Scout Archive

This is version 5.0 of my From Novice to Master Scout guide. Star Wars Galaxies is now two years old, and the number of changes the game has seen has rendered 80% of my previous Scout Guide obsolete. The Combat Upgrade has turned even the saltiest of us old veterans into greenhorns overnight.

While I've been playing SWG and Scouting for as long as the game has been out, I'm not perfect. If I've made any mistakes here, please post and let me know so I can correct 'em!

My sincere thanks go out to the thousands of dedicated Scouts who post on the SWG Scout Forums. I’ve liberally sprinkled your ideas throughout this guide, as your help has been critical in keeping this information accurate and informative. Thank you all so much for your assistance.

If you are new to Scouting, read this guide – it’ll answer most of your questions. If you’re an old hat to Scouting, read it again. You may learn something new from the latest version.

Brisc Rubal
June 27, 2005

INTRODUCTION

So you want to be a Master Scout? Excellent choice.

I’m sure you’ve read your manual and the maybe even some of the guides on the profession you’ve found online. I’m sure you’re thinking "how hard can it be? All I’ve got to do is wander around the woods killing everything that I see!"

Well, you’re half right.

Having earned the title of Master Scout after 11 grueling days in July of 2003 hunting across the wilds of Naboo, I wanted to commemorate the event by aiding all of you novice Scouts who go to sleep at night dreaming of earning the title of Master by providing some insights into things I’ve found that work.

Since I began my SWG career in July, I've played and replayed all of the different professions that I've enjoyed, taken part in PvP, led a guild in victory in the GCW, switched factions (twice), mastered a Pilot profession, moved houses four times, join two new guilds, discovered I'm force sensitive, and met some great people. My experience in the game has touched on nearly every profession, crafting to combat. I hope that some of the lessons I've learned will aid you in making the game more enjoyable. Remember - SWG (as with any MMO) is only as good as you make it. No matter what is done with the game, you get out of it what you put in.

I’ve broken down this guide into the topics that I wished I had some help on while I was out hunting. I hope this is easy to read, and I also hope that it will answer most of your questions about becoming a Master Scout and how to survive out there in the field.

THE BASICS OF SCOUTING
(Skip this if you’re already a Scout or have read my Novice Scouting guide)

For an overview of what you need to know as Novice Scout or new player to Star Wars: Galaxies, please see "Brisc Rubal's Guide to Novice Scouting". This can be found can be found at the top of the SWG Scout Forum.

So what’s the point? Why become a scout? Simple - you are one of the few nearly self-sufficient folks out in the galaxy. You can do nearly everything you want by yourself, you are an indispensable part of any group (if you choose to join one), and you are the basis for the most popular elite professions.

Scouts have a number of skills that make them critical characters: We can create camps, allowing people to heal and rest up out in the field. We have the ability to harvest bones, meat and hides out in the field - which are always in high demand by nearly every major crafting profession. We have the ability to use traps to slow down creatures and help bring them down quickly. As we progress through higher levels, we can mask our scent to skirt around dangerous animals and aid in milking or DNA sampling (if you are a Bio-Engineer), we get a bonus to our burst running, and we increase our speed up and down steep mountains and cliffs. If you think running fast isn’t that important - try hunting Nightsisters on Dathomir with no Terrain Negotiation skills.

STARTING EQUIPMENT

As a starting scout, you’ll need a couple of things. First and foremost, get yourself a weapon (we’ll get more into this later). After that, make sure you’ve got a generic crafting tool. You can’t make traps and camps without one. If you can afford one, pick up a Weapons, Droid and General crafting tool instead. You’ll need one of these to be able to make a "design schematic" for use in factories (if you want to make crates of traps and camps for convenience sake).

As a starting scout, you’ll be able to make the lowest level traps (Wire Mesh and Lecepanine), and the Basic Camp. Once you get out in the field and start killing animals, you’ll get the materials you’ll need in order to build these traps and camps.

Always have some traps and some camps available. You’ll never know when you might need them.

We'll talk more about weapons, armor and combat professions a little later on.

DOWNSIDES TO THE SCOUT PROFESSION

The largest downside to scouting is simply that nearly everyone has the novice scout skill. And with the advent of harvesting foods, mask scent foods, and harvesting droids, many folks don't bother much past novice scout, or a few boxes in the hunting tree. But it is important to remember that there are more benefits to Scouting than just harvesting. But, as with anything in SWG, what you get out of Scouting is based more on your goals and your personal play style than anything else.

There are many players who do not choose scouting, but have it forced upon them. Some of the most popular hybrid and elite professions, namely Bounty Hunter, Creature Handler, Ranger and Squad Leader, all require significant scouting experience. So many who aren’t on a path to become Master Scouts will be crowding you for XP. Don’t worry - you can still make it.

Also, please keep in mind - Scouting is a NOVICE profession. It's skills are designed to give you a good grounding in the game and in the PvE (player versus environment) style of game play. It will not make you the best PvPer (player versus player), nor will it give you the ability to cut wide swaths through every creature you come across. But it will give you the starting point to select professions that will enable you to do those things. Many of the best PvP and PvE templates in the game have Scouting as a primary component.

COMBAT AND SCOUTING – CHOOSING A COMBAT PROFESSION

The Combat Upgrade has rendered much of this discussion obsolete. With the changes introduced in CU, there is much greater versatility for Scouts out there than ever before. And now, more than ever before, the choice of a combat profession is really up to you. There is no "best" combat profession, but in terms of Scouting, most of the Master Scouts and Rangers I've spoken with prefer ranged combat to melee combat post-CU.

Ranged Combat

There are three major ranged combat professions - Rifles, Pistols and Carbines. Some of the elite "hybrid" professions, such as Smuggler, Bounty Hunter and Commando, require portions or all of the marksman skill set, so they can be included under these headings.

Each of the ranged professions has a different end purpose in mind. Pistoleer, Carbineer and Smuggler are primarily "crowd control" professions, allowing you to take on a large number of creatures at the same time. Rifleman is the primary damage dealer of the ranged crowd, followed by Commando. Bounty Hunters are the primary "tanking" ranged class, meaning they are able to absorb damage and still stay up.

Of these classes, I would suggest a Rifleman/Bounty Hunter or Bounty Hunter/Commando hybrid for combat professions. They give you the ability to wear the heaviest armor without penalty, and they can dish out a large amount of damage in the shortest amount of time.

However, if you're leveling Scout, I would suggest trying out all of the ranged professions to find which one suits your playstyle the best.

I would also suggest that you take the time to read through that profession’s forums. There is plenty of good information there, much more than I can put into this guide.

Melee Combat

There are four primary melee combat professions – unarmed, one-handed sword, two-handed sword and polearm. You graduated from these to the Teras Kasi, Fencer, Swordsman and Pikeman elite professions.

Melee professions are much different than their ranged partners, but they are just as viable for Scouts as a ranged profession. Similiarly to the ranged professions, each melee profession has a different role. Teras Kasi and Pikemen are the "tanks", Fencers and Swordsman are good at dealing damage, with each having one particular skill they are best at.

Swordsman, however, is still the best for a Scout - anything that helps take down critters fast is going to be a benefit to the leveling Scout. Again, if you're leveling both at the same time, test each one out and figure out what best fits your playstyle.

OTHER COMPLIMENTARY PROFESSIONS

Medic

In my previous guides, I admonished everyone to take Medic to assist in healing. Well, that's not as necessary now, with low level medpacks available to everyone. At the very least, make sure you've got a crate of good stims when you're out in the wild.

If you're new to the game, I would still suggest that you try medic - it may be something you'd like to do down the road.

Artisan

Having novice artisan helps to round out your initial skill set. Being able to survey and sample for resources gives you the ability to make some of the higher end traps that require metal and polymer that you can’t get by foraging. You don’t really need to advance very far in this field to get the benefits.

So here’s the tip: Pick up a combat skill, medic, and artisan to round out your scout. Remember, if you don’t want one of them, you can always ditch it later - you'll definitely have to as your advance in the skill trees of the hybrid and elite professions.

The implementation of the CL system has only reinforced the question of what planet should you be hunting on. Any of the starter planets are good. You want to be hunting creatures that are within one or two creature levels of your character. The best rule of thumb is that white and yellow con creatures are the best.

This is particularly important when it comes to leveling trapping (although it is currently bugged), where you won't get the XP necessary to level if you aren't hidding creatures within your level range.

In terms of making the decision as to which starter planet to level on, the choice is up to you - all of the starter planets (Naboo, Tatooine, Corellia, Talus) are fine. I’m partial to my home planet of Naboo. The wildlife is plentiful, the views are spectacular, and there are enough low level spots for leveling that you can move very quickly up the lower tier combat boxes as well as the lower tier Scout boxes.

The advanced planets will enable you to move much more quickly through the Exploration, Hunting and Survival. But be careful - many of the planets out there, like Dathomir, Lok, Endor and Yavin 4, are not places to go alone as a new player. The starting worlds, like Tatooine, Corellia, Naboo and Talus, are excellent for beginning, seasoned and Master Scouts. Player Cities have also made hunting in the wild much easier, as you will be very hard pressed to not find a safe haven in the wilderness on a buildable planet - if you look hard enough.

Personally, I never needed to step foot off Naboo to make Master Scout. This may not be the best thing for you, especially if the exploration bug has infected you. Since I first wrote this guide, I've visited every planet and hunted on them all. Of the starter worlds, I find that Talus and Naboo are the best, as they both are not nearly as crowded as Corellia and Tatooine. You'll find more pristine, less traveled areas on these two planets then on the others. Player cities make finding pristine areas even harder, but those two planets still have the greatest amount of green space.

For the upper end planets, my two favorites have been Dathomir and Yavin 4. Both have high level mobs, good mon(k)ey making opportunities and because of nature of the planets you rarely deal with large crowds of people. However, some of the planets generally experience more lag than others. Dantooine is notorious for lag.

SCOUTING EXPERIENCE – TYPES AND DISCUSSION

With the removal of the old style "Survival" XP from the game, there are two major types of XP that are important to scouts.

First, is "Scouting" XP. This is used to get you through the Exploration, Hunting and Wilderness Survival skill trees.

Scout XP

NOTE: Hunting, Exploring and Survival use the SAME types of XP. So when you train up Explore 1, you lose the XP you had towards

Hunting 1. You’ll need to earn the same amount over to train up your other two skills. I didn’t realize this until my first training session.

Scouting XP is the easiest XP to get. You can get it one of two ways. One way is to kill an animal and harvest the meat, bones or hide. Different size and different types of animals create different amounts of XP. The general rule of thumb is the tougher the victim (meaning, the higher the creature level), the greater the XP. The other way to get XP is by using /maskscent, a skill you gain after reaching Exploration 2. I’ll talk about /maskscent in the “Scout Skills and Modifiers” section.

Which is better to train first? This is a debatable topic, but I favor Exploration. First, exploration gives you the ability to run faster up hills, and also gives you increases to your burst run ability. These are important, and very useful. You also getaccess to /maskscent, which provides you with another means of gaining Scout XP, which you don’t get by moving up the ranks in Hunting. Hunting helps you in harvesting animals, and in determining which are dangerous and which are docile, as well as which are likely to kill you when you attack them, and so on. You'll increase the amount of hide and bone you take off an individual creature and you'll also get a creature to-hit bonus. But the downside is that training up hunting never will give you a new means of gaining XP. No matter what your opinion is on Mask Scent, it does provide you an extra means of making XP and this puts it over the top in my opinion. You can increase your creature harvesting through use of a droid or using Veghash to make up for the difference until you go up that tree. Survival is important for other professions, but you'll gain more value leveling it

last.

Trapping XP

As a scout, you get a number of schematics that let you build traps – we’ll talk about each trap in a moment. These help to disable and slow down animals by affecting their HAM pools, or their ability to move, or giving them a “state”. This is one of the easiest forms of XP to get. You simply craft the traps, and lob them at your target. If they hit and take effect, you get the XP. Additionally, you can lob more than one type of trap at any single victim - meaning that, for example, if you have the ability to craft 6 traps, you can gain 6 times the XP for every animal that you attack at a minimum.

In addition to the ability to get easy XP, you also get Scout XP for crafting traps.

Traps also are useful in helping to take down creatures that you normally couldn’t take out. Make good use of them!

THE BIGGEST MISTAKE PEOPLE MAKE WHEN USING TRAPS....is to try and trap something that is totally above their trapping skill. Now

that many people with master-level weapons skills are mastering Scout for whatever reasons, they've been having serious trouble with trapping. Here's a handing dandy trap leveling guide, courtesy of GrandPop from the Scout boards:

Novice scout - CL 5
Trapping 1 - CL 10
Trapping 2 - CL 20
Trapping 3 - CL 30
Trapping 4 - CL 40
Master scout - CL 50

Trap Types (This is from the in-game listing of the trap ... obviously its changed)

Adhesive Mesh - A trap containing some form of compressed mucilage based adhesive. This trap is thrown at a target creature. If the adhesive mesh successfully traps the creature, the target will become immobile for a short time and will suffer significant damage to its action pool.

Glow-Juice Trap – A small container of natural bioluminescent liquid. Splashing the target with this material has the effect of making the target more visible to ranged combatants, reducing the target’s defense against ranged attacks.

Phecnacine Dart - A small Phecnacine tranquilizer delivery system. This object is thrown at a target in combat. When it strikes something, it releases a thin mist of poison. The poison will cause the target's movement to slow significantly.

Stink Bomb - A small container filled with the natural musk of an animal. The musk has a repellent smell and can cause a target to become distracted. This has the effect of making the target more vulnerable to status effects like stun or intimidate.

Glow-Wire Trap - Similar to the wire mesh trap, but this trap has been enhanced. The wire mesh has been strengthened and treated

with a bioluminescent goo. The target will become more vulnerable to both melee and ranged attacks.

Wire Mesh Trap - A small canister packed with a fine and somewhat sticky mesh. When it strikes the target, the mesh entangles

them making movement more difficult. This has the effect of reducing the target's defense against melee attacks.

Lecepanine Dart - A small dart delivery system, ingeniously crafted from natural organics. The tip is coated with a light Lecepanine poison. This object is thrown at a target in combat. If it hits, the poison will cause the target to become drowsy and slightly confused. This has the effect of making the target dizzy as well as causing a slight decrease in the target's mind and action pools. This weapon cannot kill and only works on animals.

Noise Maker - A special device that emits annoying noises. When thrown at a creature by a sufficiently skilled scout, the trap will cause the target to become stunned. The raw shock of the noise will also cause a large amount of damage to the target's mind pool.

Sharp Bone Spur - A spur fashioned from natural organics. A knowledgeable scout can throw this at an enemy creature, placing it in a perfect spot to cause pain. This has the effect of damaging both the creature's health and mind. However, the effects are never fatal.

If you're new to SWG and just leveling a Scout, buy an older Scout a Jawa Beer and ask him about "Survival XP".

It's about the same reaction you'd get if you slap a Stormtrooper.

MACROS AND HELPFUL TRICKS

These macros and helpful little tricks of the trade should make your experience scouting and levelling less frustrtating.

Harvesting Macros

As a scout, it helps to setup harvesting macros – you’ll be doing a lot of harvesting. Do this by going into your skills sheet (CTRL-A), clicking on macros and typing in the command. I have used three harvesting macros:

/harvest meat
/harvest hide
/harvest bone
/loot

Having these readily available will speed up the harvesting process, and help keep other scouts from stealing your kills if they are quicker than you in the group. Most of them won’t have a macro setup and you can beat them to the punch. Throwing loot in there ensures that if the creature has something that you can loot - like teeth and bile off a Rancor, or armor segments or pearls off of a Krayt - you'll get them too.

The Alias Function

This is a little trick that makes using macros a bit easier. Instead of using the quickbar for your harvesting macro, set it up with an “alias”. For example – if you want to type “/LL” to loot and harvest a creature, go ahead and make your harvest macro. Name it “harvest”.

Then, type this: “alias LL /macro harvest”.

This will set the “LL” command to equal your harvest macro. It saves time and space on your quickbar.

Any of your macros can be aliased, as can any command in the game.

Trapping Macro

This is an easy macro that helps with trapping. In order for it to work, you’ve got to set up each of your traps or camps in a quick bar slot. It doesn’t have to be your primary – anyone will work.

Write out this macro and place it in your first quickbar slot. (F1 – this is considered toolbarSlot00 to the system). Then add in other slots for your traps:

/ui action toolbarSlot01;
/ui action toolbarSlot02;
/ui action toolbarSlot03;
/ui action toolbarSlot04;
/ui action toolbarSlot05;
/ui action toolbarSlot06;
/ui action toolbarSlot07;
/ui action toolbarSlot08;
/ui action toolbarSlot09;
/ui action toolbarSlot10;
/ui action toolbarSlot11;

For each quick bar slot from F2 - F12, drag a trap up there. Now, each time you hit F1, you’ll queue each of those traps up in your attack queue, and rack up the trapping XP.

You can also use the alias command for this as well.

Camp/Trap Crafting Macro

This little macro will help out when you're grinding through those camps (or any other crafting profession). It does take a bit of tweaking to get working perfectly.

The macro I am providing here is setup so that it allows you to craft anywhere – even if you are using a Weapons/Droid/General Crafting tool and are near a crafting station.

This is designed to use the last 4 slots on the bottom row of one of your toolbars, and requires 4 crafting tools. The last slot at the end is for the macro.

The part that requires tweaking is figuring out exactly which schematic on your datapad is your camp (or trap – if you’re using traps to grind) schematic. Ballpark the number, and then add or subtract until you figure out exactly which schematic is the one you want.

/ui action toolbarSlot20;
/selectDraftSchematic 10;
/pause 5;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/createPrototype practice no item;
/createPrototype;
/pause 2;
/ui action toolbarSlot21;
/selectDraftSchematic 10;
/pause 5;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/createPrototype practice no item;
/createPrototype;
/pause 2;
/ui action toolbarSlot22;
/selectDraftSchematic 10;
/pause 5;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/createPrototype practice no item;
/createPrototype;
/pause 2;
/ui action toolbarSlot23;
/selectDraftSchematic 10;
/pause 5;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/nextCraftingStage;
/createPrototype practice no item;
/createPrototype;
/pause 2;
/ui action toolbarSlot19

This will speed up your camp crafting tremendously. All you’ve got to do is make sure you’re fast in double clicking on the resources and you’ll be through survival in no time.

SCOUT SKILLS AND SKILL MOD DISCUSSION

I want to give a quick talk about each of the skill mods and skills we receive here.

Burst Run Efficiency – As you increase in the Exploration tree, you gain this modifier. It does not increase your speed running or your recovery time, but it does decrease theaction costs for using /burstrun, which makes it more useful.

Creature Harvesting – As you increase in this skill, you are able to harvest larger amounts from creatures.

Creature To-Hit Bonus – This is a bit controversial, as it only applies to ranged attacks. The modifier gives a small bonus to your ranged weapon accuracy when attacking a non-NPC target.

Trapping – Increases your likelihood of successfully trapping a creature.

Camping – We are not 100% sure exactly what this skill mod does. It is possible to use certain camps even if you do not have the skill to craft them.

Creature Knowledge – This increases the amount of information that you can learn about a creature using the /examine function. At Master, you can learn a large amount of information, including whether or not they’ll deathblow and what kinds of hide and meat you’ll receive from them when they’re harvested. *NOTE - THIS IS CURRENTLY BUGGED*

Terrain Negotiation – This increases your ability to run up slopes and across rugged terrain. It doesn’t affect your speed over flat land. TN only works on your running speed until you reach +50. After +50, your TN is applied to your crawl speed only.

After near constant attention from the Devs for a number of months, mask scent is finally working as it was originally designed. With each patch, mask scent seems to get a bit fluky, and then settles back to work more or less properly. Maskscent is based on your Mask Scent modifier. It originally was based on your camouflage modifier, but this was changed as of the addition of the Ranger skill /conceal (which now uses that modifier). The equation used to determine a successful /mask scent takes into account your MS modifier, your speed (whether walking, prone or running) and the relative creature level of the creature who is trying to detect you. So as your MS modifier increases (with each level of Exploration), your chances of successfully getting XP and staying safe with mask scent increase. But it is also important that you are around creatures of a similar level to you. A novice scout running around on Dathomir is going to complain loud and long that his mask scent is useless and doesn't work, while an almost-Master Scout will be running around Lok doing the bunny dance because he's almost leveled and not had to do anything for it.

If you are having difficulty with mask scent, try two things - first, use it against creatures closer to your level, basically meaning ones that you would have odds on actually defeating if they attack you when you’re unbuffed. Second, change your speed. Going prone and walking both modify your mask scent prospects by between 5%-35% over running. Slow down, creep slowly and you'll start seeing some XP spam on your window. Also keep in mind that the larger the group of reds, the more likely it will be (statistically speaking) that your mask scent gets broken. Each time you get within the striking range of a creature (based on their ferocity) you will be “checked” to see if the creature broke your mask scent. 10 creatures mean 10 checks, and with the bit of randomness that is added in to account for luck, you may just get sniffed out - even against low level creatures like Kreetles.

Previous changes to mask scent have increased it's usability. It no longer breaks on yellow "non-aggressive" creatures. It has been tiered so that Master Scouts don't need to wait the full 60 seconds to remask after a failure. It does not break upon entering combat anymore.

Forage is an underutilized skill that is granted to Scouts. Similar to the artisan "sample" skill, foraging allows you to scrounge the immediate area for food and drink. This food and drink provides different buffs, such as temporary strength increases, HAM penalty reducers and other effects that have multiple benefits. At this time you don't receive XP from successful forage and these remains a request of the Scouting community.You can also forage lairs, which provide you with interesting items such as bees and eggs. The eggs are useful in some kinds of

crafting, and can be sold. Bees can be placed into a creature habitat craftable by artisans. While these don’t benefit you directly, they do provide some interesting visual affects and may make you a few bucks selling to loot collectors.

The Scouting community feels that Forage has not lived up to its original design premise, which was to create incentives for Scouts to explore the landscape. We are working hard with the Devs to turn forage into a useful feature that provides useable loot and food items in line with the player crafted consumables that have become a key factor in the game.

That’s right boys and girls! Not only are we Scouts, we’re also dairy farmers.

This sounds funny, but milk is one of the absolute most sought after harvestable materials. I’ve heard cases of 10k worth of milk going for a million credits on Bloodfin, and averages nearly 200 CPU pre-CU.

This is primarily because it’s time consuming to get. Almost as time consuming as fishing (I won’t go into fishing here – read Volsted’s Guide to Fishing on the Scout Forums)

First of all – you can only milk herbivorous creatures, so don’t start trying to make nice to a lady Rancor. Second – as one would expect – you can only milk female creatures. In order to milk a creature you need to be mask scented, as well. One good tip for milking is to get two destroy missions for the type of critter you’re trying to milk. Get them close to each other – then run back and forth milking every critter you can between the lairs.

The vast majority of no build zones have been removed from the game. You now are only limited in placing your camps to areas within the “Municipal Zones” of a city - generally within the city boundaries, and areas near lairs. This has been a great boon to Scouts, as you no longer need to travel hundreds of meters to be able to heal.

The CU has made many of the arguments regarding weapons and armor obsolete.

As a Scout, your weapons and armor choices will be dictated by your primary combat professions. However, it is in your best interests to use the best armor you can find for your combat profession - whether that's Recon, Battle or Assault (or nothing, if you're a TK).

Weapons choice is fairly easy - you want to look at the base DPS (damage per second), and the Special Action Cost (sac). The higher DPS and lower sac the better.

Doctor buffs are less necessary post CU, but getting them makes life a little bit easier out in the wild. However, for a leveling Scout, save your money and invest in food and spice rather than Doc buffs. It'll save you a lot of cash you can use on better gear in the future.

There are a number of foods that provide major increases to your abilities as a Scout (and as a combatant) that you should always have nearby, if not on you. Having these foods available will make you a much better hunter, a more successful explorer, and can even keep you alive.

Name Type Benefit Descrption
Gralinyn Juice Drink Creature to-hit bonus
Travel Biscuits Food Terrain Negotiation
Jawa Beer Drink Mask Scent
Dweezl Food Trapping
Veghash Food Creature Harvesting

Of these foods, the one’s you will use most often are Veghash and Jawa Beer. Travel Biscuits are mostly utilized by folks who don’t intend to go up to Explore 3 and max out their Terrain Negotiation skills. Good Veghash easily pays for itself in only a few hunting sessions.

Basically, what you want to look for in foods today are foods that modify your Action pools. Since most of the combat actions you'll be doing take "action", anything that increases your regeneration rate or your action pool will be critical - it'll let you use your best attacks over and over without having to wait around. To that end, foods like Blob Candy and Vercupti have become the "must haves" for Scouts and all combat professionals.

We have available to us droids that harvest creatures for us – saving us time, giving us a slight boost to our harvesting abilities, and allow us to harvest in combat (so if we take a while to kill something, our prey doesn’t “poof” before we can harvest it).

My thanks go to Razhlok Lightningskull from the Scout boards for providing me with the information for this section of the guide.

In choosing a harvesting droid, check that the quality of the module your DE is crafting1 will give you some bonus to harvesting (around 3% per module). You want 6 modules (the maximum) for your droid.

You will need to program your droid to harvest. First you pick what you want your droid to harvest - the four options are meat, hide, bone and random. Then you must program a harvest command. When you start to program the droid, a question mark will appear above your droid’s head. Type in a command - for example "harvest". An exclamation point will appear over your droid's head indicating it has accepted your command.

Next, create a macro entitled “HarvestCorpse”, and either place it on your toolbar or alias it to your keyboard.

An easy one could look like:

/loot;
/tellpet harvest;

You can also choose to program your droid with other commands (attack, stay, follow, store, etc) using the same method. To name your droid you need to program your droid by saying his name prior to the command. For example – programming the “Stay” command would require you to say “Donkeylips Stay”. Do this for three commands and the droid "learns" its name. Once it knows it’s name, you can go back and change the command to simple “Stay”.

To use your droid in the field pull him out of your datapad. Engage your target normally. When it’s dead, active your harvest macro. At this point you may target your next kill, while your droid goes out and retrieves the goods.

After you droid harvests the corpse you will receive a message stating a droid has harvested X number of resources from the creature.

At some point your droid will run out of power and will need to be recharged. In this case you will need to have a droid battery. If you /examine your droid, you will see just how much power your droid has remaining. Droid batteries are pretty easy to come by on any DE vendor's site or even on the Bazaar. I recommend buying them in crates.

Mounts and Vehicles

Mounts and vehicles have made our planets much smaller places. Its hard to believe there was time when we didn't have them - what would have taken a Scout forty five minutes to traverse now takes 10. Areas that were very dangerous are now simply scenery along your travel route.

There are a number of different mounts and vehicles, each with benefits and drawbacks. I won’t discuss them specifically, but I compare the two. The biggest drawback to vehicles is that they are destroyable and that you are unable to attack while driving them. Mounts can be healed and you can use basic attacks on them. Mounts, on the other hand are slower and require feeding, but they generally can’t be killed permanently. The choice of whether to use a mount or a vehicle is largely personal, but most folks opt for speed and use their vehicles almost exclusively.

As for gameplay, the adding of mounts and vehicles has made mask scent an important tactic for quickly leveling Scout. Non-powergamer Scouts are still going to want to earn the Scout XP from hunting. But the quickest way to level the Exploration and Hunting trees is to grab a speeder and Mask Scent on a high end planet like Yavin 4 or Dathomir. Ride around the critters - who won't be able to keep up with you - and get XP for each successful mask scent.

Keep in mind - you can't mask you scent again while mounted. So you may need to set up a macro to dismount you, re-mask scent and then mount up again. Some Scouts have been able to hit level 4 in both Exploration and Hunting in just a few hours of zooming on their vehicles. Using a macro, it’s easy to mount, reapply your mask scent, and dismount. There's been some considerable debate about this tactic in the community, and the general perception is that this is a semi-exploitive move. It's not recommended that you do this, but it is a tactic to level.

This is by far the easiest way of moving from planet to planet - make sure you've gotten at least Novice Pilot and received your free vehicle. You can use it to get to any other planet, as well as to Kashyyk. No wait times, no pesky travel lanes. This will decrease your down time

immensely.

MON(K)EY MAKING (if you don't get the joke, ask an old timer)

The more hide and bones you can get, the more you can sell in the bazaar. And once you start hunting with a passion, you’ll get more hides and bones than you can ever use to build traps and tents. Share the wealth. Tip medics with them (they always need organics for their crafting) and sell them on the bazaar. You’ll make pretty good cash, especially the larger the lots you sell. Here's my quick pricing guide for hides and bone:

1.) Sell in even number lots: Don’t sell 538 hide. Sell 500. It makes it easier on your for computing the sales, and easier on the crafter, as well.

2.) Know your consumers: Take the time to talk to the people you’re selling your harvestables to. If you don’t know anyone, wait until your material sells on the bazaar and then ask the person who purchased it what they’re looking for in terms of stats. Each crafting profession relies on different stats beyond the overall quality.

3.) Know the market: Figure out what the average price your goods are selling at. Talk to your fellow Scouts and Rangers who are selling their goods (make sure they’re on your server – each server has a unique economy).

The most important thing to keep in mind about selling harvestable materials is that THE MARKET SETS THE PRICE. If something will sell at 100 CPU, then sell it at 100 CPU. If something won’t, then don’t sell it at that rate.

Some servers have a much greater inflation rate than others. Prices widely fluctuate, so you need to know your server, and your customers. If you know what they're looking for, you'll be able to provide it to them at rates they'll be willing to pay.

If you do sell on the bazaar, you are going to want to put your wares up on bazaars in high foot traffic areas. Theed, Moenia, Bestine, Mos Eisley, Coronet, etc. That will get your sale more visibility and its where most people turn when they can’t find something they’re looking for from a player vendor.

Running Missions

The other means of gaining money is running missions. Delivery missions are fine - for artisans and entertainers. But they don’t pay half as well as destroy missions, and you aren’t going to get Scouting XP by taking the kiddie their prize for the best picture in the "Draw Lord Vader in the Shower" contest. You will get it for going out there and killing animals.

Destroy missions are great for getting both XP and money at the same time. They’re fairly simple – go to the waypoint, destroy the creatures and destroy their lairs.

Explorer missions provide us with a monetary incentive to do the things we already do. Some of them can be very tough, but they can also be a great way to get out and see the galaxy.

There are two types of missions given by these terminals - hunting and recon. Recon is exactly what it sounds like...you get paid to take the mission and run out to the Waypoint. Once you get there you are successful and get the cash award. Generally these missions are 3k to 5k away from where the terminal is, so expect a good hike. USE YOUR VEHICLE - these missions are often on a timer, so the faster you complete them, the more likely you'll be in completing the mission.

The hunting missions are much more difficult, but provide better compensation. They require you to kill between 15 and 45 of a certain type of creature. Be careful: they are EXTREMELY specific. If you get a mission to kill Spineflap Soldiers, you can kill Spineflap Guards until the cows come home and you won't get any credit. They HAVE to be the same critter the mission calls for. Each time you kill one, you'll get a spam letting you know how many more you need to kill to complete the mission. The other difficulty is that you don't receive a waypoint for the mission - you need to find the creatures yourself.

The higher end hunter missions can go for 10k credits and above...so while they are time consuming, they also are very lucrative.

Grouping

This is used to be a difficult question, as soloing was an easy, and commonly accepted, part of the game. Today, however, it is extremely time consuming to solo level any character - getting a grind group together will increase your speed both in leveling Scout and your combat profession.

All of the past impediments that have made grouping for a Scout less than desireable have been removed. Go make some friends and get to work!

Where to Run Missions?

This seems like a funny question, but it’s important – especially if you’re running missions for money. Larger Player Cities have the option of becoming “specialized” city. Cities that have the “Stronghold” specialization give players on their militia a bonus to defense. Cities that are “Medical Centers” get a bonus to buffing and wound healing.

The most important type you’re looking for is “Improved Job Market”. If a city has this kind of a specialization, you’ll get higher payouts from your missions. A 7400 credit Quenker mission is now 8500. A 27k Mokk mission is now a 33k Mokk mission. “Improved Job Market” player cities are usually busy, popular places.

The CU fixed a lot of combat bugs in the game, but it introduced a large number of Scout related bugs that are still being worked out. But, thanks to our Correspondent Vorpaks, these are being tracked.

If you're having trouble with something and you think it may be bugged, check this thread -http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=23243

f its not on the list, add it. The more information we have, the sooner these bugs can be fixed.

When I originally wrote this guide, I promised beers in the Cantina to everyone who read it. Well, just looking at the "Page Views" number there, I've got about a zillion beers to buy. I enjoy sitting in a cantina and having someone say “Hey! I read your guide!”

I hope that this little (well, not really!) guide to making Master Scout has answered all of the questions you may have about the Scouting profession If you’ve got any questions - ask away.

Good luck and good hunting!

Suck gas, Evil Doer!! ~ Darkwing Duck

____________________
Donnie Darko

Master Bounty Hunter

Medic 3-3-0-0