Scout Archive

I was having significant problems with maskscent since the big patch. When the patch was pushed out I was at 4/4/4/3 working on that last bit of survival XP. My maskscent was a huge liability. It was breaking on low level creatures. 50% of the time it would cause the creature to agro from great distance out. Also, i was never granted an ounce of scout XP from maskscent. Well finally leveled that last bit of survival XP and made master scout. As soon as I leveled I went out and applied maskscent. It now works as it should. I was running around on Dath and receiving good XP from all ranges of creatures such as voritors, quenkers and the like. Maskscent held many times as i passed a lair of reds but was not fool proof. I was detected 3 times in the course of an hour. One time as i tried to tame a savage quenker but i had already tried 3 tames so i new the 4th try would be risky. Since leveling fixed my maskscent problem I am wondering if something with the database is not corrupted until u level and the problem gets fixed. The problem seems to be erradic among different scouts. Has anyone one else found this to be true. That leveling actually fixes your maskscent?

Romeo,

It's just possible that the increased maskscent modifier made it more workable. All the skills in the game increase in utility as you move up higher - this may be one.

But it does deserve some scrutiny.

B

I would agree that leveling to master should provide some enhancement in the maskscent ability but to go from something that didnt mask, gave no XP and agroed half the time to what I have now seems more like a bug than just the enhancementfrom leveling. Just one of the reasons i call it BUGFIN!!

If you remember, we used to get xp from maskscent but then the devs changed it so that we got no xp and it always broke. I find now that I'm a ranger with almost 3 boxes in my wayfaring that my maskscent works so much better and keeps me from being broken by relatively high lvl creatures, which, I think is as it should, plus it lasts much longer.

I'm glad that they decided to give us back the xp aspect to to. I personally feel that this skill works very well and am happy at the changes that have been implemented.

I am a Bothan with scout 4/1/4/2 and like Romeo had my maskscent breaks all the time and I have yet to get any XP from it. I am going the CH/BE route with pistoleer so I dont have any points left to hit master scout.

This maskscent breaking is a big problem since I cannot tame high level aggro mobs. I shouldn't have to master scout to use maskscent effectively. And if thats the way they want it, then the requirements for CH and BE should be master scout. Until they change something though, I continue to bug it everyday.

It may just be a Bothan thing and if you level things are fixed but in my position I cant level in scout anymore. I know its not everyone having this problem since some people say its working for them. Its just frustrating right now since I'm a CH/BE and cant tame any high lvl aggros and get close enough to sample them.

Hes on Dath, I was on Dantooine and Im a master scout and my mask scent is still failing horribly bad. I was detected 3 times in a row then slain as a result. It seems every patch they work on this they go to the opposite end of the spectrum everytime. At first it was good, then they changed it was horribly bad, then they changed again when they did the biz natch nerf, I could walk through 20 reds at master scout and was a cinch, now again I get detected averaging 1 out of every 4 reds, sometimes more. Why cant they just get a happy medium here. Holo wants us not to vent and try to work on these things but this sucks, I have /bug every week since launch of 5 different bugs and to this day none have been fixed.

He acts like they are trying well th customer service here sucks. When I send en email about a bug to try and get someone else to be aware what do I get, fill out a /bug, duh been doing that since launch.

You ever burst run into water it stops your burst run and warps you back 30 meters, /bug that also of course no fix.

Dont get me wrong I love playing, love it alot and think they have a great opportunity to go for #1 and maybe someday beat EQ. But until they work out the customer service and many many bugs still left from beta there will also be way to many people yelling(will never get rid of all of them)

It just seems 50% of their efforts are working on old bugs and 50% of them on the new bugs they create.

If you can here me Devs please dont let this turn out to be another MCO and let this die, its too good to waste away in the SOE vault. Forget LucasArts those idiots and get some players to help make this better.

Sorry to go on so long. Thank you for looking. Got a melon for the first FS person

I'm fairly new to the game, and even newer to Exploration IV. I am also mainly a miner, and don't really get out into the wild bush on Dantooine and Lok. But my maskscent seems to work.

I'm not sure how the developers want to see this skill working. The only thing I know for sure is that they don't want it to work against sentients (NPC's). I'm not sure if they have ever posted or published anything further on it. We can only deduce that they don't want the skill to be 100% failure proof. They want the MOB's to have a chance to break maskscent.

About the toughest thing I run into are Tatooinian bocatts and the like. And maskscent doesn't work for them all the time. Right now, I'm getting scouting xp in a range of 9pts with a successful maskscent roll against a kreetle, up to 101pts against a Dune Lizard. Bocatts give me 66pts.

I don't have enough data to know what the failure stats are. I don't make it a practice to run through their spawning grounds. But I know that it doesn't work all the time, even against kreetles. According to the skills descriptions in the game, the only skill that improves your maskscent ability (roll) is Exploration. It's the only thing that adds +(XX) points to maskscent. Therefore, logic would suggest that, once you reach Exploration IV, that's as good as it's going to get. Note: I could be mistaken here. Master Scout and some of the Elite skills may add modifiers as well. I'll look when I log in this morning.

My maskscent was working well a couple of weeks ago, but over the past week it has been failing terribly - even to babies that I haven't tried to tame. I'm a Master Scout with +100 in this skill, so I expect something better. Upping Wayfaring as a Ranger helps you hide better but it has no effect on your maskscent since it applies to the new Conceal skill instead.

What's really bizarre is that I usually run around with a friend who has EXP-4 (+70 to maskscent) but not Master Scout, and his maskscent Never Fails! It wears off sooner, but it is always my maskscent that breaks. We are sometimes grouped, sometimes not, and we alternate taking the lead. It doesn't matter - mine always breaks even though I've got 30 more points in it than he has. And don't tell me it's just cause Wookies smell bad! This sounds like a bug to me...

By the way, at several boxes into Ranger I've gotten a total of <500 exp from mask scent - cumulative - from the beginning at Novice Scout on up. I would be happy though if the skill would at least work reliably.

I gave up ranger cuase after the patch the ranger explore gave camo skill not mask scent, that goes to the new camo kits they can make. And I tried them, they work less than my mask scent. But your 100% right abotu a week or 2 ago, my fails so bad I normally dont use it cuase I try to avoid them now cuase im worried about being attacked, sad another wasted skill in the game. Holo you listening, nope

I have noticed weird things with markscent again. Sometimes I get exp for it, sometimes I don't, and in this case I get no message and I get attacked. Or when it works I am finally detected with no creature on the radar. So still not fixed I think...

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Savvaqet wrote:

What's really bizarre is that I usually run around with a friend who has EXP-4 (+70 to maskscent) but not Master Scout, and his maskscent Never Fails! It wears off sooner, but it is always my maskscent that breaks.

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I've noticed the exact same problem. Ran all over Yavin and Endor with a friend who has explore 4, and me with Master Scout (not any ranger at all). His maskscent broke maybe 4 or 5 times, and didn't usually end in tragedy. Mine broke several dozen times and got me attacked by nearly every evil critter on the planet. Prior to the recent changes my maskscent was noticably more effective than his, now it's flopped.

I'm happy for those of you who found maskscent working better at master than at exp 4, just wish it worked that way for me.