Teras Kasi Archive

Well, I'm bored at work, aching to go home and log into some SWG for the night, and thought I would reflect.

I started this game on 7-13-2003 as a young Trandoshan hatchling facing the world for the first time. After looking through the available starting professions, I chose Brawler, because I figured it would be a less complicated way to start off, fighting creatures, learning the interface, etc...

The moment I logged in, I spawned in front of a Master Brawler..wow! He works fast! The game had only been out for a week or so.

I continued on my way, fumbling my way through Mos Eisley, looking for the "Brawler's Guild" (sorry, old EQ habit I guess...). Giving up on finding it after about 20 minutes, I went outside town, and engaged my first Star Wars mob, a lesser worrt. Armed only with my survival knife, I emerged victorious.

After killing about 6 or 7 more creatures, I decided to change weapons to keep all my skills even, and being that I didn't have a 2 handed sword, or a polearm, I just went Unarmed, to work that up.

Unarmed combat was a lot faster, and did more damage than my Survival Knife, so I kept it up. Got level one Unarmed.

Now it was time to run missions, and get the 1,000 credits to train. Someone offered to train me instead, so that saved some time. Good thing too, I was about 600 credits short. I gave the man my 400 credits, and he ran off.

Things progressed over the next few days, and I became comfortable with my character. I was now fighting womp rats, cu pas, and the occasional scyk. On the third day I got the very pleasing message. "You now qualify for Master Unarmed Specialization". Woo Hoo!

I had been doing some research, and the Teras Kasi Artist looked attractive to me. Although later I would find out how embelished (sp?) the Game's Manual, and the Prima Strategy Guide made this profession out to be....hehe.

By now I had a full set of Bone Armor, but it wasn't making anything easier, I was a little disappointed to say the least. Went on the boards, learned about something called "HAM costs". Wow, had no idea my weapons and armor put restraints on me. /shrug, I guess it makes sense. Trying to do a spinning roundhouse is hard enough, let alone being covered in animal bones. I got a robe from my brother, who's a Master Artisan, and I must say, I'm looking pretty good for a lizard.

Over the next 3 days, I managed to make the 125,000 Unarmed Combat xp to train in Teras Kasi Novice.My Brawler days were over (for now).

I thought I was really making some fast progress, 216,000 Unarmed Combat xp in a week. I'll be a Teras Kasi Master in no time. WRONG!

I go back to my bread and butter, cu pas, womp rats, and scyks. They're not giving me much xp at all anymore. About 290 per cu pa, 275 per womp rat, but scyks are still good at 505. Scyks it is!!

I had been reading on the message boards about this skill "Knockdown", that's supposed to be really good for fighting. I just need 175,000 Unarmed Combat xp, and I can get it. So that's what I'm going to train in first.

I made the xp in about 4 or 5 days, and went back to Mos Espa to train. Woo hoo! I have /UnarmedKnockdown1, fear me!

The next day was a Saturday, I didn't have work, the wife was out with her mother, I was gonna play SWG, ALL DAY!!!

The scyks were now giving me less than 500 xp a piece, and I knew there had to be more to this game than killing the same 7 types of mobs over and over again. I actually went *GASP* LFG....Wow, this is weird, I'm in a group.

We went out and killed dewbacks. Oh man, they were hard, as soon as someone attacked one, there were about 3 or 4 of them on you. Let's not do dewbacks anymore. I always wanted to fight mountain worrts. A week or so ago, when I was still a young Novice Brawler, I saw large groups of people hunting the worrts. It looked really cool.

We found some giant worrts and mountain worrts, and I must say they were pretty easy. Much better xp than scyks. Almost 800 per kill!!

Then we got full of ourselves, we decided to try taking on a mountain squill. These things were red to everyone in our group, even the Bounty Hunter! Feeling rather invincible, I engage the squill. He tears into me, the medic is healing, but only for 200ish, and the squill is hitting me for close to twice that much. I go down, the mountain squill tears off, making short work of each party member. It was a wipe

After joining up again, the Bounty Hunter in our group asked me, "Do you have knockdown?". I say, "Yes, I just got it, never used it though.". He replies, "Just keep them knocked down, we can take squills then.". "Wow! Really? Ok, let's try again."

We return to the brambles, the squills' home. I engage the same mountain squill that decimated our entire group, I knock him down, he's not hitting me anymore. Well the bounty hunter told me to "keep him knocked down", so I did just that. He stood up, I knocked him down again, and again, and again. After an epic 2 1/2 minutes, I got a massive TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED EXPERIENCE!! OMG! OMG! OMG!, that's like kills 5 scyks. My ego explodes!

We fight squills for about the next 2 hours. The xp is insane! 100,000.....200,000....250,000...Umm, guys I need to train, I'm gonna hit a cap soon. I did in about 3 hours, what took me 5 days to do by myself, fighting rats and scyks.

Now I'm 3 skills into TKA (Balance 1, Power 1, Striking 1). I've become a somewhat accomplished Creature Handler as well. My pet and I are unstoppable. I can solo mountain squills, greater desert womp rats, mountain worrts, alkharas, valarians, and Jabba gang membersby the dozens.

Now I'm making about 75,000 - 100,000 Unarmed combat xp a night. That's about 50 Squills,20 per hour, that's only 2 1/2 hour of playing. I climbed the Power Techniques tree, I'm a Teras Kasi Expert now, 2 more boxes to go til I max the Balance tree.

They're patching tonight, and nerfing Knockdown. Bah, I don't spam it, I'll be ok. I only hit KD about every 8 - 10 seconds.

PC crashes, power supply blew out. Bah! Off SWG tiI get it fixed.

Buy a new power supply, slap it in there, bam, up and running.

I patch, I log in.

You have enterted Mos Eisley

Call pet. "You have too many active pets, Store some first" huh??

Guess my pets were affected by the patch, no worries, I still have trusty knockdown.

Run out east of town. An Alkhara Bandit agroson me. I run over to him, hit F6 (my KD key).....SIX HUNDRED SIXTY SEVEN HAM flies over my head....I get shot to the mind pool for 863 damage. I'm incapactitated....ONE SHOT! He walks over and death blows me.

Ummmm, WHAT just happened? I went from being an untouchable, fearless, killing machine, to a chump that gets killed in a SINGLE SHOT!! I am not happy. I log out. I come to the boards and complain. Everyone feels the same way I do. It's not fair! What happened to out class??

A few days goes by. I calm down, start playing again. I still can't call my pets. But I'm feeling better about the reaming that happened to me.

Ding! Another TK skill in the bank, 4 more til Master.

Maybe it's not so bad after all.

The end.

Hmm ... sounds like someone recently stopped you on the street, waved their hand in front of you, and said, "These aren't the droids you're looking for."

"move along... move along"