there, incapped in the feild of brackasets. sadly he stores him. We made a camp, talked about the fun we had and ended the night triumphantly!
So 4 hours of rancor hunting and the good hour it took to take down the last lair was probably one of my most intersting memories of galaxies yet. Sorry for the long story, enjoy!
Message Edited by ArchiieBarrett on 11-08-2005 09:19 PM
A recent, but very memorable moment was when i used my triplet kwis (Crichton, Dargo, and Rygel) to retire a jedi. The battle ended in a draw due to a runaway, but not without some amazing pet tactics.
My 3 kwi were taking on the jedi with me and we were starting to wear him down so he did a force run until he was the precise distance from us and cloaked. I lost my target, but my incredible pets didn't! The kept on following the ghost, so i followed them and when multiple people are in close proximity to a cloaked jedi it sucks their force down quick so he popped back out and we duked it out some more. He did to manage to knock me down and he held force run a bit longer to break away and then force cloak, but he sent me a tell letting me know that was an awesome fight and gave kudos to the boys on draining his force. Gotta love the Farscape boys.
Favourite non-tame moment was when we were out doing a PvP base takedown and after slicing one of the terminals a spawn of CL 88's kicked the crap out of two full groups of us. I didnt clone for 5 minutes to watch my twins chomping on two of the baddies til they finally went down...a good few minutes after all of our players.
