Creature Handler Archive

Well after one year of being a Master CH ( happy anniversary Sky) I thought i would take a little trip down memory lane of how this all started and exactly where I am at now. It may take a couple of posts.

In The Beginning

In the beginning I was playing a totally other game. But a friend of mine kept saying to me via team speak, you gotta try this you gotta come. I am in beta and when it releases you gotta come and try this. So the great day of the release came and i go out and buy the game. I sit down and load the game up.

Amazing graphics on the intro screen and then time to choose my char. I always wanted to try a wookie, I thought yeah wookies, big mean, rip peoples arms off kinda cool. So I made a wookie, got some good stats, went through introduction and walk through and thought woe this is way cool. I landed in Theed cause that's where my buddy said to go. He was a musician almost master and I thought cool, I am a musician in RL so this is cool. He had a friend meet me at the Starport and take me to the Theed Cantina which was rocking at the time. He handed me a slitherhorn and say join group. We then spent a few hours playing and I was zooming up in music.

The next day I logged on and hey, my bud isn't in Theed anymore he is over on Talus. I said, hey where'd you go and he said come to Talus. I said How? He said follow my friend, then he bankrolled me to get to Talus and we started hanging in the cantina doing our thing. Wasn't long and I was a 3 4 4 4 musician and really enjoying it. Of course being a wookie I thought yeah I need to be a rebel so I joined the Rebellion. I also thought that well, being a wookie I could act as a bouncer at the cantina so I started working on Brawler. Then during this time, late June, a guy comes through and he is selling non-ch pets. I thot what good are they so I flag him down and he convinces me to buy one of his pets, a guf Drolg. I had him name him Tiger.

Oh my friends hated tiger cause him and I would be out hunting paralopes and vynocks and I kept talking to Tiger in Guild chat. Drove them nuts. About a week goes by and I am thinking you know I am not making much money so I began placing harvesters here and there gathering resources. I was the entertainers body guard, big wookie and his pet guarding the entertainers as we would run, yes remember the days of running, out to a house or guild and play for weddings etc. Running around chunkars, killer paralopes, vynocks etc. Every once in a while I would have to stop and take on the chunkars so they could get away. We would always get back to Dearic breathless and laughing like crazy.

Tiger and I are getting pretty attached and i see that there is a branch called Creature Handlers and I tell my friend that I might do that and he says cool. So I begin my long study on CH. I am out checking my harvesters after doing a rebel mission when an Imperial sneaks in and begins whaling on me. My only skill is brawler and novice CH and with no real understanding what is going on he kills me while I am still looking at my harvester. He laughs at me, I get his name. I don't have skill yet but I now have motivation. I begin to work CH in earnest, CH and RIfle and I drop music. The imperials name is burned in my memory. I reach 4 3 4 4 CH and I tame two Graul Maulers. I find my first real deadly spider, a gaping spider hunter and a merek battlelord. And I go looking for this Imperial. I arrive in Dearic and land into the middle of a big Imperial raid on Dearic. No fear i am covert. But then I see him, running around the corner. I run over to the recruiter and go overt and pull my two grauls. I run around a corner right into about three Imperials, the Grauls go beserk and there are three dead imperials and my target. He is running like a scared rabbit and I sick my two Grauls on him. It was the most satisfying DB in the game.

I am quickly asked to join the Rebels who are fighting willy nilly through the town and with my two grauls and another Masters GSP we soon are kicking the Imperials out of town. Until Lexy shows up with AT-ST's. We learn fast that not much can stand against those things and we are downed. I am in the hospital waiting to be healed when who should show up but Lexy. We start talking and Lexy heals me. I was woe why did you do that. Cause, we maybe enemies out there but in here it's over. I fought many imperials, in fact my Grauls and some friends went to Lok and the Imperial got out his AT and I got out the Grauls and we went Kimo hunting. It was wild. I mastered CH in August. After about my third battle I realized that people were heading straight for me when we fought and a rifleman was kinda useless at close range, so I dropped rifleman and picked up Commando 0 0 4 0. That gives me access to the flame thrower special 2. When it was time to hunt Imperials I would join up with OOV and I would be the only one from my guild TaHn that was out there doing PVP.

September to November CH rocked and I was starting to get into killing Krayt dragons and PvP. I lived in the krayt graveyard, I know others probably killed more Krayts but my running total was 134 Krayts killed with just me and my pets. I was having fun. It wasn't instant win, I never buffed not in PvP not fighting Krayts and of course as a wookie, no armor. It was mano mano thing. Me vs them. Slowly though I noticed in PvP that things were changing, my pets were still good, but armor and other professions were definetly showing signs of being good. Still I enjoyed myself a lot.

....and then no matter how hard we get nerfed, we still keep CH because we are still some of the coolest characters on the game.

BOYCOTTING JUMP TO LIGHTSPEED UNTIL COMBAT BALANCE AND GCW REVAMP!
SWG: Quote: Grand moff Tarkin: The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. you my friend are all thats left of their religon. Except for the other 5000 over there...

The December Disaster

Then came December. Everything changed in December. My first inkling that life had changed was when I was out getting leathery hide of torturs on talus. I pulled up to the torturs and sent in my pets. Strange the pet was hmmm taking more damage. Well not to worry there were four torturs. I pulled out my flame thrower and gave them a blast of cone fire and they all died. WOE!! Now that had never happened before. I pulled my pet back and hit the lair. Out popped 4 more torturs, one cone shot dead torturs. Now this is cool.

If I can do this to torturs me and the pet should own Krayts right. NOT.When I took out my grauls something was missing. The Armor and a bunch of resists. Suddenly the Krayts were owning my pets and me. All of you who were here know the shock of seeing your favorite pets dying in front of you doing missions that never were a problem before. I was numb. I wandered around looking for some pet that would help stand against the Krayts and Kimos and Rancors and there just wasn't any. Even the AT's were not allowed to fight Krayts (happy day) but that left us doing krayts with what.

Then I discovered a friend who was a BE. I told him my problems and he said, "you know i might have something that you might like." and he introduced me to my first BE razor cat. Rhavin, I named it Rhavin, light armor, Big HAM, great resists and disease and poison. Ok Mr. Krayt I have some bad news for you. Except that Mr. Krayt had suddenly grown HAM 200,000 plus HAM. So tactics had to change. Houses that were public became my place of ambush. I would shoot over and around and run into. Then one day I called Rhavin into the house with me and the Krayt wouldn't give up. I told Rhavin to stay in the house and I sneaked out. The krayt was diseased and wouldn't let go of aggro on Rhavin and I slipped around and roasted his innards. I had learned something. Animals hate being diseased. I remember the first time Rhavin ran off with a Krayt on his tail. I built a camp and sat down and was healing myself up, when Rhavin suddenly auto stored. No problem I can call him again. Except here came the Krayt really ticked and came pounding into camp and with one chomp sent me to the cloning station. I guess he really held a grudge.

Each incap and loss of vitality on my precious Rhavin was very hard to take. And I learned that in pvp to hide my MCH title and go with shock trooper. Rhavin or his sister Morindrel or their twin Ultimate Warrior would guard our medic while I engaged with my flame thrower. Still no buffs. In PvP the pets had become next to useless and as each month passed and successive publishes happened it became clearer that pets were being nerfed out of the game. But I just couldn't give them up. I remember all the hours of hunting and cross planet trekking we had done together, I couldn't just cast them out, they were my sheild and sword. My companions around the fires, my traveling buddies and when no one else wanted to go they were always there with a sparkle in their eye saying "where to now boss".

When the threat of Imperial crackdown came, I decided I would change allegiance and so I became an Imperial. It is very tough to be an Imperial wookie but I slogged through the missions and have raised myself to a Major. Yet who was there beside me, sharing the danger and never flinching, you got it my pets. Often whenI would get incapped they would stand over me not letting any Rebel NPC get close enough to DB me. And so it went.

Jedi

I have never wanted to be Jedi. I don't intend to take the path. If the old man ever shows up I think I will sick Rhavin on him. The hologrind stole my best friends. They didn't have time to wander the spaceways or go hunt krayts, or see the caves on Lok, or visit the sarlacc pits, or go to Misty Falls, or enjoy the vistas of Naboo. Or cross the southern plains of Dathomir. Nope they were consumed with hologrinding for their FS slot. In the months that followed many many of my friends, got weary, got burned out and left the game. Some would leave a note and others just disappeared. Some I still don't know where they are, SERI where are you. sigh. Through all that my pets kept me company. The GCW ground to a halt, OOV imploded and V was born. I hung in with TaHn with the few friends who were still there. So many disappeared into the Abyss of Jedi mania.

Of course CH kept getting weaker and more and more bugs began to surface. Certain people in high places laughed and called us names but we persevered, we were the few, the elite, WE ARE THE CH. Now I go to Dath and you can find the Jedi by the trail of dead rancors behind them. I really think Yoda is probably rolling over in his grave. This isn't what Jedi do. This isn't the Jedi path. This is the Jedi of "instant power, instant win". When do Jedi actually help people. Where are the Jedi we see in the movies? It certainly aren't these infantile powergamers who have found a new end game in being a jedi.

The Future

What does tomorrow hold. I grow weary in wandering the game alone. The Devs wanted us in groups and we are SOLO groups. No one hunts together anymore. No one talks at the spaceport. For all their talk of us being together we are more apart than ever before. Now we shall see the great Jedi questing and that will take the few remaining friends off on quests they either don't want help on or I can't help them with. We have two levels of society in the game now, those who are jedi and in training and those who are not.

The long awaited combat revamp will be over a year making it to the game. I don't believe I will see it until 2005. Jump to lightbeer will consume Development time and the GCW will fizzle and disappear. I stand on the brink of a dark future in SWG. The landscape is carpeted with Jedi, friends are disappearing, my pets stand stoically by my side. They are still there, we look over the fire mountain of Lok and wonder, what future is there for an old CH and his pets.

Waiting for the next Act.

....and then no matter how hard we get nerfed, we still keep CH because we are still some of the coolest characters on the game.

BOYCOTTING JUMP TO LIGHTSPEED UNTIL COMBAT BALANCE AND GCW REVAMP!
SWG: Quote: Grand moff Tarkin: The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. you my friend are all thats left of their religon. Except for the other 5000 over there...

Very nice read

Nice one Sky. Yea I miss my hunting trips too. I remember my first Bantha hunt on Tatooine.

I was given my first pet on that trip and knew what I was going to become right then. My first pet was a gurreck named Jack. Jack has evolved over time and is now a prowling gurreck that I love to team with my charging gurreck. The days of hunting Krayts with my buddies and my Graul, yup no more. I came in on the end of the glory days but remember when I got my first killer pet only to have him become ineffetive a couple weeks later. /sniff I agree with you Sky!!

But some of us still stick with it because it is still fun to be out there in the middle of nowhere hunting with just my pets. The friends that are still left are always asking me, what are you doing

OUT there? I have a ton of pics of just me and my pets kickn it at the campfire after a hunt. Ah well...

=SIVART SMADA= ~ANNAED SMADA~
-Elder Jedi--Elder Medic-
DWORKIN = Officer
!Master Creature Handler Forever!