Great Total Guide : Star Wars Galaxies Nerfed Info

Here's the guide... it encompasses just about every aspect of the game that I was into, including levelling up all the professions, etc...




Star Wars Galaxies...


The Unofficial ULTIMATE Strategy Guide!!!!!




Introduction:

The following is a near complete strategy guide for the Massively Multiplayer, Online Role-Playing Game, Star Wars Galaxies, the game I've played and loved/hated since about a month after it's public release. I've been utterly and unavoidably hooked ever since. I've unlocked 3 Jedi Force Sensitive Character Slots since then, and mastered over 60 total professions. Some I mastered more than once of course since there are only 33 total professions in the game. I'm a die-hard student of efficiency and speed, what you're about to read is a complete compilation of all the tricks and strategies I've used. All my secrets...

Inside are strategies that encompass many aspects of the game... Earning up to 5-10 million credits per day by buffing people... Mastering every combat and crafting profession in under 2 days... Mastering Bounty Hunter (The hardest combat profession) in a week... Merchant in 1-2 weeks... Musician and Dancer in about 4 days each... Every profession is covered, including the dreaded Politician, which takes a very, very long time... Finally, the last part of the guide is dedicated to mastering PvP combat..........


Table of Contents:


Section 1: Profession Mastery...

Introduction: Choosing a Profession...
(Which kind of player do you want to be? An adventuring fighter, a profiteering tradesman, or a little bit of both? This chapter explains the best professions for whatever style of play you'd rather choose.)
Chapter 1: Basic Essential Knowhow...
(Secondary skills and techniques that are instumental in gaining experience as quickly as possible. General advice on the best skills and equipment to invest in before you go off to master your first profession.)
Chapter 2: The Combat Professions...
(Detailed instructions and more basic essential knowhow for mastering all the combat-related professions, including Marksman, Brawler, Bounty Hunter, Commando, Fencer, Swordsman, Pikeman, Rifleman, Pistoleer, Carbineer, Smuggler, Squad Leader, Teras Kasi Artist and Creature Handler.)
Chapter 3: The Crafting Professions...
(Detailed instructions for mastering all the crafting professions, including more basic essential knowhow. Artisan, Architect, Armorsmith, Chef, Droid Engineer, Tailor, and Weaponsmith.)
Chapter 4: Non-Combat, Non-Crafting Professions (Or Hard to Classify)...
(Detailed instructions for mastering all the other professions of the game. Entertainer, Medic, Scout, Combat Medic, Dancer, Doctor, Image Designer, Merchant, Musician, Bio-Engineer, Ranger, and Politician.)

Section 2: Credits, Credits, Credits...

Chapter 1: Missions...
(Sony has nerfed this method, so I had to remove it sorry.)
Chapter 2: Harvesting Meat/Hides for Profit...
(A guide to resource harvesting as a profession. Many doctors, chefs, Bio-Engineers, and Armorsmiths will pay TOP dollar for hides and meats of exceptional quality.)
Chapter 3: Resource Harvesting...
(Ever seen those bulky machines harvesting minerals from the earth or growing plants? In Chapter 3 are the tricks of the resource mining trade, one of the most profitable trades of the game.)
(How to earn a living making regular and Bio-Engineered clothing for profit.)
Chapter 4: The Doctor...
(A complete guide to earning credits as a doctor by selling buffs, wound packs, stimpacks, enhance packs, and all the rest.)

Section 3: PvP/Faction-Related...

Introduction: Which Faction...?
(Faction perks of both factions, including personnel, and factional equipment. Also locations of various Rebel and Imperial outposts, bases and theme parks throughout the galaxy.)
Chapter 1: Jedi PvP...
(How to kill those pesky Jedi (LOL) in PvP combat.)

Section 4: Unlocking your Force Sensitive Character Slot...

Chapter 1: How to Unlock...
(The confirmed method that's circulating around the internet on how to unlock your FSCS now that publish 10 has changed everything around. I unlocked all 3 of my Jedi before the new system was implimented, so this is the best I can do until there's less mystery surrounding unlocking. It would be kind of hard to figure out from personal experience because it supposedly takes a LONG time to unlock, to the tune of 6 to 12 months or something, and I just don't have that kind of time on my hands any more.)


Section 1: Profession Mastery...



Introduction: Choosing a Profession...


There are several areas of expertise in the game that one might chose as their primary field of endeavor. One is crafting important equipment for their guild or for profit, another is hunting creatures and NPC's with their friends and player association members for fun and profit, and another is hunting creatures and NPC's solo for fun and profit.

If you're going to choose a crafting profession, please keep in mind that it takes MANY weeks if not months to gather the necessary resources to make quality items, and it takes time to find and purchase skilltapes to get +120 experimentation for your profession, for the extra +12 experimentation points (not 120, 12. You get 1 experimentation point per every +10 to your experimentation experimentation skill). It takes a LOT of money and time to buy all these items, so I recommended if you want to go crafter, unless you want to struggle for months trying to sell lower quality equipment for a small profit for new skilltapes and better resources, that you go for master artisan. It generally takes fewer resources to make their items, such as weapon powerups, repair tools, swoop bikes, and more, which still sell fairly well.

You can also mine your own resources using mineral harvesters, flora farms, and several other types of harvesters. A lot of people seem to make good money selling power (What you run your harvesters and equipment factories with), and it's less difficult, but the profits aren't nearly as good as selling regular resources. The resources you mine/grow can either be sold for more money to help purchase the skilltapes you need, or can be used in your crafting, depending on if you thought ahead and only harvested the resources you'd be needing for your profession later. You can do a little bit of both as well, selling the ones you can't use and keeping the ones you can use later for your future craft. (For more information on harvesting resources using mineral, flora, and the other types of harvesters for profit, see Chapter 2, Section 3.)

If you don't want to go artisan or be a resource dealer, you can also harvest creature resources for money, but it helps to be a ranger and have master of at least one combat skill to help you kill them faster. If you choose this method there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find a creature resource, i.e. -- meat or hide or bone, that has good enough stats to get a decent profit by selling it to an established crafter, but when you do, the profits are extremely high. (For more information on harvesting resources from creatures for profit, see Chapter 2, Section 2.)

If you'd rather get your hands dirty, and have a few blasters blow up in your face, or possibly mash your finger or toe by accident with your power hammer, and you're not too concerned with making items for profit, there are a lot of adventuring professions out there that are a lot more fun than sitting around mining resources and making pastries for people.

Before you choose what kind of combat profession you want, you need to choose whether you want to primarily hang out with groups and fight with other people, or if you'd rather solo most of the time, and rely only on yourself. You can also focus on a versatile character who's handy in both a solo situation and a group situation.

Also you'll need to decide whether you'll want to be primarily a Player-Versus-Environment player (PvE), or a Player-Versus-Player combatant (PvP). For soloers, you can gear yourself towards PvE and PvP both, but you won't be as effective. For example: A Master Heavy Swordsman is great in PvE. He can do a spin attack that lets him kill 5-6 creatures or NPC's at the same time, but he's not very good in PvP, because to use his knockdown attack, and deal any damage, he has to be close to his opponent. If you're primarily a team player, a grouper, you can just focus on PvP and PvE both, and you'll still have plenty of skills left over to be very effective in PvE groups. If you want to do a little grouping, a little soloing, a little PvP and a little PvE, read on and I'll give you a little insight a few paragraphs down...

I'll start with solo PvE... If you like to solo a lot, you'll want a melee profession, such as fencer, heavy swordsman, teras kasi artist or pikeman. They have high melee damage mitigation, which grants added protection against most creatures of the game, and they all have a really powerful spin attack which helps them to solo entire lairs of creatures much faster. This is an extremely useful tactic for levelling up on the road to mastery of the profession, because you kill creatures faster, and can earn upwards of 500 to 600k weapons experience in an hour of steady grinding.

For group PvE it really doesn't matter what you pick. Just pick a profession that it looks like you might like, and stick with it. If you stop and switch to another halfway through the process of levelling up, you won't really know how good the character could have been, so stick with it! You can level up any combat profession in the game in under a week anyway, even as a total newbie! I can do them in 1-3 days so just stick with the character and build up your wisdom, then choose which you like the best.

Next I'll discuss Group and solo PvP... As I've said before, any character dedicated entirely to solo PvP is just fine in a group situation. There is nothing you can really do to improve your group PvP performance that would be any different from regular solo PvP preparations, short of being a doctor so you can revive your friends that get deathblown.

The best PvP'ers in Star Wars Galaxies hardly ever get knocked down, and when they do, they get right back up. This is because of 3 factors: Defense vs. knockdown prevents you from being knocked down as often, and at higher levels seems to make you near impervious to knockdown attacks. I once tangled with a PvP'er whom I shot approximately 30 times with a knockdown move and she never went down. Defense vs. Dizzy is another one. When you're knocked down, you can normally get right back up, unless they use a dizzying skill on you. A lot of professions can dizzy

The best PvP'ers use a weapon that does stun based damage, because most people who PvP wear composite armor, which has usually no defense against stun, or up to about 40% defense against stun, or no armor at all. This makes a stun weapon your best friend in PvP combat. The only stun weapons I know of are the Geonosian sonic blaster (requires pistoleer techniques 2), stun baton (novice fencer), jawa ion rifle (rifles 4 tree in marksman), and the tangle pistol (pistols 4 in marksman).

Good PvP'ers also tend to target the mind pool with whatever special attacks they have, because of the fact that any master medic with powerful stims can heal their entire health and action once every 5 seconds, making all the damage you do to those pools pretty useless. The only two ways to heal the mind are by eating certain food/drinking drinks, which I'll explain about in more detail later (Section 1, Chapter 2), and by finding a combat medic who's willing to heal it. You can only eat food so many times until you're full, and the combat medic's mind healing skill has so many drawbacks they very seldom ever use it, so regardless of how nice his armor is or how well he can dodge, your opponent's mind pool is usually his undoing.

The professions that can damage the mind pool are firstly rifleman, who gets head shot 3, swordsman, with 2 hand head hit 3, bounty hunter, with eye shot, and the combat medic, whose mind poison stims are so SICK, and I mean just PLAIN sick, in PvP, that they're considered the best profession for dealing mind damage in the game. A combat medic's poison once damaged me for about 300-600 mind damage every 6 seconds, until I had 1 mind point left, and ran away. Luckily I escaped, but I just barely made it. Mind poison is JUST PLAIN SICK in PvP and it lasts for sometimes 5-10 minutes, beating relentlessly at your mind pool until it goes away. Against weapons, you can dodge, but against mind poisons... you're out of luck and you'd best kill them fast, or run away. Better hope they didn't destroy your speeder...

You probably already guessed this, but when coupled with the Jawa Ion Rifle, the Rifleman using head shot 3 is generally the second best choice for raw damage to the mind pool, and when rifleman attacks are coupled with combat medic poisons, you know your damage output to the mind pool will be pretty ridiculously powerful.

The bounty hunter, with his eye shot, does massive damage to the mind, especially when you couple the bounty hunter pistols tree with the pistoleer techniques 2 tree so you can use the Geonosian sonic blaster. The bounty hunter carbines tree includes some decent knockdown and dizzy attacks, so you can usually knock people on their backs and blow them away with your eye shot from your sonic blaster! Some high end sonic blasters have better damage output than the Jawa Ion rifle, so bounty hunter is also an extremely powerful PvP choice!

The fencer can use the stun baton, sure, but they don't have any mind attacks, so they're not as good in PvP as the other professions I just talked about, in my humble opinion. They do however have a few boxes with good knockdown and dizzy defense, so they're not a completely bad profession.

All of the best PvP'ers in Star Wars Galaxies have the following:

1. Good defense vs. knockdown and dizzy to keep them from getting knocked down, and to keep them from not being able to get back up once they're knocked down. (pistoleer and fencer have the best knockdown and dizzy trees out of all the possible professions). Good combat equilibrium, to help you to get right back up as soon as you are knocked down. (Teras Kasi Artist has +40 to combat equilibrium from the balance conditioning tree, and fencer has +20, but +30 if you master it). Also, there is a chef food, called Thaktilo, that increases your knockdown defense dramatically! You won't even need knockdown defense bonuses from skills if you eat this all the time, but some players already have knockdown defense, and don't need it, making room for other important foods such as vagnerian canapes.

2. Good damage mitigation, dodge skills, block skills and/or melee and ranged defense modifiers, to help avoid damage, limit the amount of damage that can reach them, and to help avoid some attacks altogether. (The best profession for all of these except block is fencer. They recieve high bonuses to dodge, melee and ranged defense, and have melee damage mitigation. If you go for master fencer, you have all of the important defensive PvP skills except for block, which comes in the rifleman tree, and ranged damage mitigation, which ALSO comes in the rifleman tree. Pistoleer also has some VERY impressive dodge mods, and all the professions have a little melee and ranged defense. ) If you go master fencer, and master rifleman, it seems to be the best combination for both heavy mind damage, melee and ranged mitigation 3, and for all of those vital defensive skills, however, you won't have enough points left over for combat medic, so you might sacrifice some of those defenses in exchange for that added heavy damage, but master rifleman master fencer is also a very viable alternative.

3. The ability to knock down other players and dizzy them is also important if you want to have an easier time in PvP. It's not necessary, though... All the melee professions have a knockdown attack, and I think a dizzy attack as well, but you have to be up close to use them, so I prefer the ranged professions that can knock down, if you knock down at all. Bounty hunter has a nice knockdown attack in the carbines specialization tree called fire knockdown, and they also underhand shot. Fire knockdown also has a chance to dizzy, so it's better until you land the dizzy, then I think you should use underhand shot for the knockdown itself since you are only trying to get 1 special effect to take effect not two... I'm not sure on this one, but I'm pretty sure it's the way the game mechanics work. Carbineer has charge shot 1 and 2, which also knock down opponents. Smuggler has low blow, which hits them in the nads and they fall over grabbing them until they don't hurt any more... (it's a knockdown attack) smugglers also get last ditch assault, which is a very powerful attack that doesn't target a specific pool, and is very useful in groups and in PvP against people who can't heal damage to their health and action pools.

4. The ability to heal yourself at least a little. I recommend you go for at least pharmacology 4 in medic for high powered stim B's without too much skill point cost, but preferably first aid 4 as well, so all your heals do even more healing. Even better still would be master medic for the stim E's that heal for almost 4000 damage per 5 seconds!!! I personally would just try to go for Stim D's with maybe 1 or 2 boxes in first aid, but master medic is already a requirement for combat medic, so if you want to go that route, you can look forward to some powerful heals to heal yourself with in addition to those devastating mind poisons I told you about.

This is only a guide. I strongly encourage you to make whatever kind of character you want, and to use my guide as simply a set of guidelines to help you make that decision... however here are some suggestions for what professions to choose for the defense modifiers above...

5. Damage mitigation versus ranged and melee are both very important. Every ranged weaponry profession (rifleman, pistoleer, and carbineer) offers ranged damage mitigation 3 at master, with levels 1 and 2 coming at earlier points in the skill tree, and melee mitigation is the same, except it comes with the melee professions (pikeman, fencer, swordsman and teras kasi artist). These are very useful skills to have in PvP combat, as they limit the amount of damage you can take from a weapon. For example: If your opponent is using a weapon on you that shoots for 140 to 700 damage, your ranged damage mitigation skill would reduce that weapon's maximum damage by a significant amount. The weapon would have an effective damage range of about 140 to 400 damage when firing at you. This is of course the same with melee weapons and melee mitigation. Since you can be sure to encounter both melee and ranged attackers in PvP, you'll need both, however there are probably more ranged weapon using PvP'ers because most people get really tired of having to chase people down while hitting them a lot less often with melee weapons than with a nice ranged weapon. With this in mind, if you are short on skillpoints, and don't have enough to master a melee profession and a ranged profession both, I'd recommend trying to get at least level 2 in ranged and melee mitigation, but preferably level 3 in ranged, and even more preferably both, although it's a tossup sometimes and you have to make a few sacrifices of certain skills. Just weight the ones you think are the best against the ones you think aren't so good.

6. Dodge is just that... the ability to completely dodge an attack. The best skill tree for dodge is the pistoleer grips tree, as I earlier mentioned, but fencing techniques gives +15 to dodge in each of the 4 fencing techniques boxes, and +15 in another fencer box, I think for a total of +75 to dodge at techniques 4, and +100 at master fencer, PLUS you get +40 to dizzy and melee damage mitigation 2 along the way up the techniques tree, making fencer techniques 4 a better choice than pistoleer in some ways.

7. - Area attacks. Not all good PvP'ers have area attacks, but I mention them here because they are a very effective tactic to use. The only one I really recommend using, however, since people heal themselves fairly commonly, is area effect mind poison and disease delivery units that come with the combat medic profession. A master combat medic with high powered area mind poison delivery units can put a mind poison on a group of foes at the start of a combat, then run away, and come back to finish them off after the poison has taken its toll!! Provided you can escape to your swoop, and make it to safety, when you get back, if you have a mind damaging attack and a good stun based weapon, you can use this tactic to take down several opponents if your mind poison stims are strong enough, and they don't have anyone in the group to heal the poison/disease!!! Some people get confused in the heat of combat, anyway, and might do stupid things like run away or something. If you see someone doing this, take a not of where they went and follow them to take them out first lol. The antelope that strays too far from the herd is more readily caught by the lion.

I hope you followed me through all that... I know it's kind of confusing, so just try to follow the guidelines and try to keep in mind that it's good to balance your damage output somewhat with your defensive skills. I recommend you study all the skills available to each profession by pressing control + S in-game to see the skills window, and clicking the "all professions" tab at the top left corner so you can check them all out and see which skills are available, to help you make a decision. I'm not sure how long this site will remain active, so please email me at c.woodmore2@comcast.net if they ever take it down so I can remove this part of the guide, but go to the following link, and click "character builder" at the top of the page. This helps you determine how many skillpoints it will take to get the skills you want, so you can plan ahead and know what you'll be able to get before you get really close, and realize you just barely missed it, or you calculated wrong. This site is very helpful, trust me:

http://swgcb.yogn.net/

Please be sure to donate to their site by clicking the button on the top right corner, if you have any extra money lying around that you don't need, and you feel that their service is helpful. It might help keep the site alive a while and I'm sure the hard working folks who made the site could use the money!

(For more information on PvP combat, and ideas on some good character combinations, go to Section 3, Chapter 1. There's quite a bit of info there on PvP combat.)

Now you're ready to pick what kind of character you want to be!

No matter what profession you choose, they all have their fun points. The game has a wide variety of things to do, and no matter what skills you choose, you're bound to have a lot of fun, so just pick something, and enjoy! I hope this section of the guide helped you decide a little on what you'd rather play as, but please don't choose entirely based on my suggestions. Part of the SOUL of your character, is that you chose skills for him/her that best suit YOUR personality! If you're a loner in real life who just wants to make some money and maybe buy a place of your own some day, maybe you'll choose to be a bounty hunter, or a weaponsmith, who knows... just tailor your character to be like you, and you'll feel a lot happier about him when you log in... trust me hehe... I've powergamed and grinded every day almost since the game came out, with only about a month break in between, so I know what I'm talking about! Play for FUN!!!!!



Chapter 1: Basic Essential Knowhow...


Before I talk about anything else, I'm going to talk about stats. You have 3 stats per pool. You have your primary stats (health action and mind) and you have your secondary stats (stamina constitution strength focus quickness and willpower). Health, action and mind are of course, your main pools. They determine how much you can take before you're incapacitated. Stamina, constitution and willpower all determine how fast your natural regeneration rates are. This is how fast your stat pools (H/A/M) regenerate after depleted. Your quickness, strength and focus are stats that determine how fast your health action and mind are depleted when you use special attacks.

Mind stats:

When I make a new character, knowing that his mind is the most important stat, I migrate his mind stat as high as I can get it, first thing. Secondly, I make sure his willpower is maxed, then I put whatever is left over into his focus. All the other 6 health and action stats are usually about 300-600 after I do this, but I ALWAYS rely on buffs from doctors for levelling up. This is just good sense. Trust me. When you're fighting a bunch of baddies and your vagnerian canapes/brandy are keeping you alive just fine, and you don't even have to use any muon gold, in fact, in my inventory the entire crate is still just sitting there and hasn't been used for almost a month, you'll thank me for telling you this!

Protect yourself:

For starters you're going to need to have composite armor. This stuff is a LOT better than Ubese. It has something like 3x as much durability, and doesn't wear out nearly as fast. A full set costs nearly 250-350k, and you're looking for something with Kinetic protection of at least 79 or 80%. If you can't find it, go to another armor shop, because 80% kinetic protection composite is fairly common. Try to buy an extra chestplate or two, and maybe an extra pair of pants and a new helmet, and repair it every time the kinetic protection drops down to about 70-75%. If the item falls apart, goes into the negative numbers for the durability, or just plain gets too low to wear any more, you'll need to get a new piece for that slot. A typical set of composite consists of 9 pieces. The helmet, the chest plate, the pants, the boots, the left and right bracers, and the left and right biceps. Ubese is ok, because it's cheaper and almost as good, but in the long run composite will be better for you because it lasts a lot longer than Ubese and is very much worth the money. The only drawback to composite is its "encumbrance" which reduces all of your secondary stats. Your focus, willpower, stamina, constitution, strength and stamina are all reduced significantly when you wear composite, and you may be forced to have a set of doctor buffs and drink a vasarian brandy or eat a canape just to put on the full set. When the buffs wear off, you can still wear the armor, but you're going to need to leave it on until you get another set of buffs, because you can't put it back on once you've taken it off until you get buffed again. With the right foods, and good doctor buffs, the encumbrance penalties from wearing composite armor should be far outweighed by how heavily it protects you from damage, and how impervious it is to the wear and tear of getting knocked around and beaten on by creatures and NPC's hitting you. Also, unlike kinetic armor, composite also has protections for every type of damage except stun damage. A good set of composite that you'll pay about 300k credits for has 80% kinetic protection, 78-79% electricity protection or cold or heat protection, and about 65-70% protection to everything else (except stun). Another reason composite is the best armor to wear, though, has nothing to do with how powerful it makes you!!! It just looks plain freaking cool when you wear it!!!

A little healing goes a LONG way:

You're going to want some medic skills. This is one of the most important parts of solo levelling. Without the ability to heal yourself, at least a little, you're just going to die too often to have a good efficient levelling experience. It's just something you need. Novice medic is actually pretty good, as you can heal yourself for 300-500 per heal, which should be all you ever need for solo hunting Huurton Stalkers or Quenkers, however, if you make the jump up to pharmacology 4 in medic you'll be able to heal yourself for about 1500 per heal with good stim packs, and at master medic you can heal yourself for up to 3000-4000 with one heal, which is more than most people's total health and action put together!!!

Skill enhancing clothing (Not just for medics!):

To accompany your medic skills, you'll need a shirt or pants that give a bonus to your injury treatment. This will help you heal more damage per stimpack use. The highest bonus you can have from any skill mod on a piece of clothing is +25. If you have a shirt that gives +17 and some pants that give +15, you're still going to only get a maximum bonus of +25, not +32, so get whatever you can get and try to get as close to that +25 threshold as you can. Some master tailors can actually make pants and hats and shirts that give +25 to injury treatment, so you might just want to do what I did, and get one item, saving the other slots for something with perhaps melee defense or mask scent. I prefer a shirt because it's the only piece that won't conflict with a piece of armor you'll be wearing in combat. They make similar skill mod clothing for mask scent skill, bleeding defense, musician wound healing, and melee defense. Ask any master tailor for a full list of Bio Engineered clothing that he can make.

Running multiple instances of Star Wars Galaxies on one computer:

This can be extremely useful if you have another account, and want a hunting companion, or another character online at the same time as you main character, but don't have another computer or another internet connection!

Go into your main Star Wars Galaxies directory on your computer. For me it's...

C:\Program Files\Sony\StarWarsGalaxies

Once you're there, create a new text document and name it user.cfg -- Inside this file you should copy and paste the text below EXACTLY as I have it here...

[SwgClient]

allowMultipleInstances=true

Save the file, then enjoy running 2 instances of the game!!!!



Stimpacks:

You'll also want some decent stimpacks. Try to get the best ones you can find. Stim B's, for novice medic usually have about 390-430 strength if they're really good. Stim C's are about 700 strength for a crate of good ones, good stim D's are about 900 strength, and the best Stim E's I've seen were about 1200-1300 strength. A crate of 10 of them, whatever kind you qualify to use, will last you quite a long time, and should only cost maybe 10-30k depending on the quality and the level of skill/resources required to make them. A full crate of 50 stim B's should only cost about 25 to 75k but they're not as good as high quality stim E's which would probably be close to 120k-200k for a full crate of 50.

The mind is the most important stat:

Your mind stat is very important, which you're aware of if you read the earlier section of the guide entitled "Choosing a profession", and the best way of keeping your mind at a high level without losing too much of it in combat, other than stat migrating your mind stats to their max, is buying vagnerian canapes, vasarian brandy, and muon gold. High quality Vasarian Brandy will last you about 40-45 minutes per use, plenty of time to your stomach to get empty again so you can use more of it, and it should only take up 49 or 50 spaces in your stomach so you can take 2 of them at once. This is instrumental in almost all combat, as it increases your mind, focus and willpower by 400 each time you drink it, for a total of 800 if you drink 2, which should fill your stomach. Your focus determines how much mind you lose when using a special attack. Another factor that affects your mind loss from using specials is the "Mind special attack cost" on your weapon, which can be found by examining it. The willpower stat is simply put, how fast your mind regenerates. The higher your willpower, the faster your mind points replenish after they've been depleted. Your best quality vagnerian canapes are about 33 filling, meaning you can eat like 3 of them before you get full, and EACH one of them gives about +600 to +700 to your focus and willpower (Not your mind, but since the willpower is so high, your mind regenerates so fast you won't notice anyway). It only lasts about 10-13 minutes, though, so I recommend you only eat one or two at a time, and wait for it to wear off before you eat another one or two. Muon gold increases your mind focus and willpower by 500 for 10 minutes, and is a spice. Spices are different than foods. When you eat the muon gold it will last for the 10 minutes, then you'll LOSE 500 from your focus willpower and mind. That is why I say it is only for emergencies. That 500 point loss can be a real blessing in a tough fight, but when the buff wears off, and you go on what they call a spice "downer" you'll be wishing you'd ended the fight sooner! A full crate of the highest quality vasarian brandy should cost no more than 100-200k, and the price for canapes is about the same, and a full crate of both should last you a LONG time. I generally go through about 3 crates of canapes before my brandy supplies are depleted, but I'm assuming you don't have much money, and might not be able to afford much more than 3-5 stacks of each to get you started. Muon gold is no more than 10-20k for a full crate, but you'll probably find yourself hardly ever using it if you have plenty of canapes and brandy. Those quenker missions add up! It generally only takes me 1-3 days to master any given combat profession, so you should be there in no time!

Solo groups:

Just about every time you go out to gain experience, you should join a solo group first. Grouping with 10-20 other players is absolutely instrumental in getting as much experience as possible when solo or group hunting. A solo group is a group of players who group together for the sole purpose of getting higher level missions, then going off to fight solo so they don't have to share the kills with the other group members. They all stay in the group until they're ready to log out or stop levelling, and generally tend to stay in the group even if they go afk so the other group members can benefit from them being in the group as long as possible. Here's an example of why being in a solo group helps a LOT for doing solo quenker missions for experience: The typical 5-6k quenker mission that you take from the mission terminal generally has about 9 quenkers for you to kill. 2 spawn out of the lair, then you kill them, and attack the lair, after which 2 more immediately spawn out of it for you to kill, then when you take the lair down to about 50-55% health, 2 more will spawn out. After those are dead, you are free to destroy the lair, and no more will spawn from it.

PAY ATTENTION HERE: When grouped with a droid or creature pet for the experience bonus you get from having at least 1 other person in the group (yes even pets), the experience per kill is about 3100 per kill. Without a pet or another player in the group with you it's only about 2500.

Assuming you are taking advantage of the experience bonus, those 9 quenkers will give you about 27k or 28k experience per lair... However, if you're in a solo group, and the missions are at least about level 78-82 in difficulty, your quenker lairs will spawn 5 per wave, for a total of 15!!! That's 46k experience per lair!!! If you're by yourself and don't even have a pet grouped with you, those 9 quenkers will give a measly 22-23k per lair! The experience bonus really adds up fast and can be the difference between 100-200k per hour and 200-500k per hour in weapons xp!!!

Repair Tools:

Make sure you bring plenty of repair tools with you, to repair your weapons and armor as they get low on condition. The general rule for weapons that I've found best effective is to repair them when they get down to about 25% condition. Always have a backup weapon or two with you in case a repair fails, and the same goes for your armor if you can afford it. For armor, I try to not repair it until it's special protection against kinetic drops below normal by about 5-10%. For example: When an 80% kinetic composite chestplate gets worn out a bit, its special protection to kinetic will drop some, to say 75%. I'd normally repair it then, or wait until it gets to about 70%. It's your call, just try not to let either your weapon or your armor get too low before you repair it. Whenever a weapon or armor gets below 20-30% condition, you have an outright chance to fail at the repairs, making it utterly fall apart and become totally useless. I think it can actually fall apart at higher condition than that, but it seems to be more frequent the lower the weapon/armor piece gets. Also be sure your repair tools are at least 97-98%. You can buy them very cheap at the bazaar markets in Theed and Coronet, usually, and you should always examine it first to be sure the "functionality rating" of the repair tool is 97-98.00 at least.

Vehicles:

Another piece of essential equipment is a good vehicle. I try to have 3 vehicles so that I have backups in case one or two of them get disabled, but you should do fine with just 1, if you watch it a lot to make sure it doesn't get too low, and if you're not involved in much PvP battle. A player can attack and destroy your vehicle in 1 or 2 hits even if he doesn't know the first thing about PvP, so watch out. Keep a good eye on its condition and type /find garage before it gets low so you can go repair it. Generally, to repair a vehicle to full condition it should cost no more than 7,000 to 9,000 credits. Landspeeders are the most durable vehicles, and you don't have to repair them nearly as often, and speederbikes are slightly less durable but a lot faster. The fastest of them all, but the quickest to lose durability and become disabled is the Swoop bike. This is my personal favorite because I'm a steadfast advocate for "getting where you want to go quicker and making more progress and credits because of it". Generally a swoop is only like 15-25k credits, and speederbikes and landspeeders are about 10-15k.

Buffs:

Be sure to get buffs before you head out, and don't forget how important a solo group is. Remember, a solo group is a group of players who group together for the sole purpose of getting higher level missions, then going off to fight solo so they don't have to share the kills with the other group members. They all stay in the group until they're ready to log out or stop levelling, and generally tend to stay in the group even if they go afk so the other group members can benefit from them being in the group as long as possible. Here's an example of why being in a solo group helps a LOT for doing solo quenker missions for experience: The typical 5-6k quenker mission that you take from the mission terminal generally has about 9 quenkers for you to kill. 2 spawn out of the lair, then you kill them, and attack the lair, after which 2 more immediately spawn out of it for you to kill, then when you take the lair down to about 50-55% health, 3 more will spawn out. After those are dead, you are free to destroy the lair, and no more will spawn from it. The experience per quenker (when grouped with a droid or creature pet for the experience bonus you get from having at least 1 other person in the group, yes even pets) is about 3100 per kill. Without a pet or another player in the group with you it's only about 2500. Assuming you are taking advantage of the experience bonus, those 9 quenkers will give you about 27k or 28k experience per lair... However, if you're in a solo group, and the missions are at least about level 78-82 in difficulty, your quenker lairs will spawn 5 per wave, for a total of 15!!! That's 46k experience per lair!!! That experience bonus really adds up fast and can be the difference between 100-200k per hour and 200-500k per hour in weapons xp!!!

Slice your weapons and armor!!!:

I guess I don't need to remind you to get your weapons and armor sliced by a master smuggler before you start hunting, but it helps a LOT. Damage per second is the most important thing for a soloer, even more important than your armor and your stimpacks. The only thing more important is CLONE be sure you clone at the nearest cloning facility before you go out there, because if you die and you're not cloned you take about 100 wounds to your mind action and health, plus you get about 100 battle fatigue. That's another thing I'll talk about for a minute after I finish this paragraph... Before I talk about battle fatigue you need to know about insuring your items. When you die, unless it's in a PvP conflict, your items in your inventory, ALL of them, including your armor and weapons and repair tools, EVERYTHING loses 5% condition. If you INSURE at the insurance terminal, they only lose 1% condition when you die, but you have to be sure to insure after you die, every time, because the insurance wears off after each death. It costs anywhere from 500 credits to 10k credits to insure your items before you go out and go hunting, depending on the value of all the items you have in your inventory.

Watch your battle fatigue!!!:

Battle fatigue is a big of a thing to worry about... you get a few wounds when you get hit if your battle fatigue is too high, like higher than 400, but the wounds are pretty negligible and not really worth mentioning, BUT when a doctor buffs you, your battle fatigue is VERY important. If your BF is higher than 200, his buffs won't buff you for their full amount. If it's about 300, he'll only buff you for 2300 where he'd normally buff you for 2500. If your BF is closer to 500, his buffs will only buff you for something 1500. If it's really bad, like 800 to 1000, you'll likely only get buffed for around 600-800. I highly recommend that when your buffs wear off, every 3-4 hours, that you go into either the Mining Outpost cantina, the Coronet cantina, or even the Theed cantina, and heal up your mind wounds and battle fatigue before you have a doctor to sell you buffs.

Easy apprentice XP!!!:

Apprentice XP is the final thing I need to talk to you about... in order to master any skill, you have to have 620 points of apprentice xp. The only way to get this experience is to teach other players skills until you've reached your goal of 620 apprentice points. Generally, if I have money, I'll go to Coronet or Theed and shout something like, "Buying apprentice experience!!! Paying 2500 credits per train!!!" You can change the amount of money you offer, depending on your budget. Another good way is to simply stand there and shout, "Master Marksman, Entertainer, Brawler, etc. training skills free of charge!!!" Be sure in your shout to state which skills you qualify for so your potential trainees know if you have the skill they need or not. Another way to get apprentice xp, if you have medic skills, and a friend who only has novice medic, or one skill tree empty that you have full, is to go to a secluded space with him and type /tumbletostanding over and over and over. It helps to make a macro such as the following (Don't forget to include the semicolon in the middle there):

/tumbletostanding;/macro tumbletostanding

(Be sure you name your macro "tumbletostanding" or the macro won't work. Remeber, if you want to stop the macro, just type /dump.)

Anyway... as you tumble your action and health slowly deplete. Your health depletes far less than your action, though. The best way to do this is to get a buff to your ACTION pool and no other stat. Do NOT buff your quickness or stamina or this strategy will not work. As you sit there tumbling for your friend, he heals you with the best stimpacks he can use, and every time he qualifies for a medic skill, you teach it to him and he then surrenders it. You repeat this process until you've earned enough apprentice XP to master your skill, and that's that.

My favorite way to gain apprentice xp, is a lot harder to do, but you get it much faster. You need to have a friend with pharmacology 4 and first aid 4, but no skill in diagnostics. You in turn have to have diagnostics 1, and get your action buffed, but once again NOT your quickness or stamina. Also you need a pet who has learned the "trick2" skill. This skill slowly depletes your action bar, AND your mind bar, but here's the trick... you make a macro like the following (Don't forget to include the semicolon in the middle there):

/tellpet trick2;/macro trick2

(You have to name the macro trick2 or this will not work. Also remember that when you're ready to stop using the macro type /dump.)

Next, you type /macro trick2 to get it started, then you type /macro trick2 several more times, so that you spam the server with it. I usually type /macro trick2 about 7 times before I stop, and when the server is spammed with your trick2 requests, your pet looks like it's got a nervous twitch, then you see your action bar is depleting about 3000 points every 2 seconds!!!! Since this skill depletes your mind pool as well, though, this technique will not work at all unless you have to drink a bottle or 2 of vasarian brandy, eat a vagnerian canape or 2, or just get some focus and willpower buffs from a nearby musician who's got time to buff you. Muon gold also works but unless you get musician buffs, you have to take a combination of canapes/brandys/muon to make your focus high enough for it to not deplete when you use the "trick2" command. Anyway, once you get it working, and your action is depleting like crazy, just have your friend with pharmacology 4 and first aid 4 heal you non-stop. It helps if he uses a macro but it isn't necessary. Every time he qualifies for diagnostics 1, simply teach it to him and have him surrender it, and you should have all the apprentice experience you need in no time at all!!!!

Another really good way to gain apprentice xp is to simply offer to trade it with someone else who needs apprentice experience. You and he/she both have to have skills that you can teach the other, and that's the only requirement. Usually you don't have to pay in this scenario because you're both benefiting from the exchange.





Chapter 2: The Combat Professions...


Basic Essential Knowhow: (Please refer to the section above as well for added help with the combat professions.)

For all combat professions I recommend that you bring along a good full set of 80% composite armor, with backup chestplates in case you get a repair failure, and also some vasarian brandy and vagnerian canapes to increase your mind stats. Some muon gold for a quick emergency 500 point mind heal also helps, but keep in mind that the muon wears off after 10 minutes and your mind is decreased by 500 for the duration of the downer effect, which is about 3 minutes.

Don't forget that getting in a solo group is absolutely necessary for fast levelling. For quenkers you'll want 10-20 people, and for huurton stalkers, you'll want about 15-20. Read below for more information on why. Also, getting missions from a Playermade city is always better than getting them from an in-game city such as the Mining Outpost or the Imperial Outpost on Dantooine, because in playermade cities, for some wierd reason, the missions are always a couple hundred meters closer to the terminal.

Don't forget to group with another player, or even a pet! This gives a nice experience bonus!!! You get about 20-30% more experience per kill if you are grouped with someone/something.

Killing Quenkers and Huurton Stalkers on Dantooine are the two best ways of earning weapons experience I've been able to find. Quenkers are best when you have relatively little to no skill at all with your current weapon, not only because they're simply easier, but also because stalkers give more experience based on how much weapons experience you have with your current equipped weapon. Since they're slightly harder to kill, (about 50-70% harder), it's just common sense to kill quenkers at the early levels, and to make the transition to stalkers a bit later when the experience rewards outweigh the slightly harder difficulty of the stalkers. At novice skill level, the quenkers and stalkers will both give you about 3000-3200 experience per kill. At about 5 to 7 skill boxes into your weapon skill you'll get the same from quenkers, but the stalkers will shoot up to about 3400-3500 experience per kill! At maybe 10 skill boxes stalkers will max out at about 3900-4000 per kill, and they're still soloable so I think you'll find that they're the best all around for later on! Just use your best judgement when deciding when to make the transition. Keep in mind that stalkers pretty much require you to have a nice 80-90% kinetic resistance composite helmet, and plenty of vasarian brandy/vagnerian canapes, because they do a considerable amount more damage to your mind than the quenkers. They also do a good bit of damage to your other stats as well. For hunting quenkers, all you'll probably need is buffs, although I'd get some medic skills and the mind enhancing food/drinks just to be safe. For stalkers, since like I said they're pretty hard in comparison, you'll definitely want at least novice medic, if not better, and you're NEED the food/drinks to survive. Refer to Chapter 2 above for more details on the medic skill and acquiring stimpacks/foods/drinks. Also don't forget to have some muon gold for emergencies. I never really needed it, but my composite helmet was 90% to kinetic so you might want to take a little with you in case of emergencies. It's a quick 500 point mind heal, and it buffs all 3 mind stats for 500 with a 10 minute duration. Keep in mind, that after that 10 minutes is up, you LOSE 500 from all 3 mind stats, and it lasts for about 3 minutes. This is called a downer.

I've been able to get some combat professions from novice to master in about 1 day of grinding (15 hours or so)!!! For Huurton Stalkers, you'll be looking for the ones that pay about 10k credits. When you go to the mission details it clearly says "Huurton Stalker Lair" right there. You can't miss it. If it says "Huurton Matron", or "Huurton Pack" or "Huurton Howler" you weren't paying attention to me when I told you to get the ones that pay 10k credits. All the other ones are either too hard or too easy, and not worth your time. I chose stalkers because they're the most efficient thing to kill on Dantooine, if not in the entire game. Ok, keep that in mind. Here's some more useful info before we get started on hunting techniques... I highly recommend that for Huurton Stalkers, you get in a group of at least 10-15 people, because unless you get missions of 85-90 difficulty or greater, you'll likely get stalker lairs with only 12 creature spawns instead of 15. More spawns in the lair means less time running back to the city for more missions, so you level up faster! I dont need to tell you this is a good thing. For quenkers the missions only pay about 5k credits, and the lair is called "a quenker lair". You may be tempted to take the "savage quenker lair" missions because they pay a little more, but they are a lot harder, and they have a ranged attack, which makes it very hard to kill them with the area effect damage strategy I'm about to tell you about. Also avoid the ones that pay 15-25k because they're quenker relic reapers and ravagers. I don't even want to get into how hard those are to kill, and they give about the same experience as a huurton stalker... For the REGULAR quenkers, lol, you can probably get the 15 creature lairs with a group of about 5-10 people. I know you need to have missions of around 75 to 84 difficulty to get the best possible quenker missions.

Strategies:

For killing both the stalkers and the quenkers on Dantooine, you'll want to follow either of these two strategies. The slowest method is just killing them one at a time. It's less risky but a lot slower as far as gaining weapons experience is concerned. The fastest method utilizes an area attack such as burst shot 2 (for carbineer), flushing shot 2 (rifleman), fanshot (pistoleer), and the various spin attacks that the melee professions get.

The one at a time strategy:

For the slow, one at a time method, you just target one of the creatures, go prone, and begin shooting it with your best special attack. I tell you which special attack to use in the specific section below for each profession, so I don't really need to list that here. Just know that you use the most powerful attack in your arsenal as far as efficiency and speed of the kill is concerned. When it runs up close to you, just stand up or kneel, and continue shooting until it and its friends are dead. I personally choose to kneel because of the added accuracy bonus, and because I don't appear to take enough damage to matter whether I stand or kneel. It's just common sense to kneel for me, since it gives you a better chance to hit. Someone once said to me in the game, "I kneel before no beast." I didn't think to say anything to him at the time, but I'd rather kneel in front of a beast and shoot it with more accuracy, than let it beat me up, eventually biting off my nose or my ear... Anyway, when the initial 5 "beasts" are dead, just shoot the lair one time, then type /peace before anything comes out of it and attacks you. If you shoot the lair while there's a creature out of it, they'll go up and heal it, so it's best to just hit /peace before any of them spawn. It helps to have a button on the toolbar that automatically types /peace for you. Just open up your macro editor and name the new macro whatever you want. Inside the box type /peace and then be sure you drag the macro up to a button on the toolbar. That's basically it. Just hit the corresponding F key whenever you need to peace out, and you won't have to sit and tediously type out /-p-e-a-c-e which you're in combat. Much simpler. Anyway, kill the second wave of 5 creatures the same way you killed the first 5, then you need to take the lair to about 50% health to get the final wave to spawn. /peace out as soon as you see the first one spawn and you should be fine, then kill them, and finish off the lair. I should mention one other thing about the one at a time attacking method. It helps a LOT to make a macro for your best special attack, so you don't have to sit and hit the attack button over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It's as annoying as reading what I just typed, which is almost as annoying as typing what I just typed lol. Here's an example of a good macro that I use personally for whatever combat profession I'm working on:

/bodyshot2;/pause 1;/macro attackmacro

(It's that simple. Make sure that the macro is named attackmacro or it won't work, and change it from /bodyshot2 to /overchargeshot 2, /legshot2, /headshot2, /melee1hbodyhit2, or whatever. Just go to the skill box in your character skillsheet and hover the mouse over your skillbox to determine what the exact command for the attack is, and put it in your macro. To stop the macro type /dump. You'll need to do this every time you want to change to another target.)

The area attack method:

Now for my personal favorite, the area attack method... This method is pretty awesome. I've used it to earn about 300-700k experience per hour on huurton stalkers, and every time I master a profession this is what I use. Depending on which profession you are, your best area attack will be different. For some professions you have to use a normal one at a time approach for a while until you earn your skill level in your area attack, but it's worth it to go straight for the area attack tree before you work on anything else. I'll tell you in the specific profession sections below which attacks to use, so I don't have to type it here and waste space. This section just tells you have to use them the right way. Ok, for the melee professions it's REAL simple. You walk up to the lair, make sure you have all your brandy and canapes ready and eat what you need, then you start wailing on the lair with your best area attack. I prefer to use a macro to spam the attacks for me, just something that loops the attack over and over so I don't have to hit the attack button all the time. Go above to the macro for bodyshot2 and just use that. It works for all special attacks, so just substitute the word bodyshot2 with whatever attack you'll be using. Ok, I told you it was simple. You just keep attacking the lair. The creatures that come out of it will keep healing it, but you'll be hitting them with the spin attack, so they'll eventually die, which will let you take the lair down to 50% health so the last 5 spawn out, then you just attack them all until they're dead. A pretty simple method, and I think you'll find that it's a lot easier to do, and a lot faster than the one at a time strategy.

For the ranged combat professions, it's a lot different, but still pretty easy. What you'll need to do is go prone about 64 meters away from the lair first thing. You can see your distance from the lair when you target it and look at the little target box in the top right corner of your screen (unless you moved it). Next you simply shoot the lair with your best area attack until the lair is at about 50% health, to spawn all 15 creatures (again, I'll tell you which are the best attacks to use in the profession-specific sections below). I prefer using a looping macro to attack for me so I don't have to keep hitting the key over and over. Whenever you need to change targets, you just type /dump, which I've also made a macro for. Read a couple paragraphs above for a good macro to loop your attacks. Just substitute bodyshot2 for whatever attack you'll be using. Anyway, after you attack the lair prone from about 64 meters away, and get it down to about 50% health, since all 15 creatures are spawned out of the lair, you need to change your target to the closest one that's chasing you, and start shooting it. Ok, once one dies, you'll need to switch targets, and it helps a LOT to run around in circles away from the creatures as you're shooting them. You need to be a distance of about 10-15 meters away from them to hit them all with each shot from your weapon, with your area attack. If you're only 5 meters away, you'll be lucky if you hit 1-2 of them, but if you let them chase you around, running at your top speed (burst run isn't necessary at all), you'll hit most if not all of them with EVERY shot from your weapon. While you're doing all this craziness, one or two of them might just stand there like you're not even there. What you do when they do this is either change your target to them, or you just run past them in a way that your area attack will hit them in addition to your target. I also forgot to mention, that if you need to change targets, hitting /dump alone won't be enough. You'll have to first hit /dump then hit the "clear" button in the little window that shows what special attacks you're using.

This method is a LOT faster than the one at a time strategy, and if you do the math I think you'll use it as much as humanly possible .


Brawler:

Unarmed:

Use a vibro knuckler with at or around 1.7 speed, 150 damage and buy a few crates of melee weapon speed powerups. Also try to get a speed slice if at all possible. From level 0 to 1 just hunt newbie spawns outside any major city using the /berserk skill as much as possible. It helps to make a looping macro so you berserk over and over again. This keeps you from having to do it manually every 10-20 seconds which is a big hassle. Here's an example of a good berserk macro:

/berserk;/pause 1;/macro berserk

(To end the macro, when you need to change targets or something, just type /dump. Remember, this macro won't work unless you name the macro "berserk".)

From 1 to 3 get master doctor buffs and wander around outside the city killing any high level creatures you can find, (i.e. -- tortons, humbabas, gurrcats, sharnaffs, and wrixes), still using the berserk macro. You can usually find these creatures or plenty of other relatively hard creatures (but not if you're buffed) easily within 2000 meters of the city. From level 3 to 4, go to Dantooine and get in a solo group, then get a couple quenker missions. Keep on using the berserk macro until you get all the way to level 4 in unarmed, which should only take about an hour or two total if you do it like I told you. The solo group isn't really necessary at this time because you only need 70k unarmed xp, which can be gotten from 3 or 4 easy lairs. In a solo group it's faster because you only have to take out 2 lairs but honestly the time it takes you to find a solo group can sometimes take longer than just grabbing the missions and running to them .