Controlling Pets

[Hydroxide]

I was told that I could not control a nightmare without taming and lore on this server.

I know there will probably be some that will argue this shouldn't be changed, but when I played during t2a I worked my ass off to buy a nightmare (50K!) and I controlled it with no lore/taming. It took a few tries to get it to transfer to me, and sometimes it didn't listen so well, but it worked.


I have read another post here which verified this with dragons, I think it was under the thread about never changing a few things e.g mounts...

[Hydroxide]

Nobody will take a swing at this?


Is this deliberately being ignored ?

[Derrick]

If it's inaccurate we'll fix it. I just haven't had a chance to look this up. Not ignored, just delayed. If you can dig up some control change charts before I get a chance to please post.

[Kaivan]

Sorry, I didn'e even see this thread when it first popped up.

From what I have read from the patch notes, animal taming was origonally a factor in controlling a pet, and that later on animal lore came into the picture. Before then, animal taming was only used to check to see if the pet was tamed, and transfers and commands were entirely unchecked. Here are the 2 seperate patch notes which highlight the changes:

Thieves Guild, new skills, and more Feb 24 1999 1:06PM

• Pets now have 'orneriness' factors as far as obeying commands.
• The harder the pet is to tame originally, the more 'ornery' it is. This means that it is more likely to refuse commands given to it.
• The better the player is at Animal Taming, the more they can overcome the pet's orneriness. This means that those with low animal taming will have great difficulty in controlling creatures such as dragons, draken, or nightmares. On the flip side, good animal tamers will be able to order around easy creatures such as cats and dogs, even when they are starving.

New tinkering menu, pets, auto-stacking, and more. May 25 1999 9:41AM CST
Animal Taming and Animal Lore

• Pet "nerfing" when crossing server boundaries will be fixed. This actually affected all creatures throughout the game, so you may find some creatures being tougher than previously. All creatures have been fixed retroactively.
• "Death taming" is fixed. Dying while taming a creature will abort the taming process.
• Pet follow speed has been increased.
• You can now give all your pets orders by prefacing your order with "all." For example, saying, "all follow me" will make all your pets follow you. The list of commands this works with is:
  • all follow me
  • all guard me
  • all come
  • all stay
  • all guard me
  • all stop
• "Breath nerfing" (dragons and other firebeathing creatures losing their fire breath) should be fixed. This fix is retroactive for all existing creatures.
• Loyalty checks are now done for all pet commands (previously, certain commands did not check the pet's loyalty).
• Transfer and friending actually do two loyalty checks--one for the old owner and one for the new. Both must succeed for the order to be obeyed.
• Pet "orneriness" is now a much larger factor. The tougher an animal was to originally tame, the tougher it will be to control in general. The higher your taming skill and animal lore skills, the better able to control the animal you will be. Animal taming is more significant for this than animal lore is.
• The professional title for Animal Taming is now "Tamer" instead of "Ranger."
• The professional title for Animal Lore is now "Ranger" instead of "Scholar."

The second set of patch notes is the set of patch notes that was responsible for requiring a particular amount of taming and lore for transfers, and the near impossible control of already owned high end tames.

[Mens Rea]

I remember paying 40k or so for dragons, using this trick:

1) Get a tamer to release a dragon at the foot of a ledge.
2) Get the tamer to release the dragon (tamed creatures which were released had a difficulty level of 0) (edit: BUT if they became feral by themselves their taming difficulty returned)
3) Tame the creature

Now, this meant that without too much trouble I could make the dragon "all follow me" and "all guard me" without any trouble. All kill took too long to work.

The patch mentioned above fixed this, but it was a fact that my 1x dexer had dragons and I had to run around asking mages for gates to deceit.

[Kaivan]

Well, now that we more or less have an idea of the process behind how this sort of thing worked, as well as the patch that changed that ability, it falls into Derrock's hands as to whether it should be implimented or not.

[Mens Rea]

The use of the taming bug was never wide spread.

I'm sure 99.9% of UO players wouldn't even notice it's not functional.

[SirMeeks]

mares and drags are overrated anyways

[Prurk]

*dances around tamer with a bow while the dragon looks at the oomie, not quite sure if he is supposed to eat him or the orc*

Ya go ahead and give em dragons lol. Tamer Pvp, what a joke

---
On topic I had a friend back in the day who was always shelling out money for a new mare he couldnt control. So this is accurate in my head.

[Maleficia]

Animal taming was not always necessary to control a pet. It was durring T2A they changed this though (early on if I remember right). I had drakes which I had bought on a warrior char that I would farm with. They changed control rules and I had to give them up, but all of this occured in T2A. Most of T2A if I remember correctly, taming/lore was required but only to the point where control was possible (however they deemed that at whatever percentage). Later I think they adjusted it to you have to be able to tame it to take possession of it. I am certainly not positive on the last part, as I had a tamer and never had to take conrol, I just went and tamed as needed.

[Artemis]

On topic I had a friend back in the day who was always shelling out money for a new mare he couldnt control. So this is accurate in my head.

I had to constantly buy a new tamed horse(every 1-3 days?) from a stable because my horse would always eventually go wild, buck me off and need re-taming, even if I kept feeding it.
You could have a tamer transfer pets, but eventually they would go wild and the stronger the pet the more likely they would go wild sooner.
I also remember reading post saying some pets, WW cast 6-7th level spells, Area effect spells? Someone posted they only had to say all stop a couple times to keep the pets from fighting each other? If pets accidentally attack each other theres nothing a tamer can do to prevent them from killing each other, they fight till one dies. Same goes with mobs, etc.
On rare occasion Lich lord would cast 7th level Area effect an hit other mobs causing them to fight.

[Kaivan]

Casting monsters never cast actual 8th circle spells or 7th circle area of affect spells. The "8th circle" representation on the stratics hunters guide provides an equivilent magery skill. For example, liches spawned with anywhere between 70.1 and 80.0 Magery (this is confirmed with the debuffs that they casted being either -7 or -8 during T2A and -8 or -9 during UOR), and they are marked down as being able to cast with 7th circle magery on the hunters guide. If you look at the actual Magery guide, you'll notice that the minimum skill for casting 8th Circle spells is 80.1 Magery, or in other terms, having 80.1 or greater Magery, makes you an 8th Circle mage. All monsters in game could only choose from a limited set of spells to cast, including all direct damage spells, poison, and debuff spells. That list was further restricted by their actual magery skill, and remaining mana.

[Artemis]

Lich lord debuffs where always -10 meaning they had 90+ magery. Ancient Wyrms would always be -11, that would be GM magery. Blood Elementals also had a very high magery. Blood elementals casted the most 7th level spells, flamestrikes like crazy, 2 sometimes 3 in a row. Blood els might have been the nastiest casters in the game
I had an ancient wrym mass dispel 5 blade spirits at once, which at the time I was like, wtf just happened? I thought other players were around or something, which I proceeded to use reveal like a mofo. A couple times I had also seen a Lich lord cast chain lightning and a couple times it was mass curse, which if it hit any nearby mobs they proceeded to attack each other. And if 2 mobs fight each other like this, unprovoked/no bard involved, and one dies the bodies disappears, no loot at all.
I might of also seen a white wrym mass curse. It was rare they did area effect though

[Kaivan]

During T2A the maximum debuff was -10. The -11 debuff is something that came around during UOR when the equation for debufs was changed from:

Code: Select all

Magery / 10 = debuff level

To:

Code: Select all

(Magery / 10) + 1 = debuff level

I am also aware that here on Second Age, we currently have debuff spells set to the latter equation, and it is an inaccuracy that is on the list of fixes to be made.

As for the magery skill of the various monsters, no one is disputing that they were capable of casting higher level spells, and that the tougher monsters did indeed cast some of the higher level spells somewhat more often. The major difference is that higher level creatures did not cast area of affect spells. Also, for future reference, dispel is the spell that casting monsters used, not mass dispel.

[alatar]

monsters used mass dispel & mass curse..