Scout Archive

Ok so here's the low down. I'm playing a human ranger based out of Corellia. And in my relatively short adventure time I've come across some bits and pieces of information that I thought might aid some of you in gaining skill points to further your professions.

Keep in mind that I didn't really start keeping track of this until I had reached Explore and Hunting II, Trapping III and Survival II.

Explore & Hunting Gains: The best "in game" way I have found to do this is to find a group where you will be the only scout (good luck) and venture into hostile areas with large creatures to kill. On a good night you may very well pull 150 scouting per kill. However if you are the solo type player and have the cash, I would highly suggest getting enough XP to get Explore III and head to LOK. Beware that it is a bit pricey (Corellia to Tatooine to Lok ran about 2500 credits one way) but once you get there make "Mask Scent" a hot key and watch the XP pour in. Just today I saw a guy earn enough XP to make Explore IV and Creature Handler in about four hours.

Trapping Gains: Having the luxury of being able to have a pretty vast amount of resources at my disposal allowed me to play quite a bit with this area. In fact my gains went so fast this was the first skill I mastered. (Didn't know about LOK yet) I set up my traps as hotkeys on the tool bar and by using a combination of Poison dart, noise maker, bone spur, glow juice, wire mesh the gains came rolling in. At roughly 59 points of trapping for most smaller animals on Corellia that puts us at about 236 points per animal, assuming all the traps hit. As the lvl increase and more traps become available they were added to the arsenal to the point where finally I was throwing adhesive mesh, glow wire, noise maker, poison dart, bone spur, stink bomb. And on LOK for instance where you get roughly 102 points per hit that's in the area of 612 per animal or more because you can do multiple runs on them. Now is it the most resourceful way, prolly not. But it worked really well.

Survival Gains: Ah yes the ever elusive camping gains. Best way I can put this is to do EVERYTHING in camp. For instance as I write this now I have my scout in camp, surveying for polymer. Here is the reason, obviously I need polymer for my adhesive mesh traps, plus it hits my mind bar. As the mind bar regens it seems to count towards the overall camping stats. And with a relatively low mind bar to start with it worked really well as a timer. So all alone in my camp, surveying 3 cycles for polymer, I was almost always able to pull out 800 xp for camping. Now here is the catch.

The camps are listed as two person, when my friend who is a medic came by and also surveyed we were able to hit 820 and 860 one time. Then one the third attempt, running the camp for the same amount of time (roughly 18 min) we only got 540! As I continued to camp in the area, for the same amount of time the totals kept going down. Now I'm not sure if this is a product of poor craftsmanship of the camps (One was amazing, good, and marginal) or the fact that the camps just really need to be moved after a certain period of time to keep the gains up.

Well that's about it from here. Hope this helps someone. I'd also like to hear from other people who have come up with other various ways to gain.... Now it's off to ranger.

One trapping method I have heard and used is to first craft a lot of wire mesh traps then go find a tough mob that has a green-con "baby" nearby. Toss the wire mesh traps at the baby over and over and over. You will get the same trapping xp per hit that you would if you were throwing it at the full grown version of the same creature. Because the wire mesh traps dont do damage, you can keep tossing them as long as you have them to toss.

A trick to get some survival xp when grouped is to dismantle and rebuild your camp when it hits the xp cap. After some tough battles there is so much healing to be done that you will easily hit the xp cap 2 or 3 times in a row if you are quick. You can also be a nice guy and allow another scout to set his camp up after you reach your xp cap for the camp.

Good tips alexi.

I agree about the camps, always have one ready, and use them often, i keep one in a hotkey.

I also forage while in camp, since it costs action, i do feel you get more exp the more the camp has to work to heal you up.

In reference to trapping exp, i usually find a blue con mob, start the fight by throwing around 4 different traps at it, getting exp for each, then usually one hit kills them.

What's sad, is that at first, i thought you could only trap a creature once and get exp.. heh.. could of leveled trapping much faster.

Could you talk about surveying and how scouts are supposed to go about getting metals and such for our higher skill traps?

still haven't figured this part out.

thanks,

I picked up Novice Artisan for the Surveying portion of my Scouting. Whenever I go into camp I "sample" for metals for few minutes then sit down and build my traps and spare camps.

This makes the most of your down time and pushes up the exp gained while camping. I usually spend 20 to 30 minutes within my camp. Depending upon what I am crafting and hunting.

Sathlin, your options as a scout to find minerals or polymers are 1) buy them or 2) get novice artisan and survey for them yourself.

As far as surveying for resources, I found it was best to train novice artisan to be able to locate them and gather them myself. There are two reasons I say this:

1. It gives me something to do in camp that raises the survival XP. For instance if I am in camp and make four passes surveying for polymer it hits my survival xp cap of around 800 per camp and only takes between 15 to 18 minutes, even less if I am grouped with someone else also working in the camp.

2. Buying resources is an option if you are well funded. However since I've been spending so much money traveling between planets I found that if I harvest my own resources and only keep enough to keep me well stocked I can sell off the rest for a nice profit. For instance last night I did about 6000 survival XP working on survival IV and was able to harvest around 2400 polymer. I'll prolly keep 200 of that in the bank and then be able to sell off the remainder including whatever else I harvest later on today.

Of course it's going to come down to a personal preference issue if you choose to train it or not, just remember if you do train it and run out of skill points for something you really want, you can always surrender the surveying points. They're so easy to gain, it won't keep you up at night missing them.

Hey,

Aparently your the guy to go to for scouting info so......could u mind explaing as much as you want...about putting up a campsite? ive tried myself for like hours and still no luck.. help would be appreciated thx

I've seen many posts on these forums about making campsites, and while I seem to have no real issues with it I will attempt to address as many concerns as possible.

A trick that I've used to guage a good place to build a site at is this. Once you leave the city, that is actually being told by the game you have left the cit (You have left Coronet) go roughly one to two thousand meters beyond that, or roughly walk straight out for 2.5 to 3 minutes. Provided there are no NPC encampments or creature lairs in close proximity to your site it should build with no problem. Terrain is not an issue as the ground will level itself out to build the camp. Obviously some planets are more populated than other so even though you may be well outside the city limits, there may be obstructions that you will have to work around.

Also the camps themselves, so far that I have seen, don't really make that much difference between the one and two person camps, with the exception that the xp cap is raised. Thus making it easier to gain skill points quicker when grouped with a party. I've also noted that when people walk through the camp and count as visitors the XP goes up quicker, so encourage random PC's to walk through your camp!

As far as gaining XP faster in camp, just about anything contributes to it, regardless if it's an action performed by you or someone in your camp site. Foraging, crafting, healing, entertaining, and surveying all will help raise the xp level faster. Why? Because it reduces your mind/action pool and as they begin to fill up they count as "heals", thus giving you greater XP, and from our early tries it appears that the more people you have in camp doing this the faster the xp comes in. Best case scenerio you get like three or four guys all surveying in your camp, 10 to 15 min take down the camp, collect 800 xp and re-set the camp back up.

Keep in mind I'm working these experiments with Survival III, if the results change with IV or when I hit Ranger I'll be sure to let everyone know. I expect they will as IV introduces the "improved" camp kit and novice ranger gives you the "High Quality" camp kit. Stay tuned for details.

The wire mesh spam trick doesn't work anymore. I tried it last night and didn't get any xp for successfully landing traps on a green /con. That was a pretty bad exploit, though. I'm glad they fixed it. I can still get 300 or so xp for landing 6traps on a white /con. It's just a little more dangerous.