Bounty Hunter Guide

In this Guide, "BH" stands for Bounty Hunter, and "MBH" for Master Bounty Hunter. (This Guide last updated May 16, 2005)

Is BH right for me?
A bounty hunter is able to take down almost any lone target in the galaxy.

As a bounty hunter, you will find a lot of new parts of the game that otherwise would have been left undiscovered. There are NPC bounty hunts, player bounties (only Jedi hunting is possible at this time), and of course the underhanded special abilities and tactics that make some hunters famous.

You might remember such hunters as Greedo, Jango Fett, and Boba Fett from the movies. Players take examples from these, sometimes comparing Greedo to a newbie and the Fetts to the real master hunters. If you like any of these characters, bounty hunting might be for you - for roleplay if nothing else.

An important part to bounty hunting is speaking to informants and using droids to locate your mark. You will eventually do this on every mission, and might find that having a friends who are Artisans, Droid Engineers, Armorsmiths, and Weaponsmiths, can give you an advantage.

If you are having a lot of trouble deciding, you may want to stop by the bounty hunter's forums on the Star Wars Galaxies website. You should look for messages about a BH's first successful hunt, as those are almost always a good read. Here's the link: [http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board? http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board?]

Skill Requirements
To even begin bounty hunting, you're going to need to have Ranged Support IV (from Marksman) and Exploration IV (from Scout). You'll notice scout skills aren't worthless, they can really come in handy.

When on hunts, your bike may be blown up. Thanks to your scout skills, you can place a camp (if you are in a properly zoned area and out of combat) and pull a bike from the camp instantly! You also are given bonuses to terrain negotiation, which helps you climb hills faster. Sometimes, you'll find it can be advantageous to use the mask scent special to get past creatures or reduce the risk of them attacking you while on a hunt, which can be done by using the ability icon or typing "/mas".

Combat and Equipment Tips
This part of the guide assumes you have already played a combat class for at least a little while, and have made the decision to play as a Bounty Hunter.

In combat, one of your best tactics is using your specials that you've earned. If you have carbines, your best damage specials are currently Leg Shot, Critical Shot, and possibly Rapid Fire. If pistols, you'll probably want to stick Stopping Shot and make them Bleed. All bounty hunters should know how to use Duelist Stance properly to maintain defense, as well as Knockdown Recovery. Know your specials WELL before you even THINK about hunting Jedi.

(You can figure out what specials do by moving your mouse over the special in your Skills menu. If you want to see what the special itself does, find the first reference to that skill and mouse-over it.  If you want to see what Improved or Advanced versions of the special does, you'll have to find each of them respectively.)

You will also want to use the proper weapon in combat. Proton Carbines and Scatter Pistols seem to be the recent favorites. Proton Carbines are a trade-able quest reward from Kashyyyk. Scatter Pistols are craftable. You may find some other weapon that better suits you. Look for a weapon with high speed and high DPS.

Know your equipment! Learn the various weapon statistics and how they affect your ability in combat. Read statistics on armor. Compare wielding a certain weapon with another on your Character Sheet to see what mods it gives you. Figure out which classes give you the right armor mods and which armor type is most important to you. You don't want to be running around with armor you are uncertified for, as it can reduce your speed and accuracy.

You can also get weapons or armor "sliced" by a smuggler to increase random statistics, and thereby increasing overall weapon quality. In addition to your armor, get a Personal Shield Generator (armorsmiths make these too). This will add even more to your defenses.

[Take care of your equipment. If you won't be using it for a long time, store it in your bank or house where it's safe. If you are, insure it often and make sure it's repaired to a fair condition.]

Also, make sure to take advantage of the food and drinks chefs make. They can boost various HAM pools, and increase regeneration rates. Spices still give downers, but they are very short. Instead of the previous long downers, you will find it reduces one pool and increases the others. I usually use neutron pixies in short fights as they decrease from the mind pool, which I don't really use anyway.. Make sure to visit a doctor for "Medical Enhancements", they don't help as much as pre-CU, but it can still make quite a difference.

As a BH, droids are used in almost every BH mission you will take. Therefore, it's important to know some things about droids. First of all, a DZ-70 (or 80? or whatever...) is not the droid you're looking for. Neither is a "ProBot" droid. You are looking for Arakyd Droids (which, when examined on a vedor, appear to simply be a radio or controller-device), as well as Seeker Droids (which looks a little like the droid Luke Skywalker was training with on the Millenium Falcon - for prequel fans it looks a lot more like the droids Darth Maul uses in Episode 1 when he arrives on Tatooine.) You can often find these droids in droid shops, vendors, player "malls", and bazaars. They also come in crates.

There are also droids called "bomb droids". These droids are crafted with a certain level of "detonation power", and can be used by bounty hunters by selecting the radial menu and clicking "detonate droid" - or by targetting the droid and using the "/detonatedroid" command. Using it will cause a 5 second timer to go off above the droid before it explodes.

(Last week, about May 5, I was informed there was a bug where bomb droids were not nearly effective as they are meant to be, hopefully this will be resolved shortly.)

Investigation
Investigation is what a Bounty Hunter uses their specific kind of missions. Your skills in Investigation determine what type of missions you can take, how hard they are, which informants you have to talk to, and how good you are at using your tracking droids.

At novice BH, it is probably best to finish your weapon skills before you try to take on the Investigation branch. If droids are working like before, most BH's would suggest maxing out on Bounty Hunter XP (the XP for investigation). You should have enough XP for Investigation II before bothering to learn Investigation I.

At Investigation I and up, you have to take off-planet missions and use droids to track your targets. (At novice BH, missions are pretty easy, always on the same planet you prepared for it on. At investigation 1, things get more difficult and bounties may be off-planet, droids may get eaten by space slugs or crash into asteroids - wasting time and credits.  At investigation 2, your skills improve to where this isn't such a problem.)

As your investigation skills and mission difficulty increase, you will need to talk to different informants who know more about your new bounties. They will give you the biological signature that you need to program into your droid so it can find the target.

A list of Bounty Hunter Terminals, Trainers, and Informants with their locations (from the bounty hunter forums) is included below.

See Bounty Hunter Mission Terminal page for terminal locations. See Bounty Hunter Informant page for informant locations.

BH Missions (General BH missions)
The Layout of a BH Mission

Beginners: Step 1 - Get a mission (you'll have to find a BH mission terminal.) Step 2 - Talk to a SpyNets Ops at your investigation level (AKA "Informant" - at one of the locations in the list above.) Step 3 - Find and eliminate your bounty at the given waypoint on the same planet you are on.

Advanced / Experts: Step 1 - Get a mission (BH terminals) Step 2 - Talk to your Informant and obtain their Bio Signature (SpyNet Ops - they'll be harder to find now.) Step 3 - Leave the city far enough to call an Arakyd droid from orbit. Call the droid (select find or track from the droid's radial menu.) Step 4 - The droid drops from orbit and is now called "Imperial Probot Base". Go up to it and use option 2 from your radial menu to upload the bounty's biological signature. Step 5 - Wait for the droid to locate the target (approx. 3 minutes). Step 6 - Go to the planet the arakyd droid found the target on. (This is not a recently updated waypoint, but left from when if found what planet the target was on.) Step 7 - Send out a seeker droid (find or track, tracking is better if you have the skill to do it). Currently, you can use multiple seekers to update your target waypoint by selecting the Find and Track option over and over again really quickly after releasing the first droid. When it finally registers the first droid has left, you will be unable to send more seekers until one of them fails to locate your target. I still have heard no word if this is considered an exploit or not, so use at your own risk. (More people point to the fact that tracking with seekers at master level does not consume any droids, than to this type of use, as it limits the amount of seekers a BH has to buy, in turn cutting Droid Engineer's potential income.) Step 8 - After seeker locates the target, travel to the new waypoint and eliminate your target. (You can start traveling to the waypoint your Arakyd droid gave you, but your bounty probably moved far away while you were traveling to the planet.) You may have to send more than one seeker to pin down their location, and the targets are often moving (trying to get to a starport or something). If, for some reason, the bounty is on the planet you are on - in other words, if you're lucky - you could potentially find the target by sending out a seeker after getting the mission and speaking with the informant (skipping the arakyd step), and not be required to call an Arakyd droid from orbit. Just realize that once you've started tracking, you can't keep sending out droids to track until the first one is done. If you pick up a mission on a Jedi from the terminals, you may not always have to track them. Sometimes you will see a Jedi in the middle of PvP, find their mission on the terminals, and decide it is much more efficient to attack them without visiting an informant or launching droids. Just realize if you do this, you will be unable to track them if they run away, unless you speak with an informant or have a friend who is helping you track him.

The Jedi Hunter (PvP bounties)
Jedi missions are the same as a BH's regular missions - but only as far as tracking your mark. Actually, even then there are a few disparities. You will have to use your wits and underhanded tactics to come out on top. Jedi bounties can be very difficult to pull off, especially when hunting a high-level Jedi on your own. As stated earlier, you must make sure you have excellent equipment and know how to use your specials and abilities before entering combat with your bounty. Basically, you should always make sure you are prepared before fighting in PvP (player versus player). To prepare yourself properly for a hunt and avoid newbie BH mistakes, make sure to read this whole thing. Before picking up a mission, you should check a few things. Having a Bounty Hunter profession tag up will likely give you away. You may have to decide if giving yourself away is worth having the tag up. Make sure you are not easily spotted by Jedi who use the "/who" command by going to your Community menu (Ctrl+P) and making yourself anonymous (look for the checkbox at the bottom of one of the tabs, where it asks if you want other players to be able to search for you). When you are looking for a Jedi's mission on the mission terminals, you will start by determining which ones are Jedi bounties from those that are NPC (non-player character) missions. Payout is a great way to separate NPC missions from Jedi missions. Recently, the minimal payout for low-level Jedi was raised from 25k to 30k. NPC missions shouldn't go above about 33k unless you slice the terminal, so it gives you a good reference point to start looking. Any mission 40k and above is an obvious Jedi mission. You can also determine which missions are Jedi by who provides the mission. Single NPCs or "Anonymous" NPCs will hire you for Jedi missions. The BH guild and other guilds or criminal syndicates will simply hire you for NPC missions, so if it's an organization it's probably an NPC mission, but if it's just one employer you've got a Jedi mission. If you're still confused, look for missions that have the word "Jedi" in their title - not all Jedi missions will have "Jedi" in the title, but many will. Pick a payout level that suits your current desire for a hunt. You may be starting out and wish to hunt a Padawan, but beware, they often hide in private structures (so you can't go inside to kill them) and may still have regular combat skills other than just Jedi skills. Jedi Knights are 225k-ish and up, and will prove formidable opponents. Those missions are great for a challenge, especially when hunting alone. Sometimes a hunter may use payout levels to find a specific Jedi (though note that SOE is against targeting a specific player repeatedly). Once you have the mission, use /addfriend (Jedi Name) to get them on your friend's list. This will show if they are online. If for some reason you miss the message or they are already on your friend's list, open your friend's list and check if their name shows online or not. Then make sure to use /removefriend so they cannot use the /findfriend (Bounty Hunter Name) to find you or figure out if you are after them. You usually won't grab a mission on an offline Jedi. Alternatively, you can use /findfriend on the Jedi. Currently, if they are online it will state you are unable to find the friend. If they are offline, you will get no system message response. This will eliminate the risk of the Jedi using /findfriend on you altogether, but realize it sometimes may take the system longer than other times to return that it is unable to find your "friend". If the Jedi has you on their friends list, this can also be nice because it will update the exact location of the Jedi, so you might be able to get by without using droids. Next, if you don't know where the Jedi is, speak with your informant (you should still be able to speak with the informant if they are offline) and send your droids (only do this if the bounty is online) as you might for any other BH mission. When you arrive in the area where the Jedi is, I'd stay a good 450 meters away from the waypoint. Now is when you refine your tactics. Open your Planetary Map (Ctrl+V), and watch as the waypoint updates. (You should have already checked the map to find your best route to the target area after landing on the planet) Is the bounty moving? Is he in a player city, or a POI? What are his possible escape points when you show up? Is the terrain suitable for a fight in your advantage? Do you know the terrain, POI, city, or player-city well enough to make combat decisions on-the-fly? You should ask yourself these - and other questions - to fine tune your tactics rather than going in guns-a-blazin' (if you just run in fighting, you're usually asking to get killed). Make sure you have a /deathblow macro set up so you can kill the Jedi if he should become incapacitated. Also, if your macros loop, have a /dump command to keep them from looping when you want them to stop. Many hunters also have macros for their bomb droids. Do NOT send the Jedi /tells before you show up, that is a great way to give up your advantage of surprise. In fact, I recommend never speaking to a Jedi bounty. If you do, try to be polite - it is just a game, and if they are rude or threaten you, you should probably /addignore them. Remember, anger is rarely useful in fighting, it is more important to keep your wits about you and pay attention to what is happening combat-wise than to try to win some verbal battle. I know I said not to speak to your bounty, but at times you will find speaking to them can deceive them into thinking you aren't after them. Then you may want to, but realize Jedi are keeping their eye out for this, and will instantly suspect anyone /telling them who they don't know. Some hunters have used /tells right before attacking their targets to distract them, and some friends of Jedi have even sent me tells before or during a hunt to distract me. If you ever find time to use /addignore that may be nice, but another thing you might consider is muting the User-Interface sounds from the Sound tab in the Options menu. Some bounties don't require that you lift a finger. Some of the best hunts have been carried out this way. An example of this would be a case where one Jedi was dueling another, and actually got to the point of incapacitating him. Then the bounty hunter with his mission (who had been watching and waiting), walked up and hit /deathblow. If you decide to engage a Jedi in mortal combat, and you are a long or medium-ranged hunter, your most important thing is keeping your distance from the Jedi. When they get close enough, they can put you in a world of pain. If this should occur, have some Stim D's ready, or some kind of stims anyway. Watch your combat tab from time to time - and you can see when your stims will be ready for use again (it tells you how much time until you can use the stim next, when you try to use a stim and it doesn't work). You will eventually develop your own tactics and style of combat. When you're fighting, do your best to keep your wits about you and pay attention to all the details, it may just get you the win.

One great way to surprise a Jedi, is to show up at a player event uninvited, but blend with the crowd. Then you may be able to get in a /deathblow or attack them when they are unprepared. Though you will become unpopular in some Jedi circles for interfering with a player event, and even the event coordinators, you may find circles of hunters who would praise your tactics. You should decide of course, whether the bounty is worth the hurt relations to you. You may also get banned from a city when hunting Jedi, because people who side with the Jedi in their matters - or simply are their friends - are capable of doing so. Do not fear, you will not be stopped from hunting a bounty in that city just by being banned. The main thing a city ban does to hurt you, is keeps you from using their shuttle port. In no way does that stop you from completing your mission, it simply inconveniences you. Unfortunately, this also means you cannot shuttle TO their shuttle port from an outside shuttle. A lot of player cities that ban people like this, have long lists of people who are banned, and are not likely to unban you, though you can usually find someone to appeal to - although personally I don't take the effort do do so, I've only had about 4 city bans so far. Sometimes you will get message that says "mission incomplete". This is because another bounty hunter beat you to the bounty. They got paid, and you didn't. Looks like you'll need to pick up another Jedi's mission, or wait until that one gets on the terminals again. Of course, you lose the mission, so if you try to go after that Jedi again later - you'll have to pick it up again. Also, when a Jedi is online, but the droids report he is offline, that may mean the Jedi is in space or on the Corvette (and instanced mission) which means you will be unable to attack them. Currently, there is no bounty TEF in space, so you can't hunt them there. Given that droids don't update their location in space, I don't see how this would matter much anyway. Realize that Jedi can hide in their house. That means they can sit in their house all day, and there's nothing you can do about it. I find one of three outcomes happen if you come upon a house like this and get too close, or if you chase the Jedi until he goes inside. Either he will log out, after a while, or he will come out. He won't come out while you are there, but if you leave to where he can't detect you and wait it out, they'll sometimes leave. Thirdly, they might go AFK in their house for a long time, whether they use /afk or not, of course. Usually I leave and come back, and if they're still inside I may give up their mission. It is typically a bad idea to try to taunt them when you're outside and can't touch them, as well as sitting right on their porch to wait them out. A fun thing to do when Jedi hide in their homes, is to find a public house nearby, and hide inside it - rather than approach the Jedi's home. Now you have any advantage the Jedi has. You can see them when they leave their house, should they pass close enough, but they can't see you. Jedi can see you if you stand outside their house, even though they haven't gone outside, so that is how I feel it balances it (in a way). Once they leave, you can leave your new hiding place, and likely catch them by sneaking up behind them to the mission terminal, or their current mission, or whatever they are up to. Make sure that if you do this, you keep tracking. You should always continuously track the Jedi to keep tabs on his location, and whether he/she is on the move.

credit to Giles025 on SWG Official forums - http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=bounty_hunter&message.id=404660