Ranger Archive
Thread: Making /areatrack work for you
With the number of threads complaining about /areatrack not working, I thought I'd post a small guide to how I find what I'm looking for. Any other hints/suggestions are greatly welcome. And let me know if I'm doing something wrong--I have had quite a bit of success but I'm sure I can still improve!
1. Know your planet:
This one is quite important. You cannot track something that is not there. And if you want to find the rarer creatures, you have to know where to begin. Don't go into Fort Tusken looking for krayts. You need to go to the Krayt Graveyard or one of the skeletons (the skeleton north of Wayfar has been quite good for me. Not too crowded and a reasonable number of spawns). This applies to NPCs as well. Most of the spawning in this game actually makes some sense. Creatures and NPCs spawn in their own regions. You will occasionally find a rare spawn where it doesn't belong but you shouldn't be tracking for it there anyway. It would be very useful to compile a list of this sort of stuff somewhere (hint hint). I know people have asked for the devs to give us this but there is no reason we can't make one for ourselves.
2. Know your tools:
/areatrack is not the only tracking tool you have available. Remember to bring up the area map (CTRL-M) and to zoom out your radar (I usually use 128m). It also helps to turn up your draw distance if your computer can support it. This will help you find buildings and lairs without them having to spawn creatures/NPCs first.
3. Let your group know your limitations:
Most people don't know how /areatrack works. Explaining it to them at the beginning will lead to a lot less embarrassment if you fail or mess up. Most people will understand that it is not perfect but still take you along for the help, if only because it means they can sit back and relax while you find what they need.
4. /areatrack limitations:
/areatrack will only work for creatures/NPCs/players that are already in your search radius. If there is a grand wrix lair that has yet to spawn any creatures, /areatrack will not pick it up. The search radius is only 500m. Lower skill levels don't show a direction or distance, just that the creature is within 500m. Terrain can often cause funny things to happen with /areatrack (I'm not sure exactly how it works but I find that searching from the top of a hill is usually better than searching from inside a canyon). There are some bugs that will make you miss stuff that has already spawned--you may not even see that rancor on the hill next to you.
5. Spawning:
The spawning system is a little buggy right now. The Devs are working on it. What you will find is that things won't spawn unless a player is in the area for a while. So don't just run around randomly looking for lairs. Go somewhere where the lairs should be and hang around for a bit. Lairs will eventually spawn, giving you creatures to then track. The spawn table is usually related to the number of people in the area (I believe they also need to be grouped). So bring your group along and consider putting a camp up for a bit (not entirely sure if this works, I usually run around in a small circle [couple hundred meters] to get things to come up).
6. How I actually track a creature down (an example):
First off, I will assume you have read what I said above. This method is not perfect, and probably not even the best. It is how I do things and finds me what I want more often than not. First, pick a target (or targets). In this case, I will choose Ancient Bull Rancors. Now, I know that Ancient Bull Rancors are on Dathomir. Furthermore, I know that they are most common near the trade outpost (the northern one, I think it's trade). Even more specifically, I know it is best to head west from there. Having found plenty of rancors before, I could even have a waypoint to a particularly dense region. I turn on my map (CTRL-M) and make sure my radar is set to 128m. I head a few km west. I now start running in a smallish circle (probably around 500m diameter [250m radius]). I stop every so often and do a /areatrack for creatures. I make sure to do this on top of one of the many plateus and not in a canyon. Eventually I start seeing rancors around. If I'm lucky, there will be an Ancient Bull Rancor lair and I'm done. Otherwise, I can either stay around where I am a bit (possibly hunting the normal rancors) or I can move on a bit and repeat. Hopefully I will find the Ancient Bulls I want before too long. Just a warning--/maskscent is almost useless against the Ancient Bull Rancors (and most rancors). You might be able to crawl up next to one but be careful not to run to close. Camo might be better but I haven't tried recently (from what I have heard, camo should work reasonably well on them).
Hope this helps. Let me know if you know of any way for me to improve my tracking skills. And make sure to let people know if I forgot anything.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/CH (4/4/2/4)/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
It can be used very effectively on offense to guage the strength of an enemy position without giving away your own position, and on defense it can be used to track incoming hostiles, very useful for forming intercept groups and organizing the defense.
Great post Nemo0
On another thread (http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=ranger&message.id=21857), I noticed that Dashida had a nice PvP use of tracking. It involved using the player search tool (under CTRL-P or just /who [imperial/rebel]) to locate any opposing faction members nearby (the example was an imp in Moenia). The imperial was hunted down with tracking and killed. This does give the PvP Ranger an advantage and can be used for other things as well. Tracking a lot of players nearby? Do a /who and get a bit more information on them. This can be quite helpful, especially in PvP. Very few people will know you are around until they see you. This gives you a slight edge. It would be nice if we could get this sort of information directly, though.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/CH (4/4/2/4)/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
Well, I seem to have forgotten a description of the various levels of /areatrack. As I was already a Master Ranger when this skill was added, I suggest you read the following with skepticism. I'm not sure exactly where you get what ability so this will mostly describe the different abilities that I know you get. Please correct any mistakes I make in this. I'm sure there will be plenty.
basic /areatrack:
As far as I know, the basic /areatrack just displays a list of the animals within 500m. No direction or distance or NPCs. So you will know that a durni is less than 500m away, for example.
direction:
Eventually, /areatrack will show you the direction to the target. This means that next to each tracked target it will list either N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, or NW (for North, NorthEast, etc). Now you know that the durni is somewhereSouthWest of you, for example
distance:
This means that you will see a distance in meters next to each target name. So you will know that the durni you are tracking is 100m away from you.
People:
Tracking people means you can track NPCs. So now you can find out where the [imperial/rebel] scum is. Or just your next meatlump. This is very useful for tracking bounty hunter targets and similar NPCs (i.e. force sensitives).
Players:
Now you can see where players are nearby. This will only tell you their name, direction, and distance. No faction information or titles will show up.
Hope I didn't forget anything. And I think I forgot to mention the following above: when moving towards a specific target it is sometimes helpful to try using /areatrack as you get closer. This way, the direction can be updated so that if the creature was really more north than east (but still showing as NE), you will know to turn more north later.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/CH (4/4/2/4)/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
Eclipse Server
Another question that I've seen coming up a bit recently:
Is there a way to macro /areatrack so that you don't have to select the target type in a window.
Answer: I am not aware of a method to do this and have not heard of anyone else having success in this matter. I would guess that, if it were added, the command would be something like /areatrack [people/players/creatures] or something similar.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/CH (4/4/2/4)/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
Eclipse Server
Feel free to take whatever you want out of here. It's just meant to help people track stuff down (and, hopefully, keep the number of times /areatrack questions come up to a minimum so that repetition doesn't happen too often). And, just so people know, the last patch seems like it might have corrected the creatures not spawning until you are on top of them bug. I haven't fully checked it out yet but I've been seeing slightly higher spawn rates on Dantooine.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/CH (4/4/2/4)/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
Another nice use of /areatrack:
Yesterday I happened to be doing Stormtrooper missions need Moenia. There was another player around that showed up as a blue dot on my radar. I was a little suspicious so I went off in a random direction afterward. The guy followed me for a bit and then turned around. I set up a camp to heal a bit and decided to/areatrack for players. Low and behold,my follower and another guy were close by. Then I did /areatrack for animals and found an ATST near both of them. I started evasive maneuvers and they dropped off tracking after a while. I don't know if they were going to attack me but I wasn't willing to find out. I can only assume that they would have come after me had I not avoided them. And, without a commando or grenades, I wasn't ready to take on an ATST.
Lesson learned: Use /areatrack to check for other players following you after running factional missions. It might just save your life.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/CH (4/4/2/4)/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
Eclipse Server
A little thing I have noticed with /areatrack that may be a bug (but can be quite fun). If you are inside a building, /areatrack claims to only work for outdoor environments. But if you do /areatrack outside and then walk into the building, you can select what you want to track and it will tell you what is inside. I haven't found any real uses for it yet but it can be fun to find out what NPCs are in the Emperor's Retreat and similar locations where it won't let you go all the way in without doing the missions. Then you can do /examine [name] to get a window showing the person. Can be quite fun sometimes.
Lythender Nirou
Master Ranger/Master CH/Rifleman (3/0/0/0)
Eclipse Server