There are several places in UO that have Giant Toads, the pond were going to is probably the easiest because there usually are not a lot of competing tamers, and there is a very high re-spawn rate if you Tame/Release/Kill.
The pond is north of the T2a City of Paupa, in the Desert, once you cross this bridge you will have to be on your guard. The pond itself isn't that bad, but the area surrounding it has a Lot of dangerous things.
In addition to building your taming skill, you will also start building your personal skill on how to tame dangerous things, in dangerous areas. Not to worry its not Mission impossible here, but this will be one of the first creatures you try and tame while it tries to attack you.
Their are two ways of dealing with this, the first is to do the "Taming Dance" where you walk up to the creature and start taming, then to the Step Pause, always staying 1 pace in front of it so it cant hit you, but not so far as too break off the taming attempt.
Taming Dance Fig 1
The Beast has already gone into war mode, and your avatar will counter attack. If you have a low wrestling skill, and keep your spell book armed (so you don't gain wrestling) you will probably not damage it and stop the taming process.
Taming Dance Fig 2
Quickly "Tab out" (Press the tab key to toggle out of combat mode) so you wont be counter attacking the toad if/when you brush next to each other. Move 1 space, you will get a feel for the animal, and be able to lead its move so you almost never take damage, but only have 1 empty space between the two of you.
Taming Dance Fig 3
Just keep at it, and re-try taming the animal until you tame it (or if you attempt to tame 5 times in a row with no skill gain).
Very importand, Kill the toad as soon as you tame it or fail trying to tame it 5 times. (For some reason, if you fail 5 times in a row and gain no skill, even if you do succeed in taming the animal, you will almost never to never gain skill from it, Its MUCH better to kill it and let a new one spawn.
Also, if you did succeed to tame it, you can freely attack it most of the time because the animal is still flagged criminal to you, in addition to that it will still be trying to attack you tame or not, unless you give it orders otherwise (and feed it!). If you get busy trying to tame other things, or deal with any other creatures that spawn, and the criminal flag wears off, your going to have to Stop what your doing, get it listening to you, get it moving, Release it while its moving (more on that in the Tricks of the Trade section) then Kill it. If at all possible Kill it the moment its tamed, so you don't have to do that, and a new one will respawns as soon as possible.
That by itself is going to take some coordination, what makes it difficult is all the other stuff (Giant serpents, swamp tentacles, alligators, mongbats, snakes) that you have to deal with that is going to be in the area your taming the toads, this is also good tho. It gives you an opportunity to have a look inside the spawn engine mechanics.
While developing my first taming character I spent hours in this pond taming the toads, and "dealing with the spawn"
On day one, I tried hard to just keep moving so the spawn wouldn't be able to catch me, after several near deaths I had a pocket of Lag and came back as a Ghost Grrrrr lol
So on day two I figured I would just kill everything that Moved, Which worked better, but I still had to deal with a lot of things that I didn't want to. The mongbats, and Swamp tentacles were not so bad, but the dang Giant serpents spawn again in a matter of minutes (sometimes moments) after you kill them, by the end of day 2 and from day 3 on I started a new tactic of Leading the Giant Serpent away and ditching it.
You see as long as that serpent is alive a new one will not re-spawn in the pond, so I could usually go the whole power hour without having to deal with them beyond leading the first one away when I arrived.
So when you get there, get all the dangerous stuff except the toad(s) following you, go into war mode, click them furiously and slowly ride off. When your several screens from the pond turn around and SPRINT back. If you went far enough you will "ditch" them, if not.. lol go a little further it works like a charm and they wont re-spawn until some knuckle head player *GRINS* walks on by the spot you ditched the spawn, and kills them.
I would do the "Taming dance" until your confident in your personal skills doing it, but after that I wouldn't mess with it, Just Paralyze the toads, and tame them while they are paralyzed. It will cost you a bit in Reagents, but it will save you a LOT of time.
The Para-Tame :)
This is an awesome tactic that most people learn when trying to tame Dragons, however it works with anything and I wouldn't even consider training up a tamer on toads or higher creatures without it. The only drawback is you will burn a lot of Regs (not much of a drawback!) but you will save a TON of time taming, and its much safer too.
The majority of the things you will be taming from this point on are going to involve you paralyzing it, then taming it.
It might be possible to GM from toads alone. If it is it is going to take a LOOONNNGGGGGGG time, I would get your taming up to 91 from Toads then move on.
Luckily you won't be moving to far. You're going to be working with Imps, and there are a lot of imps in the T2a Desert. The minimum skill to tame an imp is 83.1, You can try it at 83.1, but I would keep toads as your primary animal until 91 or so. They look like Red Mongbats, but can cast spells. Their spells can kill you if you don't have a way of immobilizing their casting, or healing while they are Mana dumping on you, and they can almost hit respectably. (Their melee is a little harder than a normal Orcs). You treat these the same as the Giant Toads, Paralyze then tame.
A good creature to compare them to would be a very wimpy Orc Mage.
Don't let overconfidence consume you tho, Paralyze them even tho they are not as tough as other things they will kill you in the time it takes to get a few taming attempts off if they are not paralyzed.
This is an awesome creature for power hour training, there are a LOT of them, and you even gain on the failures.
Imps are a good creature to take you all the way to GM.
You have other animals that you can also train on when your at 91+. I really wouldn't recommend them as a "Staple" creatures to GM from, (Use a lot of Imps and a few Giant toads to get to GM) but if your Suicidal enough, there is a Host of other Creatures just south of the Pond that will suit your needs :)
With all of these do the Para-Tame method, but be very careful these are SERIOUS combat animals, they hit hard and have a ton of Dex, plus fire damage.
Hell hound 85.5 Min taming skill
Predator Hell cat or Large Hell cat 89.1 Min taming skill
As luck would have it I was able to Maneuver (CHANCE!?) all the different breads of high level dogs and cats in the Lava pools into following me, I snapped this screenshot about 1.2 seconds after it happened, and notice that I still have 49 of my normal 100 hitpoints....
A final (and saner) option of an animal to mix in with Imps to GM the skill from is the dire wolf. These have a fearsome reputation, but really are not that tough in the wild. (Train one and it will rip things up, see more in the training section). They have a lot of hit points, a decent armor class, bite respectably and Often.
Its best to Para-Tame these, but since they don't do anything cute, like Poison, Shoot, Cast spells, or BBQ you, you can do the taming dance almost as effectively.
Its hard to find enough dire wolves in 1 spot to justify using them as a staple animal for GMing from. I wouldn't "rely" on their availability as much as Imps/Toads, but many people have GMed from a Dire wolf, and that would make an awesome 99.9-100 Screen shot of a Dire wolf "seems to accept you as master" :)
Loot from 21 minutes with a Dragon against Titans and Cyclops warriors
