Ranger Archive

It was a busy night last night. I recently changed my tag from Master Scout to Novice Ranger to Tracker. The /tells began shortly after this last change, "Do you track?"

Do I track? I generally brush aside the silliness of such a question when someone has obviously searched out a tracker profile and simply reply with a question, "What do you need to find?"

"Graul Marauders," came the response.

"Of course you do," I reply, thinking, "Yet another Jedi who wants someone else to do the leg work." Well, leg work is what we're good at, right? If there just happens to be credit in it, so much the better. "I have another obligation right now, but can you wait an hour or two?"

"Sure," he replies.

So, I spent about an hour on Talus helping a friend track down sludge panthers. It was interesting. He had hooked up with an Ithorian brawler newbie, so we had company. I had intended not to fire a shot, merely track, but that Ithorian got himself into trouble and needed a lot of support. Failure to follow instructions once again gets someone into trouble.

So, after my friend kills the panthers and heads off to parts unknown, I contact the suspected Jedi and ask if he is still interested. Of course he is; none of his Jedi friends seem to be able to find any and all he needs is two. We decide on a payment arrangement. So, it's off to the hinterlands of my home planet in search of big, leathery beasties.

I had seen a few weeks before and waypointed their location, but that turned out to be no good tonight. I covered the whole planet and never saw a single graul marauder, let alone two. That could only mean that they spawned somewhere after I had been there or were killed at another place before I got there. That is not the point of my story, however.

Toward the end of the evening, I was headed home when I paused to perform another /areatrack when I decided to investigate the sounds of combat coming from up ahead. When about 60m from the ruckus, I see a glowstick fire up. You guessed it, a Jedi was out slapping around a nest of Bols.

I watched him strike and slash and generally make a mess of the things for a few seconds, probably wouldn't even harvest them afterwards, when I get this /tell "Hey, dude, get out of here."

He proceeded to jump on his speeder and attempted to drag the things onto me. No problem, I just stand there as they rush by, intent on stomping on his head. When that tactic didn't work, he moved back to the nest and fired up his lightsaber again.

Once more, back to tracking. I perform another /areatrack, but my hopes of finding the grauls tonight have pretty well faded. Besides, my friend has called a bunch of us back to our guild town for an important announcement.

Meanwhile, the Jedi notices that I have not left and about the time I mount up and begin to pull away the /tells start flying. The gist is that I know better than to stand next to a Jedi, that I'm doing it on purpose, please don't attack me, I'm increasing his visibilty, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Would you like some Ahrisa with your w(h)ine?

I mention that not only am I not tracking him, but that I am tracking for one of his brethren, that I had no idea what was going on when I arrived at this location to track, and that perhaps he should take better care in concealing himself if he is at all concerned about "visibility." Perhaps firing up that glowstick 100m from a player town with a busy set of vendors was a lack of foresight on his part and not my problem.

I then left the area. Of course, the /tells kept coming. I wondered briefly about "visibility" and the many Jedi, dark and light alike, who stand around Coronet starport or the Mining Outpost comparing saber size. I then touch briefly on the Jedi "fight clubs" I've heard mention of and how that affects it. Whatever, I have a desire for picket steak and beer just then, so I file the episode for later retelling in front of the hearth.

Jedi...

I wish them luck in their endeavors, I hope they help to bring peace and justice back to the Galaxy, but they know going into it the consequences of walking that path. Prudence and caution should be their guides; a little planning goes a long way toward success and survival. After all, no one made the choice for them to pursue the Jedi path. This is, of course, a generalization. It applies to only one Jedi specifically.

Back at the hunting lodge all is well and we got a laugh over our steaks and beer out of the encounter, even my soon-to-be-Jedi friend. He tried to explain it all, but I just held up my hand and told him to do better when he is a Jedi.

Message Edited by tekniko on 02-23-2005 01:22 PM

Twice on Endor I've found a Jedi beating on my misson lair...

Don't they teach Jedi about named lairs?

The only plusable answer that I could come up with was - Ebay.

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agent156 wrote:
Twice on Endor I've found a Jedi beating on my misson lair...

Don't they teach Jedi about named lairs?

The only plusable answer that I could come up with was - Ebay.

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You'd be surprised how few people know about that. However, I've also seen named lairs pop up that I've determined were clearly not mission lairs, but that's when I check back on them a few times before attacking. After all, you have to be fairly close for it to spawn. (We can also /areatrack for players of course.) But the smokey green stuff always signals a mission lair, and unless it's abandoned for a good while, I don't go near it.

Some Jedi may also be surprised at how few people know about the visibility thing. My guild has several Jedi, and *I* didn't even know how it worked until recently. It's not intiuitive. (I personally think that the visibility thing is kind of messed up, but that's another thread.)

When the Jedi are within sight of a town, a POI or in the middle of a "pathway" between those areas, they can't complain if someone sees them. There's fewer and fewer areas of the galaxy for them to go without being spotted, true, but they can at least make the effort.

Message Edited by WornTraveler on 02-23-2005 05:34 PM

Jedi are the bane of my /tell hell.

I tell them now upfront, 500k for 1.5 hours of tracking your "rare jedi spawns". Payment due beforehand. They want me to help them "tank" the beast, they pay for my buffs, I keep any harvested goods. Simple as that. They don't want to pay that amount, they don't get my help, unless I'm really bored, and not busy.

I make money plenty of other ways without helping Jedi advance. They have no patience. Didn't Yoda try to teach Luke about patience?

After dealing with the 50,000 Jedi on Bria, it made the FS stuff simple for me. I just grab the Survival tree, and that's it.

Yeah, I'm fairly anti-jedi, but only because they're either totally obnoxious, think they're better than you because they have no life and spend 23 hours a day grinding, or because they bought their jedi and have no clue what they're doing.

/sigh
/end rant

The most ironic thing about the whole situation is that the Jedi worth working with/for don't need help in the first place. They've been in game and around enough to know every nook and cranny of the galaxy. One friend, who's played since launch leveled his Jedi to within 100,000 XP (out of 36.4 million, for those who don't know how long the Jedi grind is) of completing his template before he finally earned the visibility to get on the BH terminals. Same guy had lists of spawns he'd found in his travels and didn't need an ounce of help with any of his trials, including the slaying of a GKD on Tat (long before they were a common spawn like now). For anyone who's not had the pleasure of watching a Jedi try to fight a Krayt without a tank, they get torn up hard. But he used his brain, the canyon wall (for what good that did - the dragon magic-ported to the top anyway), the local city's buildings and the better part of an hour and did it. He's a guy I'd proudly fight alongside at any time, and always come to his aid.

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Bassnet13 wrote:
The most ironic thing about the whole situation is that the Jedi worth working with/for don't need help in the first place.
For anyone who's not had the pleasure of watching a Jedi try to fight a Krayt without a tank, they get torn up hard. But he used his brain, the canyon wall (for what good that did - the dragon magic-ported to the top anyway), the local city's buildings and the better part of an hour and did it. He's a guy I'd proudly fight alongside at any time, and always come to his aid.

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I have dealt with a very few Jedi with whom I would purposely deal again. However, there are some who live up to the semi-mythical Jedi reputation.

I was hunting last night when a friend of mine sent a /tell asking if I wanted to hunt giant krayts. I told him I would be there as soon as I finished what I was doing, but I was unbuffed and we would probably need friends. He replied that he had been tossing mind poisons at one, but that he lost sight of it.

Soloing a krayt? What was he thinking? Lost sight of it? Well, OK. I said I'd be right there. What in the world was he doing out there alone tossing things at a big lizard, anyway? Krayts are not known for their sense of humor. It turned out that he had stumbled upon the beast and had hit it with poisons before running away to call for backup.

I performed a quick /areatrack when I arrived at his location and discovered that the giant beast was sunning itself a few hundred meters away, apparently trying to recover from the headache it had sustained from the poisons.

We moved to about 100m of the thing and then we crawled into rifle range. I had camo'd my partner, so we should be safe for a while if we were cautious. I began to pummel it in the head with my T-21 from the top of a nearby ridgeline and my partner would heal me as I got low. Let's hear it for /concealshot and combat medic! This was going to take a while.

Then, without warning, these two people on swoops came screaming over the ridge, leapt from their speeders, and engaged the thing at point blank range. "Jedi Knight" read the tags above their heads.

"Hey," said my friend, "someone is trying to steal our Krayt."

"Yeah," I replied, "you might as well engage the thing now." I expected glowsticks to ignite at any moment and we wouldn't have much time after that. Frankly, I was happy for the assistance, since I was sure that our camo would be broken sooner or later.

But, those lightsabers never did ignite. These two kept the thing intimidated and busy while I pummeled it with mindshot and my partner flung more poisons at it. They had obviously done this before. Granted, it took a lot longer than when you have 30 heavily armored thugs with lightsabers, T-21s, flamethrowers, and rocket launchers attacking a krayt from all sides, but we finally brought the beast down, four of us, at least two of us unbuffed. Words could not express my awe.

Afterwards, I set up a field base and the two Jedi came over to rest at one side of the camp. They never spoke a word, but healed themselves, gave a nod and a wave, then departed as quickly as they had arrived. We just sat there in silence for a bit, occasionally glancing at the giant corpse nearby.

Those were two very impressive Jedi, with whom I would deal again and whom I would be proud to call allies. They understood combat and the effective use of force (Force?). Most impressive.