Ranger Archive

Only the area track command is in right now, later we will be getting a /track command that lets us, essentially, spawna specific creature type or lair within the area and will lay down a waypoint or something along that line for us to follow to find the critter.

Area track lets you know all the animals/players/NPCs(based on your skill level) within up toa 500m radius and gives you their distance and general direction. The biggest problem at the moment is the list truncates at 50 entries..this coupled with the fact that dead creatures, vendors, and pets show up on the list makes it hard to get a complete reading in crowded areas.

As for its use....I've found 3 great uses for it:

1) Hunting missions: it saves some time by cutting down on my random wandering

2) Keeping my butt safe: specifically, if I'm camped out in a location on a dangerous planet and need to find a way out, using area track can give me a good idea on what the safest possible route out of the area I'm in is.

3) CH's or people hunting specific animal types will love you. For example, I was on Endor with a group tonight and one of the members was trying to track down a very specific and hard to find Merek baby type. While we ended up unsuccessful, we found tons of mereks in part due to my frequent scanning as we moved from lair to lair to try and track down babies and or that specific type of creature. On the really deady planets, the less random wandering you have to do, the better off you are.

So area tracking does have its uses, but you have to remember it does have limitations and is essentially supposed to be the "baby" tracking skill while the "adult" tracking skill hasn't been added in quite yet. Think of area tracking as an extended radar that takes a couple of seconds to kick in is the best way to look at it.

At level 4, areatrack takes 15 seconds to work, and you can detect animals, NPCs and players with 100% accuracy for everything in a500 meter radius. It provides 8directions and distance at time of tracking completed.It will show -1 meters as distance for inviduals in houses or buildings, but will give direction.

So far I have been using it to very good effect. 15 seconds would allow you to analyze the ground, and IMHO this is a lot less time than it would be to cover 785,000 square meters, which is the area of a circle with a 500 meter radius.

Overall I'm very pleased with tracking, and it will be better if they can fix the -1m distance bug for players, as well as the bugs in which areatrack shows vendors and other unrelated items. For example, areatrack helped me find animals for my CH friend.

You can also hit /areatrack and then /forage to make those 15 seconds of waiting a little more fruitfull. Besides tracking animals, I no longer have to /tell my friends 'location pls' if we get lost while hunting. And if they're in battle you often wait longer than 15 seconds for them to get back to you. Now you can simply go to them. Also, if you are hunting enemies it's useful if they get out of view to go lick their wounds. Now no one can hide from a ranger just by getting out of view and doing a couple switch backs.

-- YP

As master ranger it works really fine. For PVP it wills erve a purpose if you are looking for a specific player who has griefed you or owns that nasty AT-ST and you need to take them out. You can tell your team how far away he is.

Combine this with explorer misions and you will find where the highest concentration of creature you are looking for.

I don't really understand this command. It seems somewhat pointless to me. I also think it takes way way to long to find something. You do the command and stand for like a minute thinking "oook so is this doing something?" Can someone break down the differences between the different tracks, and what / how to use them appropriately.