Game Guides Archive
Thread: Guide for New Players How to play Star Wars Galaxies
- Play for more hours per day.
- Play more efficiently so you earn more XP per hour.
Ok, so not all of us can spend seven hours a week day, eighteen hours a weekend day grinding, if we could, getting Jedi would no doubt be made even harder and long winded. Remember SOE wants you to keep playing for longer, you're paying their wages playing.
So you are going to play as much as possible, but that only equates to three, three hour sessions a week, that's not a problem, you can still play - but I would suggest a calculator and a stopwatch on your desk before you start.
Also before you start - look at the choice of professions you want to achieve, and the economy on your server, and decide which proportions of it are the best for making money with low expenditure. Also you should probably take ALL basic professions, as this will cost you little, but make you more self-sufficient and Skill points are not a problem - there really is nothing to lose taking them all on day one. For example Novice Brawler gets intimidate, you can use that with your pistol in you hand grinding marksman, even if you never intend to ~Master Brawler. Also if you are a Medic, foraging is going to be a pain, if you got scout and artisan, you have better means for getting organic and inorganic resources, making the crafting part easier to grind.
Initially you will probably find Combat profs are the easiest way of making money, this is probably the opposite near to the end game, but will change with the economy.
So you take all the basic profs, the first thing to do is get a gun and go out there and kill stuff. Note the get a gun part. If you are going for an elite melee profession then consider the gun to mean weapon. Either way, Press Ctrl+S and fnd the Novice Brawler and Novice Marksman boxes, if you click on them they will tell you what weapon cert's they give you. You can also see your current weapon certs in the bottom left of this screen, but I would click on the highest box of that weapon discapline to see - you want to be using the most efficient weapon for grinding !
If you can find a friendly Weapon Smith, they may make you the weapons for free, or a nominal fee, it will help you alot if you can get good weapons so don't ignore this stage. Beware the bazaar, alot of cheap guns on there are looted and virtually useless, a good Weapon Smith will be happy to help a new player, particuarly if you give them business later.
Now you can run a few missions to get money if you want, but sometimes your play can be more efficient if you find a static spawn. The way to find out is to first, find a static spawn (Somewhere near a large town where thugs appear, as soon as the corpses disapear more appear.) Create a Waypoint at it (This is done from the Ctrl+V screen.) Then set your alarm for 1 hour and start killing and looting them as quick as your HAM will let you. Note: You must loot or the corpses will not disapear and more will not spawn. If you get killed rush back to your waypoint and continue for the hour. As soon as the hour is up, leave the spot and stop fighting. Now go to the Ctrl+S screen and find the tickbox Show Experience Monitor. This will show a metre on your main screen with the names of skillboxes you are yet to acquire and a coloured bar underneath. You can drag this box down to make it bigger and see more skills. Once you have, click the selector on the top one and choose the weapon discapline you have been grinding, when it changes it should show a yellow or green bar underneath the name. If it's green - great ! You've earned enough for the skill, if not hover the mouse over it and will tel you how much you earned and how much you need to get the skill.
Okay now you should make a note of that, get healed and entertained and run missions from an hour, choose the closest ones from the mission terminals that pay ok, and keep refreshing for the second to get it in the same direction as the first. Don't rush straight out though - press Ctrl+O and find the option for youdisplay onscreenwaypoint or similar, it's invaluable - it shows you direction and distance to al your waypoints, so you can go to closest first. Now start running those missions, in an hour you should be able to complete four at least, depending on whether they are NPC or Creature. NPC are generally faster, Creature are usually more XP. Set your alarm for the hour and at the end finish what you are doing, get healed and look at the amount of XP you earned in that hour.
You'll probably find that when starting our static spawns provide better XP per hour, this is the opposite later on. The problem is that you will start to need money soon, in large amounts. You should buy Kinetic 60% Ubese Jacket and Helmet as soon as you can. When you are looting static spawns, you will loot several items, some of these are worthless, but some are not - here's a breakdown of what you can expect it to be worth:-
- Weapons without DoT (Damage over time.) - 50 to 200 Credits on bazaar, people might buy them to grind slicing with or Marksman.
- Weapons with DoT - Note the stats and get a price check from your trade forum, looting low level thugs might give you one worth a thousand, if you get one with negative uses it's infinite and is worth significantly more, you'll be unlikely to loot anything worth more than 1k though at this stage.
- Locked Containers - People grinding Smuggler will pay well for these, if you put them on the bazaar for 1k - 3k they should sell depending on Server, particularly Coronet Bazaar.
- Loot kit items - If you get parts of rugs or sculptures or tables or tracking devices keep em' you'll be getting alot more of them, if you complete a set and visit the junk dealer, you can create items that will sell very well indeed. The market for complete loot kit items has slowed down, but you should still auction completed loot kit items on the trade forums, put the starting bid at, at least 100k, or more depending on server. Look at the trade forums to get an idea of what it is worth. Don't sell adhesive, dye or patches as these are rare than thread parts, only sel them if you are offered a very handsome amount.
- SEA's and AA's - These are the hardest things to price, some are worth nothing, some are worth a small fortune. Some do nothing for you at all - search the forums to check how functional what you found is. Generally AA's are worth more than SEA's as you can wear more of them. Combat orientated will be worth more than most crafting, particularly weapon speed, check your server trade forum. The exception is Weapon and Armour experimentation, these are worth more than most, again check your trade forums.
So you are well on your way now, keep looking for new spawns, run missions if you need money, but for grinding at the moment spawns will be better for you, if it takes you 20 minutes to kill a sharnaff for 3000 XP, but you can kill three Loons a minute for 200 each, that makes 12,000 xp in the time to kill a sharnaff! Keep looking for more spawns, with different difficulty enemies, time how many you can kill in a minute and use your calculator to work outthe most efficient way to spend your time.
As you climb through the boxes, make sure you buy good weapons, good weapons will speed up the process alot! Keep checking the highest box you have for it's cert and use that. The exception to this is Brawler unarmed. You should use speed sliced Vibro Knuckles from the beginning, you will do a little less damage, but you will hit many more times per minute. When you get to the level 2 or3 boxes, definately level 4, you should start looking for solo groups and doing high pay missions buffed. On Dantooine choose Quenkers or Picket's. On Dathomir go for Baz Nitch, on Corellia go for Sharnaff, on Tatooine go for Bantha's. Keep monitoring how much XP you earn per hour, if it seems low - try statics again, or different missions. Keep the XP per hour as high as possible.
Once you hit elite profs the rules change slightly, doing the non-combat basics are different too.
Artisan - get Engineering and Surveying first, when you have Engineering 3 build harvesters, use them to gather resources - build harvesters, harvesters give the best xp per resource.
Medic - Crafting should be passive if you are a combat prof, use tumblers in medcentres for other boxes.
Scout - get exploration III, then /maskscent constantly, and take many creature missions, harvesting every time, camp often for wilderness XP, get people to use your camps if possible.
Entertainer - Some people will hate you for it - but the best way of gridning Entertainer is AFK while you are sleeping with a flourish macro running.
I hope this guide helps you. The combat revamp will mess things up alot, probably make this useless - but it might help you make the most of the time you have before it's implemented.
One last thing - teach at every oppurtunity. Apprentice XP requirement has been reduced to 300, but you still have alot of work getting that, never refuse a teach. If you need teaching use the Ctrl+P window, search, then by profession, and send them a tell, most people will be happy to teach for free!
Good luck.
Message Edited by TakO_Paleae on 12-07-2004 03:45 PM