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Curious about Beast Master, Entertainer and other questions
Razide
Member Posts: 10
I have a couple of questions I hope you can shed some light on.
Can anyone give me a brief comparison between the two; CH and BM are they similar?
From what I read I’m not sure I’ll know what to expect if I log my old MCH on. I would hate to lose all that work, would I retain any of my skills and/or adult pets?
I truly miss the game communities, even the band we formed as Master Ents jamming in the taverns. Is there a need for this class anymore?
Are there any decent mature communities that are looking for more players? I played on Radiant and Tempest.
Lastly, was there a server merge? I don’t see the server name listed anywhere that I used to play my CH on. Can anyone share this info if you know, or know where I can get it?
Thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions.
Appreciate your comments and feedback.
Raz
Comments
BM is nothing like CH.
You can't tame pets in the wild. You craft them in test tubes, in what is a time sink (it takes days to craft a pet).
Also, nothing that matters is player made, it's all about endless searching for `leet loot drops to make the best pets.
None of your old pets would work, they'd have to be made over again, this is SOE, after all, previous accomplishments matter not.
There have been no server merges despite the cries from the playerbase to do so. Only a few servers have any appreciable population on them and even then, it seems to be at specific times of day, like evening hours. The rest are ghost servers with more and more players cancelling or paying money to transfer toons. I believe the pets trapped in your data pad can have the DNA taken to place towards a replacement pet.
BM skill come from the expertise trees that all professions have access to. BM does not 'tame' animals. It is intensively resource and component based, and due to that, it is frightfully expensive to make or buy a good pet. It is also a time sink...not just to make a pet, but to level it to. Many have resorted to combat macros to level their pets because the grind in painfully dull and seemingly endless. I really do suggest reading the official SWG BM forum for the details in order to 'appreciate' all that is involved.
Entertainers actuallly have great buffs that are in demand. An ent can macro to 90 in less than a day. If you are starting out as a new combatant, you will be mortified on the grind it takes to level. I have read there are some ways to avoid most of the tedious ATK grinding now by using a macro and a pet.
BM is a pathetic shadow of what CH once was.
You know those rares you spent hours finding and then taming?
Under the BM system, they're transformed into generic skins that lose all the qualities you spent hours searching for.
Once you grind that rancor up to level 90, it's only slightly taller than a Wookiee. No more large pets allowed, because the kiddies who don't know any better than to use the broken pseudoFPS UI can't deal with pets blocking their shots.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
BeastMaster is a Combo of creature Handler and Bio Eng. No you don't tame pets but you do gather DNA from the critters and other needed genetic material to make a pet.
It takes 3 days to make a pet but a 60 point maxed out pet sells for about 75-90 million credits.
You can take the time to gather HQ genetic material or use the comon stuff and sell low quality pets.
But a full BM can make a great Combat pet one that can tank a Gold Elite, a BM Bounty Hunter and a BM Medic are two powerful combos.
It is a lot more involed than Creature Handler taming a pet was easy making a top of the Line Combat Pet is not easy it takes time but is worth it.
It does take a lot of credits to get started unless you have guild help.
Is it Fun yes and also there are also MUTATIONS no has yet made a Ackley or the Mutated Rancor yet you could be the first!!!
Don;t listen to the Angry People here they don't even Play the Game I do so go for it its fun!
Ajax
Beastmaster is very much more complex than the CH profession was in the past. And legacy pets you may have are very valuable, in some cases it is the only way to get some types of creatures. I have a guild member who tamed a rasp long ago and now that creature is awesome in PvP. Since the only way to get that pet was to have one tamed from years ago there are only 2 known on my server.
It flys so high that players don't know what it hitting them, quite funny to see peoples reactions.
Yes I wish I had a Rasp but yes you old pets can be remade any many are rare!
Ajax
CM was great. BM stands for bowel movement
http://www.soesucks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=10
foolishly went back to try BM, it.'s honestly not worth the effort i was able to make 60 point pets in the end, but the cost's to buy all the kit is simply silly unless you can self produce all the items from a few accounts for your self, or know someone who can supply you with re-usable parts etc.
I did like making my pets and did enjoy leveling them up to a point, but it gets very tedious very fast and all the specials seem to do exactly the same damage just a name change to each pet type.
But has it any soul no.....far from it ... it feels like the plastic of the nge..just pretending to be something it can just not be and you will feel the differance between CH and BM like pre-cu and nge.
As for entertainer they have been saddled with the buff burden, and if you think buffs where bad pre-cu, think agian i have seen players with 4 or more lines of buffs in pvp needless to say there god like, sadly the game continues to follow extreme lines of over powering and nerfing, then again i cant recall a period in it history when it did not.
To be honest the game has not fleshed out the potential it had, its over 4 years now since i started it just seems to have been in a downward trend since publish 7 or so, but the collateral damage was without a doubt the NGE.
These are my opinions
You people lie through your teeth BM is so much more than CH ever was I was a Creature Handler and BM is a lot more involed.
Ajax
Also what Ajax forgets to mention is that 70 million credits is pocket money in todays SWG...
Ajax never played Creature Handler, I would be shocked if she even played Pre-CU at all. She might claim to have, but she knows so little about the game beforehand that I doubt it. She seems to be custombuilt for the NGE.
I'm glad she enjoys the game though, somebody has to.
Tecmo Bowl.
Everything in SWG now as far as super DNA and resources, rare loots , collections is a now a gouging practice alll the best stuff being sold for 100 mil or above. Most of the players that are still left and are traders a good majority of them use this gouging even though they dont need the credits do this and give nothing back to the community. At least when I was a trader I sold things at a more reasonable price last things I was selling at the time was collection pieces before they ninja nerfed the drop rates for collections and rares i was pulling in 100 mil-200 mil a week seems that everyone just wanted to buy thier colllections and not grind them themselves. I had plenty of rares including the sith 4/5 holocron which goes for 100 mil or more i sold them for 15 mil and would still be doing that if SWG wasnt the big turd it is now thing is i undersold stuff so people would buy from me considering what most stuff sells for my stuff was very fair priced.
At the end of the week I would try and help out friends with credits that needed the uber equipment they needed I collected everything and had multiples of things and spares and gave them to people that needed it I didnt hoard my credits or belongings with the exception of stuff thats no longer obtainable, cause in the end.... this game will be canned and all that hoarding will not matter.....
Sorry, Charlie, but this is a forum of opinion, and opinions are not "true" or "false". They are not facts.
In my opinion, BM is a joke, a pathetic shadow of what was once the best pet system in an MMO, ever.
You cannot tame. You must grind forever. You can only have one pet out at a time. Certain unquestionably iconic pets cannot be obtained except by forking over massive amounts of credits, or by a byzantine mutation process that is subject to dev revision the first time it's cracked.
Beast Master is the suxxors.
In my opinion. And that of many other old school CHs.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Sorry, Charlie, but this is a forum of opinion, and opinions are not "true" or "false". They are not facts.
In my opinion, BM is a joke, a pathetic shadow of what was once the best pet system in an MMO, ever.
You cannot tame. You must grind forever. You can only have one pet out at a time. Certain unquestionably iconic pets cannot be obtained except by forking over massive amounts of credits, or by a byzantine mutation process that is subject to dev revision the first time it's cracked.
Beast Master is the suxxors.
In my opinion. And that of many other old school CHs.
I agree, this forum really doesn't know what true or false is, in-fact it's the only forum that confuses it's opinion with fact.
Account has been stolen, why would someone want to steal my account?
I can not find any lie in the post's on this topic....other than yours you said " BM is so much more than CH ever was" bullsh*t i doubt you even played in that period.
ajax7 your either a shill or a fanbois i don't have much respect for either to be honest.
I was one of the first MCHs on Corbantis. I went back to try out the BM thing and found it in no way like CH. I used to bring out my two grauls and whoopazz.
My level 80 Commando is not gonna spend 50 hours training up a midget rancor in newb areas. Waste of time. Plus it gimps your primary prof to be a competent BM.
Also, just thinking of the time and patience it took to level up my CH and see it tossed by dumbass management makes me grit my teeth.
As you can tell I don’t post much, so I appreciate all the opinions and responses, positive and negative alike. I honestly didn’t think this post would draw this much attention but I’m glad it did, a majority of the feedback has been a solid read, thank you all for that. Sorry for the length of this, been a while since I had a chance to reply.
From what I understand after reading the comments…
· BM is a cross between CH/BE.
I’m not sure exactly how this actually works I couldn’t find a BM forum on the main SWG boards, but from what I read here seems like it’s a huge chore to gather the require items you would need to make a solid combat pet. While I could deal with gathering parts, the difficulty in gathering them would be another issue in itself. I would be coming back to the game and the communities have changed where I don’t know anyone willing to help. Are there any?
· Rare mats can be purchased for 100-200 million credits
First off, good god do a majority of people actually have that kind of money handy? Is the economy that broad that things are actually inflated to those extremes? I can’t recall what I had when I left, but I doubt it’s more than a couple thousand credits if that. How tough is it now to make a living?
· Pets take time to grind and level.
Far as I can remember the old CH pets needed to be used daily in order for them to mature. I remember spending a lot of time trying to level pets by grinding gnorts (I think they were called) because that’s all the babies could handle without getting thumped. Eventually, a couple weeks later or so the pets would be mature enough to train as mounts or be used as fighters. Is grinding pets today much different than that of the old days? If not, I don’t see that as a major issue.
· Only one pet at a time
Blunty… that sux, they used to have a max level cap meaning you could use 70 levels worth of pets, be it one lvl fifty Rancor with a level twenty Cupa or, two level 35 Graul Maulers. One pet is better than no pet at all but it still sux not to be able to call more than one. I would miss it, but still it’s not that big an issue.
· Pets are not their actual size
Ok that one is killer for me. There was nothing more fun than watching your pet mature into a massive creature. True - they made a lot of freggin noise stomping around, especially the Tortons. They were extremely irritating to see marching thru the Theed cantina when I played my Ent. I mean, you couldn’t hear the music, but they were still fun to have and see in game once in a while. I remember the ‘Whoa’s’ I would get from the Torton I would walk around with in the field, the ground actually shook. That will be missed and like another person said, I don’t think I’d like a midget rancor either.
· You don’t tame pets you craft them
Masking Scent and running into a group of Gurrecks was fun and foolishly dangerous to some, but the adrenaline rush was intense, don’t think I’d miss that much tho.
From what I remember I had a Rancor, Dragonet, I think a Ravenous Torton but I’m not sure, may have been a regular Torton, 3 Gurrecks, 3 Sludge Panthers, Toxic Merek Battlelord, Bantha and Bull Ronto. I believe I had a full cap of 16 pets all-together I just can’t remember all I had, but those I remember. I may even have a Rasp. Are any of these usable or salvageable?
· Entertainer buff machine
That’s nothing new, but like someone said, it’s probably worse now. Always hated macro artists, why bother playing the game if your gonna bot? I understand the need for buffers etc, but that’s what the community is for. But if that’s fun to you – tho I can’t see how – have at it.
Thanks again for your replies.
Have a lot to contemplate now
Raz
They are salvagable, sort of.
The way it works is that you can "stuff" any pet you have in your datapad from the old days. These pets are turned into old style BE "furniture" pets. You can then drop them in your house, use them for display...OR...you can sample DNA from them (a BM skill) and use that DNA to clone the pet. When you sample the pet for DNA, the furniture pet poofs. You can display them or extract their DNA. This is an intentional design "feature". The catch is, the clone pet is a generic skin...any special attributes you might have had on the original is lost...to include coloration. You have to select the pet's color as part of the BM crafting process. You can turn a once incredibly rare frenzied graul into a plain vanilla graul.
BTW stuffed "flying" pets are highly sought after as decorations...just about any stuffed pet is, now that I think about it, because the BM system doesn't allow for "furniture" pets as BE did. Flying pets didn't exist under the old BE system as no flying skins were ever available to BEs, and some of them make exceptional pets in PvP because they're hard to target. More on that later.
One thing you can do with rancors and grauls is turn them into mounts...but they have no combat value at all. At least rancor and graul mounts are full sized rancors and grauls. Good for impressing the poodoo out of the n00bies.
Another word on mounts: they are usable as is from the datapad...there's no need to stuff and clone them, and for some, like savage humbabas, you don't want to do that, because stuffing and cloning them will shrink them. Full sized savage humbaba mounts cannot be obtained anymore from the wild or the BM crafting process. This holds true for any mount critter...a cloned dewback is a generic dewback. The old "mini mounts" are also no longer obtainable. No more lesser plains bols. No more large wasteland cupas. No more motley kaadu or lowland brackasets. No more ridable giant carrion spats. Bolotaurs, a quest reward mount, have been shrunk with absolutely no recourse at all.
You can sample veractyl DNA on Kashyyyk and grow veractyl mounts, though. Small compensation for all the other massive nerfing that was done in the creation of BM.
Some creatures cannot be DNA sampled in the wild, and so their DNA is fantasically expensive. Rancors and rasps fall into this category. Rasps are particularly prized in PvP because they're difficult to target with the default pseudoFPS UI. I suspect crystal snakes still fall into this category; because they're tough to target, you can't sample DNA from crystal snakes in the wild. It would upset the PvP "freestyle" kiddies too much to have to deal with it, and the assclowns at LA won't allow SOE to do the right thing and eliminate the pseudo FPS UI option.
Your toxic merek battlelord is just going to be a merek skin. Likewise with the GSPs, they just turn into generic razor cat skins, and only can be grown to razor cat size. No more large GSPs taller at the shoulder than a wookiee. Likewise, your cloned rancor can only grow to be slightly taller than a wookiee at level 90.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
The Rasp would be the most rare pet you have and it is DEADLY in PvP because it flys so high most everyone will not notice it. The diversity of attacks and defences you can get for pets now is what really makes them stand apart from how they were in the "before-NGE" time. A top end pet can apply a root to ta target, drain the action pool, apply various dots to make them really useful.
So specific skills for pets have always been, at least in theory, available. Of course these special attacks were frequently bugged. It's just that during the preCU period, you had to hunt for specific pets for specific special attacks that may work or not work. Some of the most sought after special attacks were only available on some of the most rare tames, and these were also the attacks that were next to impossible to aquire in bio-engineered pets.
Still, the gamut of specials were available, at least in theory, in the two previous systems.
Beastmaster's supposed superiority in this area is only that more often than not the specials appear to work...but that applies to specials across the board, from critters or players. The usual bugginess of the SWG combat system is still in play.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
Following might be usefull aswell.
http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Beast_Master
http://swg.warcry.com/news/view/72397-Leveling-and-Training-Your-Beast
http://swg.warcry.com/news/view/71933-Exploring-Experise-Beast-Master
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http://www.swgalaxies.net/features/beastmaster/index.htm preview below
Expertise - Overview and the BM necklaces cube combos
Enzyme and DNA Collection - How to and crafting information
Incubation - How to
Using your pet - Commands, xp, loyalty and mood
Pet specials - Work in progress
Genetic Engineering for Dummies by Cindal
He he. I stopped playing the game continuously and for long periods three days after the NGE. At that time my little Bothan chef had, after three years hard work, amassed a fortune of ninety million credits - not just from selling pretty good food but by doiing little arbitrage operations of her own (wonder where all the Rebel rugs went in April 2005 from the bazaar? Ha! I bought them all, held them for a week and thensold them all for double the price. Profit: 25 million). Today, 90 million couldn't buy you an Imperial cap.
I would hate to lose all that work, would I retain any of my skills and/or adult pets?
You would not retain any of your skills. your pets would have the option to be a "stuffed" furniture item or you could sample the DNA. BM is a separate expertise tree. If you are level 80 when you come back that would give 40 expertise points, which is enough to complete all the BM side, but is not necessary, depending on what you want.
I truly miss the game communities, even the band we formed as Master Ents jamming in the taverns. Is there a need for this class anymore?
Entertainer is in high demand now, giving xp attribute and other buffs. That being said, most entertainers hang out afk in the cantina at mos eisley in my opinion. I have an entertainer that has expertise in the "drama" line. Basically, he is a poor man's version of the TKA , but hey I just loved those TKA animations. My ent also has points in BM, so I guess he could be a hybrid poor man's tka and ch lol.
Are there any decent mature communities that are looking for more players? I played on Radiant and Tempest.
No clue about those servers. Bria and Bloodfin both seem to have pretty strong communities.
Lastly, was there a server merge? I don’t see the server name listed anywhere that I used to play my CH on. Can anyone share this info if you know, or know where I can get it?
No mergers... yet, but the population on a many servers is a real issue.
Thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions.
Appreciate your comments and feedback.
One last thing, BM is very expensive , to be a good BM you will need friends who can make you the many different items needed to craft a 60 point pet. I did not bother with it, as my toon is not loaded and I am starting up on a different server than my main. Instead I have lots of fun with my 9 point Bantha. He is not pretty, but he bites hard and has become the bane of Gotal s in Ryatt. Also the grind past level 75 is VERY long per pet.
Raz
‘The way it works is that you can "stuff" any pet you have in your datapad from the old days. These pets are turned into old style BE "furniture" pets. You can then drop them in your house, use them for display...OR...you can sample DNA from them (a BM skill) and use that DNA to clone the pet. When you sample the pet for DNA, the furniture pet poofs.’ ‘You don't want to do that, because stuffing and cloning them will shrink them’
Furniture? Bah! That’s lame. Having a playable pet was the only reason to get one, who wants to have a luxury like a pet you can’t use?
‘One thing you can do with rancors and grauls is turn them into mounts...but they have no combat value at all. At least rancor and graul mounts are full sized rancors and grauls.’ ‘Full sized savage humbaba mounts cannot be obtained anymore from the wild or the BM crafting process. This holds true for any mount critter...’
So as a mount they stay full size as in the old days, but when you clone or sample DNA from them they turn into short versions?
‘Another word on mounts: they are usable as is from the datapad...there's no need to stuff and clone them,’
Can you use one as a mount and then if you decide to later, sample the DNA from it?
What full sized or any creature for that matter can be a mount then? NM that, I’ll look that one up.
‘No more lesser plains bols. No more large wasteland cupas. No more motley kaadu or lowland brackasets. No more ridable giant carrion spats. Bolotaurs, a quest reward mount, have been shrunk with absolutely no recourse at all.’
‘Some creatures cannot be DNA sampled in the wild, and so their DNA is fantasically expensive. Rancors and rasps fall into this category. ‘
So if you can’t sample the DNA from the wild you can never get a Rancor unless you meet up with someone who’s had one from the past CH days? Wow, that’s lame.
/saddened sigh
Seems like there is still no end to the disappointment the dev’s keep putting forth in this game. Just when I get a hope that it would get better, the news just keeps getting worse. I miss how this game used to be so community friendly, fun and more like Star Wars, now it’s just seems like a cheap version of Jedi Academy. I bet one of the Dev’s kids wanted to be a Jedi so bad that he implemented it as a starting class just to shut his spoiled brat up and everyone else was left to deal with it. At least that’s my theory. They should’ve incorporated this game into Planetside, cause the Star Wars elements seem to have left the building. Ah well, too bad, wake me when it’s over.
As always appreciate the feedback and replies, thanks all.