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Tricks of the Trade

Mounts

The most common mount is the horse, tamable all over Briton and buyable in many stables, I am usually on a horse. A horse will "poop" out a bit sooner than the other rideable animals however horses like all animals in UO are trainable, their combat skills and stamina can be dramatically increased.

The next mounts that come up are Ostards, and rideable llamas, they have about 25%-33% more stamina than a horse, and are marginally faster. (I suspect they are marginally faster because its easier on your graphics card to handle the smaller silloette of a mounted player using Ostards or llamas rather than a horse.)

The animal with the next most stamina, almost double that of a horse is a nightmare, they can gallop for a long time without having to be rested or fed.

The absolute best mount for speed and stamina is hands down the Frenzied Ostard. It has 2 1/2 times the stamina of a horse, is very fast, and also (which most players dont realize) can be used to "Whoopass"


Frenzies spawn in a lot of places in the lost lands



A nightmare is still the best choice for combat toughness, but annother factor is that Nightmares cost 25k as opposed to frenzied Ostards which only cost 1-2k

Stabling

With the changes to stabling last year anyone can stable up to two animals. (And many 3 packhorse miners and lumberjacks cried, myself included lol) It works like this, you take your total number of skill points in Taming, Animal lore, and Veteranary. The more points you have the more animals you can stable with the max being 5 animals.

000-159.9 2 Pets
160-199.9 3 Pets
200-239.0 4 Pets
240and up 5 Pets

Many tamers plan on becoming GM in Taming and animal lore, but only developing a small amount of Veterinary. If you plan on only getting a little vet skill you might get at least 40 points of it to open that 5th stable spot for yourself.

On most shards the inn at Moonglow (and other inns) now have Stable Masters


You can stable and claim your pets from the same way as you if you were at the stables. Kind of convenient, and possibly will open up some avenues if your a "Red" and not looking to stable your pets in serpents the serpents hold stable near the bank. (You can get the stable masters attention from the jungle there).

Serpents hold location that "Reds" can use

Invisibility

After your first few dragon taming trips you will quickly learn how effective it is to cast invisibility on yourself to get out of the targeting que for monsters melee and magical attacks, it also makes them "stop" following you.


In addition to that, you can also Start the taming process, and cast invisibility on yourself if your in a bad area. I haven't done it enough to have hard statistics one way or the other but it seems slightly harder to succeed while taming if you "invis" after you start the process, however you are occasionally in very crowded (with monsters) situations, and its your only choice.

Also to keep your tames out of harms way, you can cast invisibility on the dragons themselves and take them out of the targeting que of monsters (and other players!)


Beyond using invisibility for taming dangerous things, it is EXTREMELY effective for PvM, you direct your pet to what your hunting, order it to kill then cast invisible on yourself, or if there are a TON of monsters targeting you, cast invis and let your dragon handle it, if there are more monsters than he can handle, break the invisibility by casting gate and get the two of you to safety.

Will it follow your last order?

The way to instantly tell on most pets is to listen to the sound they make, Dragons, Wyrms, Nightmares, alligators, horses, bears, wolves etc, (almost all the tamable creatures) have at least 2 sounds that happen when your telling them to do something. One is their "no" sound, the other is the "yes" or "happy" sound. If you hear the happy sound then the pet is planning on carrying out your orders. Things may happen after that which prevent him from carrying them out (like the pet may be blocked, fatigued, extremely low on hit points which will cause them to avoid combat, or attacked by another monster or player.

Always carry a rune book
You Die, it happens. If you have a rune book back to town, and another for various points that you hunt at it will make getting resurrected and back on track go a LOT faster. When your out with the big 4 they will usually kill whatever killed you, so as long as your back before they go wild (you have less than 20 minutes, less than 10 if you haven't fed them recently) it will be work out with no problems.


No two animals are identical

They may look the same, and they may sound the same (and maybe when they spawned they were the same) but no two animals ever end up equal.

Pets acquire stats and skills much in the same way that we do. They build Strength and Dex, magic using pets build int as well.

Other skills such as tactics, magic resistance and magery for casting pets are built as well, and parrying in whatever form it is available for Tames. The difference between trained animals and non=trained animals is amazing, you might try out some tests on your own with simple timber wolves, tame some timber wolves and order them to attack other timber wolves, you will see that it is usually a pretty close fight. Then take 1 wolf, and use him to attack Orcs, Headless, Lizard men, Rat men, and even Ettons and Trolls if your healing is up to it.

After as little as an hour of training its skills up on monsters order it to attack another timber wolf, you will see that their is a significant difference than before, that difference is your wolf is stronger, faster, has a higher tactics, and probably more parrying skill as well.

Animals don't just "ceiling" after a few hours of training, they can eventually ceiling but it takes a LONG time, and they are 2-3 times tougher than when your first got them. While making the veterinary section of the guide, I totally bought the farm (died), what happened was I ordered one of my polar bears to kill me so the one guarding me would attack it. The plan was to then step back, cast invis and let the two of them fight while I healed them to train up Vet.

What I did not take into consideration was that these were the two bears that I had fighting each other on my boat for almost 5 hours while I GMed animal lore for the guide.

Originally before they were trained I could tell one of them to attack me, then I could leisurely get out of harms way. But this time when I ordered the now well-trained polar bear to attack me, he kicked the heck out of me in a few seconds, taking such huge chunks from my health bar with each attack that I was loosing Dex as well, he just tore me up. I could neither recall or get behind the other bear fast enough, I died a few seconds later. That is how effective well trained animals are.

Some animals have some amazing abilities that you would never guess. An alligator for example has a Huge Armor class and parrying skill, their bite is pretty good too, but their armor and ability to only take minimal damage makes them an Excellent choice for a combat pet of mid-level tamers.

Grizzly bears can dish out damage very very fast, Trained grizzly bears can occasionally kill players (Master swordsmen, fencers and macers) if the players forget to run and heal in the combat.

The Pile on factor

You will start to notice this after a while depending on where you hunt. Your Dragon (or whatever animal you use) will tear up a single opponent, but it will start taking longer for him to kill 1 opponent as more and more things are attacking your pet.

If the things are "tough" monsters, then you might be in some serious trouble, but even if they are ultra wimpy monsters you may still be in some serious trouble if there are enough of them. Every time your pet (or you) takes damage it has a chance of blocking your next attack. I have had dragons take over two minutes to kill a stone gargoyle because there was a hoard of orcs beating on him at the same time. Granted the orcs did not do a tremendous amount of damage, but no matter if you take 1 point of damage or 10, each time damage is accrued to your tame there is a chance of screwing up its present attack.

I have also lost dragons outright due to overwhelming numbers. For example I have lost more than 1 dragon in the southeastern deserts of T2a (north of the city of paypa). That area is packed with hellhounds, fire elementals, Lava serpents, swamp tentacles etc. No one thing is particularly overpowering, but its very easy to find yourself surrounded and being hemmed in by the high number of monsters concentrated in that area.

I Try and pick off the smaller monsters on my own to let my tame deal with the serious threats, its much safer for myself and the tame that way, I have yet to try it (and might for the next update) but it might be possible that 50 timber wolves could kill a single dragon (might not) but 20 timber wolves, with 1 serious creature like a Daemon, or an Ogre lord could probably beat a Dragon easily just because the dragon will "rarely" get a shot in with all the wolves nipping him.

The gate spell can get you and your pet out of anything.


When your starting to get overwhelmed, or have a pet stuck (on a ledge, over water, even paralyzed) Make sure you get your tamer out of combat, cast invisibility and let everything target your dragon, or ride off a bit, hide behind something etc. Do whatever you need to do so you can cast gate and not be interrupted in the process.


When the gate is cast stand next to it, tell your pet to follow you until you hear the happy sound, then step through the gate and you will both appear safely at your destination.


Be very very careful when casting gate tho, if your standing on any kind of terrain that is not flat you have a very good chance of not being able to "step into" the gate. The lost lands are particularly bad for this, but it can happen anywhere if your not watching for it.



Your pet can Un-paralyze, stop fighting tons of monsters, move over things heads and around obstacles, basically it will become "unstuck" with anything it might be stuck on, and follow you through that gate.

Feeding During Combat


It's not uncommon in faction wars to see a pair of combatants slugging it out in a running gun battle, then one Jumps off his mount, then right back on. That isn't because they "slipped" they are feeding the mount to keep it from having to stop and rest. That is one example of feeding during combat. That particular case is the same with players, if your ever out of Dex, eat something and it will restore a few points of it

Another way that I use food for my pets in combat is to restore their dex. Its important tho that only Higher level tamers do this, feeding the pet will occasionally take them out of combat, and the thing that they are fighting might target you, or the pet might wander, or be attacked by something else and take its attention away from the business at hand.


Feed it and you restore its dex and prevent its melee attack from slowing down.




Feed it several times in a row to make sure the pet goes to top stamina, then order it to "kill" whatever the target is that its in combat with to make sure that it stays in combat on with it.


DO NOT use magic reflect, or reactive armor! These are both awesome spells and very effective in many situations, but not for taming. If your trying to tame a dragon (or anything else) and it casts a spell on you, when the spell bounces back and hits the tame it will ruin that taming attempt, same with reactive armor, when the beast tries to claw you, you will damage it and have to restart the taming process. Magic reflect is particularly annoying to have on when going for dragons/Wyrms as both of those creatures cast spells often, not only does it "anger" them because they took damage, it will take them out any paralyze field that you might have them in.

Tame, Re-name, and Release Every time you tame something you need to do this, or kill it yourself, or stable it in order for more animals to spawn in its place.

When doing Tame, Release, and Kill, you need to kill the creature immediately if its still gray, because if its blue and it "sits" (stops moving) when you release it, it wont actually go gray until it moves. So.. tell it to follow you, while its moving Release it, it will go gray immediately.

Building up your Player skills

There is soooo much more to using animals in combat than saying their name and kill. Tamers usually learn this the hard way by loosing their first several dragons. There are things that you learn to do, and not to do. Like when your in the Northern T2a Desert, you only move 1/2 screen in front of your dragon because you can be easily overwhelmed, and you have to bring the beast forward enough when you find a target, but you cant be there so long as the thing your hunting goes into war mode on you...


I bought several Drakes (baby Dragons) essentially they have the same breath weapon, but much weaker armor piercing attack, and about 1/4 the hit points of a dragon. They are still EXTREAMLY tough, but not as tough, and no where near as expensive as a dragon.


If your magery is high enough you can also practice with summoned daemons (there not quite as tough as a Drake, and not even in the same ballpark as a dragon). But if you can go with Drakes :)

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