¶ Beast Mastery
Beast Mastery is a unique Perk and Skill set for SWLOR characters to tame, fight alongside, and further enhance creatures in game!
As ever the spreadsheet is a comprehensive mechanics design document available for reference. In the Discord enter ?bible to get a link to the design bible at any time!
Scattered across the various accessible worlds are creatures that a player can utilize the tame feature on when the perk is selected. Depending on your rank you'll be able to tame different creatures, though all tamed (or hatched) creatures start at level 1 and must be leveled alongside a character in order to grow in capability, stats, and power.
¶ Beast Families
All creatures fall into one of the following six groupings, each with their own separate benefits based on which category they are in. While there are additional perks generally the families function as follows:
- Balanced - Grants additional attacks for a limited time.
- Damage - AOE and elemental attacks.
- Tank - Ability to reduce damage taken and higher HP.
- Evasion - Ability to increase evasion to avoid damage.
- Bruiser - Helps restore stamina to the character.
- Force - Helps restore FP to the character.
As the different families have unique perks to them, you will access those perks in a button next to the character's perks in menu which appears like this.
Beasts do not use character perk points, but instead have their own based on their level!
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Available Creatures
Based on your Beast Mastery skill level specific creatures well be available for taming. For ease the list is broken up as follows. If you have trouble locating your desired creature feel free to ask around in game! After the name of each creature the possible transformations via incubation mutation will be listed after.
Tame Lvl 1: 0-10
Kath Hound (Damage) can become Horned Kath Hound (Balanced) or Hanadak (Bruiser)
Crystal Spider (Force) can become Razorhide Hound (Damage) or Tukata (Damage)
Warocas (Balanced) can become Grutchin (Evasion) or Burrowbarry Pack (Bruiser)
Wildwoods Kinrath (Evasion) can become Mutated Boar (Tank) or Bramble Lynx (Bruiser)
Valley Cairnmog (Bruiser) can become Giant Garu Bear (Bruiser) or Burrowberry Bird (Damage)
Tame Lvl 2: 11-20
Gimpassa (Force) can become Juvenile Rancor (Bruiser) or Cragscale (Damage)
Ravior (Balanced) can become Katarn (Balanced) or Tach (Balanced)
Valley Cairnmog Alpha (Bruiser) can become Orray (Bruiser) or Allosaurus (Evasion)
Valley Nashtah (Balanced) can become Aardvark (Evasion) or Blastail (Damage)
Tame Lvl 3: 21-30
Aradile (Bruiser) can become Bearbug (Bruiser) or Wraid (Bruiser)
K'lor'slug (Tank) can become Dreamwalker (Force) or Deepwoods Rager (Bruiser)
Microtench (Evasion) can become Serene Grovetrader (Force) or Speckled Seer (Force)
Moraband Serpent (Force) can become Terentatek (Bruiser) or Spined Crawler (Tank)
Octotench (Tank) can become Juvenile Chirodactyl (Damage) or Porg (Force)
Scorchellus (Balanced) can become Sink Crab (Tank) or Triceratops (Bruiser)
Shyrack (Balanced) can become Dathomir wyrmling (Evasion) or Spinosaurus (Balanced)
Viper (Evasion) can become Crocodile (Damage) or Weasel (Brusier)
Tame Lvl 4: 31-40
Jungle Bug (Evasion) can become Stinging Swarm (Evasion) or Royal Plumage (Balanced)
Qion Slug (Tank) can become Stoneclad Behemoth (Tank) or Mutated Boar (Tank)
Qion tiger (Damage) can become Binarian Sabercat (Balanced) or Bomabeast Baby (Force)
Sand Beetle (Damage) can become Dewback (Tank) or Tyrannosaurus (Damage)
Sandswimmer (Force) can become Stegosaurus (Tank) or Mushwarrior (Force)
Womprat (Evasion) can become Swamprat (Damage) or Balanor Force Mite (Force)
Tame Lvl 5: 41-50
Purbole (Evasion) can become Tundra Ponderer (Tank) or Undersea Carver (Balanced)
Shear Mite (Damage) can become Ronto (Damage) or Frog (Damage)
Sand Demon (Bruiser) can become Blistering Beetle (Evasion) or Hssiss (Tank)
Sprantal (Damage) can become Torosaurus (Balanced) or Ubese Thorn (Force)
Squellbug (Damage) can become Mutated Frog (Tank) or Hutlar Penguin (Evasion)
Ssurian (Tank) can become Orbak Waterhorse (Damage) or Boma Beast (Tank)
To be released…
Voritor Lizard (Force)
Plains Thune (Bruiser)
Iriaz (Balanced)
Gizka (Damage)
¶ Inspecting and Commanding Your Creature
So now you have your new companion! But as you progress you may want to inspect statistics about your new friend, which can easily be achieved through the radial menu. This opens up a creature character sheet, and it you happen to be curious about how much more XP they need to gain simply hover your cursor over the “Level” section of the character menu for your pet.
There are two ways to command your pet to attack, follow passively, or stand its ground.
- The “V” voice command menu will spam out voice emotes for your character but can instantly gain control of the creature.
- The radial menu also has these various commands available.
Another thing to remember is that creatures cannot be healed by First Aid kits, but they can be healed by the Reward perk or by Force Powers such as Force Heal or Benevolence. Beasts also benefit from buffs from Devices, First Aid, or the Force tree. Leadership auras, even those that are provided by the character who controls the beast, also enhance their performance.
Beasts can be given names and have their purities checked at the beast mastery terminal available in every NPC city as well as those PC cities that have terminals set up.
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Incubation
There is now an advanced way to further enhance creatures that you would like, additionally this incubation process can unlock additional appearances for creatures as well. In the Beast Levels tab if you scroll to the right for each creature you'll see what two possible mutations your beast can potentially transform into.
Incubation does require some Fabricated buildings and objects. First a laboratory building will need to be constructed and placed in a player city, and after that incubator pods can be only placed within that laboratory building up to a certain limit. A character does not have to be a part of the city as a citizen to utilize the available pods. However the building can be left accessible to the public or not based on building settings. And once a pod is in use no other player will be able to utilize it until that process is completed. An in-game notification will let you know that the pod is in use and how much time it has left to complete (or indeed if it's done), but it will not give any indicators as to who the player is or what creature is inside.
Be sure to follow the design bible's enzyme requirements (colors, which days to use said colors) in order to potentially obtain that creature. This chance is determined by a mutation percentage that does not carry over, unlike the other enzymes and stat adjustments added during the process.
In total you will need 3 of each of the enzyme types:
- Hydrolase - Trees
- Isomerase - Creature loot
- Lyase - Asteroid mining
The time required shown here is based on a character that took the full time reduction perks, yours may be longer.
Obtaining beast DNA can happen in one of two ways.
- A Fabricator can construct a DNA extractor which can be used in a similar way to the harvester for resources after a tamable creature is slain and looted. There will be a DNA node left behind.
- Releasing a tamed creature will return DNA to the character's inventory. The higher the level is the more of its purities you'll be able to retain.
There are no perks required to claim the DNA of a released creature!
¶ “Do I really have to level the creature up in order to collect the DNA?”
Here's an example of a creature's stats after a round of incubation.
To claim the creature you need to ensure you don't have an active pet (which is managed at the beast mastery terminal.)
And this is what happens to all those purities if you instantly release the creature.
Here is a comprehensive one stop visual list (it's just an image of the Design Bible) for ease of seeing what creatures are available and how they can be mutated. Feel free to save this reference or open in another tab for easier reading.
¶ Incubation Tips
- Avoid XP Penalties whenever possible as this will slow down the process of retraining your beast for another round of incubation.
- If possible try to increase the XP Learning boost for quickened training.
- If your creature is in range of a character utilizing the Dedication leadership aura they will gain XP also at an increased rate.
