First, I must say I've used most of the tips listed here and they are great. Thanks to everyone who's posted here so far.

Hopefully this will help some as well.

Missions

1. Most missions vary in reward based on distance. With most towns having multiple mission stations, accept missions which head across from where you are. (ie. I'm at the south side of town, I'll take missions that are North).

2. (I know it's allready been mentioned before) Mission difficulty is based on your level of expertise with the type of weapon you have equiped at the time you access the terminal.

I'm a future commando, so I have high in all ranged weapons and Unarmed. Therefore to reduce the difficulty with a mission I would equip an axe or something similar, where I have a low skill rating, then access the mission terminal.

Weapons

Try as much as possible to spend the credits on a weapon for your skill. When the calculations are done to measure you vs a creature or mission, it's done on the class of weapon you are armed with and your skill. But it does not take into consideration the weapon value. So if you are still using your CDEF Rifle, while you could be using a dlt20, you will be seriously under matched. The calculation does factor in the weapon you have, but the one you could have. 

(ie. a person with a skill of Advanced Pistol, can use a DH17 Pistol and use x abilities, and will be labelled as being that strong. Using a CDEF Pistol effectivly lowers you potential)

Droids

If you are not a Creature Handler, get a droid. Even in groups a droid comes in handy. While bringing up my combat skill I set my combat droid to Guard. I concentrate on my target and he takes care of the adds.

Healing and Incapacitation

I use 4 healing macros, and must have at least 1 of each wound kit and 1-2 stims in my main inventory. (it doesn't work if they are in your backpack)

1. /healdamage my name 

(No need to target myself or loose my current target)

2. /healdamage                    

(I also need to target the person I want healed)

3. /Healwound                     

(With the kits in my pack, this macro heals any of them, no need to specify)

3. /tendwound Health; /tendwound Strength; /tendwound Constitution; .....

 (I use this when in a scout camp and we have an entertainer to heal my mind wounds. This way I save my kits)

For times when a party member becomes incapacitated, I drag a Stim-A on the person. This either removes or reduces the down time before the person can be healed and fight again. I don't use higher stims because no damage is healed by this, so why waste a higher charge.

Medics should highly consider a healing Droid. Having one active allows you to heal wounds without the need of a scout camp or medical center.

Inventory

Try to get several backpacks. In this way you greatly increase your total capacity. In the bank, I have packs for healing kits, resources and Powerups.

On your person, place all unused kits, resources and extras in it, and keep it equiped. This will increase you carrying capacity.

When using macros or crafting, the items in those packs will not be found. But if you drag items directly from the pack to a hotkey then you can use them. So for surveyors, store you devices in the pack and drag them to the hotkey and use them from there. If you want fast access to items in that pack, place that pack on a hotkey as well, this way it will open up without having to go into your main inventory first. The same goes for using healing kits and the like. As i mentioned above I use macros to heal and must have the kits in my main, but for times when I use my stim-a on a downed group member I have the stim draged from my pack to a hotkey.

Armor

Learn to read the stats on what you wear. Everyone tries at least once to wear a full suit of bone armor. well that's nice but it doesn't do squat against most creatures, but does reduce you own stats drastically. What bone armor does have is a high resistance to energy weapons.. (Blasters). Most Vynock don't have blasters. But a bone armor helm is great for PvP against those snipers with a head shot.

That's all I can remeber for now. I hope this helps.

--------------------------------------------------

Unless you've got some other reason for wanting to turn it off, in which case you'd probably better explain yourself

--------------------------------------------------

Call it personal preference. It's easier for me to quickly ID things in my inventory when they always look the same. i.e.: not spinning around. Some people just prefer things a certain way

Great tips so far, but I have one question that there just must be an answer for (it was asked earlier in this post but no answer was given):

How do you easily target the mob of your melee? (in other words, what is the equivalent of /assist in here?)

Instead of /g I'm on the 3rd Vynok on the left...attack!, there has to be a simple way for everyone to get on the same target. I have tried using the Assist button but it doesn't target what the person you're assisting has targeted. In fact I can't seem to figure out just what that button does. I've tried /assist with a person targeted as well as /assist playername without success. Can anyone answer this yet? I am an old EQ player and this is just a must have for any group combat situation.

Thanks in advance!

Daymenn Stormrider

Novice Brawler/Scout/Marksman

Kor Vella on Corellia

There is a really nice thread at:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=17597

Which details how to macro button pushes on the toolbar. The core of it is

/ui action toolbarPaneXX

/ui action toolbarSlotYY

/ui action toolbarPanePrev

Where XX ranges from 00 to 05, the 6 toolbars or panes you have

YY is the slot number. You have 2 rows of 12, so this runs from 00 to 11 along the top row and 12 to 23 on the bottom row.

The paneprev command can go back to wherever you were last.

Where this is nice is you can say drag any item that needs to be equipped to say pane 05. This would be say a vibro knuckler, rifle, 6 pieces of armor, some clothing, maybe a few stimpacks and say some traps. Then you can create a macro with these keys to go to the pane, punch the right button there, then return. So  you could have an equip macro that would put all of your stuff on, and hitting it a second time would make you naked. Or  you could have say pane 00 devoted to brawling with a sword and pane 01 devoted to say carbine, and toggle between panes with a weapon swap with a macro. I have been spending alot of time with this tonight and am amazed at the power of this sequence now.

Other tips that I like are binding reticle/pointer switch to right mouse; using wearable containers (list under misc in bizaar) to sort your inventory.

---

DixFlatline wrote:

---

FlavorX wrote:
Is there a "/" command to execute macros?

---

Yup, it's the name of the macro.  Name a macro "foo" and you can invoke it with "/foo".

Speaking of macros, did you know that calls to macros can be imbedded inside of a macro? 

---

 

Man I couldn't have been more wrong here!  That's what I get for posting something I've heard before I try it.  OK, after trying it myself, I have concluded that you CANNOT call a macro directly from another macro.  My apologies for the mistake.

Now that I have groveled sufficiently, here is what I believe to be the case.  I will try this out tonight to verify it, but be warned I haven't tried it yet.

There are two possibilities for calling a macro inside a macro.  The first is to put the icon for the macro on the toolbar and invoke that toolbar slot from a macro.  The following was pasted from a message on this forum from Kierstad titled "How To Change Toolbars And Access Hot Keys" :

Accessing Hot Keys In A Macro

Simply use the following command in your macro to access a specific hotkey:

/ui action toolbarSlot[xx]

[xx] is a number 00-23 that directly relates to the slot (two banks of 12 slots, 24 total slots, starting at position 00).

So, if I had a macro or command I wanted to execute in say the third slot on the first row of the toolbar I'd use the following:

/ui action toolbarSlot02

 

The second way is to define an alias and invoke the alias from inside the macro.  Do a search in the forum on alias and you will see a ton of examples.

Dixie Flatline
 

This really should be sticky, most of the things explained here are not covered by the manual.

On some of the screenshots ive seen on some sites, i see that some people have little boxes on their screen that show how much exp they need till they learn the skill. It displays this as a bar, that slowly fills up as u get more exp. I know how to see it in the cntl s menu but how do u make it its own box that stays on the screen?

And also, I really dont know MMORPG lingo so can someone please explain: nerf, agro, mob

Thnx

Seifer                  Kauri

In the skills screen there's a check box labled "Show experience monitor" click that box and you'll have a monitor on your hud now.  If you expand it up, it can track up to 5 skills.

Do you know?

I want to change my home world. How do I 'quit' my home world bank?

What happens if I destroy my 'personal residence'? Can it be moved?

Thanks,

Darkstar

tips time...

Marksman... (person) ;p

First of all Take Cover will automatically drop you to prone. However, if you get down there and realize there's a nub of terrain blocking your view, you can't move. I suggest going prone first if there's any doubt so that you can crawl a bit if you decide to.

Take Cover also does not always work. Make sure you didn't fail before opening fire.

Another thing... You cannot Peace while taking cover, because you are immobilized. (I'd call this a bug, personally and I intend to /bug it.) If you just want to pop some shots at a nest don't Take Cover.

Also... even if you specialize in Rifle or Carbine... buy a pistol. At some point there will be something gnawing at you from point blank range and it really helps to not have those huge neg modifiers. You can use Threaten Shot with a pistol even at point blank, so it's good to have.

Now for something more specific. Try this... go prone at max range and Take Cover until it takes. Then start your attack with Aim, Headshot, Aim, Headshot, Aim, Headshot, Threatenshot. At max range I've found the first two headshots usually finish before the mob rushes... the third usually takes place during the rush, but still before it get's to me. If the mob rushes early you can easily kneel and switch to a pistol. Since you can't Headshot with a pistol the Headshot will simply fail and you'll switch immediately to Threatenshot with not time penalty. You can continue to threatenshot if need be.

Unless you successfully snipe the target dead before the rush this will usually give you a mob with almost no mind left wandering around at close range. Back off, becaue it can still hit you. Keep at it with the pistol, though. It's damage will be spread across all pools but if the thing only has 10 mind left who cares if you do 250 or only 50 damage to mind? This is a perfect time to toss traps, then finish off with Point Blank shots.

Do NOT use Body Shots if you have already depleated the mind pool. You will only affect Health with those, and will basically have to start completely from scratch since you've done ZERO Health damage.

If the mob wanders far enough away simply switch back to the trusty rifle for the finish.

If Threaten Shot simply isn't taking, or you missed your Headshots consider kiting the mob.

Also, when not stalking a picked out target (or taking a mission), keep your pistol equipped instead of your rifle. If something aggroes it'll probably be at close range and this will save you the switching time in the heat of the moment.

Also, take the high ground when you can. Remember that the terrain effects movement rates. If your opponent has to run uphill it's going to take them just a tad longer to get to you. Plus if you aggro some nasty mob with a gun, duck into ravines and behind hills to break their line of sight.

For healing... Setup a macro to heal first, then tend. As long as you have the medicines you will heal and the tends will fail because of the heal timer. If you run out of medicine you'll automatically tend instead of heal.

Also, you don't have to target yourself to heal yourself. When there's nothing targetted you heal yourself. Thus you can simply hit ESC then your normal healing macro of choice.

If you don't care to write a Bio (or even if you do) put useful info in your Bio such as the location of your shop/s, what you sell, ect...

Make tipping macros... I have 3... Tip100, Tip500, and Tip1000. I bound them to Shift+T, Ctrl+T, and Ctrl+Shift+T. If I want to tip 200 I just spam Shift+T twice. It makes tipping fast and painless. Plus I included socials and in Tip500 and Tip1000 even a Tell to say thanks. (It tips whomever is targetted.)

When surveying once you've found that nice high concentration lode using the long range scans switch to short range and survey again. The shorter the range the better the resolution, so it helps you nail down the best possible place even better.

Don't just run to the waypoint and resurvey. if you notice the resources generally getting better in that direction run on past the waypoint before surveying. Most likely it keep going up, even past the waypoint.

Don't close the survey window. Leave it open and switch mouse modes. You'll be able to see and steer, and the window will still be open when you switch back to the pointer. Use this to survey while running. Simply start running or autorunning and hit your survey butten when you want... wait no more than about 3 seconds before switching the mousemode to bring the window up, though. If the window isn't on screen you'll still get the waypoint, but it will not redraw the map or percentages on it.

To be continued...