Scout Archive

ok, i've seen lots of posts recently about maskscent and the like, and i want to try to answer some questions and give some pointers.

so at explore 2, you get maskscent, cool huh? well, unless your a bothan (+15 camoflouge), not really. maskscent doesn't work hardly at all. once you get explore 3 though, it'll start working more often.

ok, so some basics on maskscent. i dont really know a whole lot about it yet, buti do know a few things. First, to get scout xp from using maskscent, you have to use it on agro creatuers (red dots on your radar). It works against non-agro, but you dont get any xp for that...and it seems to work better on agro's anyway . usually, it will kick in right as they get to the outer extent of your radar...so at that point, you'll either get a message that it worked, or it didn't.

So basically, you want to run around agro mobs(red dots on the radar) and get xp. (a little side note, maskscent doesn't work on humanoid mobs, like thiefs or whatnot, and they tend to be more aggresive than other creatures, so stear clear of those.)

Once i got explore 3, i headed straight to Lok...i know the ticket is pricey, but it's worth it (by the way, buy a round trip ticket and once you get to Lok, put your ticket home in a deposit box in the bank, incase you have a bad run in with giant dune kimogilas ) I just ran around on Lok, seeing what it had to offer, making sure thatI always had maskscent on, and was ready to burst run at a moments notice.

this works very well, and blows harvesting for xp our of the water. 3 hours last night and about 2 today, and i've already gotten the xp for explore 4, and hunting 3 and 4, and only have about 10 000 more xp points to go until Creature Handler.

if anyone has any more questions, i'm trying to learn as much as i can, so either post here, or if you play on Bria, send me a /tell, I'm Fernanthonies the wookie

thanks for your time and i hope this helps

PhorEverAPhan,

Now that's how to provide valuable information. Thanks APhan!

Notice how he included ALL relevant information; not just some vague statement like "I use maskscent all the time and make great XP." He included race details, use strategies, and limitations. He included who it works best for and under what conditions.

Awesome post! I'll be off to Lok as soon as I get my Explore III.

~ Neth

thanks Neth

I also want to add one thing...if you dont have maskscent one of your most accesible macro keys, then you want to put it there, cause your gonna be using it A LOT

some dev should make this a sticky. Possibly we could add more information on it as we figure it out.

I'll try to keep up with new information as best as i can

Thanks for the info!

A question....

Have you noticed that going prone and moving slowly up to an aggro mob works better for getting that maskscent XP than just walking up?

Or does it matter?

If you went prone the process would be painfully slow. By running around Lok you can easily get 10 - 15k per 45 minutes-ish (maybe longer, maybe less).

If you want to remember this thread you can bookmark it. Just select thread options at the top of the forum and select Add this thread to my bookmarks.

I just wanted to post another technique that I used to max out my scouting experience in about 6 hours. I have shown this trick to a couple people on my server and it seems to work well. With a small amount of practice it produces the richest gains of any method.

First I will provide some insight that I have learned. When I first got to expl 2 and received masked scent I was eager to go out there and try it. I am a human scout so I don't have any bonuses that would help me mask better. What I noticed was that everything detected me. Then purely by accident I was doing missions that involved killing those little kreetle bugs (The really low level spiders located on Tatooine) and I noticed that my mask scent worked about 50% of the time and gave me 106 or so scouting exp per tick. Well the good thing about these guys is they spawn 5 deep in a camp. My first idea then was to get two missions close together and just run around masked and rake in the experience. While this was effective it was extremely boring so I modified my technique slightly. It seems that there is a check when you first shoot at a mob masked to see if they detect you. It also seems that mask scent passes this check a lot more frequently then running around in circles. Once I noticed this, I would get two kreetle missions and get about 45m away from the spawn lair and not move at all and just make sure mask scent stayed up anytime I wasn't in battle. Then with my pistol 2 I would just pick these things off. Every time one spawns it is 106. Every time I hit one and it doesn't detect me (75% of the time) another 106. I was moving through exp extremely fast. Now my only problem was the fact that they stop spawning after a while. I then figured out how to maximize the spawns on the kreetles. Everyone has figured out by now that shooting the lair produces more bad guys. Well if you only shoot at it twice and then hit peace they will start a spawn cycle that lasts quite a while and the whole camp won't aggro on you. I recommend only doing this after they stop spawning for 30 or so seconds. When the cycle ends you repeat and you can sometimes get 50-75 per mission. The advantages to this system is you can harvest bone and such to get even more scouting exp and get materials that you can sell at the bazar.

There are two additional thing that need to be considered. First training your expl skill should be a last resort to get maximum experience. Train hunting 1-4 first before you even think about training expl. The reason is that as soon as you go to expl 3 you only get 1 point scouting kreetles. The good news is, that once your hunting is maxed your scouting exp cap is high enough to train through expl 3 and expl 4 in one shot. After expl 4 use one of the other methods to get enough exp to become a creature handler or whatever you want to be. Secondly you don't have to use kreetles to make this work. Any aggro mob that cons blue to a weapon 2 skill and has about 100 hp will work. There are some on every planet so no travel is required.

Sorry if I did not convey all I wanted to here I tried to post as much information as I could without rambling on too much. Let me know if there are any questions if you decide to use this method. Good Luck!

Severity

Thanks for all the information on Maskscent. I have been trying to figure out how this worked.I can't wait to get home from work and try out these ideas.

Phaserblast

Zabrak Scout with Explore III

Upon training in Explore III I immediately bought my (return-trip) ticket to Lok and I was off on an adventure! Before departing I banked my gear (everything) except a pistol, pants and shoes. (In fact I bought some sparkle dancing pants and pink boots just to make this as outrageous and adventure as possible).

I travelled to Lok and upon arriving at Nym's fortress I was amazed. Lok is cool, and the sound track for that planet is sweet, with the chanting and everything, it's very creepy. I went to the bank in town to bank my return-trip ticket but was unable to join or get my deposit box, so instead I put it up for auction for 3k figuring it'd still be there when I returned.

I then re-arranged my /maskscent, /burstrun, and /peace so they were all easily accessible. In fact I removed my pistol and attack button. You really don't want to mistakenly attack anything on Lok and besides - your meager skills and a pistol won't help you a bit. I then cloned before setting off.

I then set my radar to 256 meters and turned on my overhead map. The map is important because sometimes creatures appear there before showing up on your radar. I then turned down my video settings too reduce any lag or frame spikes. (Even then, a few creatures just appeared in front of me suddenly - and I have a cable internet connection.)

The I was off.... my finger always hovering over the /maskscent button. It dropped often and my eyes got used to not even looking at the scenery, but instead just floated between the /maskscent symbol (appears next to HAM bar) and the system messages.... the xp just rolled in: You receive 180 scout xp.... 250 scout xp, etc.

I never ran closer than 100 meters to any creature. I watched for the lairs (as they pop into your radar first) and veered around them before the creatures appeared. I was doing fine, until the pirates. Those %#*$ers are everywhere and they can kill in two shots. And the do a little dance on your body after they walk up for the deathblow. They only killed me twice, but no loss - I just masked again and set off.

I set my waypoint for the volcano to check out the imperial fort there. As someone said once in a thread like this... running to the volcano and back should be a right of passage for any aspiring Creature Handler.

The volcano and imperial fort were cool. After an hour of running I reached it.... 13,000 scout XP later! I decided to camp there and return as it seemed pretty safe..... DON'T do this!!! When I returned the imperial fort was gone and I was sitting in the middle of two groups of reds... you never saw someone burst run and hit peace so fast!

End of story, this works. Follow the advice in this thread. Do it, but be very cautious. 2.5 hours later I have 27,000 xp and ran into a CH in Nym that trained me in Explore IV and harvest III. Now I'm out again, I figure I'll be a CH in about 4 hours.

Hope this helps. Safe travels my friends!

~ Neth

as i increase my exlporation skills, how does it affect my mask scent XP? for example, if i get 190 XP from something at exploration 3, will i get more or less XP from the same creature at exploration 4?

you would get less experience, simple reasoning for it, you are stronger at the skill, therefore using it on that creature is now easier so the amount of effort is less and so is the experience reward.