Rifleman Archive

Since everyone like tips on xp I figured I'd share some of the things I've learned while grinding along without pets or spice. Generally I just don't bother with buffs because Ihate the downers and I get embarrassedwhen folkscatch mebehind the cantinapuking up my lunch. Plus I'm pretty lazy about finding spices, and I'm cheap and often penniless to boot. But that's me. I've just been toddling along with rifles and enjoying myself, but thingssort oftook off this weekend so I figured I'd make some observations.

My two cents:

1.Wear armor, and go easy on the specials. If you're shooting fast enough, specials are just a waste of mind. Save it up and go with good weapon on autofire. In the end you'll have less downtime, and that means more xp. Good kinetic protection is just a good idea - you're eventually going to end up with something in your face. Powerups are nice, but I find myself burning through them too quickly.

2. Do the sniping andspeed trees first. However you do it,get to that 4th box of special abilities as fast as you can. If you don't have combat xp, get yourself some grenades and learn how to bleed and run - pikets will give you upwards of 4500 combat xp if you work them well. Until your speed gets up there, grinding solo is plain slow. Once you hit the 4th box, it's a whole new ballgame. Do sniping for the accuracy and for concealment, which is a fantastic special ability for the solo player. Pulling one target at a time makes you a methodical grinding machine. No panicky running around, no incaps, just a nice steady flow of xp...

3. It doesn't always have to be pickets, huurtons, or quenkers. This weekend I was getting above 100k/hour on Naboo, hitting bolle bols, shaupaut hunters, and fambaa. All easy, and all give high xp for the effort. I suspect that every planet has a decent range of mobs to hunt for xp. So go with what you like, where you like. (that said, you can't beat Dantooine for the densityor the mission payouts)

4. Learn to love suppression fire and warning shot. It's odd that my favorite skill isn't evenfromthe rifle tree, but it's a doozy.It doesn't seemto come up oftenin this board, either, but it deserves a lot of praise. An easy pattern to get into is this: Get to 64m and kneel, start shooting. Aftera fewshots, target will spin aroundand youhit it with the suppression fire. If it sticks (about 75% of the time, it seems), target will sit there like a dope while you blaze away at it. By the time they get to you, they're pretty well cooked. I sometimes like to mix in a warning shot, just for the heck of it and to keep my distance. These two shots are your keys to controlling any extended fight, and will save you more than a few times, so give them a try.

5. Go for volume over value every time -particularly when you're starting out. Some stuff can give big xp per kill, but consider what it's going to cost you in healing, possibly getting incapped, etc. Better to kill 20 things for 2k each than 10 things for 3k each. It's up to you to figure out the best mix, but if you can't kill it with a minimum of lost ham on your part, it's probably not worth your time.

That's about it. If it matters, I started the weekend at 3/1/0/4. I played for maybe 10 hours total, finished off the sniper tree and banked 900k xpbefore I hit the cap, plus about 200k teras kasi xp. Hope it helps.

sure does..

u saying get some grenades and and do pikets. hows that ?? what grenades and how can i get 4500 combat exp per piket ?

pretty simple, but it does take some practice. Get yourself a good rifle and get yourself the worst cdef you can find - the less damage, the better. I picked one out of a treasure box that I've been using. For grenades, get c-12's by the crate. If you can, take novice commando - this gives you a little boost to thrown weapons and the certification for c-22 grenades, which are fairly heavy hitters for the price.

Go out and find your favorite target and hit it with two mind bleeds. Do mind shot 1 & 2, and peace out. When they charge you, switch to the low damage weapon and use a warningshot, then peace out immediately. It may not stick at first try, but keep at it untilit runs off in the other direction. Whenever the bleed ticks, he'll be likely to turn and charge you, or at least stop and look angry.

After you bounce it a few times, most mobs will stop running and just walk slowly towards you, bleeding all the way. You can walk ahead of it or start bleeding another one while you wait. When they bleed down to 1 mind point, toss grenades at it until it dies. If your grenades do more damage than the cdef rifle did, all the bleed xp is going to be combat xp. If you're grouped and lucky, one picket will give you about 3900 combat xpPLUS your usual 10%, which puts you in the 4 - 4.5k range for the price of a few grenades. This is a pain in the butt, but when you get good at it you can burn up the combat xp very quickly. Once you get better at it you can start doing more than one at a time, which will keep you very busy.

Another method I've read about is to bleed it and hop onto a speeder and run circles around it until it bleeds out. That's up to you - I just got used to doing the yo-yo method. It's actually a good skill to learn, anyway.

Enjoy.

Just as a side note on the bleed to death+ grenade = combat EXP thing - if you stack this with 2hand sword bleeds or Combat Medic poison/disease, you can really take things down fast. I started the Rifles tree as a skilled Combat Medic. At CM 4/0/04 I'm able to use Mindshot1 and Mindshot2 before being detected, stand up and throw Mind Poison C, and finish with the shorter range Mind Disease C. For doing very large mobs or for large groups of small mobs, I'll toss in some AoE poison/disease to make things go quicker.

Also, forgrinding combat XP, the bigger the critter is, the better. Slap a few bleeds on it and go get another.. the more you've got bleeding, the more free XP you're getting. I've found that Slinking Voritor Hunters on Dantoine are great for this, netting me 8-10K a kill. They take forever to die, though, and they hit hard if you don't stay far enough away from em.

Donca La'aru

0/0/0/2 Riflecreature

For my money nothing beats Kliknik missions on Yavin. Just need concealhsot and you can solo lairs easily. You can average 2k per Klik, with an average of 5 Kliks per mission wave, times 3 waves equals 30k plus the lair is jus icing on the cake. Oh and the missions are 12k ones too.