So I've disabled close to 150 NPC's since the Holiday mission has been up and I've yet to see a single scruuge ship. Don't get me wrong I love all the Holiday missions that you implament, it just seems like this one's a bit tough to find them than the previous Holiday events. I know a few other people in the Paladins have yet to see any as well and have disabled a lot more than I have. Quite discourging, maybe the scruuge are a little too scrooge-like?

keep killing. i've gotten 5-6 so far from hundreds of npc kills.

ive only killed 50 NPCs cause i was into the missions, and i found one. you just have to be lucky.

Definitely not a myth. I've killed around 50 so far.

They are definitely not a myth but, at the same time, out of 400-500 NPC's killed since they started spawning I got two of them. In the same time I got about 10+elite and boss NPC's, countless rares and a swarm of uncommons. So don't hold your breath over it. Also out of the said two I got two Gifts for the naughty so...

I believe scruuge will be showing up more often at around Christmas

I hope so, It would be a shame to see all that energy gone for nothing.

I managed to get my first one yesterday. And I spend most of my energy going after NPC's. I have Wormhole Relays so that's a lot of energy that i'm spending on the NPC's. I also only got it shortly after I raised my scan rating, so you might want to do the same. Normally I only have 26 scan, (And that's only from the mission rewards, I normally avoid scan and cloak modules and opt for attack and defense first) but I rejigged my modules and I now have 356 scan. After I did that, I got a Scruuge within a couple of hours.

I don't even bother. I've killed like 100 NPC's in the past week and half, PLUS all the NPC regen's every 8 hours or so. Only one Scruuge, and it dropped the worthless "Gift to the Naughty". So I'm not gonna waste my energy killing NPC's to get a holiday NPC that will more likely drop the crap loot than the better loots.

"Uncommon" label, my ass. It should be labeled as "Extremely Rare" or "Mythical" in rarity.

im wondering if theyre gonna be as common as dark smugglers between th 25th and the 1st...

Yeah for them being labeled uncommon they are the most rare uncommon I have ever seen. I have not found 1 this whole time, yet my son who is just starting to even think of going after NPCs had two on his battle tab at once. But was only able to take out one. Wish I could get a hold of a few of them.

I've found ten of them so far, but only by using all my energy from multiple level-ups and most of my attack increasing artifacts. And 8 of those only gave me the Gift to the Naughty : (

All more the reason to forget all about those NPC's. I haven't gone out of my way to "find" them considering how rare they are. Why waste so much energy and effort when I can easily invest that into missions or worthwhile NPC's like science vessels or NPC's that drop mission specific items like Chron Shifter pieces? Or do the one-time-only holiday mission that probably won't be archived? Much more worthwhile and wise investment of energy.

Yeah, but it's not like you can't kill the other NPCs, you have to in order to get to them. The energy isn't any more wasted than if I was just fighting regular NPCs. In fact, energy spent fighting now is less wasted because there's a higher chance you'll run into something good, even if it's not much. Even though I haven't run into many of those ships I still killed two Blade Harvesters and a Troop Carrier yesterday. And it helps that I have a lot of energy, I've already almost completed the mission 14 times, and I only haven't finished because the last few times I leveled I put every bit of my energy into NPCs. Which is actually pretty useful, I used the Neural Interface and Memory Implant right before I leveled up, then used a Shield Amplifier, Nanite Swarm, Grid Console, Ancient Crystal Focus, Crimson Obelisk, Crimson Amplifier, and Shockpulse Charger, then used Time Manipulators to heal quickly and almost leveled up using just the energy refill from that level up, because the NPCs were giving great experience returns at that rate (killing a Shadin Charger in 3 hits and getting 38 experience bonus).

EDIT: Just got another Gift of the Stars, so three of those and 8 Gift to the Naughty.

Right now I'm trying to go from 63 missions ended to 86 missions ended to get all the mission tier rewards. Also, I get crap NPC's like Shardin Chargers, Iconic Battleships, Dark Warper, Drannik Replicators, etc. Those NPC's don't give me anything. My philosophy is: If NPC's don't give me worthwhile rewards like RP's or artifacts that I do need, I won't bother otherwise. I let these NPC's sit until they disappear on their own.

Leveling up fast? You'd be screwing yourself in the end.

High level with low tech = easy PvP target.
Low level with high tech = tough PvP target.

Yeah, that's why I have a lot of research too. And it doesn't matter, people rarely attack me and even if they do, so what? I have 5 disables/hack/raids per day, they can have at it. But if you fight a bunch of NPCs right now you're probably going to get some good stuff (I've increased the research on one of my planets by 3, the mining on another by 4, upgraded from Vortul to Korteth hull, gotten a Drannik Power Core, a Quantum Bio-Vaporizer and a Terraforming Device in the last two days) and most of the missions I have left are going to take a while anyway, taking some time off isn't going to make much of a difference. Perhaps at your level it's not worth it, I'm not really sure, but for me it's paying off, maybe not as much as missions, but I can do missions later. Trust me, it's probably going to be a long time before you get the last Tier Reward unless you're buying refills.

So yeah, leveling fast isn't going to screw me in the end because I'm pretty close to that "in the end" anyway, and even though each individual NPC doesn't give you something useful they open spots for ones that do. Each round of a mission won't give me something useful, but I do them because in the end they will give me something useful, just like NPCs. Just focusing on NPCs right now because now's the best time for it.

EDIT: It does make a difference that PvP isn't the focus of the game for me, I just want to make great planets. If you want great planets then fighting NPCs right now is a great way to go if you can at all handle it.

hunh, seems the particular scrooge I got isn't in the wiki yet, but I can't edit that page to fix it. Guess I neglected the forum too long and missed the memo why. more spamholes I assume?

Yeah, there were some problems a few weeks ago.

I found my first scruuge, and it gave me a gift of the void!

And that's what? We've seen Gift of the Elements, Gift of the Ancients, Gift of the Stars and Gift to the Naughty thus far.