A white Wyrm is one of the most obedient, and deadly pets available in UO. They are a little harder to control for low level tamers because they have a higher base taming requirement, however when you get your level of taming to 95+ that is less of a factor you will really enjoy using these Wyrms in combat.
They are similar to dragons, but with some key differences. They are much better behaved that dragons are they don't go flying off or attacking monsters on their own as much. They also have a Much better melee attack, a dragon's melee attack is somewhere from 10 to 45 points of damage, but an untrained Wyrms is consistently around 35 points of damage.
This would make the average damage over say 30 seconds time much greater from the Wyrm than the dragon, but there is more. A Wyrm can travel and move much faster than a dragon, so in addition to having a higher average damage per swing, they have more swings in the same amount of time.
One of the differences between a dragon and a Wyrm is that even tho the Wyrm has a stronger physical attack and is faster, it has no breath weapon.
Both Wyrms and Dragons have spells, Wyrms are sometimes dangerous to use in or near crowds because they have a slight possibility of casting "Mass Curse", which in the countryside and dungeons will turn you both gray and make you attackable, but in the cities will promptly get the Wyrm (and you!) guard wacked.
When Wyrms first came out, and for about a year afterwards "mass curse" was a frequent problem, now (Since factions) the code appears to have been changed, they do cast it but not nearly as often as they used to. As luck would have it.....*Grins* I was claiming my pets on Siege to get the screen shots for the tamer/archer part of the guide. This was done while the orc invasion was in full swing, An Orc Chopper attacked my legacy Wyrm, and she started ripping it up, but low and behold her spell #2 just as the Chopper was dying (Orc Choppers are such Hit point hogs) was Mass Curse *rolls eyes* I'm in the Paupa stable, and just holding my breath for the guards to come in, talk smack, and send me and my Legacy Pure white Wyrm to meet our makers..... well that didn't happen, but my Dragon sure was copping an attitude about something. Apparently he was hit when she mass cursed, and now the two of them were going at it, I was able to separate them by opening the door and telling her (the Wyrm) to follow and the other to stay, they kept slinging spells and throwing each other looks like a pair of siblings having an argument, but eventually I was able to stable the dragon to "break it off".
Another difference is a Wyrm will follow the commands of a Red the same as a blue, but a Dragon will not be ruled by red. Since stat loss is such a HUGE deal when it comes to taming (20% of all stats) its not very often on most shard that you see Reds running around with Wyrms in tow.
On Siege however that is a different story... lol
As a side note, if you decide to be a Pk tamer (your probably going to hell in RL but anyway *Grins*) you can mark a rune to the stables in serpents hold that are closer to the bank in the Jungle. Its not the safest place to gate into with Giant serpents etc, but there are no guards there, and you can get the attention of the stable masters and stable your tames at that location.
ALSO if there is a Red tamer on your shard that is running amok, simply set up an ambush for him Here. I could be mistaken, but I think this is the ONLY stable on that map where a PK tamer would not be risking a guard kill by using. If the stable masters in Minoc, and Skara wander a lot its possible that a red could use those stables, however the odds of a guard seeing them are pretty good so I don't think that would happen very often.
Recent changes to stabling now allow a character to stable at an INN, but reds need to take heed as innkeepers may call the guards.
Taming a Wyrm is similar to taming Dragons, its a little harder only in the aspect that Wyrms have a minimum taming requirement of 96.3 but if your taming skill is high enough its a lot easier because there are not as many monsters to worry about in the area that you will be taming, and of the monsters that are there because there they are not UBER creatures running around as there are in the places that you would tame dragons or nightmares. The toughest things you will have to deal with will be Snow elementals, and Ice elementals. Both hard monsters, but easy to lead off and ditch.
Side note, their are a lot of Frost spiders in the area, these will Not poison you, they are purely Dex fighters, not imposable to kill and as an added bonus they are tamable :)
This hallway that I have highlighted in the picture is going to be your runway to tame Wyrms in, when you first get there lead off or kill all the other monsters in this area (leading them off works better as they wont re-spawn until someone kills them).
I usually mark a rune in the middle of this hallway, then ride nice and slow from the west end (but not so close as to attract the Wyrms in the Wyrms nest) and get all the critters (Ice slimes, elementals, spiders, ice snakes, occasional rat men, etc) chasing me, then I head for the east end with a big train of nastiest in tow, I lead them over the bridge, then Recall back to the center of the now empty hallway.
Ok, now your job is to attract a SINGLE white Wyrm out to the hall so you can lay down your para fields and start to tame it. A lot of times there are multiple tamers here, and you have to take a number, or *cringes* decide to be a tame jumper like everyone else on some days or come back later. Unless I'm particularly agitated with a tamer there I will not "tame jump", but it happens so much here, and people are occasionally friendly about it that its not quite as much of a crime as it is in the first level of Destard.
Anyway.... :)
If there are a lot of tamers at that time you will probably only see one Wyrm there, but if no one is there taming them there can be as many as 5 or 6 in that little area or the Wyrms nest! Not to mention one or two roaming around the dungeon in search of a Pepsi or an Adventurer to snack on.
How to only attract one of them into your empty taming hallway is to run up to their ramp and cast invis on yourself. Any Wyrms that noticed you on your way in will forget about you when you invis. Select the Wyrm that you want, and take into consideration how fast he can get to you.
At the moment only the Icy ones are spawning, but in the past and sometime down the road Pures will be spawning as well as the icy ones.
When you have chosen the one you want you will come out of invisible by going into war mode and furiously double clicking the Wyrm (make sure you do this from a good distance) then Run a little ways, because a very angry Wyrm is on your tail...
Be careful that you only attracted the attention of the 1 Wyrm that you want, if 2 or more are coming out after you then invis, reappear and attack the one you want then run a bit leading it away from its brethren.
You can usually have a single Wyrm following you by the time your 1/3 of the way down the hall.
At this point you lay down paralyze fields and let the Wyrm get stuck in them, then try and tame them from 1 square away. A Wyrm does not have fire breath so he won't be BBQing you every few minutes the way a dragon would, but he does have spells. If you take particular care to not "damage" the Wyrm by counter attacking it when it gets close to you then you wont have to deal with the spells. If it does start casting on you then you can invis to take yourself out of its spell casting que, it wont re-cast when you reappear unless you "damage" it again.
It will take a few more tries to get a Wyrm than it will a dragon simply because the minimum for a dragon is 93.9 and the min for a Wyrm is 96.3 but since you will usually not have a bunch of other people and monsters to deal with its generally a less dangerous more pleasant experience.
Of the Big 4 (Wyrms, Nightmares, Dragons and Drakes) Wyrms are definitely the easiest to tame. Nightmares are probably the hardest, and dragons/drakes about average. Not in terms of skill, but in terms of the area that you have to work in, and the natural tendencies of the creature.
Good luck with your new friend! :) and remember when gating him back to civilization to wait in a safe place out of the guard zone until his criminal flag wears off.
Side note, At the moment only the ICY ones are spawning, (The one on the right is an ICY), but the only pures (The pure white on the left) floating around are legacy pets. They are selling for a LOT, however OSI has announced that pure Wyrms are coming back in one of the next patches. It may not happen right away, but it almost certainly will happen. So don't go paying 100k for a pure, unless you really really want one! :)
As a second side note and warning to new tamers there is currently a "blocking" bug that is in use to tame Wyrms and nightmares (possibly dragons too, but I haven't really noticed many people trying it in Destard) I'm not going to go into the details of the bug, other than it involves a craftable item and the Wyrm can't physically attack you around it, (but he can still cast spells on you). If you see someone doing something like this DONT do it, the only thing that it does is save you some reagents because you don't have to lay down Paralyze fields. This has got to be one of the stupidest bugs that people can use, if anything it makes it only slightly easier to tame a Wyrm, but it puts your account in jeopardy. I bring it up here because most of the people doing it are not aware that its a bug, they see it done, and think its just a better Technique.
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