Game Guides Archive
Thread: Newbie tips from a Near-Newbie
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HiroTanaka
Sat Feb 26, 2005 8:59 am
#1
Congradulations! You just bought SWG! Since you’re reading this, you’ve probably just finished coming back from the movies while your computer downloaded enough megabytes in game patches to fill an entire 3rd CD. Take this time to reflect upon life and drink a shot of brandy in a sympathetic toast to anyone who was unlucky enough to be stuck trying to do this with a conventional modem.
Now, you’ve probably read the manual twenty times over while this was happening, and good for you! That’s smart, and let’s you dive right into the action. Well, not really. See, that manual was written for version 1.0 of the game, and we’re up past 13.0 by now. So you manual is now all but completely irrelevant to the actual game now.
What to do? Tear (or cut) out the sections on character stats and your keyboard controls. Staple these pages together. This is your new manual. Take the rest of it and throw it out the window – it’s about as useless as the in-game “Holocron Help System” and no longer bears any resemblance to the actual game.
“Okay,” you think, “Where do I find the new, up-to-date manual?” Frankly, if you can figure that one out, please tell me. For the most part, you’re going to spending a lot of time on this forum scavenging for bits & pieces of information. More on this soon.
Now once you enter the game, the first thing you should know is that the Covert/Overt section from the book is (surprise!) no longer applicable to the actual game. Here’s the lowdown of what happened: All the supercharacters who are qualified for big time PVP battles decided that they’d rather just run around from city to city mowing down Stormtroopers/Rebel Troopers like chaff for kicks and without any fear of retaliation by any being actually on their level (i.e. – other supercharacters on the opposing side). So they had the rules changed so that they can do this. Meanwhile, those who don’t have supercharacters now have two choices: Stay completely Neutral until you do have a supercharacter, or bend over every time you walk through the starport gates and prepare to die.
Why did they do this? Because they hate you. Why do they hate you? Because you are a what they call a “Noob,” or “N00B” in their language, which is called “L33T” and bears a vague resemblance to English, but only remotely. A “N00B” is a derragatory term for a New Player or “Newbie” (the more polite form). They have derragatory terms for everything, naturally, because having a supercharacter on an on-line game apparently makes you cooler than James Bond in a Jaguar, thus entitling them to look down upon everyone else in the world who isn’t just like them. No, really, it’s true! Just ask them! Now, how long must you play to no longer be a “N00B?” Answer: Give up, because to a “L33T” a “N00B” is anyone & everyone who’s character isn’t as superheroic as theirs, even if you’ve actually been playing longer than them, and they were here first anyway, so you will always be at least one day younger than them and thus a “N00B” forever. The term for this is Elitism (or “L33Tism”), and it’s something you’ll just have to learn to live with in SWG or any other on-line game, for that matter. Don’t let it get to you too much. I find mockery to be great outlet, don’t you?
Don’t think you can escape by going to play Everquest or something, either, because they are everywhere. The “L33T” live & breathe for on-line games, because it gives them a venue in which they can flex their digital muscles without ever having to meet the people they offend daily face-to-face and thus risk getting their teeth curbed by someone who doesn’t just play a Wookie on SWG. They are easy to spot, too: Just look for a character who is wearing more armor than a tank, never takes off their helmet or puts away their weapon, and is somehow unable to speak in complete english sentances. You will truly enjoy the good old fashioned Star Wars style cultural diverstity effect when the other players start speaking in some sort of semi-english dialect that you can’t really understand. Alas, where are those subtitles when you need them?
Warning: It’s contagious, and if you are not careful you’ll start becoming just like them, even if you have no desire to “fit in” with the supercharacter crowd.
Okay so back to the game … when talking to the Recruiter for a faction you want to join, DON’T DO IT! Why? Because there are three states of being in the game once you join a faction and a fourth one if you don’t. The first is Special Forces, in which case everyone on the opposing side can attack you, both PC & NPC. This means that you will die every thrity seconds, because the L33T have no mercy and seeing a N00B open themselves up to attack is like throwing blood in front of a shark. The second level is Combatant, in which case other PCs can not attack you but NPCs can. This is also suicide, because planet infromation from the book and even the info blurbs you watch in transit all give you incorrect data – the actual owner of any city is a coin toss depending on the hour of day or night. Guess wrong, and you walk out of the terminal facing half a dozen NPC soldiers who all have 10x your HAM status and blasters that belong in the turret of a capital ship. The last state to be in is Non-Combatant, which they make sound to be the safest option. It isn’t. It simply means that enemy troops will consider you Neutral (“Civilian”) until they search you … which is usually about ten seconds after you walk through the spaceport doors and into the city, because they just happen to park guards right at the entryway. Again, you will be dead before you realize that you are even under attack.
So, which Faction declaration can you be and survive your first day of SWG? None. Cool, eh? Oh, and if you declare yourself a “Non-Combatant” then you can’t get missions from NPCs in your faction, spend your faction points on anything, gain rank, or basically do anything that makes joinging a faction remotely worth the hassle. Like get trained, for instance.
However, what the book described as “Neutral” still exists, only know they call it “Civilian.” Don’t be mislead by the name – you can be a “Civilian” Death Commando with so much armor & weaponry covering your body that your character will seem to belong in Mechwarrior more than Star Wars. Who said there’s no humor in the game?
Now the next thing you notice when you step into your first city is that 99% of the other players will all have something written in parenthesis after their names. What the heck is that jarble, anyway, and why do they ALL seem to have it? Those are nicknames for the various player guilds that exist in the game. “Wait,” you say, “it didn’t mention anything about player guilds in the manual!” Hey, didn’t I already tell you to just throw that thing away already?
So what’s a player guild? It’s kind of like the mafia or a pyramid scheme. You see, as any Artitian will tell you, the game is run by L33T players because they’ve been around the longest and have all the supercharacters – including super Artitians, such as Shipwrights, Weaponsmiths, and Armorsmiths. Because the only way to hope to compete is to have the best gear possible, there is a huge demand for top-quality player made products crafted by Masters. The Masters know this, and this is why you only see second hand junk on the Bazaar Terminal 90%+ of the time. The wares you see there are the desperate hopes of Novice Artitians hoping that someoone will pay enough for their +1 damage rifle to break even on the cost of rescources to make it. You will see a lot of these, because no one ever buys them. What do they buy? Superweapons. Where do you get superweapons? From a Master Weaponsmith/Armorsmith. There is, of course, one catch – to get them, you either join their personal guild or pay 20,000+ credits for a hand balster. Some of these people only deal in million credit denominations, and that’s not an exaggeration. Meanwhile, every other Artitian in the game below Master level get’s the shaft for the next few months because no one is interested in buying anything they ever build. In fact, aspiring Artitians can be hard pressed to even give away their goods for free, because everyone already has something better.
There is also something else you should notice about the Bazaar, if you haven’t already: There is a price cap on anything sold there of 6,000 credits. Which is why you see mostly junk up there – if the maker feels it’s worth more than 6,000 credits (i.e. – anything made by a Master, even if it’s just a pair of shoes), then it goes in their own private vendor somewhere for whatever they feel like charging. So everything you see there is either bottom of the barrel, a cheap rescource (the average rate is 3cr per 1ru, irregardless of the rescource), or an advertisement.
One final note about th bazaar: All actual items for sale will say “Instant Auction” on them. If it says “Auction” next to it, it’s not really for sale. Whatever the item is that says “Auction” will look too good to be true for the price, and it is. The only way anyone will actually get that thing is if the auctioneer forgets to back out of the auction before it’s too later. Anything you see up for “Auction” is just an advertisement piece designed to show off what the Master can do and isn’t really for sale. So don’t waste you time bidding on it.
Thus, the life of an Artician is Surveying, Sampling, and Grinding their way to the top with zero thanks along the way. Thanks for signing up! The payoff comes in the end, because once you get that Master Weaponsmith/Armorsmith title, every single person you meet who isn’t already becoming a hunchback under 500lbs of fancy gear will come begging and crawling like grovelling little worms to beg you to grace them with the blessings of your products. That’s when you tell them to either join your personal guild or pay you 20,000+ credits for a hand blaster and be unable to wipe the smirk off your face for a week.
Towns: Be glad you’re Neutral/Civilian, because every town you walk into is going to have their main entrance flooded with supercharacters, dead troopers of one faction or another scattered about their feet, and vendors on repeat shouting out strange coordinates for you to come visit their shop (if you’re lucky, you won’t get eaten by a Foaming Chipmunks on the way out to said shop). You will see hapless troopers taking shoots at supercharacters, their blaster bolts bouncing off their chests a-la Superman, whilst the supercharacters kill them with one shot apiece from their 1-Handed Portable Death Star Cannons and wait for them to respawn to do it again. This is how you take over a town. Viva la revolucion, if only it were so simple in real life!
Lucky for you, you can ignore all this. The only problems you should face is that this endless slaughter of local police forces opens the towns up to be over-run with bandits, thugs, outlaws, vicious critters & NPC miscreants of all natures. Since supercharacters get squat for XP for dealing with such obviously inferior foes, they only notice this little problem for the two seconds it takes them to cut down said opponents whilst strolling to the local cantina for a drink. Which means if you stray off the beaten path at all, even in a major metropolis, you’re going to get jumped by bad guys.
This is one of the reasons your starting class should be something combat oriented, such as Marksman or Brawler, because even though these are weak foes they tend to respawn ever ten seconds and don’t care that you happen to be standing right on their respawn spot (after all, it makes you an easier target). The first thing you should buy is armor & weapons, although remember that 90% of what you see on the bazaar is “junk” by common SWG standards. Once in a while a nice item will pop up, with the maufacturers name & shop address embedded into the design description, natch, so you never forget where it came from. They didn’t put that item up there to help new people – get real! They did as a form of “cost effective advertising,” and guess what? It just worked!
“But wait, I wanted to be a Tailor!” Okay, fine, be a Tailor …after you’ve become a Master Brawler. You see, with the market the way it is, there is no possible way for an Artitian to as much as break even on rescource costs as they grind their way to the top (since no one will buy their stuff) and the only “Neutral” missions that pay more than bird seed to spend four hours driving around delivering stuff are the combat types. Yes, a Artitian can Survey & Sample their own rescources, but when you start off spending twenty minutes to find a good spot, gathering an average of four units per sample, making one item that nets you a whooping 25 exeperience points requires 50+ units of assorted rescources and it’s 20,000xp to the next branch in the tree … well, you get the idea. That’s right, you’re mortal, and you want to still be alive when you finally reach the top of the ladder instead of inheriting your character to your great-grandchildren. Yes, you can buy or build your own personal extractor/harvesters, but these too cost money … so much money that you’ll quickly realize that it’s cheaper to just buy your rescources from the major guild/cartels that were here before you and have BIG harvestors that outproduce your puny persoal ones by levels of magnitude.
Plus, surveying means you have to go outside the city where there are many things awaiting to eat you. Fun!
So no matter how you slice it, there is just no room for constructive pacifists in SWG. You will either have to fight in missions to earn money for your stuff, or fight off beasties in the wild whilst trying to forage your own. So if you’re not some kind of fighter, give up now and go make a new character.
Pilots: “I want to be a Rebel/Imperial Pilot!” Yeah and so do a lot of people, but again you have to be a ground fighter first & foremost. Why? Because the high level pilot trainers are all in major cities – the same major cities that will undoubtedly be in enemy hands at a most inconvienent time. Which means you will die on your way to the trainer. Count on it. However, a Neutral/Civilian Pilot (Privateer: Smuggler, Royal Defense, or CorpSec) can waltz right through a raging battlefield without catching a single hit slicker than R2-D2 & C3PO in the first five minutes of Star Wars. Handy, yes?
It has been theorized (although I’ve yet to test it) that you can fly for either side whilst still under the banner of a Privateer and earn faction points without actually having to join said faction buy going to their stations and declaring yourself (and a similar arangement for faction mission terminals). If so, then this is your ticket through this frackas. Why join up day one and claw your way on a thin strand of luck to the rank of General when you can just horde a secret stash of faction points under your Neutral flag and then use them all at once right after you finally enlist ten minutes after gaining your “Master Slayer of Everything” badge & shoot straight to the top?
Another perk of being a Neutral pilot: Turkey Shoot! You can still go around blasting Rebel/Imperial ships out of the sky left & right, gaining exp and credits for it. What makes this route particularly sweet is that NOTHING you can do will ever change you from being Neutral while you’re up there. Come again? It means that you can fly under the Privateer flag and both Rebel & Imperial ships will all show up as Neutral Yellow Dots on your radar. They will not react to your presence in any way until you open fire & hit them – only then will they retaliate, and by then you’ve already walzed right up to their tail and opened up them so fast that they won’t even have time to react before they’re dead.
And here’s the sweetest part: Say you spot, oh, fifty ships of your secret enemy faction flying in formation. Guess what? You can take them all on and win. Huh? Yes, because when you hit a ship, ONLY THAT SHIP becomes hostile, even if it’s part of a larger group. So you can swing behind one ship, blow it away, and then the next one, and the next, and the next, etc etc etc until all fifty of them are dead and NONE of them will respond to the plight of any of their bretheren unless they, themselves, are hit too by accident.
Now is that a racket or what? And why even fight pirates when you can be one? Neutral frieghters are perfectly legit targets as far as looting & exp goes, and a CorSec pilot can come up to a freighter with a CorpSec escort & blow the freighter away without the other CorSec pilot even trying to stop you – same for Rebels & Imperials, too. Yes, three of the four modes of being offer no real protection at all but the last one makes you all but untouchable. I love it!
Another thing aspiring pilots & grunts should know (that the manual doesn’t mention) is that all those credits you loot don’t become cash or go into your bank account – they all go on that credit chip you started the game with. You have to actually click on that chip & chose the radial option to deposit it into the bank manually.
Plus, the real perk of becoming a pilot: Free Transportation! No one who spends the $20 (or less) to buy JTLS will ever have to waste money on a shuttle again! You can just hit the nearest Starship Terminal, select Travel, and go whereever you want for free In fact, some very low level delivery missions can actually be done in under five minutes just by using your ship to go from one starport to another.
The last but far from least perk of being a pilot is MONEY! When you’re on the ground, and you see some criminal wandering the streets of your town, your Newbie character can probably take them out easily enough but chances are you’ll take a hit or two in return. Annoying little wounds and battle fatigue eventually add up to you sitting in the hospital and chilling for a little while. No doctor? Well don’t worry because (again the manual won’t tell you this) if you use the “Sit” option from the Radial Menu when looking at a bed (and sit on in), after a few minutes your Wounds will start to heal themselves in 5 point increments on their own over time. It’s also worth the 100cr for a Newbie to buy Novice Medic, because then you can make stimpacks and heal yourself when there are no doctors around (which happens a lot on the less popular planets or off peak hours). Later, when you’ve become a supercharacter, you can surrender the Novice Medic again because you obviously be invulnerable to all forms of damage and not need it anymore. I digress – money is the juicy reward of piloting. You shoot that thug, you may get 50 to 100 credits off them. Same thing for a Tier 1 target in space that you can drop in thrity seconds or less and not take anything more than a couple of hits to your ships deflector shields at worst, which even a Newbie can shrug off. Obviously shields regenerate faster than wounds or battle fatigue, so space is the faster & more profitable option. Plus there is always the chance of finding loot in space. Even the lowest level, junkiest loot item you find will fetch you a minimum of 1,000cr per item from one of the Chassis Dealers you’ll find in every Starport in the game … and it goes up from there quickly, usually about 1,000cr per certification level of said piece of equipement. Even a sortie against a sqaudron of mere “Tier 1” ships can net you ten grand, easily.
Ah yes, something else the book doesn’t mention (aren’t you glad you threw it away, now?) – what does “Tier” mean? Tier is the relative strength of the enemy ship, kind of like the color coded starburst near the HAM bars of creatures on the ground. Tier 1 is supposedly your equal (although any pilot worth their salt, Newbie or not, can take them down by the dozen) and each Tier level goes up pilot skill and technology used on the craft. Or at least in theroy … in reality they just make up the stats, because you’ll notice that around Tier 3 and up the ships move faster and have better armor than anything you can actually find in the game. But don’t worry, it won’t save them … just be sure to steer clear of the big threats (easy to do with a radar with over 4km of range!) and focus on the targets close to your level. Although I might add that even a Newbie in a “Trainer Ship” can usually take out a slow moving Tier 2 or even Tier 3 ship from the “bomber” classes, provided they are flying solo. It can be worth it, too – a Tier 1 ship only nets you an average of 100exp but a Tier 2 will net you nearly 500exp for the same class of ship, and Tier 3 (if you’re feeling daring) will net you around 1500exp on average (quick level up!).
However, something else you should know – you’ll need to SAVE all that money you’ve been earning. Why? Because when you get that skill promotion to the next level of ship, you won’t actually get that next level of ship from your employeers. You’re on your own in that department, pal, and the missions they will give you after your promotion will assume that you already have the next grade of ship. If you don’t, consider yourself scrap-to-be because they aren’t going to pull punches on mission difficulty for you just because you’re still flying that triainer. I’ve seen blueprints sell from 20,000 to 250,000 credits, and that’s just the blueprint (you still have to take that blueprint to a Chassis Dealer to buy the actual ship, which requires another large sum of money). You’ll probably notice a lack of blueprints for sale on the Bazaar. By now you’ve already guessed why, too – the 6,000cr cap means that although the local Shipwright has ten thousand copies in his library, they worked their butt of to get where he/she is and isn’t about to let you have one for anything less than 20,000cr! So this is why, as annoying as they can be, it can be a good idea to periodically listen to all the “paperboys” hanging out in front of the starport, because private shops will most likely be your ONLY source for getting a new ship, unless you become a Shipwright yourself. If you’re not part of a guild that gives away free rescources to aspiring Shipwrights to practice with, then that’s going to be an even longer & thankless road than becoming a Master Artitian in the first place.
Speaking of practice, yet another thing the book doesn’t mention: You know that little “practice” button that appears when you go to make a prototype item? When you click that, you don’t actually build the item but you still get the experience for it – with a bonus of around 5% (so I’m told), too. This can be very handy as you don’t want to be one of those poor souls trying to hock a hundred copies of the same blaster rifle on the bazaar that no one will buy that you ended up making while trying to grind your way to the next level. I know it may seem like a waste of good rescources, but that’s how it goes. You’re better off just saving yourself the time and getting the extra experience points buy using the “practice” option all the time unless you’re making something you just know will sell no matter what (i.e. – something no one else is bothering to make, or something you price so low that they can’t resist buying it, like a 50cr personal harvestor deed or something).
Now you may have read some stuff about players building military bases and whatnot. Yes, they can, but only once they are factionally aligned and holding a certain rank. Read: Not you. So don’t even worry about that right now. Also, most guilds have their own private towns, even though they are rarely (if ever) listed on the map because only the minority of them ever bother to actually go through the process of making them official “Player Towns” (something else on the forums here that you should read about). These private towns are where they hide the shops with all the stuff you really want to spend your hard earned credits on, and if you’re lucky they’ll have gone through the effort to hire some guards to keep all the man-eaters off their front lawns, too.
So there’s my little new player survival guide – in summary, no matter how eager you are to aid your cause, you’re nothing more than blaster fodder until the day you can examine an enemy trooper and have the Blue Starburst appear next to their HAM bars, and that will take a long while to get to. Until then, see if you can’t scam some faction points via Faction Terminals & Overt Space Combat (when no one is looking) and hold on to them until the day you’re gone commando enough to be able to walk the streets (or canyons) at night without worry and THEN decide what career & faction you really want to devote yourself to.
Then you get to be once of the starport lounge lizards who sit around all day drinking tea and wasting NPC troopers for fun. And it will be Good.
Final tip for Entertainers: Macros. Learn them, love them, and leave them on when you go to work, to bed, or on a six week vacation. There is no such thing as a dancer or musician who’s actually sitting in front of their keyboard. For the aspiring doctor, a cheap way to burn off all those low-grade stimpacks you’ve been cranking out while grinding your way up the ladder is buy hanging out in cantinas and healing performers for action wound damage. It’s not much, but it will get you to the first level of skill without having to hang out in hospitals, waiting for the injured to come in and getting on the neves of the real, Master Doctors who haunt these places. Be polite, don’t step on their toes and maybe they’ll train you for free!
Now, you’ve probably read the manual twenty times over while this was happening, and good for you! That’s smart, and let’s you dive right into the action. Well, not really. See, that manual was written for version 1.0 of the game, and we’re up past 13.0 by now. So you manual is now all but completely irrelevant to the actual game now.
What to do? Tear (or cut) out the sections on character stats and your keyboard controls. Staple these pages together. This is your new manual. Take the rest of it and throw it out the window – it’s about as useless as the in-game “Holocron Help System” and no longer bears any resemblance to the actual game.
“Okay,” you think, “Where do I find the new, up-to-date manual?” Frankly, if you can figure that one out, please tell me. For the most part, you’re going to spending a lot of time on this forum scavenging for bits & pieces of information. More on this soon.
Now once you enter the game, the first thing you should know is that the Covert/Overt section from the book is (surprise!) no longer applicable to the actual game. Here’s the lowdown of what happened: All the supercharacters who are qualified for big time PVP battles decided that they’d rather just run around from city to city mowing down Stormtroopers/Rebel Troopers like chaff for kicks and without any fear of retaliation by any being actually on their level (i.e. – other supercharacters on the opposing side). So they had the rules changed so that they can do this. Meanwhile, those who don’t have supercharacters now have two choices: Stay completely Neutral until you do have a supercharacter, or bend over every time you walk through the starport gates and prepare to die.
Why did they do this? Because they hate you. Why do they hate you? Because you are a what they call a “Noob,” or “N00B” in their language, which is called “L33T” and bears a vague resemblance to English, but only remotely. A “N00B” is a derragatory term for a New Player or “Newbie” (the more polite form). They have derragatory terms for everything, naturally, because having a supercharacter on an on-line game apparently makes you cooler than James Bond in a Jaguar, thus entitling them to look down upon everyone else in the world who isn’t just like them. No, really, it’s true! Just ask them! Now, how long must you play to no longer be a “N00B?” Answer: Give up, because to a “L33T” a “N00B” is anyone & everyone who’s character isn’t as superheroic as theirs, even if you’ve actually been playing longer than them, and they were here first anyway, so you will always be at least one day younger than them and thus a “N00B” forever. The term for this is Elitism (or “L33Tism”), and it’s something you’ll just have to learn to live with in SWG or any other on-line game, for that matter. Don’t let it get to you too much. I find mockery to be great outlet, don’t you?
Don’t think you can escape by going to play Everquest or something, either, because they are everywhere. The “L33T” live & breathe for on-line games, because it gives them a venue in which they can flex their digital muscles without ever having to meet the people they offend daily face-to-face and thus risk getting their teeth curbed by someone who doesn’t just play a Wookie on SWG. They are easy to spot, too: Just look for a character who is wearing more armor than a tank, never takes off their helmet or puts away their weapon, and is somehow unable to speak in complete english sentances. You will truly enjoy the good old fashioned Star Wars style cultural diverstity effect when the other players start speaking in some sort of semi-english dialect that you can’t really understand. Alas, where are those subtitles when you need them?
Warning: It’s contagious, and if you are not careful you’ll start becoming just like them, even if you have no desire to “fit in” with the supercharacter crowd.
Okay so back to the game … when talking to the Recruiter for a faction you want to join, DON’T DO IT! Why? Because there are three states of being in the game once you join a faction and a fourth one if you don’t. The first is Special Forces, in which case everyone on the opposing side can attack you, both PC & NPC. This means that you will die every thrity seconds, because the L33T have no mercy and seeing a N00B open themselves up to attack is like throwing blood in front of a shark. The second level is Combatant, in which case other PCs can not attack you but NPCs can. This is also suicide, because planet infromation from the book and even the info blurbs you watch in transit all give you incorrect data – the actual owner of any city is a coin toss depending on the hour of day or night. Guess wrong, and you walk out of the terminal facing half a dozen NPC soldiers who all have 10x your HAM status and blasters that belong in the turret of a capital ship. The last state to be in is Non-Combatant, which they make sound to be the safest option. It isn’t. It simply means that enemy troops will consider you Neutral (“Civilian”) until they search you … which is usually about ten seconds after you walk through the spaceport doors and into the city, because they just happen to park guards right at the entryway. Again, you will be dead before you realize that you are even under attack.
So, which Faction declaration can you be and survive your first day of SWG? None. Cool, eh? Oh, and if you declare yourself a “Non-Combatant” then you can’t get missions from NPCs in your faction, spend your faction points on anything, gain rank, or basically do anything that makes joinging a faction remotely worth the hassle. Like get trained, for instance.
However, what the book described as “Neutral” still exists, only know they call it “Civilian.” Don’t be mislead by the name – you can be a “Civilian” Death Commando with so much armor & weaponry covering your body that your character will seem to belong in Mechwarrior more than Star Wars. Who said there’s no humor in the game?
Now the next thing you notice when you step into your first city is that 99% of the other players will all have something written in parenthesis after their names. What the heck is that jarble, anyway, and why do they ALL seem to have it? Those are nicknames for the various player guilds that exist in the game. “Wait,” you say, “it didn’t mention anything about player guilds in the manual!” Hey, didn’t I already tell you to just throw that thing away already?
So what’s a player guild? It’s kind of like the mafia or a pyramid scheme. You see, as any Artitian will tell you, the game is run by L33T players because they’ve been around the longest and have all the supercharacters – including super Artitians, such as Shipwrights, Weaponsmiths, and Armorsmiths. Because the only way to hope to compete is to have the best gear possible, there is a huge demand for top-quality player made products crafted by Masters. The Masters know this, and this is why you only see second hand junk on the Bazaar Terminal 90%+ of the time. The wares you see there are the desperate hopes of Novice Artitians hoping that someoone will pay enough for their +1 damage rifle to break even on the cost of rescources to make it. You will see a lot of these, because no one ever buys them. What do they buy? Superweapons. Where do you get superweapons? From a Master Weaponsmith/Armorsmith. There is, of course, one catch – to get them, you either join their personal guild or pay 20,000+ credits for a hand balster. Some of these people only deal in million credit denominations, and that’s not an exaggeration. Meanwhile, every other Artitian in the game below Master level get’s the shaft for the next few months because no one is interested in buying anything they ever build. In fact, aspiring Artitians can be hard pressed to even give away their goods for free, because everyone already has something better.
There is also something else you should notice about the Bazaar, if you haven’t already: There is a price cap on anything sold there of 6,000 credits. Which is why you see mostly junk up there – if the maker feels it’s worth more than 6,000 credits (i.e. – anything made by a Master, even if it’s just a pair of shoes), then it goes in their own private vendor somewhere for whatever they feel like charging. So everything you see there is either bottom of the barrel, a cheap rescource (the average rate is 3cr per 1ru, irregardless of the rescource), or an advertisement.
One final note about th bazaar: All actual items for sale will say “Instant Auction” on them. If it says “Auction” next to it, it’s not really for sale. Whatever the item is that says “Auction” will look too good to be true for the price, and it is. The only way anyone will actually get that thing is if the auctioneer forgets to back out of the auction before it’s too later. Anything you see up for “Auction” is just an advertisement piece designed to show off what the Master can do and isn’t really for sale. So don’t waste you time bidding on it.
Thus, the life of an Artician is Surveying, Sampling, and Grinding their way to the top with zero thanks along the way. Thanks for signing up! The payoff comes in the end, because once you get that Master Weaponsmith/Armorsmith title, every single person you meet who isn’t already becoming a hunchback under 500lbs of fancy gear will come begging and crawling like grovelling little worms to beg you to grace them with the blessings of your products. That’s when you tell them to either join your personal guild or pay you 20,000+ credits for a hand blaster and be unable to wipe the smirk off your face for a week.
Towns: Be glad you’re Neutral/Civilian, because every town you walk into is going to have their main entrance flooded with supercharacters, dead troopers of one faction or another scattered about their feet, and vendors on repeat shouting out strange coordinates for you to come visit their shop (if you’re lucky, you won’t get eaten by a Foaming Chipmunks on the way out to said shop). You will see hapless troopers taking shoots at supercharacters, their blaster bolts bouncing off their chests a-la Superman, whilst the supercharacters kill them with one shot apiece from their 1-Handed Portable Death Star Cannons and wait for them to respawn to do it again. This is how you take over a town. Viva la revolucion, if only it were so simple in real life!
Lucky for you, you can ignore all this. The only problems you should face is that this endless slaughter of local police forces opens the towns up to be over-run with bandits, thugs, outlaws, vicious critters & NPC miscreants of all natures. Since supercharacters get squat for XP for dealing with such obviously inferior foes, they only notice this little problem for the two seconds it takes them to cut down said opponents whilst strolling to the local cantina for a drink. Which means if you stray off the beaten path at all, even in a major metropolis, you’re going to get jumped by bad guys.
This is one of the reasons your starting class should be something combat oriented, such as Marksman or Brawler, because even though these are weak foes they tend to respawn ever ten seconds and don’t care that you happen to be standing right on their respawn spot (after all, it makes you an easier target). The first thing you should buy is armor & weapons, although remember that 90% of what you see on the bazaar is “junk” by common SWG standards. Once in a while a nice item will pop up, with the maufacturers name & shop address embedded into the design description, natch, so you never forget where it came from. They didn’t put that item up there to help new people – get real! They did as a form of “cost effective advertising,” and guess what? It just worked!
“But wait, I wanted to be a Tailor!” Okay, fine, be a Tailor …after you’ve become a Master Brawler. You see, with the market the way it is, there is no possible way for an Artitian to as much as break even on rescource costs as they grind their way to the top (since no one will buy their stuff) and the only “Neutral” missions that pay more than bird seed to spend four hours driving around delivering stuff are the combat types. Yes, a Artitian can Survey & Sample their own rescources, but when you start off spending twenty minutes to find a good spot, gathering an average of four units per sample, making one item that nets you a whooping 25 exeperience points requires 50+ units of assorted rescources and it’s 20,000xp to the next branch in the tree … well, you get the idea. That’s right, you’re mortal, and you want to still be alive when you finally reach the top of the ladder instead of inheriting your character to your great-grandchildren. Yes, you can buy or build your own personal extractor/harvesters, but these too cost money … so much money that you’ll quickly realize that it’s cheaper to just buy your rescources from the major guild/cartels that were here before you and have BIG harvestors that outproduce your puny persoal ones by levels of magnitude.
Plus, surveying means you have to go outside the city where there are many things awaiting to eat you. Fun!
So no matter how you slice it, there is just no room for constructive pacifists in SWG. You will either have to fight in missions to earn money for your stuff, or fight off beasties in the wild whilst trying to forage your own. So if you’re not some kind of fighter, give up now and go make a new character.
Pilots: “I want to be a Rebel/Imperial Pilot!” Yeah and so do a lot of people, but again you have to be a ground fighter first & foremost. Why? Because the high level pilot trainers are all in major cities – the same major cities that will undoubtedly be in enemy hands at a most inconvienent time. Which means you will die on your way to the trainer. Count on it. However, a Neutral/Civilian Pilot (Privateer: Smuggler, Royal Defense, or CorpSec) can waltz right through a raging battlefield without catching a single hit slicker than R2-D2 & C3PO in the first five minutes of Star Wars. Handy, yes?
It has been theorized (although I’ve yet to test it) that you can fly for either side whilst still under the banner of a Privateer and earn faction points without actually having to join said faction buy going to their stations and declaring yourself (and a similar arangement for faction mission terminals). If so, then this is your ticket through this frackas. Why join up day one and claw your way on a thin strand of luck to the rank of General when you can just horde a secret stash of faction points under your Neutral flag and then use them all at once right after you finally enlist ten minutes after gaining your “Master Slayer of Everything” badge & shoot straight to the top?
Another perk of being a Neutral pilot: Turkey Shoot! You can still go around blasting Rebel/Imperial ships out of the sky left & right, gaining exp and credits for it. What makes this route particularly sweet is that NOTHING you can do will ever change you from being Neutral while you’re up there. Come again? It means that you can fly under the Privateer flag and both Rebel & Imperial ships will all show up as Neutral Yellow Dots on your radar. They will not react to your presence in any way until you open fire & hit them – only then will they retaliate, and by then you’ve already walzed right up to their tail and opened up them so fast that they won’t even have time to react before they’re dead.
And here’s the sweetest part: Say you spot, oh, fifty ships of your secret enemy faction flying in formation. Guess what? You can take them all on and win. Huh? Yes, because when you hit a ship, ONLY THAT SHIP becomes hostile, even if it’s part of a larger group. So you can swing behind one ship, blow it away, and then the next one, and the next, and the next, etc etc etc until all fifty of them are dead and NONE of them will respond to the plight of any of their bretheren unless they, themselves, are hit too by accident.
Now is that a racket or what? And why even fight pirates when you can be one? Neutral frieghters are perfectly legit targets as far as looting & exp goes, and a CorSec pilot can come up to a freighter with a CorpSec escort & blow the freighter away without the other CorSec pilot even trying to stop you – same for Rebels & Imperials, too. Yes, three of the four modes of being offer no real protection at all but the last one makes you all but untouchable. I love it!
Another thing aspiring pilots & grunts should know (that the manual doesn’t mention) is that all those credits you loot don’t become cash or go into your bank account – they all go on that credit chip you started the game with. You have to actually click on that chip & chose the radial option to deposit it into the bank manually.
Plus, the real perk of becoming a pilot: Free Transportation! No one who spends the $20 (or less) to buy JTLS will ever have to waste money on a shuttle again! You can just hit the nearest Starship Terminal, select Travel, and go whereever you want for free In fact, some very low level delivery missions can actually be done in under five minutes just by using your ship to go from one starport to another.
The last but far from least perk of being a pilot is MONEY! When you’re on the ground, and you see some criminal wandering the streets of your town, your Newbie character can probably take them out easily enough but chances are you’ll take a hit or two in return. Annoying little wounds and battle fatigue eventually add up to you sitting in the hospital and chilling for a little while. No doctor? Well don’t worry because (again the manual won’t tell you this) if you use the “Sit” option from the Radial Menu when looking at a bed (and sit on in), after a few minutes your Wounds will start to heal themselves in 5 point increments on their own over time. It’s also worth the 100cr for a Newbie to buy Novice Medic, because then you can make stimpacks and heal yourself when there are no doctors around (which happens a lot on the less popular planets or off peak hours). Later, when you’ve become a supercharacter, you can surrender the Novice Medic again because you obviously be invulnerable to all forms of damage and not need it anymore. I digress – money is the juicy reward of piloting. You shoot that thug, you may get 50 to 100 credits off them. Same thing for a Tier 1 target in space that you can drop in thrity seconds or less and not take anything more than a couple of hits to your ships deflector shields at worst, which even a Newbie can shrug off. Obviously shields regenerate faster than wounds or battle fatigue, so space is the faster & more profitable option. Plus there is always the chance of finding loot in space. Even the lowest level, junkiest loot item you find will fetch you a minimum of 1,000cr per item from one of the Chassis Dealers you’ll find in every Starport in the game … and it goes up from there quickly, usually about 1,000cr per certification level of said piece of equipement. Even a sortie against a sqaudron of mere “Tier 1” ships can net you ten grand, easily.
Ah yes, something else the book doesn’t mention (aren’t you glad you threw it away, now?) – what does “Tier” mean? Tier is the relative strength of the enemy ship, kind of like the color coded starburst near the HAM bars of creatures on the ground. Tier 1 is supposedly your equal (although any pilot worth their salt, Newbie or not, can take them down by the dozen) and each Tier level goes up pilot skill and technology used on the craft. Or at least in theroy … in reality they just make up the stats, because you’ll notice that around Tier 3 and up the ships move faster and have better armor than anything you can actually find in the game. But don’t worry, it won’t save them … just be sure to steer clear of the big threats (easy to do with a radar with over 4km of range!) and focus on the targets close to your level. Although I might add that even a Newbie in a “Trainer Ship” can usually take out a slow moving Tier 2 or even Tier 3 ship from the “bomber” classes, provided they are flying solo. It can be worth it, too – a Tier 1 ship only nets you an average of 100exp but a Tier 2 will net you nearly 500exp for the same class of ship, and Tier 3 (if you’re feeling daring) will net you around 1500exp on average (quick level up!).
However, something else you should know – you’ll need to SAVE all that money you’ve been earning. Why? Because when you get that skill promotion to the next level of ship, you won’t actually get that next level of ship from your employeers. You’re on your own in that department, pal, and the missions they will give you after your promotion will assume that you already have the next grade of ship. If you don’t, consider yourself scrap-to-be because they aren’t going to pull punches on mission difficulty for you just because you’re still flying that triainer. I’ve seen blueprints sell from 20,000 to 250,000 credits, and that’s just the blueprint (you still have to take that blueprint to a Chassis Dealer to buy the actual ship, which requires another large sum of money). You’ll probably notice a lack of blueprints for sale on the Bazaar. By now you’ve already guessed why, too – the 6,000cr cap means that although the local Shipwright has ten thousand copies in his library, they worked their butt of to get where he/she is and isn’t about to let you have one for anything less than 20,000cr! So this is why, as annoying as they can be, it can be a good idea to periodically listen to all the “paperboys” hanging out in front of the starport, because private shops will most likely be your ONLY source for getting a new ship, unless you become a Shipwright yourself. If you’re not part of a guild that gives away free rescources to aspiring Shipwrights to practice with, then that’s going to be an even longer & thankless road than becoming a Master Artitian in the first place.
Speaking of practice, yet another thing the book doesn’t mention: You know that little “practice” button that appears when you go to make a prototype item? When you click that, you don’t actually build the item but you still get the experience for it – with a bonus of around 5% (so I’m told), too. This can be very handy as you don’t want to be one of those poor souls trying to hock a hundred copies of the same blaster rifle on the bazaar that no one will buy that you ended up making while trying to grind your way to the next level. I know it may seem like a waste of good rescources, but that’s how it goes. You’re better off just saving yourself the time and getting the extra experience points buy using the “practice” option all the time unless you’re making something you just know will sell no matter what (i.e. – something no one else is bothering to make, or something you price so low that they can’t resist buying it, like a 50cr personal harvestor deed or something).
Now you may have read some stuff about players building military bases and whatnot. Yes, they can, but only once they are factionally aligned and holding a certain rank. Read: Not you. So don’t even worry about that right now. Also, most guilds have their own private towns, even though they are rarely (if ever) listed on the map because only the minority of them ever bother to actually go through the process of making them official “Player Towns” (something else on the forums here that you should read about). These private towns are where they hide the shops with all the stuff you really want to spend your hard earned credits on, and if you’re lucky they’ll have gone through the effort to hire some guards to keep all the man-eaters off their front lawns, too.
So there’s my little new player survival guide – in summary, no matter how eager you are to aid your cause, you’re nothing more than blaster fodder until the day you can examine an enemy trooper and have the Blue Starburst appear next to their HAM bars, and that will take a long while to get to. Until then, see if you can’t scam some faction points via Faction Terminals & Overt Space Combat (when no one is looking) and hold on to them until the day you’re gone commando enough to be able to walk the streets (or canyons) at night without worry and THEN decide what career & faction you really want to devote yourself to.
Then you get to be once of the starport lounge lizards who sit around all day drinking tea and wasting NPC troopers for fun. And it will be Good.
Final tip for Entertainers: Macros. Learn them, love them, and leave them on when you go to work, to bed, or on a six week vacation. There is no such thing as a dancer or musician who’s actually sitting in front of their keyboard. For the aspiring doctor, a cheap way to burn off all those low-grade stimpacks you’ve been cranking out while grinding your way up the ladder is buy hanging out in cantinas and healing performers for action wound damage. It’s not much, but it will get you to the first level of skill without having to hang out in hospitals, waiting for the injured to come in and getting on the neves of the real, Master Doctors who haunt these places. Be polite, don’t step on their toes and maybe they’ll train you for free!
Dekoba
Sat Feb 26, 2005 11:05 am
#2
I request that this post be deleted and locked. This guide is innacurate and gives bad vibes for non-combat professions.
First: The manual may be outdated, but it is FAR from incorrect. There is information in there (chat system comes to mind) that even most veteran players dont know.The skills, chat system, combat, (part of the healing/death), missions, grouping, critter,travel, and artisan sectaions (14 of the 16 chapters) still have a wealth of valid information. They are not 100% complete, and things have changed, but it IS STILL ACCURATE in most respects.
Second, there is no reason NOT to become factionally alligned. Go on leave if you want to avoid combat, and stick to planets which your faction controls.
Third. stop bashing vets. We are the ones who have all the information you neeed to progress. And some of us are nice. pull your head out of your arse for a minute.
Guilds arent evil and you CAN find good gear on the bazaar. not 95% comp and krayt weapons, but i found a full set of chitin (40% kinetic resist) and a really nice scout blaster on there yesterday, and thats about all a new character needs is it not? AND ARTISANS ARE GOOD! WE NEED ARTISANS. ffs, hirotanaka, have you looked at the economy lately? the reason its so screwed up is people like you are trying to keep lower level gear off the market...
Im sorry, im going to sit down.
please delete this post.
SolidShot
Sat Feb 26, 2005 12:51 pm
#3
I agree. If you don't like the game you can always not play. All the vet's i have met have been a great help and only to willing to spend time to explain how the game works.
"There is no manual for life"
JoKen_Jash
Sat Feb 26, 2005 3:10 pm
#4
Ok, firstly, I've been around for over a year, and I don't have a "super" character. Instead, I playtwo of the most gimped professions in the history of the game, Commando and Smuggler. Why getthem when I could pick up stuff that's so much more powerful? Simple. I like blowing things up and Role Playing a smuggler. And there are a lot of other people out there that are like me, who don't want the best pvp template just so they can own everyone. The people in the game don't hate you, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did after reading this thread. Plus, your guide is flat out WRONG. Most of that info is false and/or warped. Guilds can be fun to be in, I run a roleplaying guild and organize space events myself. And you can't expect to be good at something without working at it. These people running around with "super" characters are simply people who've worked hard toget to that level ofcombat expertise.
In Conclusion: Don't bash people who haven't done anything wrong, and DEFINATELY DON'T make a guide about it to encourage other people to bash us, especially when the guide is filled with false information.
Bryysto
Sat Feb 26, 2005 9:19 pm
#5
Wow dude that didn't really make sense. That wasn't a guide at all. It was just saying how much you hate veteran gamers, and bashing up the game.
For one all that info is false. Guilds are groups of friends who enjoy the game and play together.
2. Docs help this game alot. They hang out in cantinas to grind their healing. They can help the entertainers by healing them without med packs causing them mind wounds thus the entertainer heals these wounds and gets xp
3. What you call "Artitians" are Artisans. Artisan can easily be mastered in about 30 mins no uber resources required.
4. What you're saying about Armorsmiths always being begged for items. It's actually hard to make the 90% compo armor you need the best of the best resources which can go for 50 cpu.
5. All entertainers are not AFK. I have mastered musician and Entertainer twice while at my keyboard. Entertainer is great profession it's easy to make friends also.
6. What you call "super-characters" aren't extremely evil terrible villains. It just sounds like you're jelous maybe? That armor can cost up to 700k
7. Most vets are nice theres maybe a handful out there that are mean to Newbies. It's usually us vets that help new characters. Giving them our old armor old weps etc.
8. If the city your trying to train in is take by the opposite faction try entering another way or luring them away.
9. SWG is actually one of the better MMOs on the market these days. Both EQ2 and WoW can get old pretty fast. SWG is great because for starters its Star Wars. It also has a ground based game and a space based. Both seperate but they work together.
10. If you think so terribly about SWG just quit the game. If i hated a game i was paying 15 bucks a month to play i would definately quit the game.
Message Edited by Bryysto on 02-26-2005 08:29 PM
ComCypher
Sun Feb 27, 2005 1:40 am
#6
HiroTanaka wrote:
“Okay,” you think, “Where do I find the new, up-to-date manual?” Frankly, if you can figure that one out, please tell me. For the most part, you’re going to spending a lot of time on this forum scavenging for bits & pieces of information. More on this soon.
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/manual.jsp?page=Listed%20Chapters
Com Cypher
ToughGy
Sun Feb 27, 2005 10:34 pm
#7
Bryysto wrote:10. If you think so terribly about SWG just quit the game. If i hated a game i was paying 15 bucks a month to play i would definately quit the game.Message Edited by Bryysto on 02-26-2005 08:29 PM
exactly
FlynGraves
Mon Feb 28, 2005 3:24 pm
#8
I read the whole original post as Rikarussinn did, as someone just venting. And doing so in a way I found funny despite the fact that I disagree with the vast majority of it.
That said, I don't think that the guides section is really the best place for it to have been posted, a newbie coming in here and seeing that could be scared right off what can be a fun and very rewarding game.
Han_Solo_67
Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:59 am
#9
<----Vet
<---Has super char.
<---Also has a bunch of Wuss Chars.
That said i think it was a funny post, i think it was ment to be funny. I think that this guy might have a had a rocky start and is just venting out with a little satire.
Truth be told you guys shouldn't be offended at at by a persons post. Especially wehn we all KNOW that there are leet guilds and peeps on our servers that act exactly like the above description...
Just get a laugh out of it, which I am thinking was the intent, and next time you see a noob in game /tip 100k and give them a wp to the mall of choice (South Coronet mall on Naritus) or if you aren't the give money to new players type spend a few minutes helping one out. I kow that can be a hassle but in the long run keep a all of us with a nice player base.
BadgerSmaker
Tue Mar 01, 2005 3:49 am
#10
Cwor blimey, was a good read though... rather amusing. 
Being a new player can be quite frustrating... I can understand that, but we've all had to learn to play SWG and on the whole it is quite a top class game.
This post can be likened to someone who starts a new job, then moans because everyone in the company has been there longer and knows what they are doing. 
It doesn't take long to catch up in SWG, the difficulty curve is pretty good. Just dont try to run before you can walk.
Sylow
Tue Mar 01, 2005 3:57 am
#11
Dekoba wrote:
Unfortunatley, not everone reads it as just someone venting. It seems that most did not. And of the young players who come here looking for help, mosst will not. its a bad guide and again, i request it be deleted/locked.
I fully agree. I play since 4 Months now and i couldn't complain. Some people helped me getting a good start in the game, gave me a nice gun and showed me how to run the first missions. The helper droid taught me perfectly well how to get started with making basic stuff.
I feel like i am doing pretty well, am still far from the high-end dudes, but nothing to complain about.
T-Y
Tue Mar 01, 2005 8:00 am
#12
Actually it is right on. Only thing is that not all players are L33t or try to be. You need to find some players that have (HELPER) above their name, they usually are there to help and in generous amounts.
While I find it difficult that there are true "new" players, since the game has been around for awhile. More people just starting on different servers. Nonetheless you are still "starting fresh" and what you say applies to some amount.
Nice post. A bit long.
My advise find some players willing to help. That is the intended gameplay not solo everything.
While I find it difficult that there are true "new" players, since the game has been around for awhile. More people just starting on different servers. Nonetheless you are still "starting fresh" and what you say applies to some amount.
Nice post. A bit long.
My advise find some players willing to help. That is the intended gameplay not solo everything.
Dekoba
Tue Mar 01, 2005 1:51 pm
#13
Unfortunatley, not everone reads it as just someone venting. It seems that most did not. And of the young players who come here looking for help, mosst will not. its a bad guide and again, i request it be deleted/locked.
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