Scout Archive

PART TWO

a Master Scout. 95% of the animals you attack are going to close to melee distances with you, so being able to hit them up close for serious damage is critical. If you plan on using your scouting skills to round out a solid PvP player, compliment your pistoling with rifle, carbine or both.

But being a Marksman isn’t enough. You’re going to get knocked around out there, whether its at the hand of a biggie – like a Rancor, Falumpset or the like – or a little guy – like a Gnort or a Chuba. Being able to heal yourself in the field without waiting for twenty minutes in a camp is important. Spend the 15 skill points and the 100 credits and get yourself trained in Novice Medic. The ability to craft stimpacks alone is worth the time, and when you are grouped, having the ability to heal is a bonus that will make you popular quickly. You probably won’t need to advance much farther than novice in the medic field if you don’t want to – but having it will make life much easier.

As a compliment to the medic field, here’s another skill that’s good to have: entertainer. I know what you’re thinking. "How can a badass Scout like myself dance around like a Cantina Girl?" The answer is simple: it increases the amount of time you can spend in the field. Being able to heal your mind wounds quickly, and being able to heal your groups mindwounds in a camp will not only increase your camping XP, but it will make your more self sufficient – only needing to go into town to get rid of Battle Fatigue (which, unfortunately, you can’t cure in the field). This also saves you from having to drag a poor, defenseless entertainer out into the field.

Finally, having novice artisan helps to round out your skillset. Being able to survey and sample for resources gives you the ability to make some of the higher end traps that require metal and other resources that you can’t get by foraging. Like being a medic or entertainer, you don’t really need to advance very far in this field to get the benefits.

So here’s the tip: Pick up a marksman skill, medic, entertainer and artisan to round out your scout. Remember, if you don’t want one of them, you can always ditch it later.

THE QUICKBAR AND MACROS

I’ve got my quickbar setup to minimize the amount of time it takes me to do the things I do most often – fighting, harvesting, crafting, trapping and camping. You should do the same. Make sure that every one of the things you normally do for Scouting XP (hunting, trapping and camping) has a spot on your quickbar.

Mine is setup so that my pistols skills are on the far left, along with crouching and burst running in case of emergencies. My harvesting macro is in the center of my top toolbar, next to my traps - with six or seven slots being devoted to them. This allows me to quickly ripple off a number of traps in a row in order to quickly gain trapping XP. On the far right are the autofollow commands.

On the bottom toolbar (utilized by pressing SHIFT and the function key) are my lesser used, but nonetheless important, functions. These include going prone, my secondary pistol shots, and mask scent. My center bar includes my crafting tool and my dance skill. The rest of the bar is devoted to camps, and finally my secondary harvesting option (whichever one I’m not aiming for at the time).

Macros – as a scout, you need to setup harvesting macros. Do this by going into your skills sheet, clicking on macros and typing in the command. I have three harvesting macros:

/harvest meat

/harvest hide

/harvest bone

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.

CONTINUED IN PART THREE