Pet Claiming

[Mikel123]

Here was the last bit of info I could find related to this discussion:

There is no proof of any of this as of yet so it's silly to keep on about it i spose.

My pets don't automatically follow me unless i tell them to before i stable them.
If i say all stop and stable a pet...if i claim it i watch as it randomly walks around. There isn't even a problem here.

To be honest that's how I remember it working, with the pet basically just remembering the last command you gave it before stabling it. Granted that's just how I remember it, with no proof to back it up yet

This is the behavior that I belive to be accurate, we won't make a change based on memory though unless it's pretty unanimous.

As valarhu said, this was tested a few days ago and they appeared to always follow regardless of the command. I haven't looked at the code on this as I've had no intention of making a change on this without more info.

Yes, we can probably glean some info from the demo.

To answer the question on why we don't use 2001 emulator code, it's simply because it's way less stable and buggy, and less developed in terms of extensibility, and also doesn't support the latest client. We try to stay up to date with the latest RunUO releases.

Currently, when I pull my pets from the stable, they have no command and just wander around aimlessly. I don't think anyone ever found any concrete info about what happens. I thought the "compromise" that was reached due to the whining about them auto-following was to have them maintain whatever command they last held before being stabled.

Also, I'm having issues seeing pets improve skills, specifically dragons. I'm completely jinxing myself here, but I've had the same two dragons I've hunted with for two solid months, and I've yet to see either of them cast an e-bolt. Neither of them can get into Wind yet, so their magery must be under 72, and that's what I assume the problem is (magery not high enough) with getting them to cast better spells. Actually come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen them even cast Paralyze either. Is there any way to check whether pet skill gain is working correctly?

[Mikel123]

http://www.tamingarchive.com/faqs/pvp.php

Editor's Note: This faq was originally written prior to skill locks, which means it was written some time around October or November 1999. Some of this stuff is a little dated, but you might still find something useful here.

I think this wouldn't be a very complete guide if I didn't take a paragraph to mention pet training. It's a little known fact that pets progress in skill just as players do. The easiest way to prove this is to get a fresh dragon from Destard. Chances are it can't get into Wind (72 magery req). Take the dragon somewhere safe and summon elementals for it to dispell. After about an hour of this take the dragon back to Wind and have him walk over the telepad. He should be able to enter now. Melee can be trained as well. There's a huge difference between a trained and untrained frenzied ostard that will make itself apparent after about 2 hours of toad taming and killing. Pets begin at random levels of skill. Some dragons can cast ebolt in their natural state while others struggle with lightning.

I don't know what level of magery is required for a pet to have a chance to e-bolt, but I've yet to find a dragon that can do it freshly spawned.

Also... I knew magic-casters during T2A would Dispel (via the spell) and that later on in UO they'd auto-dispel (without even using magic, just via some kind of innate skill). But I didn't know that any dragon could Dispel when freshly spawned. Very interesting.

[Lothain]

I've also been hunting with the same pets for some time and noticed their skill gain is incredibly slow or even non-existent. Last year after Mass curse etc were added to the pet case list, I specifically remember having to put down dragons when their magery got too high--this did not take very long!

[Mikel123]

A couple more things.

For one... when I have a pet in my house and I say "I wish to release this", my dragon will respond as though I commanded him (much like my pet named "a" would respond when I said "stable").

Second... with regards to magery and dispelling... I summoned 16 water elementals in front of a fresh-tamed dragon, a well-trained dragon, and a white wyrm.

The fresh dragon never cast a spell above fireball. Didn't cast lightning even once. He cast his spells very sparingly. Never got below 90% mana, according to Eval Int.

The trained dragon cast up to lightning. Likewise, cast slowly and never got below 90% mana.

The white wyrm cast his full arsenal. He seemed to be working fine, except he never dispelled.

In fact, across the three of them, the NEVER dispelled, even once.

My guess..., I believe dragons are spawning with a magery level far too low. If the above link is correct, they all should be able to dispel. In any case, nothing over fireball is pretty ridiculous. So I'm guessing they should be spawning with at least 51 magery, which I think is the min level needed to cast a level 6 spell. Gazers, in the demo, spawn with 500+1d150 magery, so between 50.1 and 65 magery. If dragons spawned in this range, over 90% of them would be able to dispel upon being spawned, and possibly 100% by the time they were tamed since they would have cast upon you quite a bit while you tamed them. It would also ensure they could not enter Wind (72 required) or cast flamestrike (65.1 required) upon spawning, but would be close enough and casting high enough level spells to gain to 72 magery with an hour of casting on summons (as the PvP article mentions).

[RoadKill]

There was a time when no monsters (even those capable of casting flamestrike) would dispel. Then there was a brief span of time when monsters were given dispel but their AI didn't tell them to auto dispel if a summoned form was attacking them. I don't have the specifics on this dug up on this at the moment but if no one else chimes in with details, I guess I'll start digging

[Mikel123]

Then there was a brief span of time when monsters were given dispel but their AI didn't tell them to auto dispel if a summoned form was attacking them.

This is what I believe was T2A. They would Dispel frequently, but it wouldn't always be the first thing they did. They might go Lightning - Curse - Dispel, for example.

The UO:R patch that improved monster AI is when I believe they used Dispel (and Cure) almost immediately, when the situation dictated it. I'd love it if you found further info on this;

[Mikel123]

Bump due to no reply yet, and a little more info while I'm looking it up.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... ine/topics

Fresh-spawned dragons can dispel:

RA on Blade Spirits and EVs still works. RA on an EV can sometimes drop
a dragon before it can dispel the EV. Not a real big deal since a single
BS will drop a drake anyway and most of the time a dragon will dispel
before you can put RA on an EV. At this stage it doesn't bother me that
these seem to be low priority bugs.

Fresh-spawned dragons can dispel:

BTW, dragons do dispel blades and EVs. It takes at least three EVs to take
down a dragon, and blades are pretty much useless.

Fresh-spawned dragons can dispel with Magery, not the auto-dispel ability they got in 2000:

Went to Wind on Test Factions last night, the dragon there was dispelling
EVs without even trying. It was like it didn't even cast, just *poof* the EV
would disappear. At first I thought I was mis-targetting the drop, but the
EV would appear for a fraction of a second, wave its arms around, and then
*poof* it was gone without the dragon even turning around to look at it.
So they're dispelling them, but it doesn't look like they're using magic to
do it. I tried about 10 times, eventually it had me worked into town and a
guard whacked it. Gave up testing before another spawned.

Ancient Wyrms don't auto-dispel but rather cast it like everything else: (here, they seem to auto-dispel like they have the ability granted to them in Sept 2000)

I head down to the Wyrm room in Destard to see this new
Dispel feature in action. There's 1 other person there
fighting Fire E's (so you KNOW something's changed if it's
that quiet). Sure enough, there's a Wyrm.
Cast an EV on it. EV gets a couple shots in, then
*poof*...dispelled. Excellent! Cast a Blade, same thing. I
notice the Wyrms health dropping tho, so he's poisoned. With
that massive store of hit points this is gonna be a while
tho.

[Caswallon]

I had a huge post written up with other info agreeing with you on this but we have both overlooked one vital thing.

www.tamingarchive.com in March 2003 and current Mythic Beastiary has the dragons magery skill listed at 30.1-40.0, which obviously is too low to cast dispel, it is however sufficent to cast dispel field, 5th circle 36.1 minimum skill requirement, which is also mentioned as the spell first used to train a dragon to enter Wind.

Im not 100% on this but im pretty sure stat bonus means even a 30.1 "real" skill wild dragon will be able to cast 5th circle as the stat bonus will be somewhere between 6.0-9.0 depending on how close the dragon is to its INT cap.[Im sure someone familiar with the exact formula & access to the demo code can verify this but roughly the shortest a dragon can be from its max INT cap is around 11%, meaning minimum stat bonus is around 7.0 but someone else would need to double check that to get exact numbers.]

I think the magery skill range on wild dragons is correct, but they do not cast dispel field, or other spells for that matter, nearly enough, they should certainly be dispelling summons frequently, like 90% of the time at the very least, and it should be via the spell, not auto dispel.

[Mikel123]

You can't use 2003 data, because that's long after a bunch of pet skill changes, not to mention the auto-dispel. By that time, people were bonding pets, animal-loring them to see skills, and the skills of pets were engineered to actually raise faster than player skills! I can't remember all of the changes they were making back then.

There was no auto-dispel in 1999, not on dragons and not on wyrms. Also, Dispel Field doesn't dispel an EV or a BS.

It's funny you mention Int bonus, I was thinking of that the other day as well. No idea how it works on pets and monsters, if it does at all, but let me take a stab at the math.

It looks like Magery is 85% skil, 15% Int. The best dragon stats we have are from the demo. They spawn with 251 to 350 mana, but only 136 to 175 INT, for an average of 156. So 156*.15 = 23.4 to a dragon at 0 magery. Quite interesting. So if dragons spawned at 30.1 to 40.0, that would translate to 46.5 to 55.0. We know dragons should spawn with greater than 51.8 magery and less than 66.1 magery or 72 magery, so that they can cast level 6 spells upon spawning, but cannot cast level 7 spells or get into Wind. So this doesn't look right.

However, I don't think Int gives a bonus to pet stats - at least, it didn't in 2003 when you could animal lore and could see all stats of pets. At that time, dragons had 436 to 475 INT. Taking the low end, 436, would come out to a bonus of 65.4 magery at 0 real skill. Scale it to 30.1 and 40.0 and you'd have an actual value of 75.9 to 79.24.

[Caswallon]

Earliest available dragon stats are Feb 2001, if you can find earlier I salute you as I spend 4 hours looking. Average INT listed as 372 which coincidently is very close to you 360 mana, while also being different from the later stat of 436-475:

February 26, 2001 10:59 am - Pet Database Updates

I updated the taming chart (pet database) today with some new stats for dragons and drakes. I have yet to do strength for either creature and may get to that today. I also added screenshots of dragons, drakes, and horses in both the 2d and 3d client.

Taming Archive Dragon Stats Feb 2001. INT listed as 372: http://web.archive.org/web/200105010151 ... cle=dragon

Taming Archive Dragon Stats Mid 2005. INT listed as 436-475: http://web.archive.org/web/200408160534 ... dragon.php

Mythic Dragon Stats Now 2009. INT listed as 436-475: http://www.uoherald.com/guide/beastiary ... tiaryId=43

Dont you find it odd that dragons magery skill is the same in 2001, 2005, 2009? It does not look like it has ever been changed, nor is it referenced ever being changed in any patch notes, but other creatures such as White Wyrms, Nightmares and Ancient Wyrms, and even Dragons stats, have been? Odd.

Here is a quote from Feb 2001 talking specifically about magery gains, training dragons, and the major changes your talking about re: stat/skill changes, bonding, lore, burst hour etc that all occurred around UO:R.

Improvement in Magery

The first documented method of raising a pet's magery was done by Belldandy on the UTB board. Most wild dragons cannot enter the city of Wind (part of the difficulty itself is forcing the pet to walk directly onto the pentacle). The magery requirement for entry to Wind is 72.0. If you attempt to take a low magery pet into Wind, you will be told that it is unworthy of entry. Bell found that by forcing his dragons to cast dispel (a 5th circle spell, normally, they would only cast lightning or fireball) while fighting summoned elementals, he could get his dragons to re-enter wind.

However, since the burst hour patch (and the patch allowing dragons to insta-dispel summons), it has been found that raising their magery is near impossible. Bell theorized that maybe they are also effected by the anti-macro code and need to use 8x8 on a boat too...

http://web.archive.org/web/200107250336 ... e=training

Whats interesting here is the way its worded, in particular this:

Most wild dragons cannot enter the city of Wind (part of the difficulty itself is forcing the pet to walk directly onto the pentacle).

Now your saying it was easier to raise dragons magery in UO:R, but this states differently. I cannot comment as I never used my tamer much into UO:R, and played less and less from around july 2000.

I am not claiming they use auto dispel, I specifically state this, so I fail to see the relevance in restating that, our Ancient Wyrm should definetly not be using it. Im saying they possibly used dispel field, a claim allegedly backed up by the very first person to ever confirm pet skill gain, by that very spell, in era. And what should you cast at 55-65 magery?[if your not working resist and going straight from 2 regent use 4th circle damage spell to a 2 regent use 6th circle damage spell and ebing super efficent like today] 5th circle spells, this is still true on modern shards, where mind blast is a good bridge between lighting & ebolt for 60-65. Off course NPCs can cast level 5 reliably at 50.1.

http://web.archive.org/web/200001161433 ... t/mage.htm

The fact the player cannot dispel an EV/BS with dispel field is moot in my opinion, NPC's cast & use magic in a different way from players, we know this, they dont fizzle, they cannot be interupted, they dont have a cast time, they just cast the spell, aslong as they have the minimum magery possible. So is it possible they can use dispel field to dispel things players cant? I mean INT = Mana for players, but clearly not for NPCs.

INT bonus works exactly the same on monsters as it does on players, a dragon with say a 350 INT cap, with 175 actual INT will receive the same bonus as a player with 100 INT cap at 50 INT. Could this account for slight discrepancies in your second maths equation that places magery too high? Would 372 = 50.1-66.0?

Im just thinking out load here really, because I think your right, dragons should be dispelling frequently, usenet echo's this. I am looking for something, anything, to confirm this, but with every possible stratics page in era either broken or missing, no data from Abyss or hunter guide and taming archive starting in Feb 2001, there is nothing to go on between the June 1998 demo and the apparently recently updated Feb 2001 stat changes. Thats nearly 3 years, this theory is the best I could piece together with the extremely limited info available. Its sound, the logic is workable imo, but is it right? Who knows.

Other than that the only theory I have is upon the introduction of White Wyrms dragons magery was halved from 60.1-70.0 to balance the 2 large pets. But there is nothing to suggest or support this.

[Mikel123]

Taming Archive Dragon Stats Feb 2001. INT listed as 372: http://web.archive.org/web/200105010151 ... cle=dragon

I don't see magery on this page at all. There's also no way of knowing it, since Animal Lore only began showing magery level in November of 2001 (http://www.tamingarchive.com/updates/011130.php) So I'm not sure how you know what magery was in Feb 01.

Here is July 2002 saying 44.9 Magery: http://web.archive.org/web/200208300113 ... dragon.php

I don't buy that the monsters cast Dispel Field to dispel monsters. In the demo, monsters who can cast spells have the script "spellai". I'm sure Derrick or Batlin or Faust could confirm this, but I would be 99.99% sure that that script talks about how to cast without being disrupted, without fizzling, etc., like you mention, but does NOT say "If casting Dispel Field, make it do *this* instead of what it would normally do". That would be quite weird, programmatically inefficient and confusing, etc. There's also no "alternate Dispel Field" in the spells files, nor are there any "If" lines that I can see referring to If an NPC is casting on an EV or BS.

Raising pet skills was easier well past UO:R. I don't know exactly when. Sometime while you could bond and see all pet stats to the decimal with Animal Lore.

It appears Animal Lore, and thus pet skill, did indeed show "adjusted" (by stats) skill, since for AOS they stopped showing it:
http://tamingarchive.com/updates/aos.php

Displayed/adjusted skill has been completely done away with. There is now only base skill. This goes for pets as well, since animal lore showed displayed/adjusted skill instead of base. Skills effected will include magery and wrestling, which will appear lower than before.

INT bonus works exactly the same on monsters as it does on players, a dragon with say a 350 INT cap, with 175 actual INT will receive the same bonus as a player with 100 INT cap at 50 INT. Could this account for slight discrepancies in your second maths equation that places magery too high? Would 372 = 50.1-66.0?

Hmmm... really? I didn't think it was based on the INT "cap". I don't even think that's stored in critter templates as it's own value. But I don't know for sure how it impacts skill.

The reason I mention Ancient Wyrms is the unrelated point that, on our shard, they appear to have Dispel "skill", whereas they should be casting it.

[Derrick]

I willlook into why pet commands aren't persisting when stabling then claiming.

As far as the dispell rate, thanks for all the research that's going into this. As we currently have it implemented creatures dispell using either the dispell spell, or mass dispell based on their magery; dragons have a boost to dispel chance, so as to fall in line with reports from era, their magery skill has been highly debated since this shard opened.

[Caswallon]

Found this about faster pet skill gain.

http://update.uo.com/design_416.html

Publish 16 - Changes to the Taming Profession July 23 2002

Pet Training

*Pets will learn skills at an accelerated rate compared to players, although they will not use GGS [Guaranteed Gain System].
* All creatures, including pets, will have a faster Mana regeneration rate if they have the Meditation skill. Just like players, they will be able to gain Meditation skill when they regain Mana.
* All pets will be able to learn Anatomy, Resist Spells, Tactics, and Wrestling.
* Spellcasting pets will be able to gain in Magery and Evaluate Intelligence through casting spells in combat.
* Pets with Natural Poison will automatically learn the Poisoning skill through combat. The Poisoning skill is used to determine how often they inject poison. Pets with 99.0 or greater Poisoning skill will sometimes inject a poison 1 level more potent than their normal level. The chance to poison is given an additional boost at 100.0 Poisoning.

So documented skill gain changes are 2002. Documented stat changes are late 2000 or early 2001, mid 2002 Pub 16, and again around 2003/AoS when all the poison/fire/physical resistant stuff went in and player to mob damage changed from x2 to x1. The link with 44.9 magery is very close to publish 16s stat & skill changes, but yeah that is the earliest magery skill level so far found. But all these changes are documented, but their is no mention of dragon skilll/stat changes before the mid UO:R ones.

Yeah I messed up that first 01 link, that was referencing INT 372. Sorry about that. Its worth noting that the description on that link does however state:

They also possess some spell casting abilities, but they aren't nearly as good as their cousins, the white wyrm.

In another post you reference dragons not spawning with any magery on the demo, could it be they are spawning with half the INT the should do? You also mention Balron STR being off, is this possibly wrong? You say 136-175 is the range, but mana is 360, I thought INT = mana?

If INT range were half what it should be, that would be 350, 15% of 350 is 52.5, scaled to 30.1-40.0 that is a range of around 67-72 area is it not? Which is coincidently what were looking for. We must be on the right track surely, I cannot find anything concrete however.

It just seem odd how the numbers add up if the dragons INT is taken at 372, the first listed average INT we can find, the demo states 360 mana, and the stat bonus ends up right where we think it should be.

[Mikel123]

Derrick, thanks for looking into this, and the stabling issue. I feel like dragons don't need a boost to their dispel ability or casting, because their magery *should* be well high enough. Though I don't personally recall it, there are some sources above stating they could cast Flamestrike and enter Wind upon spawning, in some instances.

Caswallon, for most creatures, Stamina = DEX and Mana = INT. Literally, those are lines in the critter template code. But for some, like big magic casters and big HP and STR guys, it's not the case, and their Mana and Stamina values have die rolls just like the attributes.

Here is something I wrote to Caswallon a second ago:

As of the demo, no creature in the game had a magery skill lower than 50.1 except reapers, which supposedly were capped at level 2 spells according to a line in their template. Even freaking Orcs spawned with 50.1 as a minimum (but, they lacked the "spellai" script, so they never cast anything).

Let's look at it this way... here are some magery levels on the demo:

reaper: 40.1 to 50.0
gazer: 50.1 to 65.0
orc: 50.1 to 75.0

Now... let's factor in the dragon's average intelligence on the demo into that skill (156). In order, here's what they'd have as an adjusted magery skill with the previous ranges:

54.1 to 61.7
61.8 to 73.2
61.8 to 80.9

So assuming we use adjusted skill here, which factors in attributes (I'm 99% sure we would, because I know STR impacts damage calculations for monsters and that works fine), it looks like the Reaper magery level, which again is the lowest anything spawned with in UO, is a possible fit. Enough magery to cast level 6 spells, not enough to cast level 7 spells.

I still think the second one fits better though, the gazer magery level, as I've seen a few sources talking about fresh dragons being able to cast flamestrike (though, to my memory, I never saw this) and being able to enter Wind upon being spawned.

[Caswallon]

You know we should probably start flaming each other soon, this discussion is far to civil.