Nice pets, huh?
I used to call you folks stat monkeys until I built an archer tamer that could not distance heal, much less make use of what I call the EMT macro (pouring on Greater Heal and bandages, timed to sync with casting/cast recovery time and bandaging time). Up 'til then if a GD was "three in the 70s" it was just fine with me. Tamed to fight, not fight to tame, otherwise known by its charming euphemism, farming. Yeah, we slaughter us a whole mess o' critters down at the Demon Temple farm. Yuch!
But the archer is fun. Now my pet has to survive extended periods...on its own. Crap! It has to be tough. I have to find a good one. Damn!
This is when I had to make the unpleasant discovery that I wasn't much good at taming. Friends would take pity on me and help me out....too much as it turned out.
One buddy was helping me with Cu Sidhes (my archer is my only Elf....weak-ass damn characters, those Keeblers) 'cause they were killing me all the time. Said he was invising me at key moments. Got a nice Cu alright....50 over max HP. Or so said that breaker of all hearts, the UO Pet Power Calculator, that miserable, brilliant tool that compares your hard earned tame to a fantasy creature that never existed or ever will exist. Let's see...shall I plug my pet's numbers into it, or apply a cheese grater to my chin...hmmm....feels about the same.
Turned out he had also cursed the Cu as well as invised me. Didn't want to reveal his secret but wanted to help me. I respect the compromise. The Cu, however, Duncan, has never been quite right though. But, then again, the Cu has never been quite right or perhaps too right. It acts like you'd imagine a fierce beast would behave, plucked from liberty to a life of eternal servitude to a weakling Elf.
Never liked dogs.
Little did I know, though, that this would be the beginning of my too becoming a stat monkey - not for Cu Sidhes, may they all choke on doggie treats - but for Hiryus, far and away the smartest and easiest pets to work with in this venerable game of ours. And I'd come to....love....damn it, that rather meticulous tool of elation destruction....the aforementioned Pet Power Calculator. It can't manage to puzzle out what training does to make an animal better but it absolutely nails it when it comes to knowing what makes a pet more durable. Most important, it best reveals hit points for what they are: the Fool's Gold of taming.
UO should be renamed Rare Drop. It's the core of the game....the engine powering it all. And great pets are rare drops, just like Tangles or that the best named drop of them all: The Animated Legs of the Insane Tinker. Say what you will about how hard it is to get one rare drop or another but I put a singular challenge before me: rare color Hiryus that would also light up the stars of that dreaded tool. The Brilliant Colored Beast of the Insane Tamer.
In this I had a most formidable ally: Lexx Merlin. Lexx find great animals. Lexx finds four star or better Greater Dragons (they hadn't yet hired the guy who came up with the name for those legs when they named that pet....dull damned name for the game's most powerful pet - for shame!) every darned day.
And thus the carnage began. Hundreds of the marvelous beasts had to die, alas. Scores of rare colored ones too.
Lexx got his 4.6 wonder Hiryu. I got stables full of really good ones in every color, only Pinks being a true vanity ride, owing to him being neon pink and all, and Walter. Walter is a 4.2 and the color of glacial ice. Bestia D'Oro is not far behind and a deep gold. Sol is bright yellow and nearly as strong as Walter. Motoko, named after the heroine of Ghost in the Shell, is blue/gold and powerful. There are seven others, spread across four tamers on three shards.
They do well in combat because, although the elven Eldgin (my archer tamer) is not strong, he shoots well and compensates in offense what my mage tamers delivered in defense. The rest do well with the mages too. All are fully trained thanks to the twin miracles of Shadow Iron Elementals (Lexx summons them) and Spectral Spellbinders.
As for Greater Dragons, hell....I just buy 'em from Lexx. Hate those things. Hate taming them. Hate their stone stupidity and their honking, and their penchant for choosing to attack the mongbat before the Ancient Wyrmm just because the mongbat is closer. Hate their name. Hate walking.
Hey, come back here, Walter! Silly Hiryu ran up three flights of stairs at a public house to kill a hapless troll I never saw. Hiryus take the Guard Me command very seriously. And, no, there wasn't anything any more dangerous anywhere nearby. Walter would have taken it on first. Duncan would have just stood there and growled, angry still that he'd ever been tamed.
Gawd, I love UO pets.
Jonathan (and his taming corps: Ansel/Eldgin/Malcolm/Steven Maturin hailing from their virtual homes on Chesapeake, Great Lakes, and the mighty Atlantic Shard...sig file is out of date and I forgot how to edit it)