SWG Noob char questionsFollow

In my opinion going master marksman is a good idea, if you plan on going commando or BH. Otherwise it seems kinda useless to me. You can't snipe to well with just marksman skills. You will need rifleman to be effective at sniping. If that is what you are interested in, then just do the rifle skill tree and then become rifleman.

As far as the artisan skills. I know that a good quality weaponsmith is a wealthy person, and always needed. Armorsmith's make big bucks too.

In my opinion there are many interesting and intriguing professions in this game, but I believe you are more effective if you just pick a few of them and master them. If you spread skill points too far you become a jack of all trades and master of none. Thus making you less desireable.

Some will disagree with me on this, and I'm sure there are some really good combos that encumbace many different professions. In the end you just need to find what professions appeal to you and try to make them blend. I am master marksman, master scout, novice bounty hunter (working towards master BH), and some CH. This combo works well for me. However if I didn't have to have master marksman in order to go BH, I would have just selected one weap skill tree and mastered that weap.

Edited, Fri Jan 9 01:24:10 2004 by Haelomon

Edited, Fri Jan 9 01:24:05 2004 by Haelomon

My observations:

I have two characters on two different servers so I can give you the Combat and non-Combat perspectives. My first character is now a Master Creature Handler/Commando. The CH prereqs are scouting skills. I cannot imagine not having any scouting skills. This game would be EXTREMELY slow to advance without them, as they are the only ones who can make camps. Camps are necessary if you want to call pets, heal wounds, heal mind, summon vehicles, etc out in the wilderness. Without a camp, you have to walk(jog) to the nearest city to do these things. If you plan on playing ALWAYS in groups, don't worry about it since guaranteed 90% of the people you hunt with will have scouting skills, but if you like to solo hunt, you need at least novice scout.

Also in the scout tree is a skill called mask scent. My other character is a Master Artisan/Master Architect/Master Merchant and I have very little skill at any type of combat (I'm a true merchant). I still took scouting skills and did my newbie killing stuff to get the xp until I got the mask scent skill. When you are travelling around checking your harvesters for the resources you need to craft, invariably there will be a nest of things that want to kill you in the middle of your harvesters. The mask scent skill allows you (providing it does not fail) to approach hostile creatures and they will not attack you.

If you only play occasionally I would encourage you to play a combat profession. It takes as little or as much time as you want to put into it but you have a lot of freedom. The artisan path is much more time consuming. You need tremendous amount of resources to keep vendors stocked (if you really want to produce quality items) and that means you will likely have to arrange lot swaps with people from other servers to get enough harvesters to keep up. Unfortunately placing harvesters does not guarantee resources, however, because the resources shift every few days so you might be sitting on a 95% deposit of steel one day and be on a crappy piece of land where the best resource is 20% low quality ore the next. Moving harvesters and keeping them powered and empty of resources, crafting items, maintaining shops and vendors and keeping those vendors stocked with items is a FULL TIME JOB! If you plan to have time to poke around the universe, see new places, etc, I would advise you not to become a master craftsman.

It basically comes down to what you like to do. I explored the whole galaxy, did all kinds of missions, etc with my CH/Commando and he is likely the one I will pursue opening the Jedi slot with, but frankly I have had so much fun building my interplanetary resource business that I haven't touched my combat character in weeks. It is starting to feel like a second job though and I may soon take down my vendors for a bit and just stockpile resources, then come out guns a blazing next time I want to seriously play the merchant.

Hope these perspectives help you. In the end I would suggest making a couple of characters on different servers with different career paths and just toy around with it to see what you like. I have actually entertained starting another character just to play with the medic/doctor/bioengineer professions!

Gydeon-MasterCH/Commando/(soon to be master TKA, thanks Mr. Holochron), Bria Server
Squiddi McSquid-Master Artisan/Master Architect/Master Merchant, Kettemoor Server

If you decide to start on either one of the two servers I play on send me an email in game and I would be glad to help you get a few things to get you started.