Scout Archive

Here are my observations so far:

• Maskscent -A two-fold problem. The auto-detect of yellow mobs seems to be fixed, but at the cost of ever gaining any XP. This needs a looking into. I tried running, walking and crawling at 50, 40, 30 and 20 meter distances and never received any XP. I did find that I could make a beeline to anywhere with MS on since yellows no longer auto-detect/auto-shutdown MS.


• Explorer Missions - I have only tried the Hunting style missions. Fun for the first five minutes until I realized that there are no areas where certain critters hang out. It would be interesting to see roving herds or migrating packs similar to resource shifts. Random spawns are OK for general hunting, but its the luck of the draw as to when you will find the animals you need to complete the mission. Overall, this does have a lot of to offer than the standard "Find lair-Kill critters-Get money" missions.


• Mission Reward - I am 10k from Rifle Specialist and I have seen a drop of over $1000 in standard mission rewards. A mild set back that will hopefully be replaced by Explorer Mission potential.

Now for some non-Scout changes that I noticed:

• Headshot 2 - This has definatly gained some fire power. I am not invinceable by any means, but I can do a bit more damage per shot. More testing required for hard numbers.


• Mail Icon - The mail icon now flashes when you have mail. I don't remember it doing this pre-patch so if it did I suppose I need to be more observant


• Interface Colors - There seem to have been some mild tweeking to the interface colors. The number of charges for items in the hotbar are now white ( good ). Items that are equipped, whether they be in your inventory or on the hotbar, now havea black background ( bad ). This makes them hard to see, especially on the hotbar.

Overall, I feel that the changes are going in the right direction. It's too bad that most changes have come over from TC with some many bugs. Hopefully, a hotfix or two will solve these issues.

AB- your right and if that was the true cap for the camp 1900 and hour wouldn't be bad,though it is only about 300 more than prepatch,but as I posted earlier the camp dosn't cap at that. I recieved 657 in fifteen minutes with 7 visitors. So there is a problem with the camp never reaching its full xp potential

I haven't tested out the camps yet but I have done a lot with maskscent.

I tried running around on Corellia and Dantooine, skirting red MOBS and sometimes just running through them. Not once did I ever get a point from maskscent. I was attacked a few times but there was never a message that maskscent had failed. Hopefully this bug will be fixed soon!

I was examining creatures outside of town and noticed resist numbers no longer showed, Anyone else seen this?

I am a master scout btw, but I admit the creatures I tested on were low level creatures (did not have much time) Resists might only be showing if the creature actually has some, anyone confirm this?

Things affecting me as a scout post patch,

Some of these concerns might be addressed to the marksman or rifleman rep, but I think because they directly affect my scouting exp and because I'm more familiar with this board I'll post them here.

1) The search lair option is great, but it would be nice if we could get some samples that actually helped us as scouts. Most creatures build their layer out of sticks, hair, bone fragments, hides... why can't we get those rather then "Bat Specimens." Or can we at least be able to use these specimens like we use fish, turn them into bait of some sort? or use them as organic matter?

2) Where'd my rifle specs go? I went to check my rifle to see if the patch affected my firing rate/damage/etc. The damage listing is COMPLETELY Missing. How can I tell the difference between my primary and the one I want to sell now? Get the point?

3) Several camping issues... A) my camp doesn't prevent creatures who spawn where I'm camped from aggroing on me. I killed a Gungan outcast then camped for some quick healing and trap building. While crafting the Gungan was re-spawned right on top of me. luckily you can initiate combat when crafting so I managed to take the guy out. I had to leave camp to do it though. when I returned to camp it had taken away my abililty to disband it.. which is issue B) I leave a camp for a second either to defent or whatever, I come back and the camp is no longer mine. C) still getting the too close to lair bit when no lair is visible for upto 128 res on the radar. I have a recommended camping fix... see bellow.

4) if a creature bleeds to death with mind shot... I can't harvest from it.

5) Maskscent?

6) NPCs like my Gungan friend above... aren't dropping anything! Why am I killing these things when I don't even get creds off them! (Well that is besides for the sake of protecting myself.)

7) Despite not having Artisan skills... all NPCs spawned in the field (like Philosophers) send me on missions to survey. Why can't they offer a scout hunting missions? I end up turning them down only to be offered more surveying missions.

Things I'm most excited about...

1) when I log off I don't get booted to my desktop... I go back to the galaxy select screen!!! YAY that means no more sitting through the intro.

2)

3) while dropping a capper warren today the last thing that spawned from it was an "Irrate Capper Matriarch" no stronger then anything in the lair upto that point, but more hides.

4) I still don't have to insure anything.

5) while dropping that gungan NPC, it was clear Iwas gonna win the shoot out, he started yelling "Not good, Not good!"

6) looking forward to trying these hunting missions.

7) Cool adjustments to the ui...

Explorer missions:

The missions are interesting but I have noticed that creatures now don't have as many lairs as they used to making the missions more difficult. I would suggest a tracking skill at hunting 4 that would allow you to track like survey for the creatures the you are hunting. Without a tracking skill I dont see why people would hunt 45 sentry hermit spiders with 2 per lair if you can find a lair. Completing one of these missions will take days. Also they nerfed regular missions I can get best 1100cr for a mission. Now with that said I can finish 7 regular missions easier then I can do an Explorer mission worth 7000cr. I dont see any reason that I would do the explorer missions now. They look good at first but after examining them and the new spawn and lair population they are a much lower return for your time. Only if a tracking skill can be included will these missions become equal to regular missions.

Camps:

I have noticed an increase in the Wilderness XP and have to say I like it.

Maskscent:

I have notice the changes in maskscent and like the changes the mask stays active much longer and I evade more hostile creatures. I havent seen any increase in the scouting xp when in the area of hostile creatures though.

Huh.

Okay, I admit I am not a master scout yet (4/4/4/3), but please forgive me delight when I received survival xp from a multiperson camp that I put up for around 5 minutes. It never did that before! So, it seems that they fixed a bug that I was experiencing where I would set up a camp and receive no xp. Y'all should have heard the sigh of relief when I realized that it won't take forever to get me to Master Scout.

As for masked scent, I haven't noticed any difference: I'm fairly successful at running past a group of red aggro nasties on Corellia and remaining ignored while gaining scouting XP.

As for the mission amoutn decrease, I don't have a problem with it. It was only three or four days ago that I went from 1.8k missions to 3.3k missions (a surprising jump), so going to missions of 1.2k - 1.5k isn't so painful for me.

Explorer missions are... they don't pay enough. I can do a paralope mission for, say, 700cr or so. It took me three paralope lairs in order to get the 1.2kcr explorer mission completed. They should pay more due to the increased difficulty. Instead of having this nice shiny beacon to say "here I am! here I am!" that the regular missions do, one has to trek around for a long period of time.

Can it be possible to have one or two explorer missions and two general missions? That might be kind of cool. Then again, I think it would be nice to have categories of missions. Explorer, general, faction, NPC missions are limited to two each.

Maybe?

It appears that sometimes thrown traps are being ignored. I threw maybe 40-50 tonight, and about half a dozen times I recieved no confirmation as to whether or not the trap was effective. In none of these cases did the creature appear affected by the trap. I was using mostly phecnacine (sp?) darts. Anyone else notice this?

I just got on to Bloodfin a little bit earlier and here are the changes that I have noticed so far.

Maskscent- Seems to be more successful against aggro creatures, I had a few Spineflap Guards fly right over the top of me without noticing. However, once I moved out of range, I got no xp for it. Not to say that i am suprised, as I have never recieved xp for maskscent.

Camps- Haven't had time to really experiment with the xp vs. time yet, but I thought that higher level camps were supposed to have a higher health modifer. I set up my single camp vs. my multiperson and the modifer was the same on both .65. Could be that the modifer dosent go up until improved camp kit, so i could be wrong about this.

Explorer Missions- I'm definitly on board with these. My main concern is that the further you travel from any towns, the less creatures and lairs there seem to be. You would think that you would run into more wildlifethe furthergot out into the mountains and plains. The money seems to be right, you just have to be willing to hit refresh a few times. Right now I'm running one mission for senturyhermit spiders that pays about 6800, and one for nargalath cubs that pays about 6300. I just need to find some now.

KBear Lightrunner

Bloodfin

I have also thrown several traps that gave no confirmation of hit or miss.

I have tried an explore mission as they are more lucrative (and it seems as the payout on the destroy missions was cut back) - mine was to kill 45 hermit spiders. It works well to go to the destroy missions and find a hermit spider layer each time, took about 7 destroy missions to get the explore mission done.

I've also notice, unrelated to scouting persay, faction point called "townpeople faction" when I killed a thug in town and got negative "thug faction". I done know how these faction points work, but I am glad to be on the side of townpeople in their ongoing battle against the thugs.

Frog,

Those faction points aren't new - been there fora while.

I've got about -3900 Thug points now.

B

Zicx Bomb Quest is bugged on the final step

I noticed the same thing though, in regards to the faction points.

Previously, even after killing MANY npcs, (all agro ) I still only had rebel listed in my personal page...

Now the instant I logged on, killed a thug outside my house, and behold! Townspeople and thug faction have appeared!! Who knows..

By the way, the exclamation mark that appears above the npcs, this signifies a mission? As there have been npcs that I have seen that I can converse with, but dont have the mark...