Taming Questions

Can anyone describe how the pet formula works. My understanding a pets strength depends on Taming, summoning and combat modifier. Is this correct? I'm also assuming it has to factor in the pets base stats.

Is there any plans to add stronger animals to tame or is it not a very useful skill set?

Thanks!

 

LoL - you guess is as good as anyone's pet str depends on the pet tamed that is about it, there is a skill but it appears useless.

 

Ugh this game...

Really happy I spent all my time working on that a year ago.

 

In a few release back they said something along the line - like it if not refund skills for full value. S+I sit on mine since some f=day they might actually work them up and fix taming.

 

You and I are taking a large hit per death of xp due to having the taming skills just sit there waiting.

 

Same. It is one of the features I enjoyed the most in UO and one of the reasons I joined this game.

 

Taming gives you the chance to bind an animal to you using a taming collar. Since the animal usually violently objects to the taming process, you will have to stand there being bitten/gnawed/bashed until that process is complete. Damaging the animal before the taming process starts gives you a greater chance of success.

The higher your taming skill - the more powerful a wild animal you can tame though a tamed animal(pet) will have just 40-50% or so of it's wild cousin's HP. The pet is summoned using the summoning whistle.

Taming is the most expensive part of the pet system since the creation of taming collars & summoning whistles requires silver ingots and a failed taming attempt will destroy the collar. There is a skill in the taming tree that will reduce the chances of collar destruction - nevertheless this will happen quite often in your early taming career.

Some people (like me) opt to level the taming skill to 20 (which allows you to get the higher tier skills) and just buy summoning whistles with pets already bound to it from other people. This drastically cuts down the expense, effort and risk associated with the taming process (a tamer can get killed if he/she tries to domesticate a creature too powerful for them).

Everytime you use your summoning whistle to call a pet into existence, your summoning skill increases. Powerful pets require a higher degree of summoning skill so people usually summon less powerful animals until they're ready for the big ones

Keeping your pet alive in combat means buffing it, healing it and resurrecting it (if it dies).

Some of the buffing spells in the other trees such as Strength of Earth (increases strength) & Air's Embrace (increases dex) will temporarily increase your pet's HP and dodging ability respectively. Magical protections like Celestial Blessing (lunar) will also work to give your pet an edge against enemy spellcasters. Combat Training raises your pet level permanently (& probably it's HP) making it tougher in combat.

The healing spells in the Life & Water tree can be used effectively on pets though some avatars I've talked to say that the Heal Creature skill is just as effective and easier to get. Both the resurrection spell in the Life tree & Taming tree (Resurrect creature) will revive your (dead) pet though the latter can be cast on yourself and this will revive your pet no matter where it's body is.

Heal Creature is supposed to work on yourself (& probably other people) but I don't use it since I've chosen to concentrate on Life as one of may major trees - the taming tree healing does nothing for Life tree attunement. @Duke Gréagóir can authoritatively confirm this and in what cases Resurrect Creature is effective.

Taming is only a secondary skillset for me and I'm not as deep into that tree as other people are. In that context, my pets have been useful to me for farming random overland map encounters and providing good additional muscle in tough adventure areas.

Here's a good thread that gives you perspective of what a heavy taming tree skillset orientation is like :

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ir-pendragons-how-i-gmed-tame-creature.67522/

Hope this helps.

 

The biggest problem with the pets now, other than Spiders being the only ones with a viable ability, is that they require far too much focus. If summoning a pet cuts your overall DPS the system is flawed. However, if you remember back in UO, how weak were Spiders, Wolves and Bears? We just lack high-end pets, so the skills gonna feel weak even if the focus cost is more forgiving.

 

Summoning determins the max level of your pet, up to its personal max. And combat passive is the actual LEVEL your pets at. So a fero red goes to adv level 100.. and u might need 145 summoning for that to be your max.. but your combat passive if its at 50.. could mean your pets only level 40. So summoning and vombat passive ( theres a chart somewhere ) both generally needs to stay in close level to eavh other.

The obedience is uselesss.. the focus reducer is pretty key but masssssive diminishing returns on it.
Pet rez is pretty much useless since normal rez works on pets.

Spiders dps is largely dependant on poison
Makes them useless against undead and elementals. Obsid bear is good fillee till past 5 skull.

 

Thank you @Numa

I believe the Devs changed so Heal Creature only works on Pets now as does Resurrect Creature. I will double check when I get home later today.

EDIT - yes Heal or res creature cannot be used on peeps only pets.

I keep my Heal Creature and Resurrect Creature at level 40 as I never had have the need to raise those beyond level 40 to get good results.

 

Thanks a bunch for the info!

 

I asked the question about the pets being revisited, and per Chris , i forget which telethon it was they were going to look at them again, but apparently have not done so since the nerf :S and I totally agree they take way way too much focus and are completely under powered. I would like to see more abilities added to them such as a tanking feature (think bears) dps, root (spiders) some other kind of cc's poison(scorp) etc. So much could be done with this class but all they have done up to now is swing the nerfbat at them :S

 

i'd like to see wolves get some stealth capability at the very least since they have nothing else to bring to the table (even the obsidian stag has Daze). Kiting with wolves is great since they're faster than almost anything else. Being able to run quiet & unseen would make them ideal companions for rangers & archers.

 

Not sure if I remember correctly.. But I thought they said that taming skills wouldn't be a factor with decay. Not yet anyway until they refactor things.

 

What I read is that the Taming skills didn't decay, not that their presence in your overall skill wouldn't impact decay on other skills.

 

Summoning skill determines the strength of your pet and combat skill increases that strength further.

However if you look at the tooltip for combat, you'll notice that the strength change only happens 8-9 times mostly on the low end, so it makes sense to lock it as soon as the modifiers increases. (E.g, if a range like 76-88 provide the same bonus, just take it to 76).

You can also cast strength and dex to make them slightly more useful.

Also pet res is very useful now. You don't have to Target or be near your pet to res it anymore. So if you die 3 min away from an ankh or in heavy spawn, or behind a dragon, you won't lose your pet after 5 min.

 

I just wish they'd find a way to have multie pets like in UO, where they had slots and different creatures were worth more slots. Also, I agree on more pets. Multiple high end pets and different abilities for pets to make them useful, like increased attack speed for wolves or something.