Tanks on Nightmares.. WTH?!?

[Rhis]

So, how is it that so many tanks seem to be rolling with nightmares? It seems from a couple of threads around here that tames which are released have their minimum skill level set to zero? What the hell?

Does anyone have a conclusive source for this, because I don't ever remember seeing anyone riding one without the required minimum taming to accept a transfer in era.

[Roser]

The mount in a lot of cases is friended to the rider, while still under control of the tamer.

Also, if a tamer releases a pet, the tame value of that pet goes to 0 and becomes tamable by anyone, despite taming skill.

[Rhis]

The mount in a lot of cases is friended to the rider, while still under control of the tamer.

Also, if a tamer releases a pet, the tame value of that pet goes to 0 and becomes tamable by anyone, despite taming skill.

Ok, got a source for that? It seems pretty ridiculous to me, and I don't remember any such thing.

The way I remember it during this period, you wouldn't fail to retame something, but you still had to have the minimum skill. You also couldn't gain from doing so.

[Roser]

I'm not sure how that decision was arrived at.

Might have been the patch notes on the wiki, or some other source.

[Ronk]

I agree. I know for sure I rarely saw nightmares. When you saw one it was like "woooow".

I don't recall the 'friend' ability, though my lack of knowing about it does not mean it wasn't there.

I also DO recall some sort of thing with the nightmare spawn where people could keep it from respawning by having one stabled in delucia, or something to that effect. The idea of blocking the spawn could certainly have caused them to be rare.

[Rhis]

I agree. I know for sure I rarely saw nightmares. When you saw one it was like "woooow".

I don't recall the 'friend' ability, though my lack of knowing about it does not mean it wasn't there.

I also DO recall some sort of thing with the nightmare spawn where people could keep it from respawning by having one stabled in delucia, or something to that effect. The idea of blocking the spawn could certainly have caused them to be rare.

Friend was horribly broken and dangerous to use in era. It would often leave you flagged criminal when issuing commands after friending.

Spawn blocking involved the t2a mare spawns. After a nightmare was tamed from a particular spawn point, no more could spawn from there as long as that nightmare was kept in t2a. If it was stabled in t2a without being taken out, it would still block the spawn it came from.

Another factor contributing to the rarity was that it took a minimum of 5 months of solid play (8 hours+ a day) to GM taming. There were probably less than 20 gm tamers per shard before all the UO:R bullshit made it super easy.

[Ronk]

http://tamingarchive.com/faqs/

May be somethign here.... ^^ Its from 2000 time frame.

I have enough taming for this creature, but it keeps getting angry. What am I doing wrong?

Nothing. This is supposed to happen to make the high end creatures tougher to tame. You will only successfully initiate taming on dragons, swamp dragons, nightmares, and white wyrms approximately 1 out of 10 tries.


Single Spawn
Single spawns are the most common, particularly with the more powerful creatures. The server knows how many of a particular creature should appear in its dictated area. Creatures controlled by this type of spawn include lich lords, dragons of Destard, white wyrms, nightmares, and ogre lords. Tame or not, no more than a predetermined number (usually just one) of those creatures will get added to the spawn queue.

What is the "spawn queue"? The server knows exactly how many and what kind of creatures should spawn in a particular location. When the server sees that the appropriate number and type of creature is found on the server, it stops producing monsters or animals. If any particular creature dies or leaves the server, the server will pick up on this and add it to its "queue" of creatures to spawn. No one knows how often the server will check for missing creatures or how long it takes a creature to spawn once it is added to the queue.

(Ronk Note: On the offical servers the T2A world woulda been 'one server', I think. And britannia was broken into what, 6?)


Edit:
Also, teh example:
You tame a white wyrm (single spawn). If your tame wyrm does not leave the server, a new one will not get added to the spawn queue and a new one will not spawn. Once you remove your tamed white wyrm off of the server it spawned from, it is now removed from the spawn pool and it gets a new "spawn ID". You can watch wyrms respawn 'til your heart's content once you return your newly tamed wyrm back to the server it spawned from.

Which says that it only blocks the spawn if it stays on the server. This would ALSO explain why we have so many dragons here.

[Kaivan]

This is a pretty old issue with very clear information on it, so I'll put that information out there. First, we have an archive of the Stratics tamer page written sometime during December of 1999 located here. The significant quote to look at here is as follows:

If you want to give a pet away (or you're selling one), 'Release' the pet. The transferee should be able to retame the animal since its difficulty level is set to 0 upon release (or it going feral). Transfer also checks the transferee's Lore which, if it's too low, will also prevent a successful transfer quite apart from the risk of attack.

Please note that despite the archival date for this page being out of era there is no mention of any of the mechanics that were introduced with any patches following the November 23, 1999 patch which is mentioned quite specifically. Thus, this essay contains era information.

Second, we have an in-era archive from May 1999 located here that has the following statement:

If you must abandon a pet, please use the "release" command to return it to a feral state. Please note that if you do release a pet, you cannot gain any further skill by re-taming it.

This statement is in line with the later archive regarding the mechanic in question.

Finally, we have information directly from the demo that shows that a released animal will have a retame value of 0:

Code: Select all

integer Q4C0(object this, string Q698, object speaker)
{
  if(Q698 != "release")
  {
    return(0x00);
  }
  if(isPet(this))
  {
    Q4LJ(this);
  }
  else
  {
    bark(this, "I thank thee for thy kindness!");
  }
  shortcallback(this, 0x08, 0x08);
  if(isPet(this))
  {
    setObjVar(this, "petCanTame", 0x00);
  }
  Q4IH(this);
  return(0x01);
}

Notice that the line with the text petCanTame runs a function on the released animal that sets its taming value to 0.

So, the above information should be a pretty clear indicator of the fact that until the January 24th, 2000 update that changed the way that pre-tames worked that all animals that became wild would have their retame value set to 0.

[Ronk]

Kaiven, it says that it should check the transferee's lore. Is this happening here? With zero lore I have tamed a frenzied ozzy. And i highly doubt all of these nightmare riders have lore. Should this be a possible issue?

Also, I think the issue at hand is the spawn rate, not the train ability, though its good to see that cleared up.

[Kaivan]

It's a reference to the transfer command which will fail in the event of low Lore/Taming on the part of the recipient, making the release method much more effective in comparison.

[Rhis]

stuff

Are we 100% sure that difficulty means the minimum skill needed to tame the animal? Not sure I trust the demo anyway. According to Derrick, here viewtopic.php?f=8&t=16001&start=0

That is the case here, however the minimum tame skill requirement does not get zeroed, only the difficulty.

I would take the stratics quote to be suggesting a way for someone to take control of a pet who had the required minimum taming to tame it, but not the required animal lore to accept a transfer. Animal lore originally didn't count for much/at all in terms of control, and wasn't checked on transfers before it was changed at some point, so a lot of people didn't have it.

[Kaivan]

stuff

Are we 100% sure that difficulty means the minimum skill needed to tame the animal? Not sure I trust the demo anyway.

I would take that stratics quote to be suggesting a way for someone to take control of a pet who had the required minimum taming to tame it, but not the required animal lore to accept a transfer. Animal lore originally didn't count for much/at all in terms of control, and wasn't checked on transfers before it was changed at some point, so a lot of people didn't have it.

Yes, difficulty is in direct reference to taming skill required. It's also confirmed in the demo, and in the Stratics quotes (both of them). This is a very clear cut case with down the line agreement with all sources. Also, the stratics quote goes out of it's way to note that only the taming difficulty is set to 0. In the line that follows the one quoted before, the following is said:

Note: Orneriness is not set to 0, however! High-level creatures require a high Lore in order to be able to control them. In any event, the re-tamed high-level animal should be immediately fed.

Finally, animal lore was not required to tame an animal prior to or after its introduction as a factor in control of an animal with the May 25, 1999 patch. Thus, releasing a pet would effectively make it possible to tame the pet at 0 taming, but have little to no control over the pet.

[Rhis]

Then why did Faust say this?

The minimum value that is required to tame the creature doesn't drop but the difficulty in fact does(to prevent retaming the same creature over and over to macro skill gains) as Derrick stated previoulsy. This is the main reason non-tamers cannot retame a pet that abandoned them.

I clearly remember people who didn't feed their horses after buying them being unable to retame them. It seems like having zero difficulty just means that the animal will always tame on the first try, which goes along exactly with how I remember it. These guys run the shard, right, so surely they know what the code means.

Edit: I guess you do too, so why don't these posts agree.

Did you play a tamer in this era, or are you going by your posted evidence alone?

Anyone else remember being pissed about forgetting to feed your horse and losing it?

[McSchnurke]

I see you're new here, Rhis, so I'll explain the issue.

Regardless of what you have experienced here on UOSA or on OSI, in era, or what the GMs say or what the gods honest truth is, Faust is always right. Don't question it.

[Rhis]

I see you're new here, Rhis, so I'll explain the issue.

Regardless of what you have experienced here on UOSA or on OSI, in era, or what the GMs say or what the gods honest truth is, Faust is always right. Don't question it.

I'm agreeing with Faust's post on this one, lol!