Chapter 8: Making a BE Pet
By Mirrl

BE pets are a balancing act with 5 DNA samples and up to 10 experimentation points. You begin with 5 DNA samples that must be placed across 5 characteristics (physique, prowess, mental, psychology and aggression) to create a template. Once the template has been made you may spend your experimentation points as you wish on these 5 characteristics up to their maximums. In this document any predictions for values will be for the maximums. The initial values generally fall into the 60-80% of maximum range. It is not clear to me why they are sometimes closer to 60% and sometimes all in the 80-85% range. Once you have spent all of your experimentation points you get the final template. Pick a "skin" and add into it the final template plus meat and flora food to create a creature. It sounds fairly easy but none of the DNA samples contribute to just one thing and so it generally ends up a balancing action to get the creature you want. These 5 DNA samples will control HAM (Health/Action/Mind), armor, resists, damage, attack speed, chance to hit, ranged attack, 2 different special attacks and the creature level. The skin you pick will determine the creatures run speed, minimum creature level and its "agro" (i.e. could it ever be a non-CH pet and does it deathblow).

DNA Sampling

The profession does not come with a built-in macro for doing DNA sampling. Bring up the macro page and add a new macro with /sampledna. There are two kinds of creatures you need to worry about agro and not. Creatures that are not agro can be approached without the scent mask skill (Scout exploration line). I'd still suggest having it up as approaching may still alarm them and cause the sample to be more difficult. Please note that ALL creatures can agro you while you're sampling. Your first clue off this will be the creature hitting you. It's good to be aware of which creatures are social as nearby creatures of that type will also attack you if you attack back. It is important to know which deathblow as you do not want to risk being incapacitated by them. Make sure you burst run from any creature that DB's and that you have scouted an escape route. I'd suggest a route that leads right into a group of non-agros. Agro creatures must be approached with the scent mask ability up. As the CL of the creature you're approaching increases, the more caution you need to take in the approach. The first thing to remember is that walking is better than running, and crawling is better than walking for the approach. While sampling you are better off kneeling than standing. Really dangerous creatures should be approached from behind. Wearing a suit of scent neutralizes clothing. (Please remember than +25 is supposed to be the max bonus you should be getting out of these clothes) I'd also suggest have a macro ready (that does /stand; /pause 1; /burstrun) in case you're aggro-ed. Steep hills and other terrain can also help you get away without needing to waste your burst run. Some people also have luck approaching the creature by vehicle with scent masked. Then you can hit a macro (It needs the full vehicle name, e.g. /mount speederbike to get away. If you're a ranger the camo kits can also be very useful. Alternately you can see if any of the MBE's on your server have a vendor where they sell DNA they have collected. However, if you're going to work, make sure you have LOTS of inventory space. Make sure you're wearing a backpack and get 3 droids with inventory space. (Preferably 10 spaces per droid). In total this should give you 140 inventory slots. You will find you'll need it because DNA does not stack and you need a lot of it. I'd also suggest bringing a cheap shield generator and muon gold as both can help make this easier.

Experimental Increases

There are 5 places to experiment. Physique controls fortitude and hardiness. Prowess controls endurance and dexterity. Mental controls intellect and cleverness. Psychology controls dependability and courage. Aggression controls fierceness and power. When you experiment on one of the slots the related attributes will increase. Please note that when you critically fail experimentation it is common to see one of the related attributes go up, one other related attribute go down and one unrelated attribute also go down. If you have already maxed-out the slot related to this third attribute, you will not be given the option to experiment it back up. BE experimental failure seems to be as high as 20% with good crafting tools and good private crafting stations, so be careful. Please note that it is normal for 1 of the 2 attributes to max-out during experimentation long before the other one. For instance I frequently see fortitude max out long before hardiness. The following system works fairly well to determine the expected increase for a success on experimentation on all of the slots except psychology. (It usually works for 1st generation psychology, but not always then)

For a physique experimentation point:

Hardiness increase = [ F / ( F + H )] x 140
Fortitude increase = [ H / ( F + H )] x 140

HAM

Each of the HAM attributes (Health/Action/Mind) is affected by the inputted DNA samples. However the only way to affect Health positively in experimentation is to experiment on physique. The only way to effect Action positively is to experiment on prowess. The only way to affect Mind positively is to experiment on mental. The following shows how the DNA slots affect the initial/final outcome.

Health is determined by hardiness. Hardiness is determined by the physique algorithm, physique 40%, prowess 25%, mental 5%, psychology 5% and aggression 25%. 500 will give you about 9000 health. (Final combine randomizes this a bit)

Action is determined by dexterity. Dexterity is determined by the prowess algorithm, physique 25%, prowess 42%, mental 17%, psychology 8.5% and aggression 7.5%. 500 will give you about 9000 action. (Final combine randomizes this a bit)

Mind is determined by intellect. Intellect is determined by the mental algorithm, physique 5%, prowess 10%, mental 50%, psychology 30% and aggression 5%. 500 will give you about 9000 mind. (Final combine randomizes this a bit)

As you can see each of these stats is effect to varying degrees by all 5 DNA samples entered into the samples. Of the three stats Health is usually considered the most important for a pet, action the second most.