Ranger Archive
Thread: When to use Mask Scent/Camo kits?
As mentioned, it's a great way to gain Scout XP. Camo kits offer two key benefits over Mask Scent:
- It lasts longer. This means you have to dismount and reapply less
- It can be applied to others. This means others can benefit from camoflauge. If they travel with you, you will get Scout XP from their successful mob avoidance.
But let's put aside advancement for a sec. Once you hit Wayfaring IV and Tracking IV, there's still a wealth of gaming left to do.
In my opinion, there's little functional difference between Mask and Camo. Before Vehicles I could maybe see some folks saying Camos were better, but I've never really seen anything but spurious success. And as you see yourself, after vehicles, Masking at all is irrelevant. There are some mobs that can keep up with a vehicle (saw them on Endor), but by the time they jump you, you're already 60m away anyway.
Plus, with clothing that offers Mask and Camo bonuses, whether you have +125 Mask at Wayfaring IV or +125 Camoflauge and use resource-expensive Camo Kits, well, the probability of being seen is roughly the same in my experience.
The line needs a tweak. Of course first it's getting a nerf (last I heard), with it not working against NPCs. A near-useless ability (imho) just got less useful. Way back in the early days after the game's Launch, people would run around advanced worlds with Mask Scent up, gaining Scout XP rather quickly. They plugged that semi-exploit by nerfing Mask, then introduced Camo and for a time it was good. Then Vehicles came and now people are back on advanced worlds gaining Scout XP easily
My advice would be to pick up some +Mask/+Camo clothing to get to the +125 cap (it may display higher, but that's the hard cap). For exploring, I use a +15 black shirt and a +15 Spec Ops duster (plus the other armor/clothing pieces). It's pretty cool
There is a method when maskscented or camo'd that allows you to pull one critter from a bunch and only he aggros, no friends. That is useful. Do a search under my name, it's fairly recent.
Maskscent/Camo can also be used to pull aggro animals through another mob, letting the mob attack the ones who were on you. The second group hopefully will ignore you and aggro on the encroaching critters. I do this with torturs and roba all the time. don't need xp, want the hides and the creds.
Maskscent/camo can also get you into caves unharmed. Sit still near a debris pile and rake in the loot. Takes a while but can be done.
Ok, there are two semi-useful and one sorta useful ways to use maskscent/camo.
Who has more?
JB
Didn't know about those. Thats helped a bundle.... there realy is more to Ranger than first meets the eye
The mob-through-other-mobs approach is a good tactic. It works in EQ too, it nevered occured to me to try it here. Anyone have a list of what mobs hate other mobs enough to attack them?
Peko Peko dont seem to get on with Famba's, I drag them into each other all the time. The Famba's win by the way....
So long as I land at least one shot on each Peko I can run about under the Famba's feet harvesting their, currently, very nice wooly hide thankyouverymuch.... Would have trouble doing that for long without my musky-man-type odour masked now wouldnt I.
See, you dont need BH specials or flame III if you are blessed with a brain. Which this forums inhabitants appear to be. (Irrational hatred of Rasps aside...?)
So, as the previous poster puts it so well, there is indeed more to Ranger than meets the eye. It's not a profession, its a calling, a curse, a way of life, call it what you want...... I love it. Couldnt be anything else in this game, I'm sure of that.
- It lasts longer. This means you have to dismount and reapply less
- It can be applied to others. This means others can benefit from camoflauge. If they travel with you, you will get Scout XP from their successful mob avoidance.
Actually, camo kits offer one other HUGE advantage of Mask Scent, and it's the primary reason I use them:
- Camo kits effectively camouflage the player from human NPCs as well as creatures!
I've found camo kits to be a great way to sneak up on (or past) hostile NPCs. And, the scouting experience when evading NPCs is generally way better than it is when evading creatures.
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Ganrick Graystar
Hehe, OK, for one starters, rememer that mask scent was in from release, which is long long before we got speeders. So it USED to be VERY useful for general travel, if you were hoofing it and not taking a shuttle. With speeders you don't really need it, but you can apply it before mounting your speeder, and it will work. Keep in mind, the faster you go, the bigger penalty you get to getting noticed by agro, so speeders make it easiest for them to notice you. But as you stated you can zip past them.
Secondly, these skills are also useful for travelling when alone. Whether it be to travel, or to get to a mission spawn. It keeps things from agroing on you, and in some cases, when solo, you may not be able to handle everything that is out there. Not to mention, it works well when actually dealing with the mission, its creatures/NPC and what not. How? If something that is agro comes up or spawns up behind you as you are in combat at the lair, it might not actually attack you.
For camo, I use it on the more advanced planets, and it will work against NPC where mask scent won't. That is the big difference. At novice and lower levels of ranger though, camo doesn't work much better then maks scent, so only use it for NPC. If you are higher up ranger or master, it works great against higher level creatures, and you can put it on others that don't have mask scent. I will use camo on dath all the time, because those Night Sisters are nasty, and mask scent wont work on them.
A good way to boost either/and mask scent and camo, is to get clothing with bonuses to those.
That's a bug? Really? It's listed as one of the features of camo kits in the Galaxies Prima strategy guide. I know a lot of the stuff in the strat guide is off base, but that one at least seemed to be right on the money. Wow, can't believe they consider it a bug...it's just so...necessary. Here's hoping they reconsider.
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Ganrick Graystar