Pet or charm?

[Sawbones2]

Inspired by Obsoleet's question, I'll ask the lowbie version of it. (My crat is lvl 19 so I can still change my mind ).

Given that the advice is to focus on either charms or the pet, but not both below lvl 130, what did you do? And why?

Which did you find to be more fun? Which was easier? Would you do it again?

Look forward to your thoughts.

Cheers

[Nova]

I have been leveling a baby atrox crat lately and charm is way to go.

Any twinked bot do silly damage but 2xcharm is nice dd.

[Luuv]

Plus the nanoskills you need to charm are the same ones you need to calm. And you want to be able to land calms. PM/SI are attack skills, more never hurts, even if you don't need them yet to cast something.
MC and TS are attack skills as well, but you may not want to root and snare that much early on, and nuking generates craploads of aggro.

But it all depends on what you want to do. If you wanna be an evil nuker and like to show your cojones, maxing PM/MC for nukes will make you the tank in most teams, and works well in early pvp. MC/TS is cool if you like to do /pet hunt in missions while you read a book. PM/SI for charms and calms - need to be more alert to make most use of those.

I would just advise against going a little bit of everything before you are at a level where symbiants are viable. Having a squishy bot that doesnt hold aggro, crappy nukes that still generate aggro and calms that don't land aren't a cool combo.

[Lunaspell]

Pocket Trader and MP is nice at low levels.

Charms is better IMO, and more fun

[Luuv]

Pocket Trader and MP is nice at low levels.

Charms is better IMO, and more fun

Yes, and yes.

[Techofdoom]

Went nm crat so I dont have to chose;/ My bot and my charm are both red to me

[Casson]

I use both. I don't have any IP problems. All of my nano skills are maxed each level plus Implants, Perks, and Nano enhancing armor. I am lvl 83 using a lvl 107 pet and then I charm a high lvl mob while out hunting. This way I, effectivly, have 2 pets. My Main attributes are maxed, Body and nano pool maxed. Comp lit, nano programing, Psychology all maxed. Map Nav is only at 200 but I use implants to bump it up to install new maps and then take them off again. The only problem I have is that, at lvl 83, I have hit lvl cap for all nano skills, nano pool, body, and all but 1 main attribute. I am going to have to find someone to make me some lvl 150 implants since 100 is the highest you can buy from store (Which is what I am wearing). If I can't raise my nano skills with implants, I will fall even with everyone else because of the lvl cap

[Sawbones2]

I use both. I don't have any IP problems. All of my nano skills are maxed each level plus Implants, Perks, and Nano enhancing armor. I am lvl 83 using a lvl 107 pet and then I charm a high lvl mob while out hunting. This way I, effectivly, have 2 pets. My Main attributes are maxed, Body and nano pool maxed. Comp lit, nano programing, Psychology all maxed.

Wow, how did you manage that!? I looked at Nillan's skill emulator and when maxing all nano skills and attributes and BD and NanoPool I don't have anything left for CL, Psycho, NanoProg let alone pistol or other weapon skills and evades and nanoC Inits (which you didn't mention, I understand that) which strike me as pretty important too.

To all: thanks for the helpful commentaries. I had tentatively decided on the Charm/Calm route and this confirms me in my choice

Adding the engineers' pistol and later CDR as the weapons route until I'm ready for Flux/Kyr which is the combo I use on my main (lvl 190 Doc) as well.

[Shevaya]

Wow, how did you manage that!? I looked at Nillan's skill emulator and when maxing all nano skills and attributes and BD and NanoPool I don't have anything left for CL, Psycho, NanoProg let alone pistol or other weapon skills and evades and nanoC Inits (which you didn't mention, I understand that) which strike me as pretty important too.

use twinking guns like pepper pistols at first. just twink em on.
Dont raise pistol higher then needed for like a CDR.
Also if you level in SL charms > bot. if in RK you can choose more freely between the both.
And as said by others..you need calms to..which are same skills as charms.
Also if charming dont forget the standard psychic drain to charm higher mobs.
Psychology: 95% out of the tl7 crats reset this.
Imho i would just twink it to make the suit/briefcase and that's it.
Nanoc init: max.
ranged init: leave it behind.
nanoprogramming: dont touch that yet (and the 1k board gives 210NP)

Adding the engineers' pistol and later CDR as the weapons route until I'm ready for Flux/Kyr which is the combo I use on my main (lvl 190 Doc) as well.

Stay away from flux.
it's to slow and to short range.
imho for pistol crat:
till level 41: 2x pepper pistol
level 41-90ish: 2x CDR
level 90ish-190: 1x CDR + 1x dark pistol of the Revoked (at the high end of 170-180 i would go for a kyr instead of DPotR)
level 190-205: 2x kyr (type1/untyped) (maybe with a small type4 instead of untyped)
205+: 2x Kyr (keep CDR till you have the needed multi ranged)

Engineer pistol upgraded is good replacement for DPotR or for the second CDR.

[Luuv]

till level 41: 2x pepper pistol

Uhm, just that you can only use 1 pepper pistol.

[Casson]

Wow, how did you manage that!? I looked at Nillan's skill emulator and when maxing all nano skills and attributes and BD and NanoPool I don't have anything left for CL, Psycho, NanoProg let alone pistol or other weapon skills and evades and nanoC Inits (which you didn't mention, I understand that) which strike me as pretty important too.

To all: thanks for the helpful commentaries. I had tentatively decided on the Charm/Calm route and this confirms me in my choice

Adding the engineers' pistol and later CDR as the weapons route until I'm ready for Flux/Kyr which is the combo I use on my main (lvl 190 Doc) as well.

I took an odd route to get there. I do not have any weapon skill. The only things I carry are OET for the +5 Int, giving me +10 Int total. Since we have such low HP, unless you are a trox or even a sol, the last thing I want to do is shoot at something and make it come to me. I do use a nuke now and again, mainly when they are low on health and I want to speed things along. I have no Evades. I know, people will tell me I am crazy. I don't plan to PvP, as I don't enjoy that aspect of the game. Any evades I have come from perks, armor, and implants. My CL is currently 380. Its low, I know, but Implants help me equip things and as soon as I hit 100 I can upgrade my token board to get an additional 210. I did not max MM. Since we do not use it, it would be a huge waste of IP. You could use it to wear certain Hacked symbios, but I don't. I put 81 points into Navigation VA because there is a Yalm in Rome Green that only requires VA81. If you hate traveling, like I do, then its worth it. My NanoC is around 500. Thats from IP and a Nano Formula Recompiler. The only reason I worry about speed, is getting that charm back on a pet before I get my butt handed to me. I guess you could say that I am completely geared towards Offense and negligable Defense. So far, it hasn't hurt me. With high level pets and higher than normal nukes and protection nanos, I have leveled up fairly quickly. Not alot of people would take this route, but I have come to enjoy it.

[RedWobe]

Having just levelled my second crat, I will comment about this. The important skills to raise, until you can get about 1150 CL and selfcast all non-level-locked nanos, are as such -

Abilities
Comp Lit
Treatment
Nanoskills ('cept MM)

WTF would anybody bother with weapons for at low levels. You will NEVER do as much damage with weapons at this stage, and if you do its bad because you'll steal agg from pets. Evades seems kind of pointless too, if you know what you're doing and get somewhat decent teams. Anyways you probably arent full def yet (not enough nanoinit) and so your evades will be useless. You shouldnt be taking hits anyhow.

If you just max what I have told you you will always be able to stay relatively close to maxed on everything and be able to twink effectively (abilities/cl/treat being important for this). When you hit Tl4/5 skill locks and ability lock, then get weapons/evades. Even before these, I like to get runspeed, god I hate being slow.

PS You dont need IP to get on a low-ql yalm - just an implant (got anything else you plan on using the bright eye slot for at this level? rifle? AS? pft.

[Luuv]

PS You dont need IP to get on a low-ql yalm - just an implant (got anything else you plan on using the bright eye slot for at this level? rifle? AS? pft.

Rifle is shiny in eye, as is AS. Vehicle air is bright in ear... ^^

But yeah, you're right about the shiny eye cluster not having much use except for the yalm cluster. Same with bright ear. Not like you badly need concealment or anything.

[Negs]

At low levels I focused on Charms. Primarily for the reason you can get the mochams for TS and MC to cast your bots and even if the bot is 30 levels higher than you that is more than enough, along with being able to charm/calm anything you encounter.

I've posted somewhere else in this forum about when my crat was a baby going through ToTW totally untwinked but focused on charming. Being able to charm/calm anything that was in the temple that could (except i was never able to get a lego) along with just Mochams for a level 90ish bot ... was pure devistation, and no one could even attempt to train me if they tried.


The way I figure it, only needing two mochams for the bots is better ncu utilization than getting 3 mochams for charms/calms

[{T}Bleeder]

you can have good pet skills and charm skills no problem, its even easier with sl and the symbiants, at around 65-75 you can twink into a 200 ninja, and still have your nano skills maxxed in all areas.

As far as weapons go there just a waste till 150 imo, you have better places to spend your ip than dumping it into weapon skills.Push your base skills up each level, and your nano skills, treatment and nano init C, When you have free ip complit and Evade Clsc figureing that your mainly gonna be in sl and not around ranged mobs. if you spend alot of time soloing missions pop your ranged evades up some aswell.

Pushing your ips up this way you should be able to stick in symbs at any time you want and not have to hard of a time. At 150 you will have good evades a good cast time on your nanos. Then you can make your weapons choices once and not have as much backtracking ip wise to do.

[Yushal]

Wow, how did you manage that!? I looked at Nillan's skill emulator and when maxing all nano skills and attributes and BD and NanoPool I don't have anything left for CL, Psycho, NanoProg let alone pistol or other weapon skills and evades and nanoC Inits (which you didn't mention, I understand that) which strike me as pretty important too..

I dont find these things important, at least as far as levelling goes. But I am low level yet, sub 100.

I max all 5 nano skills, nearly 5 attributes, bd and npool, treatment and comp lit, with just enough pistol/burst/fa to get on exp pistols. I send robot and two charmed mobs on everything I fight and then wait until its dead.

Certainly, I would be a sitting duck in anyone's gunsight, but I remain unconcerned.

The pets are the ones that need the evades at this point, not me...

[Luuv]

I might add that weapons before lvl150 do make sense if you like to contribute to team's damage output. Not in all situations. At hecks for example, this might not be the case, since there are things you can charm and hecks have high AC. But on aliens ships, where there is nothing much with decent damage to charm, a gun with good max damage can really make a crat a splendid damage dealer. Friend of mine with bot, nukes, CDR and pistol of education has no problem at all to get to rank 1-3 on DD in AI raids. Sadly, it's really not hard to OD the crat bot when killing bugs.

[Obsoleet]

Lots of useful opinions here.
I would like to say tho, that raising weaponskills slightly to equip a Dark Pistol and CDR doesnt hurt IP much.

If implanted and buffed it should be easy to equip these and wield em while just being out of OE.
After that, ditch weaponskills and start the focus on Abilities, CL, Treatment, Nano Init and Nanoskills.
But its my preference.
I like dishing out some dmg while still being effective with charms and bots.
Its not bad to throw the focus towards charms early on and have a bot that isnt all that.
As long as it survives long enough to keep aggro while I charm my target he serves his purpose.

But thats just my 2 cents.

[Councelor]

I toyed with just about every weapon config on 5 different crats just for fun... even tried my hand at a MA crat ROFL...

I'd have to say I'm most fond of zero weaps/MA skills except to twink an item on after a topnotch wrangle. As many have said, this gives you the best of both worlds as a beginner crat... Red Bots and Charms... In my low 30s I was charming 50s in ToTW with a 50ish bot. I only twinked a tiny bit and used store bought Imps. I then buffed STA\AGI like a fool and squeezed into a suit of 60 carb and at level 35 I could solo through ToTW like a bulldozer when wrestling two charms, my bot, chain-nuking. It uses a bunch of nano kits but if you can afford it. This is the way to go 4tw!

[RedWobe]

I might add that weapons before lvl150 do make sense if you like to contribute to team's damage output. Not in all situations. At hecks for example, this might not be the case, since there are things you can charm and hecks have high AC. But on aliens ships, where there is nothing much with decent damage to charm, a gun with good max damage can really make a crat a splendid damage dealer. Friend of mine with bot, nukes, CDR and pistol of education has no problem at all to get to rank 1-3 on DD in AI raids. Sadly, it's really not hard to OD the crat bot when killing bugs.

Let me reiterate my point. You will do more damage by making sure your nanoskills and twinking abilities are maxed to get out a top level bot and charm than you will by sacrificing these skills for a weapon. This may not quite be true during aliens, but its not far behind, where its a CLEAR difference at hecks, mortiigs, high level team missions, high level statics or any other griding arena.