Tips for a lvl 17 engineer!

[jkaisler8605]

Hi I just joined the game and have read the engineer guide. I just wanted to have some tips from other players that are engineers. Any tips would be helpful.

[DaveB]

I've always used The Original Electronicum http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=160288 as a starter weapon on my engi (and doc, and crat, etc).

Bought in SL but can be used by froobs. Most SL players will be happy to get a couple for you, QL is up to 50 in shops but higher levels can sometime be bought on GMS terminals...and welcome to AO

[alfora]

Hi I just joined the game and have read the engineer guide. I just wanted to have some tips from other players that are engineers. Any tips would be helpful.

Don't start to tradeskill too early or you will cripple yourself. If you need items made don't hesitate to ask some other guys to build them for you. The only big exception might be your engi pistol because only you can build them.

Max your NCU. It will take you many many levels (more than 100) until you are able to cast your lvl 200 slayer self-buffed. So you will need NCU space for external buffs like Masteries, Infuses, or Mochams. You will also have most of your buffs running nearly all the time.

Learn to use your pet(s). A time will come where your main pet will be nearly 100 levels higher than you! It will not help you at all if your slayer is happy killing high level mobs but you get aggro and get killed. So learn to use trimmers, use your pet buffs, and use line of sight to your advantage. And don't forget to USE your pet wisely when it is 100 levels higher than you. Being a member of a heckler team with outside tank is not wise. Finishing high level RK missions is wise (and good for credits too).

Learn when and how to use your offensive auras. Running around with them always on is not a good idea. Especially not, when the Advy, Crat, or Trader in your team calmed some mobs.

[Tutomech]

Pets
Work on to how to get the biggest pet possible. Weapons and armour are secondary.


Credits:
Tredskills will eat up your IP and might slow down your progress in game, making items should come later in game when you can/want to afford to spend points in them. For credits I would suggest you get a few small backpacks and do higher level RK missions. Collect all loot and sell it to shops/npcs. Also learn what loot might be valuable to players and sell that in a playershop (Non shop buyable nanoprograms).
You might want to install Clicksaver: http://arpa3.net/ao/clicksaver.html


Custom map:
Install AoRK and AoSL from http://aomaps.com


Exploration
AO is huge. There is always something new to see or learn.


Organisation
Try to get into a nice org with friends. A well established org can provide you with a lot of answers and help, but game experience will be much deeper if you create or join a small start-up organisation with people that you team often. Most newcomers make the mistake of feeling pushed to catch up to all the 220s in established orgs and burn out in level grind and collecting credits.
My advice: accept the fact that games are made to be fun and to waste our time.


Community
Observe and analyse people behaviour in game, it is a major factor in gaining power, credits and knowledge.
Do not hesitate to ask questions on forums or in game.


Good luck,
Tuto

[Mereditche]

Don't start tradeskilling for others at low level. You wont make money doing so.

Bot is first priority at low levels. You can even skip weapons till level 100 and above.

TRIMMERS are god! Without them bot damage is a lot! lower and you'll draw aggro even when doing nothing. 3 trimmers you want:
- agg/def trimmer to put bot full agg
- taunt trimmer
- trimmer offense

Don't join teams with an outside tank in SL. While you'll level very fast, you'll end up at level 120 and completely clueless and unable to play the game.

Go level in Subways, ToTW and Foremans. As a first-time player those places learn you the most about teaming.

Solo missions on rk are also very good ways to learn how to play your toon.

[Igri00]

Don't join teams with an outside tank in SL. While you'll level very fast, you'll end up at level 120 and completely clueless and unable to play the game.

Leveling quickly in an Engineer saves time, but players without higher level alts will be unable to afford the bots they need at higher levels.

If your Engineer is your main, you'll need to level a little slower and build funds to get better bots.

Personally, I would forget about getting any trade skills or weapons skills until at least level 120. You'll find that you can't really make the items you need anyway. (they are always just a bit out of range)

[Glarawyn]

Sounds like you need a Red Monkey Wrench by Herring Co.

[Xyphos]

Hi I just joined the game and have read the engineer guide. I just wanted to have some tips from other players that are engineers. Any tips would be helpful.

Welcome to AO.
Fun stuff, eh?
I am an engineer, and I will tell you up front that it's not ment to be played by new players. especially the cost to equip/maintain/use.
Best tip: play Adventurer, Martial Artist, or Soldier while getting familiar with the game, Martial Artist would be perfect imho.

[Standdown]

Xyphos is correct engineer is for sure not the best for a new player.

I would say if your intent on playing it pay close attention to Time and space and Matter Creation skill, Intelligence and Psych as your top concerns.

Weaponry will not save you, your bots will check out:
Ao-Universe.com for guides and how to's
Tir school of engineering to check bot levels and mainly the other piece of advice I can offer is
DO NOT RAISE TRADE SKILLS till you are a higher level at least minimum level 90 most say..

I am a engineer and I hate my class 90% of the time, but then I find myself on my engineer 100% of the time..

What Server are you on?
If your on RK1 hit me up with any questions you have, I will answer with what I can, as long as I am not on assignment.

[Tutomech]

I am an engineer, and I will tell you up front that it's not ment to be played by new players. especially the cost to equip/maintain/use.
Best tip: play Adventurer, Martial Artist, or Soldier while getting familiar with the game, Martial Artist would be perfect imho.

I disagre. Enginer is not easy. But why should we always go for the easy way?

[Sweede]

I disagre. Enginer is not easy. But why should we always go for the easy way?

Exactly if you like easy mode you are in the wrong game

[alfora]

Welcome to AO.
Fun stuff, eh?
I am an engineer, and I will tell you up front that it's not ment to be played by new players. especially the cost to equip/maintain/use.
Best tip: play Adventurer, Martial Artist, or Soldier while getting familiar with the game, Martial Artist would be perfect imho.

I also disagree here. Some people simply like to have a little challenge.

I also started with an engineer as the first profession because I simply liked to have a droid as a pet. Of course, I ran into huge problems on the way and re-rolled at lvl 10 or 15 or so. The next engi was better.

Later I rolled an Adventurer and thought, whats the big deal? Just watch your health and nano bar and heal yourself from time to time. Press Fling Shot (or Fast Attack) from time to time and use a few perks.

Even later I rolled a Keeper. No offence to all the keepers out there but in the first 80 levels there is nothing else to do as to press 'Q', hit Fast Attack from time to time and use a few perks. The Keeper even gets healed automatically and doesn't have to use nanos in combat. I could stand around some Heckler spawn point and go walk the dog while the Keeper kills every pop automatically.

[Igri00]

Welcome to AO.
Fun stuff, eh?
I am an engineer, and I will tell you up front that it's not ment to be played by new players. especially the cost to equip/maintain/use.
Best tip: play Adventurer, Martial Artist, or Soldier while getting familiar with the game, Martial Artist would be perfect imho.

There is something to be said for learning the game mechanics before trying the more difficult professions.

As an alternative to not using the Engi, you might want to roll and Advi or MA and level it along with your Engi. That way you get double the experiences and from different perspectives.

I'm currently leveling my fixer and engi at the same time and it has made a world of difference in how well I understand the engi.

[Lheann]

If you are serious about a weapon (though an engi can seriously do without for first 50 levels) then look around on GMS (of have someone do it for you if you cant) for a SOL-K91 Mini Monster pistol. Best froob friendly pistol out there and works pretty good in SL as well.

As others have said focus on your bot and learn to send the pet and hide. NCU is critical. Never can enough as an engi. While it is not best armor carb does give NCU. If you are NCU short it could be a better option over a medsuit at the lower levels.

Enjoy the game. It is never to late reroll if you feel you have screwed up. Remember it is just a game.

[erozc]

Top tips for a budding engineer:

1) Learn how to cast the biggest bot possible. This includes getting enough NCU to hold beneficial buffs, getting decent implants in that buff your nano skills, choosing the right perks and looking into nano skill buffing armor and other equipment. It's also useful to know how big a pet you can maintain once your buffs run out - you need to have 80% of the skill requirements of casting the pet in order to be able to control the pet. That is, if you get an outside buff that enables you to cast a bot that requires 100 MC/TS, you need to have 80 MC/TS left after the buff runs out or the pet won't listen to your orders.
2) Learn how to control your pet. I advise a hotbar of pet macros - the important ones are /pet attack, /pet wait, /pet follow, /pet hunt, /pet behind and /pet report. You can make macros by typing '/macro botwait /pet wait', etc. Get the "Pet warp" nano from the general booth, and a nano that reduces duration of snares and roots on your pet as well. Learn how far away you can be from your pet before it returns to you bringing lots of nasty mobs following it. Also, it's useful to type ./open pets to view your pet HP and help selecting it. Ctrl-F1 selects your primary pet as well.
3) Learn how to improve your pet performance. Trimmers and pet nanos in the Anima line, plus damage buff nanos are very useful. Snare aura nanos too. You can cast the reflect aura on your pets as well to help them survive.
4) Learn how to survive hairy situations. Hiding behind a corner works quite well but there are other things such as bio shielding perk line, the abovementioned reflect nanos (and reflect auras for shadowlands use), and some very nifty blind auras that will make mobs miss you a lot, as long as you're not attacking them either.
5) After you have mastered your pet control, look into personal damage. At lower levels you should sacrifice your personal damage dealing ability to be able to cast bigger and better pets. After you can cast the biggest pets possible, personal damage becomes more relevant.

Of course, number 1 on the list requires you to learn how to gather credits for the actual pet nanos as well as the equipment. But then again, any profession needs credits. Finally, I do advise against raising tradeskills too early. It can severely hurt your survivability.

[patrick187]

Taking a few points Eroz_c wrote and echoing:

1) Trimmers, trimmers and more trimmers. Getting the best bot out is easy - stack MC/TS whenever and wherever possible, and tip your local MP well for CI/CM. But getting the best bot out as early as possible is only half the battle. Trimmers are the other half. Get to know every kind, keep them as close to max QL for your level as possible, max the skills to use them, etc. An engineer's bank should have a few bags devoted to nothing but trimmers. One bot, many settings.

2) The blind aura. Once you learn how to assist your pet and get good at single targeting among multiple adds, the blind aura will make most encounters with adds a piece of cake. You need to learn mob types and which mobs are most affected by blind, but like the doc "ghetto mez" that is the secondary init debuffs, the blind aura is really, really handy in a lot of scenarios.

3) Practice pet control, pet assist and your pulling tactics in as many scenrios and locations as you can. RK missions and SL dungeons are good for this, where adds are easy to come by. Shadowlands has roughly 50-60% of its total playable area coded as "Confusing To Pets" terrain, indoor and out. Between Scheol and Adonis, you can earn a PhD in pet control. The better you can do this, the better you'll be in a team. Keeping Sparky and DogDog on a short but effective leash is a skill.

4) To echo all the others, except for the trade skills needed for using trimmers, skip tradeskilling until way down the road. You have plenty of other time and money sinks as an engineer. The one exception to that is PharmaTech. Everyone in the game should have one character with maxed PharmaTech to convert the few gazillion monster parts you'll loot into highly lucrative blood plasmas.

[erozc]

The one exception to that is PharmaTech. Everyone in the game should have one character with maxed PharmaTech to convert the few gazillion monster parts you'll loot into highly lucrative blood plasmas.

Oh, yes, absolutely. Have several bags and fill them up with monster parts, then use a bio-commutor on them to convert to blood plasma. It's nice credits, and if you're a clanner you might want to sell them to the Miiir shop in Newland (the entrance is quite near to the GMS terminals there).

Remember, the higher QL your monster parts, the higher skill required, but also if you have extra high skills, the blood plasma becomes even higher quality. You might want to find a nice organization with a tradeskilling machine that will help you greatly with tradeskills (it buffs up to +160 if I recall correctly, for a few minutes, into each tradeskill including pharma tech but not including computer literacy).

Another tip: Get a lot of bags, loot everything you can and sell everything (except the few, rare, hard-to-recognize valuables) into shop terminals. It's a decent income.

[Mereditche]

Starting with engi as a first character isn't such a bad idea. You'll be very squishy and you'll learn to be cautious and how to play the aggro/line of sight game.

It's a good lesson when you ever switch to another professor and you'll end up in a team. You'll be used to playing with your own mini team and know the issues a tank and a healer deal with. (bot = tank, you = healer in solo situation at low level)

Also, at end-game you'll be able to TS for yourself which is a big added bonus.

[alfora]

Starting with engi as a first character isn't such a bad idea. You'll be very squishy and you'll learn to be cautious and how to play the aggro/line of sight game.

It's a good lesson when you ever switch to another professor and you'll end up in a team. You'll be used to playing with your own mini team and know the issues a tank and a healer deal with. (bot = tank, you = healer in solo situation at low level)

Hehe, you will find a huuuuuge difference when you play in teams with ranged professions who have good alpha damage, like soldiers or agents. The meaning of "let me pull mobs" is totally different with them. :-)

If it moves, shoot it.
If it stands still, blast it.
Oh, so many adds.
Map upgrades in order to check first? Who needs them?
Peek around corners first? Pffff

Yeah, you will learn aggro/line of sight with an engi.

[Ellarisa]

cant resist replying here ofcourse

some pointers:
- your pet is a part of you:
-- make it as big as you can
-- learn to control it
-- trim it so the mobs you're "playing with" prefer to eat it over you. it might be annoying to recast a pet, but you dont lose any xp and such over it.
-- buff it up!
--> damage: Assist Combat Array and up
--> damage: Energy Spike and up (RK pets also do energy damage)
--> survivability: Partial Harmonic Cocoon and up
-- desnare/deroot nano (for pets): get something like Lesser Energize Shell, it makes mission running a lot nicer

- dont bother with TSkills till TL5 at least
- dont bother with weapons till TL4 ish
- armor: carbonum armor if you lack ncu, miy's otherwise (adds hp and nanoskills), they can be obtained from various mobs around RK.
- implants: head/eye/right hand should be as high as possible.
a good combination for this:
implant: shiny // bright // faded
head: MC // nano pool // ...
eye: ... // intelligence // TS
right hand: ... // TS // ...
this way you'll get a balanced amount of MC and TS from your implants.
implanting nano pool/ max nano will also help with casting bigger bots
- NCU: get as much as you can, Dark memories from and the Guardian circuit board from totw are a really great and cheap option (though the memories might not be all that easy to obtain)
- perks: focus on bio shielding and mechanic at lower levels for the SL perks, also put any AI perks you have into champion of nano combat.
- IP: your main focus should be maxing abilities, comp lit and MC/TS/MM, but dont forget to put some IP into body dev so you dont go squish every time a mob looks at you

- LEVELING:
you will notice that a lot of people want to rush for 220. i say dont.
- run RK mishs to earn some creds. learn what loot you'd be able to sell to other players (there's not a whole lot, but there is some)
- explore some zones on RK and learn how to control your pet and how to survive in the outdoors
- run some LE missions to grab some AI levels and some VP for the nano research hud item. the perfect level for this would be 60-70 ish i'd say. the research hud item can be obtained in the tower shop in rome, borealis or Old Athens (not sure about this last one, i'm not clan)
- research: dont slack on it too much, the bonus stats from this help a lot
- if you feel that you want a couple more levels to explore new places, you can either go kill hecklers with a team or you could go do some cyborgs (froob way of leveling ). i wouldn't join a team with a pocket tank though, you wont learn anything.
- explore the subways, totw, foremans at the lower levels. they're really great dungeons and will teach you some stuff about teaming and other interesting things in ao (beware of the trains in totw )

other general tips:
- dont be scared to ask questions in the engi forums. we might bite sometimes, but dont let us scare you off
- read read read! this is something i personally did while i was leveling. at around 150ish i started reading everything in the engi forums. i find that this helped me quite a bit. (+ it helped me form an objective of sorts )

if you're on RK1 and have any more questions, feel free to send me a tell
Greetings,



Ellarisa