So, I last played UO back in 2006...

[Gardo]

Tamer is my absolute favorite character to play. My main is a disco/tamer with several old pets in the stable. Two WWs (1 eats gold, the other does not), two 2-slot NMs with 515/125/125 (one black, one lighter), two RBs, one Dragon, one 4-slot Cu, and one 4-slot Hiryu.

So.....
I've been snooping around the forums and have figured out that some older pets can be real gems and obviously don't want to screw anything up. That said, where would you guys suggest I start? Some of the posts I have read about the 4-slot hiryus and Cu's suggest they can be somewhat 'buggy' after you release and re-tame. Am I better off taming new ones? Color isn't important to me, just decent resists and stats. Am I better off with a lesser hiryu than a hiryu? What's the best plan for my old-school WWs and NMs? How do you determine if they are rare, in addition to being a trainer's gem?

Sorry for the lengthy post. I'm just trying to get a grasp of all the changes and don't want to make any mistakes with my old pets.

Thanks,
Gardo

 

[Petra Fyde]

Copy the character to test center ( Character Copy – Ultima Online ), try the changes there - and if they don't work out delete the test center version and copy it over again.

 

[Pawain]

4-slot hiryus and Cu's suggest they can be somewhat 'buggy' after you release and re-tame.

Completly false. They just lose 20 points in wrestling and tactics. I have only seen one that did not go to 3 slots. It was a Cu with 630 HP. He had 3 others that worked fine.

I would start with one of the Hiryus or a Cu to get the mechanics of what to do. You can keep those alive a lot easier while learning where to train. Just save scrolls for one of the Nightmares.

What Shard are you on?

 

[Gardo]

Yep. Definitely won't do anything on live shard until I work with a TC copy. That's prudent advice. Now that said, I can test abilities on TC and play with stats and attributes but that doesn't mean I will fully understand the pro's and con's of a particular build over the long haul and truly be happy with those selections. I'm curious what route experienced people have taken with their legacy WWs and NMs in regard to abilities, stats, resists, etc. What builds have you had success with and at what kind of hunting do these builds excel? (IE... I definitely wouldn't want to accidentally select a specialized build for a boss or purpose I would rarely/never utilize in game.) As I said, it has been a decade since I last hunted and much of the content is vastly different than when I left the game. For instance I teleported to a place I fought rotting corpses and instead came across an Ogre Bonecrusher that proceeded to ruin my day.... lol. Drachenfels has always been my home but seems to have very little population now days, not that it was ever a crazy-busy server. The one group that offered to team-up the other day wanted to do the Felluca scene and I kindly declined as my PVP skills were terrible back in the day and likely haven't improved over my extended break. So, currently solo'ing targets is about my only option.

I am pretty confident in the direction I will take my pups because there is so much good information here. I just don't see as much information about these other pets.

*deleted*

Thanks again! Any advice is greatly appreciated

Gardo

edit: deleted hypothetical scenario from post

 

[Gardo]

Completly false. They just lose 20 points in wrestling and tactics. I have only seen one that did not go to 3 slots. It was a Cu with 630 HP. He had 3 others that worked fine.

I would start with one of the Hiryus or a Cu to get the mechanics of what to do. You can keep those alive a lot easier while learning where to train. Just save scrolls for one of the Nightmares.

What Shard are you on?

Thanks for responding!

In regard to my 'buggy' comment, I was reading a post about a legacy lesser hiryu that seemed to jump up a control slot at every training interval. IE...he took it to 1-slot by re-taming and when he trained it to 2-slot, it jumped up to 3-slot. So he had to release and re-tame to take it back to 2-slot. Then he thought that training gains seemed slower after this happened. I thought this might be common on all 4-slotters, but I have learned, or perhaps not, not to assume things... lol

Currently residing on Drachenfels. Not sure that will be my long term home given the shard population....

 

[Petra Fyde]

When considering adding spellweave or myst to a magic caster keep in mind that if you do the pet will no longer use magic. The only thing I've done with my magic casters is give them special moves, increased their skill caps, and possible give them magery mastery

Maybe start by reading up a bit? Animal Training – Ultima Online

know what restrictions and caps there are before you start?

 

[Gardo]

When considering adding spellweave or myst to a magic caster keep in mind that if you do the pet will no longer use magic. The only thing I've done with my magic casters is give them special moves, increased their skill caps, and possible give them magery mastery

Maybe start by reading up a bit? Animal Training – Ultima Online

know what restrictions and caps there are before you start?

I've been reading more than I've been playing to be perfectly honest, or so it seems. I guess I should have better illustrated my examples for my hypothetical abilities..... obviously, neither is a direction I would take a NM and was more of an absurd, duh... I'm an idiot scenario...

Anyway, I'm simply trying to gauge with what builds veterans have had success or failure and if they can give me any insight. As I said in a previous post, TC testing can only go so far and doesn't fully replicate all in game scenarios....

Appreciate the insight. I'll keep digging for info

 

[Gardo]

Gold eating WW... 69/23/89/46/49

 

[Gardo]

Non-gold eating WW.... 69/25/85/49/50

 

[Gardo]

My old NMs...
Black...62/39/39/39/28
Meany... 59/37/39/37/27

 

[Pawain]

Keep the Nightmares in the stable until you have done a few pets.

Train one of the Hiryus.

 

[Khaelor]

Going to kind of go with pawain here, keep the ww, nightmares and dragon in the stable, train up the hiryu.

Some specs for the old nightmares I have used, chiv/ai, that would replace Magery. This is probably one of my favorite specs. Other specs I run are Magery/ai and Magery/fww. Nightmares don't get a lot of play with specs due to only being able to choose one ability.

Ww, chiv/ai, fww/goo.

I'm at work, hopefully I'll remember to edit this/expand on it when I get home and can actually type.

 

[Gardo]

Thanks everyone for taking the time to read about this old tamer's problems... lol

Much appreciated!

I will do some hunting with my GD while my pups and birds re-bond. (I swear I had bonding pots somewhere when I left.....)

 

[Finegold]

Keep the Nightmares in the stable until you have done a few pets.

Train one of the Hiryus.

Yes! This.

Wait on training your mares.

Go tame some new lesser hiryus... train them up. Tame some new cus. .. train them up. Nothing teaches yiu better than trying things out.

Did i say wait on yiur mares?

 

[Gardo]

I am waiting around on a new Cu and a couple of lesser hiryus to bond, so, I went ahead and got the training progress bar on all my bonded pets to 100% and copied my tamer over to the TC. I've been playing around with the training interface for a bit now and it seems to make a little sense. (.....or perhaps not)

Here's what's going on....
The first pet I started testing with was my legacy dragon. I first added HP/Mana/Stamina to his stats. Next upgrade was gonna be to max his dex at 150, but for some reason it wouldn't raise. After fussing around with it some more, I decided to try my luck with a WW. Same result when trying to cap the dex at 150. I finally pulled one of my mares out of the stable for giggles and its dex immediately rolled up to 150, no problemo.

Am I missing something about the stats on dragons and WWs? Are they not able reach the 150 cap? Is the dex trained up during the 4-slot to 5-slot training cycle? I tried a few searches on the forum but nothing seemed to match-up with my inquiry.

Thanks in advance

Gardo

 

[Petra Fyde]

How high are the other stats? there's a cap for combined str/dex/int

 

[Gardo]

How high are the other stats? there's a cap for combined str/dex/int

WW stats are 742/125/391, or a total of 1258 combined.. I know you are given 2300 cap weight on stats, which these totals would far exceed based on the FAQ page. Gauging by that info and your response, I guess those pets' stats will be static. I guess that's what I was figuring but was hoping for something else....

Anyway, off to work I go.

Thanks for the quick response Petra Fyde

 

[Petra Fyde]

Yes - my WW also has below max dex - because the cap on str for training is 700, but my WW has 756 str before training, coupled with it's 404 int leaves no room for more dex.
str is valued at 3.0x = 2268 points
int is valued at .5x = 202 points = 2470
Cap is 2300 points

 

[Gardo]

Yes - my WW also has below max dex - because the cap on str for training is 700, but my WW has 756 str before training, coupled with it's 404 int leaves no room for more dex.
str is valued at 3.0x = 2268 points
int is valued at .5x = 202 points = 2470
Cap is 2300 points

My wife was wondering if the extra high STR will overcome the lack of capped DEX in the long run? I have no idea... Seems like most of what I read indicates DEX is king in terms of DPS. How does your WW stack up to other pets? I figured dragons and WWs probably wouldn't necessarily be the uber-best pets but I'm so attached to them and I've had them for so darn long, I just wanna do them justice.

Anyhoo, now I'm really going to work

 

[Khaelor]

Dex is movement speed. Stamina is swing speed. You can max out the swing speed on legacy ww and dragons. However they take their sweet litttle time getting places compared to some other animals due to the lower dex.

 

[Gardo]

Dex is movement speed. Stamina is swing speed. You can max out the swing speed on legacy ww and dragons. However they take their sweet litttle time getting places compared to some other animals due to the lower dex.

*facepalm*

I really should've known that!

Thank you kindly

 

[Petra Fyde]

My wife was wondering if the extra high STR will overcome the lack of capped DEX in the long run? I have no idea... Seems like most of what I read indicates DEX is king in terms of DPS. How does your WW stack up to other pets? I figured dragons and WWs probably wouldn't necessarily be the uber-best pets but I'm so attached to them and I've had them for so darn long, I just wanna do them justice.

Anyhoo, now I'm really going to work

Pick your target for best results. I took mine to play with Blood dungeon balron and she took the paragon down in a fraction of the time my GD used to take, because she's targeting its lowest resist.

 

[Khaelor]

How does your WW stack up to other pets? I figured dragons and WWs probably wouldn't necessarily be the uber-best pets but I'm so attached to them and I've had them for so darn long, I just wanna do them justice.

They are some of the highest str tamables in game. They are actually quite good, if trained right.

I have a large collection of legacy dragons, ww, nightmares and some lesser ones like bake kitsunes.

In terms of rarity, dragons are the most rare of the big three, most people gave up their dragons for greater dragons years ago. Then white wyms. Nightmares being the most common, most people kept least one prior to 97. So I would take great care of the dragon and wyrm.

 

[North_LS]

One of my pre-97 dragons went wild on me. I was able to retame, but his stats are trash now and he jumped to 5 slot

 

[Gardo]

One of my pre-97 dragons went wild on me. I was able to retame, but his stats are trash now and he jumped to 5 slot

Oh wow! That really sucks. What happened to cause that unfortunate event?

 

[Khaelor]

One of my pre-97 dragons went wild on me. I was able to retame, but his stats are trash now and he jumped to 5 slot

Something to remember the taming skill on animals jumps with slot increases, even if you were able to control it before, if you don't have the adequate taming/lore, it will be uncontrollable.

 

[Gardo]

Something to remember the taming skill on animals jumps with slot increases, even if you were able to control it before, if you don't have the adequate taming/lore, it will be uncontrollable.

Will legendary skill level always be enough to maintain control? Are there other variables to the equation? (skill mastery, etc.)

 

[Khaelor]

Legendary Taming Lore will always be enough.

Couple other things: the changed line of sight code, used to be able to leave pets out of your los/in town and it would take forever for their loyality to decrease, not the case anymore. Pets left anywhere other than a house and are out of sight of the tamer will rather rapidly lose loyalty. This can include uneven ground and around corners

 

[North_LS]

Yep, I left the dragon at a spawn for a bit to go get different armor. Came back, issued one command, and untame. Didn't expect the loyalty to deteriorate that quickly.