Game Guides Archive
Thread: A guide to fighting unbuffed
So you've decided that part of being a Ranger is surviving in the woods without a buff. Or you have gotten bored with the same old
button smashing grind. Lets talk about the basics for all professions fighting unbuffed
Camo and Mask Scent - You are rangers or scouts this your primary way of staying alive. If your a ranger with at least wayfaring 1 get a master to make you some kits for each planet or make it yourself if you have the ability. If you dont have wayfaring 1 keep that mask scent going. Just remember that movement speed effects these. You will usually read about people complaining that it breaks easiy. Thats because they are riding on a swoop and think its supposed to be the end all to protections. This not the case. If your in a field of aggros with mask scent on WALK!!! let me say this again WALK!!! or go prone if its a field of really high level creatures. Remember that one small benefit of Ranger TN? Its crawl speed dont forget this. But our burst run is also better then anyone elses. For a rifleman conceal is there key to survivability.
Armor -
Think lightweight low HAM. Sure you can do the fighting in full comp but you will highly limit your specials and lower your HAM to almost
unsafe levels Think about what protections you need. Since your likely just fighting creatures don't bring more to the fight then you need
Armor is a matter of personal preference. As a brawler character I use Mabari armor for most of the fighting I do. Even though you are only
looking at 10-14% kinectic resists the fact its light armor will keep you alive longer in battle.
I have started to experiment with Chitin and even lowly bone armor. The AP1 of any armor will provide you with a loss of 50% to damage off the top no matter what the protections are (assuming your fighting a creature whos hitting AP0). The key to armor is low ham costs dont forget this part. Chitin made with Kliknik shells can in the 25-30% kinectic range with very low HAM costs. Most armorsmiths will usually be looking for an excuse to make anything thats not comp or ubese. If you want to assist your friendly Armorsmith find bone and hide with high OQ/Mall which is what control HAM costs add in good SR for good protections. OQ/Ut is the combo for hitpoints but this isnt as important as HAM costs.
Also get your hands on a Personal Shield Generator 3 or Imperial test prototype. These carry no HAM costs and will help you for those times when some NPC's sneak up on you.
Food -
Food is the key to survival, food is your life. Your usual brandy/canape/ahrissa combo will only work if your a riflemen
unbuffed. For all other classes think about
Garrmorl - Health/Str/Con - drink 300+ 36min+
Accargm - Action/quick/stamina - drink 300+ 36min+
Scrimpi - Quickness - food 350+ 40min
Ahrissa - Focus - food 350+ 40 min
Gruuvan Shaal - Strength - food 350+ 40 min
Exo-wafers - 20% damage reduction for 20 attacks/low filling
Synthsteak - 45% damage reduction for 20 attacks/high filling
Air Cake - increase base def (listed as dodge)
Look also at Vercupti as an emergency food. This will boost your H/A/M by 500-1000 for 6 minutes depending on filling. In the case of the unbuffed fighter go find very high OQ/DR insect meat and trade a stack of it to your chef in exchange for some. To go further gather some milk thats high OQ/DR if possible to get some 33 filling Vercupti made up. Strangely you will find that you have stomach space open even with all these combos of foods and drinks. When the battle isnting going your way downa 33% (BE ONLY for this kind of filling requires milk for the right additive) and a pixie and you will be able to put up with that battle for another 6 minutes.
http://www.gamekast.com/swg/foodtables.html complete menu
The numbers are averages for BE versions. If you dont have a BE Chef friend look for 50% less bonus for non BE foods. A secondary benefit of keeping your drink/food stomach full is lowered incap times. When facing that deathblowing creature a lowered time looking at the sky can save you.
As an example when i was a fencer using a low HAM vibroblade all i used was Accargm + garrmorl both with 49 filling. Using a Gaffi stick because of increased health and action costs. I added 1 scrimpi and 1 gruuvan shaal to the mix.
Droid/Pet - A droid or pet is really one of the lesser used things in game anymore. These are needed by the unbuffed fighter either non-CH or CH. If you can afford the 6 points get novice creature handler and then having one of each type out at your side. We are currently working with wildly overpowered CL10's that have been blessed by the devs as not being exploits until fixed (love the logic). So if you have the cash run out to your local BE and pick up a CL10 with at least 6k/4k/2k HAM. I have seen them as high as 11k/8k/6k in HAM. If you have the options of having one made get it in the form of a mount so you can take care of both of your needs.
You will need a few things to go with your new friendly pet. One is to get some fish meat together and see if you can trade it with a BE for some pet stims to keep he/she alive. Second is talk to your local chef about felbar. Which is one of the more powerful pet foods thats unused. In all of these broken CL10's there mind is the weakness. Felbar will increase your pets mind by 1500-1800 (BE made) for 40 minutes. To feed your pet its a drag and drop with these kinds of foods. You will recieve a "yummy" when its done right.
As for your new Droid tank. You have many options and all of these will impact your life as an unbuffed fighter. One is to go for utility by having a droid with a stim a launcher, trap launcher and combat or a full on R3 combat tank. 4300 HAM on an R3 or 3100 HAM on a probot may not sound like much but when your only walking around with 1100 ham yourself remember the damage is some that you didnt take yourself. Option 3 is a LE Repair Droid which can have over 5k HAM. The downside to the LE is it is slow but it will keep you laughing while it taunts its target in combat ex "What are you doing maggot" (actually heard on my wifes LE Repair today).
Droids are limited to 20% protections (the 40% you see is a bug) so remember to have some droid stims or get your droid setup with built in repair abilities. A combat droid in the field will be one that can do a lot of damage as well. So that 1 point damage droid you got for leveling may seem like a good companion but he will just likely cause you more heartache then hes worth.
The Droid Stim A Launcher is a useful tool for the unbuffed fighter. It needs to be loaded by a medic with Pharm 4 but it can be used by anyone even if they do not have medic. That little shot of 97 HAM may not seem that useful until your fighting for that last bit of life from your target. A stim launcher droid can fire once per 2 seconds as well. Target the droid and do /requeststimpack. I have this setup on my toolbar on my dedicated stim droid. I leave him parked 40m from a lair and let him launch those needles at me.I have chosen a Probot for this use because it wont run when being attacke
The droid trap launcher is still up to debate on its usefullness. In every class i've been except for TK i have used my droid stim launchers quite often. As a TK im finding that im just as good at applying the stats and doing knockdowns so its not useful. As a rifleman having a droid that can launch repeated adhesive meshs from 60m away (there max range look for an aim symbol when it fires) and this doesnt cost its user a combat turn.
Spices - This is no different then buffed. So keep Pixie and Muon ready for those last ditch efforts
Weapons - HAM cost is life learn the foods that lower your ham costs. These can be more improtant then regeneration stats.Think about HAM cost of the weapon versus of your target. For aSwordsman this means putting away the scythe and powerhammer in favor of a curved sword. A rifleman will be looking an unstocked/unscoped
rifle. Fencers will be living with the vibroblade. And Tera Kasi artists can put away there knucklers and truly fight unarmed. If you really want to use your high end weapons look at scrimp, ahrissa, andgruvvan shaal to lower your specials cost to allow you to stick with your favorite weapon type.
Traps- Excluding TK you will find all those traps you ground to get to ranger or to master ranger now have a use. Everyone has different favored traps.
Adhesive Mesh,P-Dart, Wire Mesh- Slows down or stops your target
Bone Spur - Blind state (lowers accuracy)
Glow-wire - drops ranged, melee defenses
Flash Bomb - area of effect blind
Sonic Pulse - Area of effect stun/dizzy (dizzy does nothing to a creature but AoE Stun can be useful)
Stink bomb, noise maker - stuns target
This may be a case where you will talk to your friendly neighborhood artisan friend about HAM powerups instead of max damage. Find the stat on your favorite weapon and have powerups that match the cost. Since you can lose 32% on any HAM stat with no downside to the weapon why not use them to your advantage.
A couple finalthoughts (thank you Jerry Springer)
As Rangers we have the benefit of getting the resources for a lot of professions you will need services from in this guide. Even the artisan needs hide, meat and bone for there profession. Learn to barter and work out a deal in exchange for free or lowered cost items. The secondary benefit is that you will have made a friend who will go to you when they need something. If you want that lower HAM armor bring the hides needed for the AS. If you want that lowererd cost weapon? Well not much you can do there except for trading loot from NPCs.
(i apoligize for the weird double spacing IE had some issues while editing this)
Message Edited by Fodder650 on 02-28-2005 02:04 AM
!!Lots of options for things for those who try to do this