Teras Kasi Archive

FAQ: Teras Kasi Artists v.9-16-03

Index
1) What race should I select?
2) In which order should I gain skills?
3) What other profession should I take?
4) How should I gain experience?
5) Where should I gain experience?
6) What does meditation do?
7) What does power boost do?
8) What does Force of Will do?
9) Should I use armor?
10) Should I use VibroKnuckles?

1) What race should I select?
As has been stated by the developers, any race is viable for any profession. But, the favorites for Teras Kasi Artists are Trandoshan(Gain naturally high health regeneration and natural unarmed bonuses; unable to wear foot and leg armor), Zabrak(Pair TKA with medical skills, then boost mind stats;able to wear all armor), and Wookie(Highest natural stats of all the races, but unable to wear armor).

2) In which order should I gain skills?
This is arguable. I strongly suggest taking either balanceAND power(and getting precision as you collect combat exp). First, move up to balance2 to receive the +15 unarmed toughness modifier, which will help significantly. Then proceed up to power4, to augment your speed and damage. Then proceed up the meditation tree, which only holds fringe benefits for our profession. By the time you have mastered those three branches, you should be very close to mastering Precision as well.

3) What other profession should I take?
There are many options, all with different benefits, but your top choices would probably be the following:
Medic->Doctor: Medical skills will greatly reduce your downtime, allow you to heal in combat, and upon progressing into doctor, allow you to enhance your stats, which allows us to use more specials and to tank longer and against stronger creatures.
Scout->Creature Handler: Scout will also reduce your downtime through the use of camps, though significantly less than medic. Scout also increases your ability to negotiate hills, making you a faster traveler, as well as give you the ability to mask your scent, which allows you to move past aggressive creatures. And, on top of that scouting also provides you with an assortment of traps and a secondary income of hide/bone/meat selling. But, most attractive of all is the elite profession: Creature Handler. Creature Handler will give you a secondary tank, or secondary damage dealer.
Marksman->Rifleman/Pistoleer/Carbine: To compensate for the Teras Kasi range restriction, many people take up a ranged profession. All of the three elite professions have their own benefits and downsides, but all will be very valuable in creating a character effecitve at all ranges.

4) How should I gain experience?
I have listed a few places to gain experience below. But, in order to survive in many of these areas I suggest some tactics to reduce the damage you will inevitably take. Firstly, intimidation is your greatest friend, as it will half the damage your enemy deals, and you receive it at novice brawler. UnarmedStun further reduces the damage your enemy deals, and is received at Advanced Unarmed. By Expert Unarmed, you will have received UnarmedBlind, which greatly reduces your enemies ability to land a hit on you. The durations on these skills vary, but if it wears off(as shown in the top right near your enemies HAM bars), simply reapply.
But, you also need to deal damage. The answer to your low damage is berserk. Berserk drastically increases the damage you deal in combat, at the cost of defense. Also, you will lose the ability to use any special attacks, so I suggest doing the above first.

5) Where should I gain experience?
Unarmed1-4: Solo, I would suggest hunting everything you can on Tattooine, Naboo, or Corellia. A good way to get experience at this level is to take destroy missions over and over. The missions scale to your ability, give decent exp, and also provide credits. If you are grouped, you have significant tanking ability for others if you follow the above answer. A good grouped area would be the squill cave on Tattooine.
Teras Kasi Novice: Your best bet here is hunting huurtons, dewbacks, banthas, squills, and the like. Again, missions are a good way to gain experience. At this skill level, you ought to be able to handle some of the higher-level areas with a group. Tusken fort is a good choice, due to the damage modifier we receive on ranged-weapon users.
Teras Kasi w/ Balance: Your damage output will be lower if you have decided to gain balance skills first, but on the other hand your down time will be significantly lower and your ability to tank creatures and melee NPC's for grouped players will soar. I suggest hunting in groups on Dathomir for Baz Nitch, or solo hunting purboles on Dathomir.
Teras Kasi w/ Power: Just the opposite of taking balance, your damage output will soar at the expense of defensive abilities. Get behind a grouped player or pet, and you'll do fine. Soloing on Dathomir will be hard, so I highly suggest grouping if you choose to go this path.
Teras Kasi w/ Power&Balance: This path of progression is wisest. Your ability to tank and deal damage will raise signficantly slower than if you were to focus, but your ability to adapt to many situations will benefit alot. By the time you reach balance2 and power2, you ought to be close to soloing much of Dathomir, until then I suggest purboles or baz nitch grouping.

6) What does meditation do?
Meditation does a number of things,most aimed at stopping DoT's,but, it eventually heals wounds as-well.
Meditation @ Novice Teras Kasi: At this level, meditation will only serve to make you look cool and to very slowly heal bleeds.
Meditation @ Intermeditate Meditation: At this level, meditation heals bleeding faster as-well as healing poisons.
Meditation @ Advanced and Expert: At these levels, meditation stops bleeding and poisons rather quickly, and also gains the abilityto stopdiseases.
Meditation @ Master Meditation: At this level, meditation does all of the above faster, and also gains the ability to rapidly heal all wounds(not BF, but it does include mind wounds). You'll know it's working when you receive messages such as, "[meditation] You heal x amount of action wounds". Generally it will heal 15-25 wounds every 2 to 3 seconds or so.

7) What does power boost do?
Power boost increases health and action maximums for a very short period of time by 300-ish. It also incurs heavy mind wounds on you. In general, this skill is not worth using.

8) What does Force of Will do?
Force of will is a manual command that gives a chance to recuperate from incapacitation. If it is successful, your HAM will be reset to 1, you'll be allowed to stand, and you'll be immune to creautre and NPC aggro for a few seconds.

9) Should I use armor?
Generally, no, at least not a full set. If you are finding you are having alot of trouble keeping, say, action up due to damage taken, throw on some leggings. But, in most cases, the encumberance will result in much higher HAM costs on our already high-HAM-cost specials, and becuase of that I suggest you just wear clothes.

10) Should I use VibroKnuckles?
Again, it's situational. Your damage is much higher(equal to the damage on the knuckles) when wearing them. But on the otherhand, the cost of doing specials is also higher. So, if you need to score a quick kill or are not using special attacks, use them. If you are using alot of specialsor don't need the extra damage, go barehand.