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Wars Galaxies Doctor's FAQ
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Wars Galaxies Doctor's FAQ |
Originally written by McGlonec
SkillsI don't want to be a doctor, but I want to heal myself in combat. What do I need to do?What's the difference between Stimpack A's and Stimpack B's? If I get novice doctor and then all of the medicine knowledge skills, will I be missing anything? Why doesn't my enhancement pack do anything? (What skills do I need to enhance people?) Why doesn't my cure poison/cure disease pack do anything? What skills do I need in order to revive fallen players? I only have a few skill points to spend on doctor. How should I spend them? I don't know if I should become a combat medic or a doctor. What are the pros and cons? Medic/Doctor Skills Summary CraftingWhy can't I make my stimpacks nearly as powerful as these other doctors? ***CRAFTING GUIDE***What resources do doctors need to make their medicines? What Items can be produced by medics (and what do they do)? ***FULL ITEM LIST*** How do you know how good a material is for crafting medicines? (For Doctors/Medics) How do you know how good a material is for crafting medicines? (For Resource Brokers) Advanced tips for selecting resources When I experiment on an enhancement pack, I get a success, but my power or duration goes down! (Or vice versa) Why? What is the benefit of an advanced subcomponent? Is it always better to use advanced subcomponents? How do I use a factory? Why can't I see any schematic for Small Stimpack D (or any other D+ level schematic for that matter)? Which creatures drop the best Herbivore/Avian Meat? OtherWhat's better, using Stimpack B's with First Aid 4 or Using modified Stimpack C's with Pharmacology 3?What is an appropriate tip for a medic? I often heal for different amounts than what is listed on my medicines. Why? What does the register command do? Can you enhance a pet? How do buffs work? How do I know how powerfull they will be? How do bio-engineered (or other skill enhancing) clothes work? Are there any unique loot drops that are good for doctors? (Janta Blood) The Doctor Profession: for Holocron Users (Guide to Fast Progression) What can a Droid do for a Doctor? Where are the Doctor Trainers? Temporary Enemy Flags (TEF) and Healing Implications The Small Stimpack - A+ I don't want to be a doctor, but I want to heal myself in combat. What do I need to do?You'll need to have the novice medic skill to heal yourself at all. Having that skill will give you enough medicine use skill to use Stimpack A's or Stimpack B's. Either of these will heal your health and action, but not your mind. Only Combat Medics have the ability to heal mind damage. Entertainers can heal mind wounds, but not damage.What's the difference between Stimpack A's and Stimpack B's?Power. A well crafted Stimpack A will heal for under 100 damage. A well crafted Stimpack B can heal for 400+ damage. The other difference is what goes into making these. A Stimpack A requires just 16 units of pretty generic resources (8 organic and 8 inorganic). The Stimpack B that I mentioned requires 104 units of resources that come from 4 different planets. It is possible to create stimpack B's using more available resources, but they won't be as powerful as I've indicated here. Expect a Stimpack B (especially a good one) to cost considerably more than a Stimpack A. As the medicine use skill required for a Stimpack B is no higher than a Stimpack A, Stimpack A's have all but vanished from SWG. Even the most basic stimpack B's are potent than a good Stimpack A and usually aren't much more expensive.If I get novice doctor and then all of the medicine knowledge skills, will I be missing anything?Although this seems like an inexpensive way to use all of the top level medicines, you're going to missing quite a bit, really. Even though you'll have high enough medicine use skill to use resuscitation packs and enhancement packs, you must first acquire the proper skills to apply them, which come in the wound treatment line. If you want to use the best doctor's stuff and not spend all the points going to master doctor, get all of the wound treatment skills and a couple of the medicine knowledge skills. Ignore wound treatment speed and medicine crafting. Then, you can use all of the nice doctor's stuff. Note, however, that you're not going to make any of it and your results won't be quite as good as a master doctor's, but you'll save yourself about 34 skill points.Why doesn't my enhancement pack do anything? (What skills do I need to enhance people?)So you just made it to Novice Doctor and you can finally make enhancement packs. You make your first one and go to use it and...nothing. No error message, no results, just nothing. The problem doesn't lie in the enhancement pack. You simply don't have the skill to use it yet. In order to use an enhancement pack, you must have two things. First, you must have the medicine use skill to use the item and, second, you must have the Enhance ability, which is awarded in the Wound Treatment tree of doctor. Once you reach that level, you'll gain the ability to use enhancement packs.Why doesn't my cure poison/cure disease pack do anything?Just like the enhancement packs, there are two requirements for using a cure poison/cure disease pack. You must have the appropriate medicine use skill, but you must also have either the Cure Poison or Cure Disease skills which you acquire with Advanced Wound Treatment Speed and Master Wound Treatment Speed, respectively.What skills do I need in order to revive fallen players?You must first have the skill revivePlayer, which comes with Master Wound Treatment. You must also have enough medicine use skill to use the resuscitation kit, which is usually in the 50's. At novice doctor, you'll have Med Use of 55, which is good enough to use most resuscitation packs. If the Med Use on the Pack is above 55, however, you'll need Medicine Knowledge 1, as well. Once you've got those, you'll be able to revive fallen players.I only have a few skill points to spend on doctor. How should I spend them?This really depends on what you want to be able to do. I'll break down the various skills and let you know what you need in order to be able to do each one. You can pick and choose as you see fit. In my experience, Doctor is a class that is very often "sampled" rather than mastered.Revive - This is one of the most common things that people think of when they think of doctors. They want the ability to bring people back to life. In order to use a resuscitation kit (which is needed to revive a fallen player), you need to have two things: Master Wound Treatment (for the revive skill) and a high enough medicine use skill to use the pack (usually you have enough at Novice Doctor but some packs may require Medicine Knowledge 1, depending upon the ability of the crafter and the resources used). Most resuscitation kits have a med use requirement in the 60's. If you can find a willing doctor, you might be able to get these experimented down to the point where you don't need any extra med use beyond Novice Doctor. If you want to be able to make resuscitation kits, you're going to need Master Doctor's Medicine Crafting. Attribute Enhancements - Another common request for doctors is the ability to apply enhancement packs, or buffs. Similar to being able to revive fallen comrades, you'll need two things. You first need Advanced Wound Treatment for the healEnhance skill and you'll need some points in Medicine Knowledge in order to apply the packs. How high you go is dependent upon which packs you wish to use. To use the most potent D level packs, you'll need at least Master Doctor's Medicine Knowledge, if not Master Doctor. If you want to use lesser packs, you don't need to go as high. In my experience, though, I've found that there's a big difference between the top level packs and the lesser ones. To be able to craft your own enhancement packs, you'll need to climb the Doctor's Medicine Crafting Tree. Again, how high you go is dependent upon what level of packs you want to craft. The best enhancement packs are very high up the tree - Health and Action D packs are available at Master Doctor's Medicine Crafting and D Level Enhancement packs for the secondaries aren't available until Master Doctor. One other thing to note is the bonuses that are granted by advancing along the Wound Treatment tree. Bonuses to wound treatment appear to have an impact on the power of your buffs. Therefore, the higher you go along that line (even though you need only go to Advanced Wound Treatment to apply an enhancement), the better your enhancements will be. Be sure to check out the question regarding the randomness of enhancements for more information. Cure Poison/Disease - If you're into PvP, you're probably interested in these abilities. Poisons and diseases do occur in PvE, but not as often - the most common poison/disease infectors are Combat Medics in PP. In order to get them, you'll need to climb the Wound Treatment Speed tree as well as the Medicine Knowledge Tree. You'll obtain the skills Cure Poison and Cure Disease at Expert and Master Wound Treatment Speed, respectively. Poison and Disease Cure packs, however, are some of the most taxing items on medicine use requirements. The highest level packs can't be used by anyone without Master Doctor (or at least a experimented version for ease of use and Master Medicine Knowledge). Like the enhancement packs, if you want to craft these, you'll have to climb the Medicine Crafting tree, but how high to go is up to you. What level packs do you want to make? The ability to craft these packs alternates through the levels. Poison A is available at Novice Doctor, Disease A is available at Intermediate Medicine Crafting Poison B is available at Advanced Medicine Crafting and so on. I don't know if I should become a combat medic or a doctor. What are the pros and cons?So you've made your way up the medic tree and now you need to choose which path to take, huh? Well, let me try to lay out some of the pros and cons for each profession (this is coming from a master doctor, so you might want to take this with a grain of salt).Doctors get the best medicines. They have the ability to craft and use the highest wound packs and stim packs. At master medic medicine use, combat medics can use some of these, but not all. Doctors are the only players in the game that can do these things: Cure States (including Stun, Poison, Disease, etc.), Apply Enhancements, and Revive fallen players. In addition, doctors gain medicine crafting experimentation all the way up to Master level where they have 10 experimentation points to spend. Combat Medics gain Combat Medicine Experimentation, which is a different animal altogether. On the downside, doctors need to be brutally close to a player to do much for them. Any healing must take place within 6 meters of the patient. However, the ability to use some powerful enhancements on your friends will lessen the need for you to heal them in combat. Another downside, no way to deal damage. A doctor is a support character. Being a master doctor doesn't leave much room for a whole lot else and, if you want to be able to craft your own meds, you'll probably need to spend some points in artisan so that you can survey. Again, this doesn't lend itself well to being able to do much damage in combat. So how about the combat medics? Well, the primary thing a combat medic can do is heal from a range. There's no requirement for a combat medic to be within 6 meters of a patient to heal that person. In fact, they can be great distances from a patient (40 meters or more) and still apply a good bit of healing. This is great if you're in a hunting party or on the battlefield. Sometimes, the seconds saved by doing this at a range is the difference between life and death. Also, combat medics gain the ability to do Area of Effect (AoE) heals. They can heal anyone within a given radius. This isn't as potent as a single heal, but you can heal numerous comrades at once. Again, this is a big boon for combat. In addition to the healing powers of a combat medic, combat medics get a bit of offense to go with their skills. Combat medics can apply poisons and diseases to victims. Poisons are essentially like a bleed shot - they slowly tick away at a given pool. Actually, from what I've heard, the good poisons can eat away your pools pretty quickly. Diseases, on the other hand, inflict wounds on the patient over time. To add to the effectiveness of these attacks, the only true counter to them is to have a doctor (and a fairly powerful one at that) cure you. Although a doctor can't do much damage, he's probably the combat medic's worst enemy as a doctor can negate the unique attacks of a combat medic. Poisons and diseases are quite effective in PP. combat, but not so much in PvE combat. If you're looking for PP., combat medic may make more sense but, if you're going to spend most of your time hunting monsters, having the ability to throw a disease pack isn't going to get you very far. Additionally, combat medics now gain the terrain negotiation ability which used to only be available through obtaining scout skills. Terrain Negotiation enables you to run up hills at a greater speed. However, for combat medics, I've heard that it's a difficult profession to "sample." You either want to go master or don't go at all. You can't use the really effective poisons and diseases until you reach master level and any competent doc (with some smart comrades) can do a great job healing folks in battle. Also, in order to make it to combat medic, you need to climb the Ranged Weapon Support tree of Marksman so it actually costs a few extra points to be a combat medic. Medic/Doctor Skills Summary
Why can't I make my stimpacks nearly as powerful as these other doctors?Well, the more powerful of a doctor you are (specifically, how far along you've advanced along the medicine crafting line) is going to determine, in part, how well you can make your medicines. However, more often than not, I see that most people aren't using advanced components to make their medicines while the higher level doctors are. Advanced subcomponents (the Advanced versions of Biological Effect Controllers, Chemical Release Duration Mechanisms, Liquid Suspensions, and Solid Delivery Shells) become available at Organic Chemistry 4. These are much more potent than the normal versions but also require some rather rare resources, such as Lokian Wild Wheat and Talusian Water Vapor. Using these advanced components can mean the difference between a Stimpack B that heals for 200 and one that heals for 400.Here's my guide to crafting (some doctors have think there are better ways, but here's my guide): First of all, know your schematic. In order to make a good product, you really need to know what you're looking for in the resources you're going to be using. Sometimes, people will tell you about this awesome resource that they have that has shock resistance 999. Well, that's all well and good if your schematic actually looks for shock resistance. However, with medical items, they never do. Rather, you're looking for Overall Quality, Potential Energy, Unit Toughness, and, in some cases, Decay Resistance. Let's use a Small Stimpack - B as an example (as it uses subcomponents and is probably the most often crafted medical item). A Small Stimpack - B requires 3 subcomponents, a biological effect controller, a chemical release duration mechanism, and a liquid suspension. Now, you can use basic versions of these, but you won't get nearly as powerful a Stimpack as if you'd used advanced components. Let's really break this down component by component and then we'll come back to making the stimpack, itself. Let's start with the biological effect controller. Assuming you decided to go with the advanced version, you're going to need 18 units of Lokian Wild Wheat (which can be a real pain to gather, especially for a doctor without much in the way of fighting skills) and 18 units of Tatooinian Fiberplast (which is pretty easy to come by, actually). Now, the next thing to do is to look at your schematic. A biological effect controller has two attributes, charges and effectiveness. Having a high number of charges on your biological effect controller is going to give you a stimpack that can be used more times, which everyone enjoys. Having a high power on your biological effect controller is also nice as it will add to the power of the stimpack. However, I strongly recommend making biological effect controllers with as many charges as possible and only add power when you can no longer add charges (you'll see why in a bit). Okay, so you know which resources you need, but how do you know which resources are good? That's a whole complicated matter in itself and there is another FAQ here (the next one, actually) that addresses this issue. Be sure to ready that. One trick to this is that, at any given time, there is often only 1 kind of Tatooinian Fiberplast and 1 kind of Lokian Wild Wheat available so, unless you've got a stash of some good stuff on hand, you're left with whatever is there. Most of the top crafting docs try to keep a nice supply of the good stuff on hand so that they're not bound to use whatever crummy resources may have just spawned. Let's say, for sake of examples, we're gotten some Lokian Wild Wheat with OQ: 648 and PE: 523 and some Tatooinian Fiberplast with OQ: 755 and PE: 923. What does that mean to us? Well, when you craft the item, you'll get some degree of success (usually Great, but can be Moderate, Amazing, or a couple others). That success tells you what the initial stats on the item will be. However, you now get to experiment on the item (note that you need to be near a crafting station and using a specialized crafting tool, such as the food and chemical crafting tool, to experiment). This is where the resources' attributes really come into play. When you go to the experimentation screen, you'll see a number of boxes (maybe 1 or 2 on the left have been filled in). You can then spend experimentation points to try to fill those boxes, in turn, making your item more powerful. The number of boxes available to fill (and, likewise, the power available in the item) is directly related to the resources you used. Let's break that down. Experimentation levels are based on a percentage. 0% would be the worst an item could ever be and 100% would be as powerful as an item could ever be. The maximum percentage you can reach is determined by the resources you used. We already said that the charges were based on OQ (66%) and UT (33%) so let's look at what our resources have in those areas. The Lokian Wild Wheat has OQ 648 and no UT. The Tatooinian Fiberplast has OQ 755 and UT 923. In order to determine the maximum percentage we can reach, we use this formula: (((648+755)/2000)*0.66 + (923/1000)*0.33)*100. That gives us a result of 77% (rounded). So, with the best experimentation, we could have a biological effect controller with 77% of its maximum number of charges. Note that OQ was averaged over the two resources because they both had that attribute while UT was only used from the fiberplast because the wheat didn't have that stat. When you're actually spending the experimentation points, there is some risk involved. A success will mean that the item will become better than it was prior to your experiment. A failure will cause no change, or, even worse, make the item less powerful. There are a few things that have a direct impact on how well you experiment. First and foremost, your ability as a doctor. The higher your crafting level, the more success you'll have. Also, the quality of the crafting station and crafting tool you're using. Although it's undocumented, the malleability of the resources you're using also has an effect on experimentation. The higher the malleability, the easier it will be to experiment. And, finally, how you spend your points will make a difference. If you try to spend all of your points at once, there is a higher risk of failure. However, if you spend just one point at a time, you reduce that level of risk. When you run an experiment, the percentage of that stat is impacted by the level of success of the experiment and the number of points spent. For example, if you had spent 3 points and achieved a great success, you would increase the quality of the item by 3*7%, or 21%. Had you spent only 2 points, you'd increase the quality by 2*7% or 14%. Of course, this works the other way, too. The more points you spend when you receive a failure, the more costly that will be. So, experimenting a point at a time can be a "regulating" approach. You're going to have less severe failures, but, as you're experimenting more times, you're more likely to get some failures. However, when you have a failure with just 1 point, the item is probably still salvageable. When you have a failure spending a lot of points, you've probably pretty well destroyed the item. Note that, if you fail and a percentage drops to 0%, don't bother experimenting on that stat any longer - you'll never get it back over 0%. I don't know if this was designed to be this way or if this is a bug, but that's the way it works. Now, when you go on to make the liquid suspension and chemical release duration mechanism, you'll find that they only have 1 stat that can be experimented upon: power. Therefore, unit toughness no longer matters. You're going to be looking for items with high overall quality and high potential energy. So, maybe now you can see why I said that you should try to get as many charges on your biological effect controller as possible. You can't add charges to the other subcomponents so your biological effect controller is your only chance to add more charges to your final item through a subcomponent. It should be noted that the power supplied by an advanced liquid suspension FAR outweighs the power supplied by an advanced chemical release duration mechanism (often about 3:1). As advanced chemical release duration mechanisms require herbivore meat (and any creature based organic is more difficult to obtain than something you can drop a harvester on), advanced chemical release duration mechanisms are often left out of the final product and a basic version is used, instead. So, now let's go back to the stimpack. We've got all of our subcomponents created and we now just need some resources for the stimpack itself. Well, a Small Stimpack - B requires two resources (besides the subcomponents): organic and inorganic. It doesn't get much more generic than that. Because of this, your strategy should be a little different here. Rather than settling for whatever is out there because that's all there is, you really need to pick and choose here. If you open up a flora survey device, you'll see a long list of organics that can be found on your planet. Go through these until you find something of excellent quality. For my generic resources, I often can find organics and inorganics that have overall quality, potential energy, and unit toughness over 900. Once you've got those, simply put your item together just as we already described with the subcomponents. At this point, you probably want to focus on power during experimentation (which is why having the extra charge already added from the biological effect controller is nice). What resources do doctors need to make their medicines?Here's the grocery list, along with a few notes. You should be aware that just about anything can me made with nothing but plain organics and plain inorganics, but in order to make anything powerful, you're going to need plenty of the things on this list. This list is really designed for people that would like to gather resources for a doctor, not so much for the doctor him/herself.These are the items for basic medicines:
Here is the full Resource Tree:
How do you know how good a material is for crafting medicines? (For Doctors/Medics)This is actually much trickier than it seems at first. By looking at your schematics (let's use the schematic for a stimpack - B), you'd be inclined to say that the quality of a resource is equal to 0.66*OQ + 0.33*PE in terms of power or 0.66*OQ = 0.33*UT in terms of charges. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.That formula (as dictated by the schematic) is correct for paired resources, but not for individual resources. In order to help you understand what I mean, I'm going to have to delve into the mathematical formula that governs all of this. The basic concept of this formula is the same for all attributes of an item (effectiveness, charges, ease of use, etc.), but the resource attributes that are used vary slightly. Here's the formula use to determine the maximum effectiveness of a stimpack - B: MAX_EFFECTIVENESS = ((Resource1_OQ + Resource2_OQ)/COMBINED_MAX_OQ) * 0.66 + ((Resource1_PE + Resource2_PE)/COMBINED_MAX_PE) * 0.33 So what does all of that mean? Well, the MAX_EFFECTIVENESS is the maximum value to which you can experiment an item (as a percentage). A MAX_EFFECTIVENESS of 100% would be, in essence, perfect item experimentation and can only be produced with perfect resources. A MAX_EFFECTIVENESS of 50% would be a mediocre item. That doesn't mean it will have 50 power, it means that it will have exactly half the power the "perfect" item would have. Note that this really only holds for the resources used. For a liquid suspension, for example, you're only using resources so, something experimented to 100% would be the best liquid suspension possible. However, for items that require subcomponents, things become a little more complicated. In such cases, you can use perfect resources to experiment to 100%, but you might not have the "perfect" item as, in order to achieve such a feat, you'd have to use "perfect" subcomponents, as well. So, even though you might be able to experiment a stimpack to 100%, if the subcomponents you used to creates it were only experimented to 20%, you're still not going to have a very good stimpack. Now let's look at the two "halves" of this equation. Start with the first half: ((Resource1_OQ + Resource2_OQ)/COMBINED_MAX_OQ) * 0.66 This seems simple enough - we're going to add the Overall Quality attributes of our two resources together and then divide by the maximum of those two - in essence, we're simply averaging the two values. Then, we multiply that value by 0.66, which is dictated by the 66% weighting that OQ is given in the schematic. The second half looks like this: ((Resource1_PE + Resource2_PE)/COMBINED_MAX_PE) * 0.33 This seems to be just like the first half, but there is a key difference here. Every resource in the game has an Overall Quality attribute, but not all of them have a Potential Energy attribute (most inorganics do not). So how do we average two numbers if one of them doesn't exist?!? Simply put, we don't. Rather, any resources that don't have a Potential Energy attribute are thrown out of the equation entirely. The ramifications of that are very dramatic. Let me show you what I mean through an example. Let's take the following 4 resources (2 organic and 2 inorganic):
MAX_EFFECTIVENESS = (950+700/2000) * 0.66 + (200/1000) * 0.33 = 61.05% Now, just for the sake of argument, let me use resources 2 and 4 instead and see what we get: MAX_EFFECTIVENESS = (600+950/2000) * 0.66 + (600/1000) * 0.33 = 69.15% How the heck did we get a better result from those resources when those weren't the best ones?!? The key here is that we're not using the correct formula for determining the quality of a given resource. Sure the 66%/33% formula looks correct based on the schematic, but that schematic is designed for multiple resources put together, not individual resources. Take a close look at the example formulas just above. Notice, in the second half of the formulas, we're only dividing the Potential Energy by 1000, rather than the 2000 that Overall Quality is divided by. Why is that? Well, the inorganic resources have no Potential Energy so that resource is "thrown out" for that part of the formula. Instead, the Potential Energy of the organic resource is effectively weighted TWICE as heavily as the Overall Quality attribute. In addition, as only the Overall Quality of the inorganic resource is being used, we need not worry about any of the other attributes of that resource. Therefore, our real formulas for determining which is best looks more like this: For organics: 0.5*OQ + 0.5*PE For inorganics: 1*OQ Let's try re-evaluating those four resources using these formulas:
For organics: 1*OQ For inorganics: 0.5*OQ + 0.5 * UT Note that there are a couple caveats to this. First of all, I'm assuming that you're using "normal" organics and inorganics in that the organic resource will have Overall Quality and Potential Energy but no Unit Toughness and the inorganic will have Overall Quality and Unit Toughness but not Potential Energy. There are some types of resources that don't follow this trend, but I don't recommend using them. (Read the advanced section to see why.) Also, even though it is mentioned nowhere in the schematics, malleability does have an impact on crafting. The higher the malleability of the resources you use, the easier it will be to experiment on the item you're crafting. How do you know how good a material is for crafting medicines? (For Resource Brokers)For those of you that don't need to craft but would like to broker resources to the medical community, here are some quick formulas you can use to gauge the quality of individual resources. For any formula, simply plug in the attributes of the resource in question and you'll get a value ranging between 1 and 1000. The higher that value, the better the resource.
* These resources can be used in a couple ways. If the crafter wishes to add power to an item, the first formula will show the value of the resource. If, however, the crafter wishes to add charges to an item, the second formula will show the value of the resource. In general, most crafter's want charges on Lokian Wild Wheat and Tatooinian Fiberplast while they want power on Organics and Inorganics. If you have a buyer in mind, you may want to contact him/her ahead of time to see what he/she desires. ** These resources are used in enhancement packs and, unlike any other medical item, Decay Resistance is also factored in. Even though I haven't identified DR in the formulas, all things being equal, a resource with a higher DR would be more desirable than one with a lower DR. Advanced tips for selecting resourcesThere are lots of resources out there, but how do you know which ones are the best ones? Well, you can refer to the previous question for some basic guidelines, but I thought I'd add in a few tips that I've picked up along the way that aren't always so obvious.First of all, realize that the quality of your resources will have a minimal effect on the initial stats of any item, but they have a dramatic effect on the final result. What do I mean by that? Well, let's put it this way - you can use crummy resources and make a Stimpack B that initially heals for 250 and you can use great resources and make a Stimpack B that heals for 255. Big deal, right? Well, when it comes to experimentation, you'll be happy you used good resources. Those resources determine how high you can experiment various attributes of an item. So, for that stimpack that was made with crummy resources, maybe we can only experiment up to 280 while we can experiment the one made with quality resources up to 350. See the difference now? I thought so. Be sure to read the crafting guide above for even more details about how this is done. I'm going to continue assuming that you understand the math behind this (explained above). So, it should be simple to find the best resources, right? Well, not always - there are a lot of things to take into account when selecting a resource. First of all, we want to consult the schematic. Let's take a look at a Small Stimpack B (even though it requires subcomponents, I'm going to focus on the additional resources used - 12 organic and 12 inorganic). With organic and inorganic resource requirements, you really have your choice of everything out there, which is, literally, hundreds of resources. So what's best? Well, first of all, the schematic says that power is based on OQ (66%) and PE (33%) while charges are based on OQ (66%) and UT (33%). So, it would seem that we want resources that have high overall quality, potential energy, and unit toughness. This is true, but there's a bit more to it than that. Be sure to read the previous question about determining good resources before reading any further. Consider what you want to do with this item. Are you after something that has a ton of charges or something that is very powerful on each charge? Basically, ask yourself this question, "Once I assemble this item, where am I planning on spending the experimentation points?" Usually (but not always), you will want to spend all of your points in effectiveness, raising power, before you bother to raise charges. Sometimes, however, you might want more charges - that's your call and dependent upon the situation. For now, let's say that we're going to try to make the most powerful stimpack available and we'll worry about charges later. Let's see what that does to our resource selection. When crafting, attributes of all of the resources used are thrown together in some way to determine how powerful the final product will be. That is, of course, determined by the schematic. In this case, we're looking for high overall quality and potential energy. Let me lay out a few resources and see if you can pick out which ones would be the best for what we want to accomplish (pick one organic and one inorganic):
Picking an organic is actually pretty simple. We want the organic that is going to give us the highest Overall Quality and Potential Energy (as combined by the schematic formula). In this case, we're going to evaluate these resources by using this formula: OQ * 0.5 + PE + 0.5. That will give us a value somewhere between 0 and 1000 - the higher the better. So let's see how each resource scored:
So how about the inorganics? This is where it gets a touch more complicated. Now, rather than evaluating each resource on its own, we have to see how it interacts with the organic that we just selected. The key to this process is to remember our goal - the most powerful stimpack we can make. From the schematic, we can see that power is based on OQ (66%) and PE (33%). Therefore, Unit Toughness has absolutely nothing to do with what we want to do - we need to remove that attribute from our calculations. That leaves us with this:
The reason for this is in the formula that is used. All resources have an Overall Quality. Therefore, we'll average the Overall Quality attributes and multiply by 66% to determine that part of the power schematic. However, what about that other 33%? Most of these inorganics don't have a potential energy, but one of them does. Well, here's how it works: as long as one resource has a given attribute, it will be used. However, if the other resources don't have that attribute, you're not penalized for that. If none of them have it, however, you're heavily penalized. Let's look at the formula (as it is calculated) to see what the heck it is I'm talking about:
((980+750)/2000)*0.66 + 0*0.33 = 57.1% That's just horrible! As a rule of thumb, you usually want to have at least one resource with a given attribute, but no more than that. Trying to find multiple resources that have everything you want can be difficult. If you know what you're after, you can make your life a lot easier. So, notice what we saw from our results above. #7 gave us the most powerful stimpack at 94.2%. Why? Easy - it had the highest Overall Quality. In the end, that's really all we were concerned about because that's all that mattered when it came to power. Okay, so now we know which one will give us the most power, but what about charges? Well, the inorganic that we picked for power won't give us the most charges. If we go back to our formula, here's what it looks like for charges:
By the way, if you picked #3 and #6, I applaud you - you're thinking outside the box, which is a great thing. There's no rule that says that your organic has to have Potential Energy and your inorganic has to have Unit Toughness. They can easily be reversed. Using those two resources together would give you a max power experimentation percentage of 93.3% which is nearly as powerful as the ones we picked as being the best. I hope this helps you get into the concept of choosing resources a little more. Obviously, this doesn't cover every situation out there, but I was trying to show you how to use the schematic formula to your advantage. The better you understand that formula, the better crafter you'll become. For those of you that don't like math, I hate to say it, but crafting is all math. Period. When I experiment on an enhancement pack, I get a success, but my power or duration goes down! (Or vice versa) Why?On some medical items, such as enhancement packs, there are multiple attributes tied to a single experimentation line. With enhancement packs, both duration and enhance power are tied to the single effectiveness line. Therefore, when you spend a point (or more) experimenting on effectiveness, you're really impacting two attributes, not one.In terms of game mechanics, when you spend an experimentation point on a given attribute, the game "rolls the dice" to see if you succeeded or failed. Of course, that result is determined partially by your skill as opposed to the complexity of the item you're crafting, the resources used, the quality of the tools you're using (supposedly, I'm not really sure about that), and, of course, pure luck. If the roll is a good one, you'll get a success. If not, you'll end up with a failure. When you succeed, the attribute that you're impacting goes up and, likewise, when you fail, the attribute goes down. However, if you're impacting two attributes at the same time, as is the case with the enhancement pack, the game "rolls the dice" not once, but twice. It rolls them once for each attribute; in this case, once for power and once for duration. However, only 1 message is returned to you and that is an average of the two results. So, for example, perhaps the roll for power was a failure but the roll for duration was a great success. The average of these two might be a good success or just a plain success, but you're going to see your power drop because of the failure. The duration, however, will go up. That's where the anomaly lies - the fact that two things occurred and yet you only received one piece of feedback. Of course, this phenomena can work both ways. I've seen many cases where I'll get a failure and my power will go up - of course, in such a case, my duration went down. What is the benefit of an advanced subcomponent?With just about any medical item (except for the most basic), you'll find that you need to use subcomponents (biological effect controllers, liquid suspensions, etc.) to craft them. When you reach Organic Chemistry 4, you can craft advanced versions of these items. So, what good are they?Well, let's take a simple Small Stimpack - B, which requires 1 biological effect controller. If you made a basic biological effect controller, it may have 5 charges while an advanced biological effect controller might have 15 charges. Now, when you insert that subcomponent into the Small Stimpack - B schematic, you'll find that the number of charges on the biological effect controller is added to the number of charges on the stimpack. So, for example, if a Small Stimpack - B normally has 12 charges as a base, using a normal biological effect controller with 5 charge will leave you with a stimpack that has 17 charges as a base (You can then raise this number through experimentation). However, if you were to use an advanced biological effect controller with 15 charges, you'd find that the stimpack would have 12+15 or 27 as a base (which could, once again, be raised by experimentation). Advanced subcomponents won't raise the maximum experimentation percentages you can reach (that is determined by the organic and inorganic resources you use), but they can greatly impact the base values that your stimpack will have before you start the experimentation. Is it always better to use advanced subcomponents?Although using advanced subcomponents will always provide you with a more potent final product, it's not always best to use them. In fact, in many cases, it's very cost inefficient to do so.It's important to realize how subcomponents work (which can be read in a different FAQ). The key is that the values of the subcomponents are added to the base values of the product being produced (it's not always 1 to 1, but it's pretty close). Therefore, the benefit of an advanced subcomponent can vary greatly depending upon what it is you're constructing. Here are a couple examples: Let's start with everyone's favorite medical item, the Small Stimpack - B. This item requires 1 BEC, 1 CRDM, and 1 LS. Suppose we have 2 CRDM's that we could use. First, we have a basic CRDM with a power of 18 that cost 64 credits to construct (this cost is based on 16 units of resources required at 4 credits per unit). Second, we have an advanced CRDM with power of 60 that cost 320 credits to construct (16 units of Herbivore Meat at 15 cpu and 16 units of Class 4 Liquid Petro Fuel at 5 cpu). Let's see what we'd end up with, using these two different subcomponents. As we're not really interested in the values of the other subcomponents or the experimentation results, I'll just make up a number for the power of the basic stimpack and then look at how that number would be changed by adding the advanced component. For comparison, this approach will work fine as all other things would be equal. Basic CRDM (Power 16) Small Stimpack - B Power = 350, Cost = 64 + Other Resources Advanced CRDM (Power 60) Small Stimpack - B Power = 394, Cost = 320 + Other Resources As the cost of the other resources is a constant value, the difference in construction costs of these two stimpacks is equal to the difference in construction costs of two CRDM's. So, in this case, the advanced Stim would cost 256 more credits than the basic Stim. For that cost of 256 credits, you've achieved a gain of 12.6% in power. That's not a bad tradeoff, but we're still not completely done with our comparison. If this stimpack is being made for your own use, it's your decision alone that determines if it is a good idea to use the advanced CRDM or not. However, if you're making these stims for sale, the issue becomes a touch more cloudy. Let's say that you're planning on selling the basic stim for 800 credits. For simplicity sake, let's assume that the other resource costs tally 400 credits. With that in mind, the basic stim would cost 464 credits to construct and, at a selling price of 800 credits, we've got a profit margin of 72.4%. That's not bad at all. Now, if we want to see the same margin on the advanced stim, what would we have to sell it for? Well, as the advanced stim would cost 720 credits, we need to multiply by 1.724 to get the new selling price. That gives us 1241 credits. So, if that advanced stim would sell for 1241 credits or more, the advanced CRDM is a good investment. If they won't sell at that price but the basic Stims sell at 800 credits, you're really only hurting yourself (in terms of profit margin) by using advanced CRDM's. These numbers are going to vary greatly depending upon your galaxy and economy so I offer these only as an example. It's still up to you to determine if it's a good idea to use them or not. However, with all of this background behind us, let's look at a different medical product. Let's say we're looking at a Small Stimpack E. A Small Stimpack E requires 3 BEC's, 1 CRDM, and 1 LS. Again, let's assume that we've got the same basic and advanced CRDM's from above but, with the additional subcomponents, we'll raise the cost of "other resources" to 900 credits. However, the big difference here is that the "base" values for a Small Stimpack - E are MUCH greater than those of a Small Stimpack - B. Here are my two sample stimpacks: Basic CRDM (Power 16) Small Stimpack - E Power = 900, Cost = 64 + 900 = 964 Credits Advanced CRDM (Power 60) Small Stimpack - E Power = 944, Cost = 320 + 900 = 1220 Credits In this case, the power increase from the basic Stimpack to the advanced Stimpack is a mere 4.8% while the cost increase remains at a constant 256 credits. Obviously, we're getting much less bang for your buck at this level. The reason for this is that, by adding the values of the subcomponents to the base levels of the final product, the percent increase is inversely proportionate to the base values of the product being made (as the base values go up, the percent gain goes down and vice versa). However, the cost of the gain remains static. So, in this case, I think it's pretty easy to see that using an advanced CRDM is just silly. You're basically throwing credits away because it's going to cost you a lot more to produce a product that is only marginally better. So what conclusions can you make from all this? Well, simply put, you need to put some thought into where you use advanced subcomponents. The more costly the advanced versions (advanced CRDM's can be very costly due to the Herbivore Meat requirement), the more careful you should be about using them. As my example showed, using an advanced CRDM in a Small Stimpack - B might have been a good idea, it seems folly to use it in a Small Stimpack - E. You'd find a similar trend with any other medical products, such as Wound Medpacks or Enhancement Packs. Of course, this comes with one big caveat. If you really must have the power (such as is often the case with enhancement packs), it might be worth spending the extra credits for that marginally better item. However, there are other items which can be easily crafted using some basic subcomponents without any real loss of power. The Resuscitation Kit is a perfect example. This item requires 1 BEC and 3 LS's. Well, Resuscitation Kits don't really benefit from the extra power provided from an advanced LS, so what's the point in using your best advanced LS's to make them? However, they greatly benefit from the extra charges that can be provided from a nice advanced BEC. So, when I craft a Resuscitation Kit, I often use junk LS's, which are cheap to build, and some of my best BEC's and end up with a Kit with many, many charges for a great price. So, while it's easy to say that using an advanced component will make your product better, I think it's somewhat naive to say that it's "better" to use them at all times. How do I use a factory?Factories can be used to make multiple identical items. By identical, I mean that every item produced in a factory (from a single schematic) will have the same serial number. It will also have the exact same stats as the item from which the new items are based.Okay, to start from the very beginning, if you want to make pharmaceuticals in your factory, you're going to need a Food Factory (for some reason, it isn't called a Food/Chemical Factory like the Food/Chemical Crafting Tool). Most architects can make one of these for you, but they can be a little pricey. Once you have a factory, you need a manufacturing schematic to load into the factory. A manufacturing schematic tells the factory what to make and what ingredients it needs to make that item. So, let's start by making a manufacturing schematic. Grab your food and chemical crafting tool and go near a food and chemical crafting station. Load the schematic of the item you want to mass produce into your crafting tool. Let's say we're making a biological effect controller, so you'll need 6 units of organic and 6 units of inorganic. Once you've got the schematic loaded, insert the resources that you're planning on using to do the factory run. Then, assemble the item. At this point, you'll be given 3 options, experimentation, creating a prototype, or creating a manufacturing schematic. Most likely, you want to experiment on the item at this point to make it better. Once you're done experimenting, you'll be returned to this screen. When that happens, press the "Create Manufacturing Schematic" button. This will take you forward to a screen where you can name the item (I usually leave this alone, but you can change it if you'd like) and you can set the manufacturing limit for the schematic. There is a slider that you can use to vary the limit from 1-100, but you can also type an extra zero in there to make a limit of 1000. Typing anything over 1000 results in an error message. If you only have enough resources for 50 items, you might want to set it at 50, but I usually set mine to the maximum and, if I run out of resources before I make 1000 items, I simply destroy the schematic. Now that you have your factory, you're going to need to find a place to put down your factory. Put it somewhere convenient (and preferably near a crafting station - find a house nearby that has one or buy a droid with one in it). Once your factory is put down, you'll want to load it with some credits and power. Factories require 1,440 credits per day for upkeep and 1,200 power per day (although power is only used while it's running). You can accomplish these tasks by accessing the "Pay Maintenance" and "Deposit Power" options in the radial menu. To see what maintenance and power is left, you can check by using the "Status" command. Now that your factory is set to go, you need to load that manufacturing schematic. To do so, select "Access Schematic Slot" from the factory Options menu. Find the schematic you want to use and click the "Use Schematic" button. Your factory now knows what it is going to build and what it needs to build it. So, the next step is to load the ingredients into the Ingredient hopper. You can access this hopper by selecting "Ingredient Hopper" from the Options menu. Simply drag the resources you want to use in your factory from your inventory into the ingredient hopper. Note that you MUST use the EXACT same resources you used to create the manufacturing schematic. Factories make identical items from identical resources. That means that if you used Tatooinian Domesticated Oats called Oimiev to make the schematic, you MUST put Oimiev in the ingredient hopper. Nothing else will do, not even a different type of Tatooinian Domesticated Oats. So, if you're going to do a large run of identical items, make sure you have a large number of resources to do it. If you've forgotten what resources you used to make the manufacturing schematic, you can bring up the ingredient list by selecting the "Ingredient List" option in the Options menu. Once you have your ingredients in place, you're set to go. Now, just click on the "Start Manufacturing" button under options and you'll get an activation message letting you know that the factory has started. Items can take a while to produce (roughly 8 seconds per complexity, so about 2 minutes for a biological effect controller) and will eventually show up in a factory crate in the Output Hopper. Factory crates of medical items can hold up to 50 items - the crates only take up 1 inventory space. So, with 6 crates of woundpacks, it would be possible to be walking around with 300 woundpacks (50 for each attribute) and have plenty of space to spare! Okay, so that take care of making simple items in a factory, but what about more complex items, like a Small Stimpack - B? Well, like I said earlier, all ingredients must be identical. Because a Small Stimpack - B requires subcomponents, you'll want to first do factory runs of each of the subcomponents. This will yield crates of subcomponents that are all identical (they all have the same serial number). When you're done with that, take 1 of each subcomponent out of each crate (1 BEC, 1 LS, and 1 CRDM - you can take one out through the radial menu or simply by double-clicking the crate) and use those to make the manufacturing schematic for the Small Stimpack - B. When you load the manufacturing schematic for the stimpack into the factory, simply load the crates of subcomponents that you just used into the ingredient hopper along with the organics and inorganics that you used. A few other notes about factories. If you ever need to redeed a factory (in order to move it, perhaps), make sure you've removed everything from it. Empty the ingredient and output hoppers, as well as the schematic slot. In order to reclaim the deed, you'll need to have at least 3000 credits in the factory. Those credits will be used up in the redeeding process, but any extra credits and power will remain. Also, once a factory is running, the Options menu changes to have only one option: "Stop Manufacturing." However, you can actually access the Output Hopper by opening the radial menu and selecting "Options." Don't select "Stop Manufacturing" under Options, just select "Options" itself. This will open the output hopper. This hopper will refresh automatically when items are added to it and you can readily pull items from here while the factory is running. The Output Hopper of a factory also makes for an excellent storage space. It can hold up to 100 items and when we're talking about crates of up to 50 items each, that's 5,000 items. Once you remove something from the output hopper, though, you can't put it back in. So, if you just made a large batch of items that you wish to sell, you might want to leave some of them in the output hopper until you have somewhere to put them. Why can't I see any schematic for Small Stimpack D (or any other D+ level schematic for that matter)?Some schematics require the use of a Private rather than Public crafting station in order to be assembled. You need be near a Personal Crafting Station or a Droid with a Food & Chem Crafting Module built into it (which counts as a personal station, even if it isn't your droid) in order for these schematics to appear. The ones in town are public and simply will not work for you. It should be noted that some of the publicly available Food & Chemical Crafting Stations you might see in some of the outposts on the advanced planets will act like a Personal Crafting Station for this purpose.Which creatures drop the best Herbivore/Avian Meat?There is no single creature that drops the best meat. Rather, meat (along with other creature resources, such as hide or bones) shift around the galaxy just like other resources, like copper or vegetables. One week, Perleks on Lok might be dropping excellent quality avian meat and the next week, they might be dropping horrible quality meat. If you want the best meat, you're going to have to keep on top of what's out there, just as you have to do when you're tracking harvestable resources.Some people say that the "advanced" planets, such as Dathomir, Lok, etc. usually have the best herbivore/avian meat, but I'm still not convinced this is true. I think the shifts are totally random. The only benefit from the advanced planets is that, usually, the creatures there are larger (and tougher), and therefore drop larger quantities of meat. Larger quantities dropped means it's much easier to gather large quantities for factory runs of pharmaceuticals. As a convenience, I have listed here some (probably not all - but all that I know of) the creatures that drop herbivore or avian meat on each of the planets.
What's better, using Stimpack B's with First Aid 4 or Using modified Stimpack C's with Pharmacology 3?Personally, I think using Stimpack C's with Pharmacology 3 is a better deal. For those of you not familiar with this, let me explain. Stimpack C's normally have a medicine use requirement of 31 or 32. Pharmacology 3 gives the owner a medicine use skill of only 30. However, any medicine crafter worth his/her salt can experiment Stim C's down to a requirement of 30 without sacrificing much in the way of power. In addition, Stimpack C's aren't much more difficult to make than Stimpack B's. B's require 12 units of organic and 12 units of inorganic (along with subcomponents). C's require the exact same subcomponents and 14 organics and 14 inorganics. However, the difference in power is quite dramatic. A good stimpack B will heal for about 350 while a good stimpack C will heal for about 550.It has been brought up, however, that some doctors sell Stimpack C's for a great deal more than B's (even though they cost little more to produce). If availability of Stimpack C's is a problem in your area, you might still want to use Stimpack B's with a level of First Aid to boost effectiveness. This is really a judgment call on your part but I bring it up as an opportunity to save a few skill points. The upside is that you can spend 5 less skill points and heal yourself about as well. I say that you'll only heal yourself about as well because First Aid offers a bonus to healing damage. Therefore a Stimpack B that heals for 350 in the hands of someone with First Aid 4 will heal for considerably more than its base value. The Stimpack C in the hands of someone with Pharmacology 3 (and no First Aid) will heal for about it's base amount, making the two roughly equivalent. What is an appropriate tip for a medic?Obviously, this is up to the tipper and it's a touchy subject, but let me explain a few things. In order to make a medpack (let's say a medpack A, which is the most basic), a doctor must use about 50 units of resources. Expect a medpack like this to sell on the market for about 400 credits (give or take a bit for the galaxy/economy of your area). That will provide about 20 charges. So, the doctor spends 20 credits every time he/she heals you. I consider it good form to tip at least enough to cover the doctor's costs. So, 5 heals would be worth about 100 credits. Note that medpack A's heal wounds very slowly. The more powerful meds cost more and heal faster.Now, this certainly isn't set in stone and I don't really recommend anyone use this exact formula. Like I said before, medpacks come in many shapes and sizes. A medpack E would fix up horrible wounds in a matter of seconds while someone using medpack A's would spend an awfully long time to do the same thing. Of course, a medpack E is MUCH more expensive to make (or buy) than a medpack A. Most folks seem to go with a system where they pay for how much damage was healed (myself included) and I think it works quite well. If you tip a few credits for every point of wounds healed, you'll find that the doctors will like you quite a bit. Tip a bit more and they'll like you even more. Also, don't forget about tipping medics in the field. The stimpacks they use on you in the field cost money/time just like the medpacks they use on you in the med center. Just because you're in the heat of battle when you get healed doesn't mean you can't take a few seconds to tip a medic once the fighting subsides. If you don't want to deal with it during combat, tip your medic before or after your trip. Also, if you're out hunting creatures, you could always pick something that you could pull meat off of. I'm sure most doctors (myself included) would be happy to come along and heal you with good meat as payment (especially good herbivore meat). I often heal for different amounts than what is listed on my medicines. Why?Certain medic and doctor skills grant bonuses to using medicines. At novice medic (with no skill points spent on first aid) you'll heal damage and wounds at roughly the same rate as what is listed on the medicine (with a bit of variance thrown in for good measure).However, as you advance through the First Aid tree in the Medic skills, you'll gain bonuses to healing damage. Note that this bonus is for healing damage, not wounds. Your ability to heal wounds will remain unchanged as long as you're a medic. So, if you have first aid 4, you can use a stimpack more effectively than someone who does not. Once you make it to Doctor, you can begin getting bonuses to healing wounds by advancing through the Wound Treatment tree. Now, you gain no further bonuses to healing damage, but you'll be able to use medpacks to heal wounds better as you progress. What does the register command do?If you look at the global map (Ctrl+V), you can open the folder on the right side named "Medical Centers" to see where the medical centers are on the map. To the left of the medical center name, you might see an icon. These icons have 3 different meanings.
This isn't a horribly useful command in heavily populated cities, but it can be very helpful in lesser populated areas where people don't always want to trek to the medical center only to find it void of medical personnel. I have also hear rumors that you gain a healing bonus by registering with a medical center (even a 25% bonus in a detachment HQ), but I have not confirmed this. Can you enhance a pet?Absolutely. Additionally, even though you don't get experience for healing a pet's damage, you do gain experience for buffing a pet. Of course, pets don't perform special attacks so buffing their strength and quickness stats is pointless. Also, for pets with 9000 HAMS, health and action buffs aren't always that essential, either. After all, what's another 1500 points, when you've already got 9000? However, buffing constitution and stamina is a wonderful boost for pets (especially the ones with giant HAMS). With buffs to constitution and stamina, the pets will regenerate hit points much faster which means they need to be healed much less often, which any pet owner will love. Note that if a pet is stored in a data pad, the buffs disappear, but they can be rebuffed as soon as they are brought back out.How do buffs work? how do I know how powerfull they are?Interactive Calculator Version 2 Total Buff Power -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Helpful Notes:
How do bio-engineered clothes work?Wearing clothing with bonuses to various skills can make you more formidable than the average joe on the street. There are a number of different bonuses that you can acquire and there are a couple different ways that you can get them.The most common type of enhancement is to get some clothing which has been crafted using tissues created by a Bio-Engineer. Bio-Engineers can make a number of different tissues with various effects but, most important for doctors are the passive and active biosensors, which give bonuses to injury and wound treatment. (They both behave the same, but active biosensors grant larger bonuses than passive ones.) Bonuses to injury treatment will impact your ability to heal damage while bonuses to wound treatment will impact your ability to heal wounds and apply enhancement packs. It is also possible to find "skill tapes" or "armor attachments" which can be put into sockets of clothing. Note that this is very different than the tissues that a Bio-Engineer makes. Tissues from a Bio-Engineer must be crafted ahead of time and put into the clothing by the tailor when the clothing is made. Skill tapes, on the other hand, are inserted into clothing with sockets after the clothing has been crafted. (The more skilled the tailor, the more likely the clothing will have sockets and the more sockets it will have - I have seen clothing with up to 4 sockets.) Skill tapes and armor attachments can not be made by anyone - they can only be found by looting enemies and containers throughout the game and, usually, they are only dropped by very powerful NPC's. However, with skill tapes, you can acquire all sorts of bonuses, including bonuses to medical experimentation or medical assembly or any combat profession out there. While this all sounds great and as if you have a potentially limitless form of character advancement, there is a catch. Any bonuses are capped at +25. That includes bonuses from tissues and skill tapes/armor attachments. Even though it is possible to wear clothing with higher bonuses than +25, the benefit caps at that point. (Note that your skill mods will show +55 or whatever you have, but the effective use is only +25. You are essentially wasting those other 30 bonus points.) Also of note is that, through skill tapes, you can increase your medical experimentation skill. Every 10 points of medical experimentation equates to 1 extra experimentation point for you to use. As this is also capped at +25, anything beyond +20 will only decrease your chances of critical failures when experimenting. There is no way to have more than 12 experimentation points. Are there any unique loot drops that are good for doctors? (Janta Blood)There is only one known item that can be looted that is specifically for doctors. As you might have guessed from the title of this question, that item is Janta Blood.Janta Blood is used as a replacement for a Biological Effect Controller. The good thing about Janta Blood is that the power rating on it is very high, unlike a normal Biological Effect Controller. The most common Janta Bloods have only 10 charges, but have 100 power (as opposed to the 10-20 that an Advanced Biological Effect Controller has). There have been reports of more powerful bloods being found. Also, when these are looted, they are often dropped in small bunches (of 3 or 4) in which case all of them are identical (having the same serial number) so that they can be used in more advanced meds, such as enhancement packs, which require identical subcomponents. Janta Blood can only be found by looting Jantas. Jantas are NPC's that are found on Dantooine - they resemble cavemen. The power of the Jantas range from medium to high and some can have some pretty high resistance, as well - be wary when fighting them. Also, they are social so, if you attack one that is in a group, expect the others to come to help. There doesn't seem to be any correlation to the type of Jantas that drop the blood. I've heard of people getting them off warriors or shamans, which are some of the more powerful, while the only ones I ever found came off a scout, which is one of the weaker versions. Of special note, there is a cave of Jantas in the far SE of Dantooine (7000, -4000) and a camp of Jantas in the SW (-3900, -5500). You can find about 30 Jantas in the cave and, the only time I visited the camp, I found only 2. I usually have the most luck finding random spawns of them in the far West reaches of Dantooine, west of the Imperial Outpost. Even if you know where to find the Jantas, Janta Blood is a fairly rare loot drop - I've killed a lot of Jantas and only once have I picked up any Janta Blood from them. The Doctor Profession: for Holocron Users (Guide to Fast Progression)So you've gotten a holocron and it has told you to master doctor and now you want to know what the fastest way to get through doctor is, right? Well, here are some tips to get you to master doctor in no time. Keep in mind that these tips, for the most part, involve no acts that I would consider "doctorly." Using these techniques, you are using the skills of the profession, but not really putting them to any use except to perfect them. However, here are some tips for those of you that want to do nothing but master one of the best professions in the game (at least by my opinion).The bulk of the experience you'll have to earn to make master doctor is medical experience. You get this experience by healing damage and wounds, enhancing players' attributes, or by raising the dead. Note that you DO NOT earn experience for healing your own damage or enhancing yourself. As that's the case, almost all of these tips are going to require someone else's help. So, as this is going to be the bulk of the work, here are some ways to gain medical experience very quickly.
What can a Droid do for a Doctor?Almost every Master Doctor (and plenty of others that aren't yet masters) have a droid. Why? What can a droid do for you? Well, a droid is essential for a couple reasons. Let me explain.First of all, droids have a number of capabilities. They can be used in combat, they can store items and/or data, they can allow you to heal outside of a medical center/camp, and they can be used as a personal crafting station. However, not every droid does all of these things. When a droid is constructed, it is really "tailored" to the requirements of the buyer. For me, I purchased an R2 droid that allowed for item storage, healing outside of a med center, and can be used as a Food and Chemical Crafting Station. The most important aspects are the abilities to heal outside of a medical center and to use the droid as a crafting station. Let's discuss healing outside of the medical center. Any location in which you can heal wounds has a "medical rating." That rating directly applies to how well you can heal wounds (this also applies to application of enhancements) in that location. A medical center has a rating of 1 (or 100% ability), while a basic camp has a rating of .65 (or 65% ability). Therefore, your healing abilities in a basic camp are going to be greatly reduced compared to how they would be in a medical center. Your droid behaves much the same way. A droid must have a medical module installed in order for it to allow healing outside the medical center. If you have a droid with one of these modules, any place in town becomes a medical center. (However, I've found that my droid does not work in most cantinas.) How well you heal using your droid is another story - it's really based upon the quality of the medical module that was installed. A poor medical module will only allow you to heal as well as if you were in a basic camp while the best medical modules allow you to heal better using your droid than you could in a medical center! The best I have seen (and I use personally) is a medical module with a rating of 1.1 (or 110% ability). Remember, this applies to wound treatment as well as enhancement application, so it's best to use a good droid for applying enhancements. Of course, having a droid that also doubles as a crafting station can be a great thing. Need a stimpack E or an enhancement pack D? No need to track down a crafting station - just pull out your droid. The model of the droid has no impact on how it works - it's all about what is built into the droid. I went with an R2 droid because I liked it and it offered a few extra options. However, if you're looking for a less costly solution, you could get all the ability you needed in a cheap mouse droid. I have really only "glossed over" the important aspects of owning a droid and I claim to be no sort of expert on the subject. Instead, I refer you to the website J'Vee Technologies, which was put together by a droid engineer and explains very well the ins and outs of buying and owning a droid. Where are the Doctor Trainers?Doctor trainers are some of the easiest to find in SWG - just check out the medical center of any major city. You're bound to find one there.If you're having trouble tracking down a trainer, here are the coordinates of all the trainers I know of (I haven't verified all of these myself but, to the best of my knowledge, they are correct): Medic Trainers
Temporary Enemy Flags (TEF) and Healing ImplicationsFrom time to time, it's possible that a Medic or Doctor can end up being a rather unwilling participant in the Global Civil War (GCW). It's important to understand how the TEF system works so that you can protect yourself properly. This can be very important for some medics/doctors that don't have the skills to defend themselves from the combat players out there.First of all, understand the colored names. If you're a neutral player, everyone's name will be blue. That means that you don't readily know what faction anyone is aligned to, Rebel, Imperial, or Neutral. If you join a faction (either Rebel or Imperial), however, you'll begin seeing people with purple names. Those people are aligned to the same faction you are. So, if you're Imperial and see someone's name in purple, you know that he/she is also Imperial. Everyone else will appear blue - they might be Rebels and they might be neutral - you just don't know. This, of course, is all reversed if you join the Rebellion. Second, we need to understand the TEF. Covert players are allowed to partake in the GCW, but only on a limited basis. They can not attack other players directly, but they can attack NPC's of the opposite faction. This means that a Covert Rebel can't attack an Overt Imperial (and vice versa), but the Covert Rebel CAN attack a stormtrooper. When and if that Rebel decides to attack that stormtrooper, however, that Rebel gains a TEF - he has made his alignment known to the Empire, if only for a short while. At this point, the Overt Imperial could open fire on the TEF'd Covert Rebel. If left alone and the Covert Rebel doesn't attack any more Imperial NPC's, the TEF will go away in about 10-15 minutes. Now, who can you heal? Well, you can heal anyone that is of the same faction as yourself or anyone that doesn't appear to be opposed to your faction. For neutrals, that means you can heal anyone that isn't overt and doesn't have a TEF. For Rebels, you can heal anyone except an Overt Imperial or a Covert Imperial with a TEF. For Imperials, you can heal anyone except an Overt Rebel or a Covert Rebel with a TEF. If you try to heal someone opposed to your alignment, you simply get a message that reads, "It would be unwise to help such a patient." and you won't be allowed to perform the action. You can consult the following grid to see who you can heal. But, just because you CAN heal someone doesn't mean that it's always safe to do so. If you heal someone that has made their alignment known to the opposing side (let's say you're a Rebel medic and you heal an Overt Rebel), you have also made your alignment known - you'll get your own TEF, just as if you had attacked a stormtrooper. The same would occur if you were to heal a TEF'd Rebel rather than an Overt Rebel. So how do you know if someone has a TEF? Target the player and look at the status effects on that player (this is where you'd also see poison, dizzy, stun, blind, etc.) If you see a small flag, that means that the person has a TEF. You might want to consider waiting for the TEF to wear off before you heal the person to avoid getting your own TEF.
The Small Stimpack - A+The Small Stimpack - A+ is an item that was added with the mid February publish. This is an item that can not be acquired by simply earning skill boxes in medic or doctor - it is acquired through a quest (or series of quests, rather).To begin the quest, you must speak with Melios Purl, an NPC standing the middle of the Bestine Medical Center. He gives you three missions, in all. The first is to rescue a woman and bring her back to the medical center safely. The second is to kill a mutant womp rat and retrieve a sample of it. The third and final mission to to deliver an item to someone waiting near Bestine. All of these missions can be accomplished by someone with very little combat skill (the mutant womp rat was the only thing I had to fight) and take under 10 minutes to complete if you've got a speeder. For your efforts, you will be given the schematic for a Small Stimpack - A+, which behaves exactly like any other stimpack, healing health and action damage while doing nothing for mind damage. Note that the schematic is not immediately placed into your datapad. Rather, when you receive it, it appears in your inventory. From there, you can double-click it to "learn" the new schematic. This is a limited use schematic - it has only 5 uses. However, with each use, it is possible to generate a manufacturing schematic to produce 1000 of them. So, even with a limited use schematic, you could potentially make 5000 of these things. Below are the stats. Ingredients: Inorganic: 8 Organic: 8 Experimental Effectiveness: 66% OQ, 33% PE Experimental Charges: 66% OQ, 33% PE Range of Charges: 14 - 24 Range of Power: 95-150 Med Use: 5 This item is really nothing more than an advanced version of the Small Stimpack - A. As the Small Stimpack - A maxes out at roughly 20 charges and 100 power, this schematic offers a little extra punch for the same cost in requirements. |
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