my only question about the new pet leveling

[Poo]

so ive been doing this for a while.
the UO thing.

i keep up to date.
this taming thing was a big change to come down the pipe so i went and played some with it on Test.
also mucked with it a little on Origin to get a feel for it.

all in all i understand the entire process pretty good i think.

but i have 1 thing im unsure about.
its probably because im still stuck in the old way of taming.

old way, i decided i need a certain type to pet, i go get the fact sheet on that animal and i go farm them, i try to get the one that is about 90% in all stats/resists/skills and once i get one i call it a day.

so now the new system im unsure of what i need to farm for pets when i go out taming.
it almost (ALMOST) seems as though i can just willy nilly go grab any pet, tame it and then worry about the numbers later as i can buff them up.
that is assuming its a 3 slot critter and will give me 2 times to level it up and muck with the numbers.

so thats my question i guess.
do i really need to look at the number now when im out taming?
i understand that we can still get animals that are over capped in certain stuff, but that over-cap still weighs against the total for that section so say i get a pet that is super fat in Hit Points, his mana and stamina are gonna be stupid low and non raise-able.
so if i want a animal that is 90% in everything then im better off getting a low number animal and leveling him 2-3 times and making him by hand rather than spending a day farming the animal at the beginning and getting one that has numbers kinda where i want them.

am i correct in that thinking?
is that what other people are seeing with this?
am i wrong in thinking this?

example.
i would like to pick up one of each of the new Drakes in each of the elemental damages for my big tamer (which i cant do UNTIL THEY SELL ME MORE STABLE SLOTS!!!!! WHY WAS THIS NOT RELEASED WITH THE PUBLISH!!!!!) ((i digress)) so i want one of each Drake.
and i want them to be 90% in everything.
A nice all around pet.
not super heavy in HP to be a damage sponge or anything like that - a good solid 90% pet.
so i could in reality tame any Drake i stumble upon and level it up to 100%, get my first allotment of points, muck around and buff up his resist to 90% and his stats, then go into training mode again, work up to 100% and go back in for another helping of points and put on some specials and such.

im seeing this right, yes?

so what circumstance would farming animals before hand be with this new change.
get one over-capped on HP as a damage sponge sacrificing stamina and mana?
get a pet way high in a certain resist to tailor it against a certain boss?
say a rune beetle with 95 poison resist (cap is like 80 with pet imbuing).

that kinda stuff, ya.

just trying to get this all straight in my head.

 

[Grace of Minoc]

The higher hitpoints, resist, strength, intelligence the better as then you wont have to spend as
many "imbuing" points on them and can use those points on say, powerscrolls, or regens.

also, I have found that going between having a four slot pet and have an ethy or be on foot
with a non ridable five slot pet is putting me in a quandary. The better stats/hp/etc on a wild
pet could make or break not training it into a five slot as it is a well rounded pet already at four.

just something to chew on.

 

[Ender]

The higher hitpoints, resist, strength, intelligence the better as then you wont have to spend as
many "imbuing" points on them and can use those points on say, powerscrolls, or regens.

also, I have found that going between having a four slot pet and have an ethy or be on foot
with a non ridable five slot pet is putting me in a quandary. The better stats/hp/etc on a wild
pet could make or break not training it into a five slot as it is a well rounded pet already at four.

just something to chew on.

The UO wiki made it sound like all those stats still factored into the cap, though.

 

[Grace of Minoc]

Can't speak for the wiki, only with what I have seen messing around in game. And am not
talking about overcapping any one stat/resist. More like what the OP said having a really good
overall/balanced pet.

For instance,
say you want the end result of your pet to have 500 strength (3 imbuing points per str point and 500 mana
(.5 imbuing points per 1 mana) Well, if you tame one at at 400 str instead of 350 str, and at 200 mana versus 250 mana,
you just saved yourself 125 imbuing points for something else.

I am terrible with math and will happily eat my hat if wrong. Been using spreadsheets and think I have a grasp on this.

 

[railshot]

The higher hitpoints, resist, strength, intelligence the better as then you wont have to spend as
many "imbuing" points on them and can use those points on say, powerscrolls, or regens.

also, I have found that going between having a four slot pet and have an ethy or be on foot
with a non ridable five slot pet is putting me in a quandary. The better stats/hp/etc on a wild
pet could make or break not training it into a five slot as it is a well rounded pet already at four.

just something to chew on.

The higher stats of a wild pet would also mean that it has higher slot requirement. So while it's true that you will need to spend fewer points, you won't have more points to spend because of the slot adjustment.

So, yes, with few small exception where you look for a pet with an overcapped stat, you can pretty much grab any pet and achieve nearly the same result.
I love the variety that was added with this taming update, but think tying the number of slots to the initial stats is an sloppy solution to the balancing problem that has not been thought through properly. Removing the need to look for a better pet kills one of the unique features of UO. What is potentially even worse, is that removes a huge time sink (content) that for a change, most players did not mind doing.

 

[Grace of Minoc]

Also, some pets can have very high natural resist in one or two resists. Since
you can't lower them, you can end up with very unbalanced resists. Which, if that is what you
are looking for or don't care then ya it won't matter. But have been shooting for getting
balanced pets that I can take anywhere with resists between say 65-80 in all elements.

Don't have the time or inclination to train up a hundred pets myself. So want the few I will train up
to have good defense.

 

[Pawain]

In a few days somebody will make a pet that can kill everything in Doom while the owner stands on the beach. Ok, that's an exaggeration maybe. I have faith that someone will very quickly figure out the best basics and then we will apply the cookie cutters.

I'm starting with untrained pets with a high resist in physical or energy or fire so I can use it for a specific purpose. Like Oaks or lady Mel. A high physical and poison for the dragon turtle. So I don't need to put points in the other resists.

I probably wont screw something like that up.

 

[Tina Small]

I have a question about the "planning" portion of animal taming. How many times can you look at that part of the gump? Just once and then you're committed to whatever you entered? Or can you look at it to get a feel for what it shows, back out, do not training, come back and look at it again and muck around with it, back out, etc.? I've had no time to mess with this, although I did spend a little time yesterday on Origin trying to get a rare-hued nightmare and taming a couple of crimson and platinum drakes. (BTW, @Kyronix / @Bleak, why do the crimson and platinum drakes just drop plain leather? Shouldn't it be horned leather?)

 

[kazeandi]

With the old system we had RNG, whereas the new one allows for planning a pet out like a character.
I prefer the new system. Never had much luck in games and undoing the WOWification of Taming is a good thing IMO.

 

[Pawain]

I have a question about the "planning" portion of animal taming. How many times can you look at that part of the gump? Just once and then you're committed to whatever you entered? Or can you look at it to get a feel for what it shows, back out, do not training, come back and look at it again and muck around with it, back out, etc.? I've had no time to mess with this, although I did spend a little time yesterday on Origin trying to get a rare-hued nightmare and taming a couple of crimson and platinum drakes. (BTW, @Kyronix / @Bleak, why do the crimson and platinum drakes just drop plain leather? Shouldn't it be horned leather?)

You just X the property out like vendor search, you can do it over and over. We are talking about the PLANNING menu.

 

[Cereal2K]

From what I could see there's still the same variations in pets as before within the control slot limit maybe a bit less severe but not 100% sure on that. What I can definitely say tho is there are caps for each control slot number which you can hunt for, this is especially true for pets which spawn with a variable number of control slots.
For example I spent a few hours today killing nightmares and I have found that finding one with near cap stats/resists for it to still be 2 control slots is a lot better than taming one with 3 control slots because you get more more pet training cycles.
My prepatch nightmare which was in the 93%ile became 3 slot when I enabled pet training, the best 2 slot nightmare I found today had better resists and hp/stam/int etc than my old one the only noticeable difference was a lot less strength. A bit of simple math however showed me that after bringing it up to the same strength value I still had 900 training points left over so when that nightmare became 3 slot I was about 1100 training points up from the previous one (counting leftover points as well as points for stats/resists that were higher than my old nightmare) so in cases where pets spawn with variable control slots try to find one with the lowest number of slots as close to the cap as possible. You will have to do some testing to see where the breakpoint is right before slot requirement goes up but if you're willing to do that going with the lower pet is definitely the better choice.

For the new drakes I haven't been able to find one lower than a 2 slot, I'll do more testing tomorrow but from what I saw today the most noticeable difference in the new drakes is the resists the rest of the stats dont seem differ by more than +/- 15 ish.

 

[Pawain]

All my Cus dropped to 3 slots. Is that a good thing?

 

[railshot]

From what I could see there's still the same variations in pets as before within the control slot limit maybe a bit less severe but not 100% sure on that. What I can definitely say tho is there are caps for each control slot number which you can hunt for, this is especially true for pets which spawn with a variable number of control slots.
For example I spent a few hours today killing nightmares and I have found that finding one with near cap stats/resists for it to still be 2 control slots is a lot better than taming one with 3 control slots because you get more more pet training cycles.

Yes, but why don't you take that 2 slot one with high stats and compare it with any other 2 slot one after you give them identical training. The difference is too tiny to bother.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

There are still some stats you'll want to look for. For example, me and a guildmate spent almost 2 hours killing Saurosaurus earlier, trying to get one with 85 Physical and 90 Fire Resist to spawn. Best we got was 83/90. Even though this means i'll be able to pump less into other Resists, i'm fine with that, due to Physical and Fire being the two most common and therefore important Resists. Just means i'll leave the Cold and Poison Resists a little lower.
Another example, is that i spent about 15 minutes killing White Wyrms, until i got one to spawn with 760 STR (max) and 80 Cold Resist (lowest). You can only imbue up to 700 STR, so the 60 overcap is nice (Strength * 0.3 for damage calculations), and i specifically wanted the lowest Cold Resist on him, so that i could raise the other, more important Resists higher.
Another good thing to go after, is a Rune Beetle with 138+ Poisoning (when wild, so 125+ after tame), and 75 Poison Resist (the lowest they can have, once again, so other more important resists can be raised higher).

 

[Yadd of Legends]

All my Cus dropped to 3 slots. Is that a good thing?

Is that after you hit the start training button? My old cu (not hitting the start training button) is still taking up 4 slots, although the gump when I lore it (EC) is claiming it's 3 = > 5 pet slots. I know it's 4 slots, because my floating pets bar says 4/5, and I can't buy a horse with the cu out and me on an ethy

 

[sablestorm]

Is that after you hit the start training button? My old cu (not hitting the start training button) is still taking up 4 slots, although the gump when I lore it (EC) is claiming it's 3 = > 5 pet slots. I know it's 4 slots, because my floating pets bar says 4/5, and I can't buy a horse with the cu out and me on an ethy

Did you stable it and take it back out of the stable to update your follower slots? It might be a case where putting it into training doesn't update your follower count properly. I'm not sure stabling and unstabling will work either, but it is something to try if you haven't.

 

[Turbo]

Once you complete your first round of training to 100% and then go to customise the cu it will then adjust to 3 slots so your first round of upgrades brings it back up to 4

 

[R Traveler]

You still need to look at numbers.
All upgrades per level adds same amount of points for any pets. So better pet you had before upgrade = better pet with upgrades.
In case pet may spawn with variable slot requirement, you need to look for best pet not exceeding slot increase.

For example most lesser hiruys may spawn 1-slot and some best strongest are 2-slots. For training you need to find best 1-slot. Keep in mind they may turn 1 slot more during normal training if their stats increased up to 125.

 

[Turbo]

Everyone is getting hung up on stats affecting control slots but from what i have seen, no wild tamables have a higher slot than they used to have before the patch but now the weaker ones come in at 1 slot below standard so picking a high quality pet will still only need the same number of slots they did before patch. Of couse some things have changed for eg cus used to be 4 slot but now i have never seen a wild one over 3. If anyone has seen otherwise i would like to find out so i know for sure.

 

[R Traveler]

If anyone has seen otherwise i would like to find out so i know for sure.

Most new nightmares are 3 slots, was 2.
Most new dragons are 4 slots, was 3.
Many rune beetles are 4 slots, was 3.

 

[Pawain]

Is that after you hit the start training button? My old cu (not hitting the start training button) is still taking up 4 slots, although the gump when I lore it (EC) is claiming it's 3 = > 5 pet slots. I know it's 4 slots, because my floating pets bar says 4/5, and I can't buy a horse with the cu out and me on an ethy

Yup after training button is pressed. I can have it and a 2 slot Nightmare out.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

If I hit the training button on my cu, the obvious upside is that it's going to suddenly be three slots instead of four. What else would change that might be a downside? Or is that what you're asking? I'm hesitant to hit the button and mess up my pet

 

[Poo]

If I hit the training button on my cu, the obvious upside is that it's going to suddenly be three slots instead of four. What else would change that might be a downside? Or is that what you're asking? I'm hesitant to hit the button and mess up my pet

you can stop at each level and just not hit the "train pet" button.

so say you put our Cu into training mode, it goes down to a 3 slot.
you get it up to 100% and buff it up with some higher HP or some spells or something and it moves up a notch to a 4 slot you can stop right there and leave the pet just like that and it wont go any higher.
just dont hit the train pet button again.

 

[Pawain]

If I hit the training button on my cu, the obvious upside is that it's going to suddenly be three slots instead of four. What else would change that might be a downside? Or is that what you're asking? I'm hesitant to hit the button and mess up my pet

What Poo said. You don't have to advance the pet so it could stay a 3 slot pet forever. You will just get an annoying box pop up. Another advantage is you can take it along with a 2 slot pet and train them both. So, it is a good thing.

 

[Uvtha]

I think in general it's no longer important to get a pet with good stats. The only things you want to look for are things with stats over the cap, and that mainly pertains to Str.

The higher the stats on the fresh tame the better, but I don't think it makes a very noticeable difference in the end.