6. Armor Choices
In general armor is used for two purposes - improving your AC and getting modifiers. As Engineers rarely stand in the front, and we have our own AC buffs, AC is less important to us. We therefore focus on what other abilities an armor set can give us.
Arguably one of the best beginner armors. Easy to get (guide here). Can then be upgraded to the Storm Carbonum Breastplate version (for clan) or Omni Carbonum Breastplate version (for omni). Agility/Stamina reqs which some breeds find hard, but still a good choice, even if at a slightly lower QL.
6.2 Intermediate Armor
The right time to switch into your intermediate armor is when you have the requirements to equip it. When this happens depends on your breed or on the armor choice. The Intermediate armor choices are made of armor sets, where usually each item adds to some specific abilities. You can mix and match to add to the abilities you find most useful.
Requires quite an ellaborate process to make (guide here), and has moderate modifiers. This is mostly a good choice if you are going to use the Third Tier armor (see Endgame Armors). The Second Tier armor can mostly be skipped.
For most armor parts you need to make Tier 2 armor first (guide here) and then upgrade it to Tier 3 (guide here). However, note specifically that the back armor, the helmet, and the shoulderpads behave a little differently, so read the instructions for those carefully. Of specific interest are the back item, which adds a nice chunk of health, the gloves which add Pistol and the chest which adds grenade. Almost all parts add to tradeskills.
Alien armor is one of the top armor sets in the game. Check the guide here for more information : Guide
You can basically choose any armor type you wish. However, some options are more popular.
With the Alien Armor, the Arithmetic Armor type is usually used for enhancing your nanoskills while casting your bots and for tradeskilling. As such, it has little use during combat, and is preferably swapped for a better armor after being used. However, not everyone can afford a second set for combat so Combined Sharpshooters is a common option for the evades it gives. Combined Officers is mainly used a cheaper alternative as it has better AC than Arithmetic, though the extra modifiers aren't that useful in the endgame.
As most engineers use ranged weapons, Combined SharpShooters and Combined Commandos are much better combat options. Combined Commandos is for the more damage dealing oriented, while Combined SSharp Shooters provides more survivability. MA engineers will find the Alien Strong armor, and especially Combined Commandos or Combined Mercenaries ideal. Combined Scouts gives more attack rating, which for MA engineers is very important, while Combined Mercenaries adds HP.
New with LE, Penultimate Ofab Engineer armor is an improved version of Tier 3 armor, available to all sides. You buy it in the tower shop for Victory Points, which you get by either killing aliens in the mothership or joining PvP in the battlestations. You then need to upgrade it twice with Kyr'Ozch Bio-Material - Type 64 (any ql), found on the boss in the mothership. Of specific interest are the gloves which add Pistol and the chest which adds grenade. Other parts add to tradeskills and basic abilities.
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7. Weapon Choices
In general, weapons can be used for several purposes. First and foremost, weapons are used for direct fighting, by dealing damage. However, weapons can also be used to enhance your combat in other ways, such as providing you with better abilities. We will consider both of these options as "fighting weapons". Finally, weapons can also be used for "twinking", i.e. you can use a weapon to temporarily give you the ability to equip some other item, and then you change back to your fighting weapons. In this section we will deal with fighting weapons only.
This section will also ignore PvP weapons - these will be discussed in the PvP section.
Some of the information in this section is taken from Silverado's DD Guide. The main engineer weapon choices are Pistol and Grenade. There is also some experimentation with Ranged Energy and Martial Arts, but as this is a mainstream guide, we will not discuss them.
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7.1 Beginner Weapons
In general, your first priority in the early levels is to launch and control as big a bot as possible, so your weapon of choice is the one that will help you achieve this goal. This is true at least until you can launch the best RK bot. Some people even do this until they can "self" the best RK bot, meaning they can launch it without outside buffs. As pistols are the easiest to equip, pistol being a green skill, and they happen to have the best mods, they are the best beginner weapons.
(CDR)
High min damage and low high damage make it best for SL mobs. Fast burst/fling recharges and no MBS. Drops from either the Lab Director in the Biomare Dungeon (guide here) or the Notum Soldier.
When you arrive at the endgame you will probably know exactly what weapons style you want. Pistol setups tend to do the most damage, while Grenade costs less IP.
Pistol of the Creator
Maker/Creator for clan, Ingenious/Innovatory for omni. Very high max damage make this good for RK mobs/aliens, but no specials and low min damage. Clan version is made from Sacrosanct Pistol + Turn Spirit of Bacam-Xum, omni version made from Inamorata Pistol + Turn Spirit of Aam. The weapons drop off sided mobs, the turn spirits can be bought from Yutto Manuals in form of Turnspirit Flesh Pouches and they drop from the heck bosses in inferno (near incarnator).
Kyr'Ozch Pistol - Type 1 and Kyr'Ozch Pistol - Type 4: Type 1 does fling and type 4 does burst. The very high MR requirement means you will not get the same ql on both hands. Until your burst is around 1300 it is best to have a higher type 1. Found from aliens, type 1/4 upgrades found on Generals/Admirals of city aliens.
Currently the best pistol weapon. You buy it in the tower shop for Victory Points, which you get by either killing aliens in the mothership or joining PvP in the battlestations. You then need to upgrade it five times with Kyr'Ozch Bio-Material - Type 812 (at least 80% ql of pistol), found on the boss in the mothership. Can be dualed, even at ql300.
Best damage grenade for RK. Found from aliens, type 1 upgrades found on Generals/Admirals of city aliens.
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8. Trimmers & Android NCU Upgrades
Trimmer
This section covers the items you can use on your robot to enhance it's performance. Trimmers can be used as many times as you need and won't disapear on use. NCU Upgrades are single use only.
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8.1. Permanent Effect Trimmers
When used these trimmers have a permenent effect on the robot, so you only need to use them once per bot. Note however, that it is not 100% agread that the effect lasts when you zone, so you might need to redo them every time you zone.
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8.1.1. Agg/Def Trimmer
This line of trimmers can be bought from the Devices terminal in general stores. The maximum Quality is 100 which represents either full defense or full offense.
This range of trimmers basically alters the position of your pets Aggressive-Defensive slider. The effect is much the same as altering your own, at full offense the bot hits faster but has less effective evades so gets hit more.
The majority of our bots are more than capable of taking a little punishment though so we tend to favour the Positive Trimmers over the Negative ones.
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8.1.2. Taunting Trimmer
This trimmer is made using components that can be easily bought in the shops. The Quality ranges from 30 to 200 and will require Mech Eng and a small amount of Chemistry to build.
This trimmer adds a relatively small taunt value to your pets hits. In effect each hit making the mob more angry at the robot. Used in conjunction with Trimmer - Positive Aggressive-Defensive this can make the pet very good at holding the mobs attention.
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8.2. Temporary Effect Trimmers
These trimmers last only for a timed duration. They all lock some skills to make sure they cannot be used too often.
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8.2.1. Tradeoff Trimmers
These can be used once every 5 minutes, and the effect lasts for 5 minutes. They increase one ability of the robot at the cost of another. They also give a minor skill increase to the skill they lock (3 for ql200).
They can be found at the Devices terminal in general shops, and can also be rolled as mission reward.
Trimmer - Divert Energy to Avoidance - Increases your bots Evades at the expense of it's Maximum Health. The trimmer is currently bugged and increases Poison AC instead of Duck Explosions. It can be very useful for PVP as the damage the bot takes when you use it will break calms. Locks Electrical Engineering for 5 minutes. Trimmer - Divert Energy to Defense - Increases the bots Armour Class at the expense of it's Attack Rating. Locks Mechanical Engineering. Trimmer - Divert Energy to Hitpoints - Increases the bots Maximum Health at the expense of it's Defensive Ability. Locks Electrical Engineering for 5 minutes. Trimmer - Divert Energy to Offense - Increases the bots Attack Rating at the expense of Armour Class. Locks Mechanical Engineering for 5 minutes.
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8.2.2. Damage Type Trimmers
These trimmers change the damage type your robot does for 10 minutes. They decrease the hitpoints of the robot by a significant amount. They lock Mechanical Engineering for 60 minutes, so they can only be used once every hour. All in all, most engineers don't find them very usefull.
They are made by combining an energy core of the appropriate type, with Trimmer Casing. Energy cores are found on minibosses in alien ships, or in apf. Trimmer Casing is from Mechanical Engineering Components.
Note that these trimmers appear to be bugged, and they cause the bot to appear to have zero HP and stop moving. Zoning solves the problem.
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8.2.3. Improve Actuators Trimmer
This trimmer adds to the damage your bot does and to its health. The effect lasts for 10 minutes, but it locks Mechanical Engineering for 60 minutes. It can be useful in a tight spot due to the immediate healing it does.
To make it combine Smelly Liquid, found minibosses in alien ships and in apf, with Trimmer Casing from Mechanical Engineering Components. The result is :
They provide additional NCU space for your bot, 110 more NCU at QL200. These do not come without a price though, each upgrade lowers the Armour on your bot (400 AC with a QL200 upgrade).
For the most part these NCU Upgrades are unnecessary as the bots generally have enough room for you to run a reflect shield, damage shield, AC buff and an Attack Rating buff. However you may want a keep a few handy if you really need them, especially since they drop fairly regularly in missions.
The lower Quality NCU upgrades tend to be more useful than the higher level ones as you're unlikely to need 110 more NCU on a robot.
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9. Implants
First of all, implants are essential to your character, all the Nano Programs and weapons in the game assume you have them to a greater or lesser extent.
A good implant set can make the difference between you being very happy with your character or having problems with your character.
Throughout this section I'm going to try to avoid stating that you must implant certain things wherever possible. However, some statements like that are inevitable.
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9.1. Profession Specific Pre-made Implants
You can buy profession specific implants for each profession up to quality level 100 from the general stores.
These implants are far from what most of us consider perfect, but they can save you the time and money building your own if you really don't want to until later on.
It's also worth checking the booths of other professions as sometimes you can make a better set by combining aspects of different professions.
Please take care if you do use these implants, especially if you're a Nanomage character. The implant set I have suggested below contains heavily implanted Life because as Engineers we don't have all that much, and as mentioned at the beginning out of all breeds Nanomage has the least life.
This is particularly important if you open a chest with a bomb in it. If you don't implant life and are Nanomage you will most likely be killed by any such bomb.
Eventually of course you'll have to build your own.
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9.2. Implant Design
Designing implants is one of the most complex parts of the game and takes a long time to get used to, but if you have doubts or are unsure then just ask.
The first thing you should do when you are considering making your own implants is download Nano Nanny. This small program will really help you out as the number of combinations possible is very very large.
You should consider which skills you need to increase, of course there will be many conflicts within the implants if you wanted to increase everything so you have to be a little selective.
For each implant there are 3 slots, Shining, Bright and Faded. Each of these slots provides a different amount of skill increase, Shining provides the most, Faded the least.
So lets think about which skills are important to us as Engineers and whether or not we'd like to implant them.
Essential Skills to implant
Matter Creation - Required to make your bot Time and Space - Required to make your bot
Highly Recommended
Intelligence - Effects all nano skills Matter Metamorphesis - Required for engineer shields Max Health - Increases your Hit Points, keeps you alive longer.
Recommended
Bio Metamorphesis - Required to heal your bot Weapon Skill - Depends on which weapon you choose, but I would suggest implanting the skills above carry higher priority. Run Speed - Being able to move faster is just useful, you should have spaces to implant this without conflicting.
Choices
Sensory Improvement - I personally don't recommend implanting this because it conflicts with skills I consider more important like Intelligence. Psycological Modification - As above.
As I've said, "Matter Creation" and "Time and Space" are both essential skills, however those use the same spots in the implant set so you have to balance the skills. So as an example you would install Shining "Matter Creation" and Bright and Faded "Time and Space" which balances the increase of those skills.
It's worth remembering that if all implants are of equal quality level, then:
Increase from shining = Increase from Bright + Increase from Faded
Experiment in Nano Nanny, it's free and once you learn the process it makes designing implants for you, or any of your other characters much easier.
Above everything else I want you to remember that anything I write here isn't set in stone and if you disagree then try your set up.
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9.3. Common Issues
Ability Requirement on Implants - It's possible to alter the ability requirement on an implant a certain amount. You can see this change with the following example:
In Nano Nanny next to head implant select the following clusters.
Shining Time and Space
Bright Ranged Init
Faded Sense
Then build the implant (a function of Nano Nanny to simulate an implant build) at any quality level. Checking the results will reveal it requires Intelligence.
Repeat this process but this time only with these clusters:
Shining Time and Space
Faded Sense
This time the resulting implant requires Agility.
Max HP or Body Development? - In general the increase in HP provided by implanting HP directly is greater. There is an exception to this though. The Atrox breed gets more HP per point of Body Development than any of the other breeds, which makes implanting Body Development more beneficial for your character.
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9.4. Sample Implant Design
This Implant set is purely generic and has no weapon skills implanted (except where the ability requirement needed changing), those depend on your weapon choice and the set will need altering in accordance with that.
The set itself will require you to have Agility and Stamina raised to wear it, although alterations could be made to change those requirements.
Last updated on 10.19.2012 by Llie
The current version of this guide in the AO Forum is being updated/maintained by Muhandes
This guide is based on the Engineer Guide MK II by Highorbit.
Thanks to Martinn for the majority of the MC TS buffing item list
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