Techno-Bard

[Stickypaws]

Hullos Tamers!

Right, decided what I am going to try. I was going to try another pack hunter but I have been there and done that before (i have had nearly every pack animal as a pack up to SE). I looked at the current power house templates. Didn't like any of them. I have a streak in me that demands quirky stuff. I like hunting and having people come across me with a gaping mouth wondering what I am doing (I.E. hunting monsters in the Abyss as a near naked thief).

So my new template... Its not really a tamer template... It has Animal lore on but thats it skill wise... It does however use pets as its main killy thing. It is a Techno-Bard as the title suggests.

What I am aiming for is this :

120 Animal Lore
120 Music
120 Peacemaking
100 Tinkering
100 Magery
100 Med
60 Mining

I want to hunt with 2 pet sets.

Set 1

1 Vollem - 2 Control Slots
1 Gollem - 3 Control Slots

Set 2

5 Leather Wolves - 1 Control Slot each

The skill breakdown.

120 Animal Lore - Gives me the 7 stable slots I need (thankyou SA!). Also enables me lore mechanical pets (90 animal lore?).

120 Music + 120 Peace - I really need these guys to take as little damage as possible, and have some spawn control.

100 Tinkering - Duh, I intend to make pets and repair them. I need 100 Tink.

100 Magery + 100 Med - I need to gate them about

60 Mining - I will buy the Bronze ingots I need, Iron ingots are what I need the most. All the other metal types... Well... Im a tinker... Dont really need them do i?

I would like to give this a go not only because using mechanical pets is different, I cant really see anything anywhere on anyone giving a techno character any real use in modern UO.

If you happen to see a fella running about with mechanical pets on Europa, gimme a poke and say hello

 

[Logrus]

Peace masteries can give you and most pets increased regens and resistance to poison or you could also run with damage reduction.


If you could switch up peace with provo. you could use inspire which would grant you hci/sdi and damage increase on your pets and might fare better for your pack instinct since your pets are not really damage tankers.

 

[Stickypaws]

Bard masteries do not appear to effect mechanical pets. That was my original idea, to give them some regen between fights. When I use the skill I don't see their health bars move more than normal, and I am guessing it is meant to give them sparklies thing around them like it does to my character?

 

[Logrus]

I think mechanical pets were "fixed" sometime after the masteries came out because they should be only healable by tinkering.

Other pets are affected by the masteries.

(Sparklies only go on the bard)

 

[Stickypaws]

Coolios, good to know. Thanks Logrus. ^^

While your here, I got a question. What is the purpose of the delay on healing mechanicals through tinkering?

For anyone else, is there any way to make a macro in the new client to repair without opening the tinker tool menu?

For anyone interested, the Golem + Vollem combo is working fine, assisted with Peacemaking. I believe whatever comes out of the stable first seems to get hit first so I am having to take out the Golem first as he cant take the bigger hits. The Vollem is quite squishy.

With 100 Tinkering, 115 Music, 95 Peace, and a GM instrument, I have barely had to heal them when fighting Poison Elementals in Shame, Elder Gazers, Ice Fiends and Demons in Hythloth. Against Elder Gazers I barely had to Peace. Poison Eles went a bit pear shaped when it started beating on the Vollem and I failed to peace 3 times in a row (my bad, took Vollem out first).

They have made me 200k so thats a 120 Animal Lore on the cards, hoping to get that and finish a pack of wolves by the end of the week (essence of the void are a bugger to get!).

 

[Logrus]

No idea about the delay play, I'd have to read up on the back notes.

When I get in I'll see about that macro.

 

[Stickypaws]

Good sir you are a star! Thankyou for looking at my rambling posts and looking into a nowdays redundent character type. ^^

I will post you some home made flapjacks for your breakfast.

 

[Stickypaws]

Ok, couple of observations so far.

The scorpions only have about 60hp. Epic squishyness, you would have to train them up to 125hp before taking them out anywhere seriously.

Golems utterly rock. The 'cant be poisoned' bit has made them perfect for smacking about Bane Dragons. 160 magic resist also rocks against magic using beasties (they laugh at Elder Gazers).

The Leather wolves... E Gads... First of all, they all only seem to have up to about 160hp, not up to 350 like on stratics guide. I have also keep reading that they summon wolves every 4 seconds. They don't. At all. It doesn't matter if I am using 1, 2, or 5, and doesn't matter how many control slots I have open. I have set them to guard me and let them attack on their own, all killed, and 'name' killed. I have bashed Vorpal Bunnies, set them on the Bane Guardians, all sorts that last a long time and so far I haven't seen a single summoned wolf. I don't know if they are actually meant to though, as I have only seen it written on guides, I am unsure if anyone else other than me has actually tested it. Anyone know if they are actually meant to summon other wolves?

Also while on the wolves, don't let them get poisoned en masse. No easy cures against Bane Dragon mass poisoning and its a bugger to keep them all up once they are all poisoned. Limited to the cure spell and you have no interim heals thanks to the epic delay on the repairs (20 secounds between each heal).

Will post more scribblings later

Still playin with em

Still gettin bashed with em...

Hehe ^^

 

[Stickypaws]

I am back down to 1 scorpion and I need to sell / trade / give it away as I need the stable space. Seeing as theres no Hunters Guide on em, heres the stats of my last Scorp.

 

[Stickypaws]

I have been given masses of void essence and been told by a few people they are liking what im doing in game, so a brief update for whats bringing a bit of a halt to my mechanic.

Last week I was having huge problems with cohesion when hunting with mechanical pets. I just couldnt run through a get first time. By the time i have fluffed and faffed I was well on my way to losing a pet. In fact last week I lost 2 vollems from it.

This weekend (post update?) I am having troubles getting them to follow me through gates while in / right after being in a combat situation. I will open a gate, all follow me, walk through and I land on the other end on my own. Left 5 wolves in the White Wyrms lair today, ran back through, got smacked and chased, as I died I saw a big swarm of monsters eating my pets one by one. Quite a loss, 10 void essence and some techno lub went into them.

I submitted a bug report.

I am going to use a Vollem and Gollem for a bit more and see if that bug goes as its a less costly loss. If not, ill have to work around it.

Until then, you'll see me about with the 2 pet combo, less info to give you but I will get more scrappin done

 

[Stickypaws]

I have also keep reading that they summon wolves every 4 seconds. They don't. At all. It doesn't matter if I am using 1, 2, or 5, and doesn't matter how many control slots I have open. I have set them to guard me and let them attack on their own, all killed, and 'name' killed. I have bashed Vorpal Bunnies, set them on the Bane Guardians, all sorts that last a long time and so far I haven't seen a single summoned wolf. I don't know if they are actually meant to though, as I have only seen it written on guides, I am unsure if anyone else other than me has actually tested it. Anyone know if they are actually meant to summon other wolves?

Going back to this for a moment. I found out today from Kimi that people used to exploit the summons to get wolf eyes. To counter this I believe instead of removing the loot from summoned wolves, they removed the main 'thing' of the pet, and stopped them summoning all together. Kinda like removing the greater bit of the greater dragon really.

Logrus good sir, I still have a flapjack waiting for you, if you happen to pass by this thread again would love to know if theres any chance the summons can be turned back on with the loot being removed from the summons corpses. Kinda defeats the point of the pet if its so hard to gather 10 void essence to make a pack of them and yeah.. Their big skill has been entirely removed.

 

[Poo]

about the tinker timer for healing mech pets being 30 seconds.

i can shed some light on this, as i was here back then and it killed my mule.

back then they where only 2 stable slots, so you could have 2 of those big brutes out with you while you where mining, and they where AWSOME, they would destroy all the spawnable stuff out in the forest that would bug any miner.

and then someone was complaining that this was overkill and such cause you could chain heal them (im guessing in pvp)

so they came out and made them 3 control slots so you could only have one up at a time and they added that STUPID (gahd i still get so made about that timer) 30 second timer in, which killed golems as pets and has made (in my opinion) mech pets totally non-feasable.

if they really wanted to make mech pets so we could USE them they would do 2 things.
just 2 little things.

1) they would take that damn 30 second timer out.

2) LET US BOND THESE MECH PETS!!!!!!!!!

like really!
what is the use of having these cause you train them and love them and nurture them then a REALLY big critter comes in and POW, they are dead and gone and your building a new one and starting from scratch all over again.

i still miss having my 2 golem bouncers with me when i mine.

i have 2 bonded vollems.... but that just not blacksmith / tinker like.
having big mechanical bodyguards..... that was good stuff.
hell, even having one and a beetle with ya was good.

 

[Stickypaws]

E gads that must have been a heck of a long time ago! I remember when they were bumped control slot wise, if that was when / why thats a bit of a defunct patch now. ^^

I am not to worried about the pets being dead thing. I do think they could be cheaper to make though if they are going to suffer perma death. On Europa the essence gos for between 25-50k. Effectively a Vollem's death costs you 75ks worth of essence alone.

I also wouldn't want to see Golems users become like the some of the Tamers* have been for years scince bonding came in. Throw your pets at stuff and not care weather they live or die.

Sucks a bit with all the 1 hit killers in the game today. But you know... Pre bonding you did look after your pets, or you kept retaming them.

Thankya Poo, Karma to you sir!

*Not all tamers.

 

[Wenchkin]

I don't think I'd have any issue with tinkers being able to "bond" with these mechanical pets if it could be added as an option.

Reason I say that is that non tamers can have bonded giant beetles, boura and the bonded vollums. All can be trained up as useful fighting pets for a non tamer. Instead of taming skill, check the tinkering.

Or, make it so that the expensive parts can be recovered. Then while it'll disadvantage a player if they're careless and have to keep re-building, it doesn't mean spending a fortune if your mechanical leather wolves get shredded. The higher the tinkering skill, the greater the % of stuff you could recover perhaps. If a mechanical pet had to be rebuilt after death, the skills etc would end up back at the starting level, which would really encourage folk to look after em.

I think the mechanical bonding would be better though, because I don't see with all the useful little non taming pets, these guys would be a bad addition to the mix.

Wenchy

 

[Stickypaws]

I would like the bonding, it would mean you wouldn't need Magery to move them about. But that might be a big coding job.

If changing the healing timer down is just a case of changing a couple of numbers in the code, I would be more keen on campaigning for that as it might get done.

 

[Stickypaws]

I has had some trouble playing the last few days due to the server lag spikes Europa has been having, losing a golem pet to lag kinda sucks donkey willy.

An extra highlight of repairing golems I have found this week though, is that tinker tool useage is on a skill timer. Try using any skill, hiding, peace, anything and then open your tinker tool. Pretty much means you need to have your tinker tool open at all times (which is an awful lot of screen real estate ^^ ).

I did get the wolves to a couple of bosses this week. To be blunt, you absolutely need a tank with the wolves now. 120 peace doesn't cut it on the 160 barding beasties. Also, looking at the damage output of them and frenzie's, its not much difference. The only difference being you need taming on your template if you take the frenzies, and they are easier to heal. Though leather wolves are cool.

I have for the time being consigned him to just using a golem and a vollem. They hit slow enough to not just break a peaced creatures peace within a secound or two of a peace.

Logrus, if you happen to pass back in this thread for the flapjack I offered, the only thing you have to do to make the tinker pets 'useable' is give them a way of being repaired easily. Even if its just to remove the timer from repairs. Honestly that one little change would be all thats needed Bonding, rezzing, and the leather wolves ability to come back are all just stuff that would be nice. Its the healing they need though.

 

[Poo]

ya know, id think with the COST or having to repair these with iron (or flavored ore) they would remove the timer and let us waste all the iron we wanted too.

tamers only have a 2 second delay on their bandaids and those cost pennies per.

you know, there is a simple fix to this whole thing.
make it so you need something like 90 or even GM tinkering to BOND and HEAL the mech pets.

gives ya the incentive to train your skill and keep it up there and gives you the perk of using a mech pet if you do.

simple and easy.

or make it like a tamer.
ya have to have over 90 tinkering to heal and res your mech pet and ya also have to have arms lore to do it.
like a tamer needs vet and animal lore to do the same with flesh and blood (scales) critters.

meh?

 

[Pinco]

they should do something different than bonding...
maybe if a mech pet will fall, in the corpse you can recover the "pet rebuild engine" and by double click it (and having the right materials), you can rebuild the pet with the same stats. More higher are the stats, and higher will be the cost of rebuilding.

But I'd like to have exodus overseer/minion as pet with barriers like the old times

 

[Stickypaws]

I shall maintain bonding isn't needed, just the ability to keep them alive is

 

[Stickypaws]

2 new things to throw in today.

I haven't checked against Golems in the wild, but the stratics hunters guide is well out on the golems resist's from the ones I have been making. Mine (GM made) are averaging :

45 Physical
50 Fire
20 Cold
99 Poison
35 Energy

Stratics listing :

45 Physical
100 Fire
20 Cold
18 Poison
35 Energy

I have to venture out in the wold and lore a few wild ones, but 18 poison resist? Doesnt look right does it?

Edit :

Did go and check it, the Wild Golems resists are hugely off the made ones. Go figure....

So! Other stuff!

I have said in a previous post Golems rock against magic creatures. So today I took just a golem (old schools or summit innit) and hit on a few Eldar Gazers. I was so confident in its abilities to survive, I even bounced off to drop gold off at the bank and left him in the Shame Gazer room for a bit.

Thinking about that, I was eager to know what other magic creatures it could kill. Well that obviously led me to fishing monsters. Serpents and water ellies. I took a fresh golem into Destard, than ran back out cause there was 3 greater dragons by the door. Changed my underwear, left the golem outside, ran through screaming like a girl, invised and relogged in the water ellie area. My Golem took on one with barely a dink, 2 at time gave him some scuff marks, 4 at a time nearly took him to half health.... Nearly. I am aware most fishermen load up nowdays with all manner of fish killing stuff, but if your an old fisher with not much offence, Golems rule against water ellies and serpents. Couple one with a vollem, and you have some rockin fishin companions.

So what other magic monsters can I take these guys too... I really want to try lichs, lich lords maybe, and heaven forbid them fairy dragons.... Or Skrees.... I really havent tried them against anything 'new world' UO yet. Think thats gonna be my next hunts. Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[Stickypaws]

Lichs got mashed by a golem on his own. Good ole clank. Hes a big hefty old golem with a lot of rust but hes the first golem I made, hes fought legions of monsters with me, I love ole clank. Anywhos, he could kill 3-4 lichs one after the other without being healed (and no peacing). He can take 2 at a time, but any more than that and he needs help. Does pretty good otherwise.

Lich Lord with a golem and a vollem went ok, I have been trying to avoid peace, but this was a skin of the teeth fight. Wither was what threw it. He shifted target a couple of times and went for the vollem. If I didnt have the vollem with me I wouldnt have killed it quick enough and it would have killed Clank (the golem). It can be done without peace though.

Skrees, that was a quick fight.... A golem and vollem make quick work of them. Easy peasy lemon squeasy. We did have some headless chicken running from raptors though. Raptors are mean!

I still haven't tried fairy dragons, must try that this weekend.

In the mean time i wanted some fame. I headed down to the ice fiends, a gate from Luna bank, in I go and some fella runs in after me. Sees the fiends, cant get back through the gate, screams 'gate me out gate me out' flapping his arms.

I pop a gate for him as I lay into an ice fiend with Clank and Inger (inger is a mechanical vollem I have had for ages who has been Clanks hunting buddy more or less scince I started this tinker quest.

The fellow runs out and poofs off to Luna. Both the ice fiends are lurking about down in the bottom of Ice today, I give a few alls kills, a wee bit of peacing, Clank and Inger do well.

I had to go to RL for a bit, both the ice fiends were by the steps down, great, they dont wander far, I will only be a moment.

I park myself and clank and inger in the bottom left corner of the area and leave us there for a minute. I return a short time later to find myself standing above a golems broken body and a heavily damaged vollem standing on top of 2 ice fiend corpses. My heart sank. How?....

A search back in the journal and I see a stranger shout 'An Lor Xen' followed by a couple 'in vas manis', ending with a 'sorry'. The stranger was nowhere to be seen.

Clank was damaged beyond repair...

I took the parts that could be salvaged, dragged Inger the vollem back to Luna, and began working on a new golem. I know hes clockwork and metal bits, but I tell ya, Inger knew Clank was gone and wasn't coming back.

Inger, Nayu and Clank, the intrepid trio who took on the bane, ice fiends, lich lords, white wyrms, and all sorts. These guys took on a bane guard on their own. You may be gone Clank, but you wont be forgotten.

 

[Maleachi]

Ooow drat!
That is a sad story Sticky...

I have seen you wander about with your old trusted golem numerous times and this sight will be missed.
I love and respect what it is you do!

If there is anything you could use to start building on a new friend let us know!
I am sure there are enough willing to lend a hand or throw in a small donation.

 

[Stickypaws]

Narffle thankya, I have everything I need to make 30+ golems, I make and sell them all the time. I cant make 'Clank' himself again though aye.

I might try to turnover a few pets and sell them for enough to cover the costs of new ones, lore them all and do a stats dump into a spreadsheet.

 

[Stickypaws]

A brief update on this, I have dropped Peace all together on this character now and I have been playing with wolves. For those that just want to use mechanical pets I have been playing with leather Wolves this week. Its kinda obvious Golems and Vollems can take bigger hits than the wolves so I have been pairing them up with other pets.

I have been finding 3 leather wolves and a vollem fast enough damage dealers (untrained) to take down most mid - high old UO monsters without taking to much damage. Elder Gazers and Daemons and even the humans in the invasion. Ice fiends switch target to much, didn't lose any pets but had a few eek moments.

But yesh, a pack of wolves are good, but unless you always have someone to tank for you, take a pack of 3 wolves and a vollem. They are pretty hard hitting between them.

Slowly building a spreadsheet of mechanical pets stats GM made. Will post it when I have enough pets on it to make it meaningful.

Till then, hope you have enjoyed reading the thread, if ya fancy something different (though clearly not greater dragon powerful) I recommend giving a tinker ranger a go.

 

[[JD]]

The tinker pets should either be made bondable or very, very cheap and easy to make if they are considered to be expendable. And made 2 slots on the golems again...

 

[Stickypaws]

Without tryin ta give away hunting spots to easy, Imagine if Golems were 2 slots. 2 Golems + 1 player with an orange petal and a quick mounting in the dark guardian room. Golems immunity to poison is a very cool, Golems should stay 3 slots.

Though I will agree on the expense coming down on the other ones, Void Essences are a bugger to collect.

 

[Nereus]

...I have dropped Peace all together on this character...

Since peace+magery allows for more selective targeting in traffic, would you elaborate on what inspired dropping peacemaking, and what replaced it?

Enjoyed reading your posts. Thanks.

 

[Stickypaws]

Bordem.

Peacing stuff is great for farming and easy kills. I was killing Ballys with a golem and vollem. But... Once I had managed to kill one of the Bane Guard on my own... I kinda felt I reached a pinacle.... Like there was nothing I was gonna kill stronger than that...

Everything weaker than that was peace all kill, peace all kill, peace all kill, peace god im bored all kill.

The template works. Its great for tuning heads. Its great for farming. It is utterly boring.

Current template is.....

65 Taming
120 Lore
100 Vetting

100 Alchemy
100 Tinkering
65 Mining (80 with gloves and pickaxe)

95 Magery (105 with alchemists bauble)
75 Hiding

Stables currently consist of :

1 Golem
1 Mechanical Vollem
3 Leather Wolves

1 Fire Beetle
1 Iron Beetle

1 Stone Slith

I wanted a raptor to take some heat while leather wolves or a golem laid into things, but as my thread on that shows, this character for whatever reason, cannot have raptors. Which sucks donkey willy, but there you go.

What is fun however, set the slith onto something first which is vettable, throw the golem in, then hurl pots at stuff with GM alchemy, Ecru Ring, alchemists bauble. Slapped out 80 damage a pot.

If anything has less than 500 health, I throw in a vollem and 3 wolves. Chompy chompy.

Between me and the pets we are kinda rocking.

It also gives me something to do when sitting at banks selling golems. I can also sell Blue Beetles if I choose to. Gives me a bit more player interaction and such.

Edit :

Peace and Music will prolly go back on for some event stuff, I like being around people when I play and the invasions are good for that. Until something else comes along though, I will be blowing stuff up alongside my pets.

2nd Edit :

Logrus I see ya readin the thread, what hope is there of me bein able to heal my mechanical pets somehow? ^^

Look look!

*TOTALLY stalks Logrus* >.>