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Challenge Levels

Players, npcs and creatures all have levels assigned to them.

The player personal difficulty level is the innate skill modifier given to players as they train skill boxes that are linked to the use of particular weapons. Each weapon's use is linked to certain professions. For example pistols use marksman, pistoleer and smuggler skill modifiers and skill boxes for calculating pistol speed and accuracy. Within some of these boxes are modifiers known as "private combat difficulty." Each 100 points in private combat difficulty equates to 1 level added to a character's personal CL. Every player, regardless of starting profession chosen, starts out with a private combat difficutly of 500 which makes this character effectively CL 5. This CL is the basis for calculating relative power between two opponents, and thus the 'consider' level. A player's challenge level cannot go above CL 25 so in essence a combined total of 2500 from modifiers is the maximum possible for an individual player. There is an exception however and this is a Jedi. Jedi characters have a maximum personal difficulty level of 40.

In order for the player to qualify for this challenge level, they must equip a weapon that is linked to the type of experience/profession to which they wish to attack the creature with. A pistoleer would there for require a pistol weapon to be equipped in order to receive the challenge modifiers linked to pistol skills. A teras kasi for example would require bare handed fighting or using a vibro knuckler. The exception, again, are Jedi. Jedi characters maintain their innate difficulty rating even without having weapons equipped for all trees except the lightsaber tree. The lightsaber tree adds personal lightsaber difficulty modifiers that add to the player's total CL which require that the player have a lightsaber equipped in order to receive them.

Grouping has an interesting effect on this calculation. Groups have a difficulty modifier which takes into account the entirety of the challenge levels of the group and takes the group average cl. The formula for this is as follows:

( Group Combined CL / 2 )

So a group of 25 elite combat profession masters would have a combined total of CL 250. A group of 10 cl 10 players and 10 cl 25 players would have an average of CL 175.

I've had a bit of trouble tracking down the exact formula for consider levels. This is made a bit more difficult because of the limited number of data points I personally have available (namely, the number of CL's I am able to assume with various weapon combinations), but it appears to be a percentage system:

Consider

When you have a creature targeted, you will see a small icon over its head next to its HAM bar. The color of this icon represents its relative difficulty (or challenge level) compared to the experience you have with the weapon you currently have equipped (or with unarmed combat, if you do not have a weapon equipped).

• A green icon indicates that the creature should be fairly easy to defeat;
• Blue indicates that you will probably kill the creature, but it will prove somewhat difficult;
• White indicates that the creature's abilities are on par with your own, it should be an even match
• Yellow indicates that the creature is slightly stronger than you, and will be very difficulty to kill
• Red indicates that the creature is much more skilled than you, and will most likely defeat you easily.

In addition to the visual indicator mentioned above, you can also target a creature and use the /consider command. This will send you a message in your chat window telling you how difficult it should be to defeat.

The color coding of a mob's CL is based upon a percentage difference between the player's personal CL and that of his or her target's. The color coding ranges are as follows:

• Green Con: 0-30% of the player's CL:
  
• Light blue Con: 31-50% of the player's CL:
  
• Dark blue Con: 51-80% of the player's CL:
  
• White Con: 81%-120% of the player's CL:
  
• Yellow Con: 121-150% of the player's CL:
  
• Red Con: 151%+ of the player's CL:
  

Group cons take into account the makeup of the group. This is even harder to figure out, but it appears take into account the average level of the group as well as the number of members of the group.

Source References