What is a 2 slot pet better than a nightmare ?

[popps]

I have been working on an effective way to tame Bane Dragons on my own (trying to get a decent one 4+).

Started with a Mage/Tamer and now have moved to a Peace/Tamer.

Since I had to take up Music and Peace, I had to give up Meditation and Eval Int.
I currently only have taming skills (with Vet), music/peace and just plain magery.

This means, I need a pet to subdue the Bane Dragon (without meditation my mana regen is horrible and without eval int the damage done is ineffective).

My first candidate was a nightmare I had in the stables but it went horrible. The thing has so little health points that I have hard time healing it up with veterinary and when it gets poisoned I see the health bar cut down in half in no time. Of course, getting poisoned all the time, waste my healing effort since I merely cure the poison but do not improve health.

Anyways, I found the nightmare not effective and more a pain than real help.

Since the Bane takes up 3 slots I was wondering, what would be a better candidate than the nightmare (perhaps immune to poison ??) that takes 2 followers slots ?

Any advice ?

 

[Metalstorm]

Is your nightmare trained? A nightmare isn't really effective until you train it.

Also it's important to have one with good resists. In my opinion, resists are more important than strength and hit points.


Once a nightmare with good resists has all it's skills at 100 (magery can be in the 90's) it is one hell of a fighter.

I believe a Bake Kitsune is a two slot pet. I havn't used one in a great long while but I remember it having lots of mana (compared to a mare) for spell attacks.
Once trained they are quite effective and there are many people who prefer them over a mare when combined with a rune beetle.

Personally, I'm liking the pairing of a nightmare with a bane dragon over the rune beetle

Tip for spell resist: go to old haven and find six of those spectral spirit things. Sick your mare on them, yell all follow me immediately after all kill so it doesn't kill it" and burn though a big supply of bandages while six of those things cast their curses on your pet.

Resist will rise to 100 within a few hours.


If you're using peace on the bane dragon be aware that even at 120 peace skill the bane will break it after getting hit a couple times so be ready to re peace it a couple times.

 

[Metalstorm]

Also, if you have soul stones available and you can handle the fear of not having the vet skill on these taming missions, Discord is a mighty powerful tool.

A discorded bane (from a 120 disco bard) will hit your mare or bake for a lot less damage and it's health bar will drop very quickly.

I don't claim this to be a perfect set up. My mare has died twice in the 18 or 19 times that I've gone searching for my perfect bane.

And I still havn't gotten one better than 3.3!

 

[Storm]

Nightmare, unicorn, ki-rin, fire steed, drake, bake kitsune, imp

there may be some new ones with SA like the bora I cant remember what slots they take

 

[Llewen]

Also it's important to have one with good resists. In my opinion, resists are more important than strength and hit points.

It's really important to have a clear idea what you intend to use a pet for primarily. For one thing a mare is very likely not going to be your tank pet. You would take it out of the stables last, and you would ride it. The mare would be there for mobility and for added damage. So in my opinion, with a mare, the most important things are hit points and strength, because both affect dps.

Now obviously you want the best resists you can get, but for certain pets dps is more important. In pvp, dps is far more important than resists. That's the reason why I've sold a number of rune beetles that rate higher than my rune beetle and kept the one I have. It has the best combination of str, dex, int, poisoning and eval int skill I've ever seen on a beetle, and all of those contribute to dps. In pvp it is an absolute monster. It's resists aren't horrible, but they aren't great either, and I've sold many beetles with better resists.

The reason why resists are less important in pvp is simply that they don't make as much difference. You give any decent pvp'r time, they will kill any pet, no matter how good the resists are. What you want is a pet that will kill as fast as possible. In pvp two things are king, mobility, and dps. That's why greater dragons are really only useful in certain specialized contexts.

 

[Petra Fyde]

How would your mare do with a little temporary assistance? I cast EVs or earths sometimes to help when I need the follower slots to be available later.

 

[Llewen]

How would your mare do with a little temporary assistance? I cast EVs or earths sometimes to help when I need the follower slots to be available later.

I find the better option when you want to work that way would be a dread warhorse or a bane dragon. And fyi, the bane dragon appears to have higher dps than the dread warhorse, even when it isn't at full strength.

 

[Metalstorm]

It's really important to have a clear idea what you intend to use a pet for primarily. For one thing a mare is very likely not going to be your tank pet.

The OP's goal is to use a nightmare or other two slot pet to beat down a bane dragon for taming so it will be a tank. Thus resists are very important for this particular task

 

[Llewen]

The OP's goal is to use a nightmare or other two slot pet to beat down a bane dragon for taming so it will be a tank. Thus resists are very important for this particular task

Ah, teach me to skim less and read more. Ya, resists and hits are critical...

 

[weins201]

As for farming the Banes looking for a good one -

A TRAINED nightmare is your best bet. Rem trainined is the key word and as for PvM and the prupose you are loking for High HP are important but resists and key. I would not bother with barding skills as they are not really important, with high eval you can cast EVs in support and cure when needed. I farmed over 30 Banes using nightmares and had no problems. My template was Tamer Mage Necro.

Now i was thinking about another second pet to have with the Bane in fights after and looked at Bake, I havn't been out yet with that pair bu I think its a good match.

If you are Atl let me know I can come help farm some too I dont need any more but am always loking for the PERFECT one LoL

 

[popps]

The OP's goal is to use a nightmare or other two slot pet to beat down a bane dragon for taming so it will be a tank. Thus resists are very important for this particular task

Yes, that is my need for a 2 slot pet.

So far, I found the damn poison of the Bane Dragon to be the real problem, it eats up over half health bar in no time and most often I end up bandaging only to cure poison rather than healing up the pet.

I need something (2 slots) more capable to tank the bane Dragon and with less fragility to the poison of the Bane Dragon.

 

[Llewen]

A TRAINED nightmare is your best bet.

What many don't realize is that training is the single most important factor in determining how effective your pet will be.

So far, I found the damn poison of the Bane Dragon to be the real problem, it eats up over half health bar in no time and most often I end up bandaging only to cure poison rather than healing up the pet.

Well if you are using the EC you can create a macro for arch cure with target set to stored with your pet as the target. I actually have it in a hotbar and you can just click it like mad when you need to cure your pet. I've had my nightmare die two or three times, but considering I've farmed hundreds of bane dragons, I don't think that is too bad. And at least two of those times were because I got ambushed by an itinerant hell hound...

 

[Metalstorm]

I forgot about the arch cure spell. I don't play a mage regularly so I totally spaced on that and have been using the regular cure spell.

Cool beans! I learned something.

Thanks Llewen for that excellent tip.


And yes, training the pet is essential.

 

[Old Man of UO]

... Well if you are using the EC you can create a macro for arch cure with target set to stored with your pet as the target. I actually have it in a hotbar and you can just click it like mad when you need to cure your pet. ...

I use an EC macro that bandages first then casts Greater Heal. With a very small delay, the bandage always goes off first to cure the poison then the Great Heal spell heals. If the pet isn't poisoned, then it gets a double healing. Very effective against creatures that poison.

 

[Llewen]

I forgot about the arch cure spell. I don't play a mage regularly so I totally spaced on that and have been using the regular cure spell.

Cool beans! I learned something.

This is a little hard to describe, so I'll post a picture instead:



When I started doing this, my pets became much harder to kill. I use the thumb joystick on my G13 to control my movement so my mouse is free to interact with my desktop at all times without interfering with my movement. What I have is hotbars set up for remove curse, arch cure, and greater heal, all set to target stored. I never have more than two pets out at a time, so this works perfectly.

The cool thing about the enhanced client is you can just click away like mad and if your spell gets interrupted, it just restarts, or if you can't cast the spell yet, it will just start when it can. It's a good thing I don't have carpal tunnel problems. I have vet and bandages for my pets on hotkeys but I basically only use them in an emergency. For the most part I can keep my nightmare alive while killing bane dragons exclusively using spells.

 

[Taylor]

How would your mare do with a little temporary assistance? I cast EVs or earths sometimes to help when I need the follower slots to be available later.

I vote for this method, but replace the mare with another summon. Ride your ethy in, drop two EVs (which are immune to poison, I believe), and invis. Cast more EVs as needed. Once the bane is subdued, dispell your EVs and tame.

That's how I tame most agro creatures.

 

[Llewen]

How would your mare do with a little temporary assistance? I cast EVs or earths sometimes to help when I need the follower slots to be available later.

I vote for this method, but replace the mare with another summon. Ride your ethy in, drop two EVs (which are immune to poison, I believe), and invis. Cast more EVs as needed. Once the bane is subdued, dispell your EVs and tame.

That's how I tame most agro creatures.

This all depends on your playstyle. If you are going to actually farm bane dragons this way you have to have lots of med skill, and plenty of mana regen. And you need high eval int, or it will take a long time to kill the bane dragons. My med skill is pretty low, so I use my mare to farm the bane dragons.

 

[[JD]]

I'd ditch the bard/tamer unless you just like frustration or you're a die-hard and have to do it as challenging as possible. Don't waste time with summons either, you have to dispell them in time or you'll accidentally kill your 4.x+ bane before you can tame it.

I used my pvp myst mage and owned the bane in about 4 ebolts.

Cleansing winds and healing stone lets you cure and stay healed.

Use SDI and Dragon slayer book.

Bane dragons are energy vulnerable. Use 3-4 ebolts. Then use smaller spells like lightning or harm.

In the EC it shows pet's health as a percentage. At 12% life or less you may begin taming.

I setup my f1-f12 hotbar like this:
f1- target next enemy
f2- animal lore, current target
f3- ebolt
f4- lightning
f5- harm
f9- cleansing winds
f10- greater heal
f11-invis
f12- tame, current target

this is about all you need to effectively tame a bane in the ec.

f1 to target bane, then lore it to see if its worth keeping. if not, start ebolting it with f3.

if its worth keeping, i stop ebolting at 20% and use lightning, and then switch to harm. i bring it to 4-12% life and begin to invis-tame.

cast invis on myself, rush to bane, begin spam taming. if it gets mad i invis.

hop on it and recall out.

very simple to farm hundreds this way to get a nice one.

spec was:

120 magery, eval, focus, myst
120 taming (89 real skill + jewels)
110 lore
(x) meditation

i stoned off vetrinary for this, its just not necessary unless you're out of stable slots...

120's in all the magic stuff isn't necessary. bane's are insanely painful to tame at 115 tame so i recommend you use skill items and power scroll to get to 120.

also, myst isn't necessary- cleansing winds just makes it a cinch. you could do it with protect+magery also.

 

[Luke Carjacker]

I use a nightmare when I farm Banes. My template is discord tamer as follows:

120 magery, music, discord, taming, lore, vet

Killing the unwanted banes is super quick; discord, all kill, 2 bandages and it's over. Taming is a bit more of a challenge than if you have peace or something, but I guess I was weaned on old-school taming. I just go into protection and cast GH and GC as needed as I lead tame the thing. No med means I have to be judicious with the spells I cast, but banes are super slow after they've been beat down so there's no need to panic & cast invis constantly as tamers these days seem to do. Just get the tame going and stay a few steps in front of it, don't worry too much about healing or curing during the tame attempt unless you get really low in HP.

 

[Aldredge]

Wanted to post in this as i have something to add. It should be noted that unicorns are immune to poison and while they have lesser resists then there cousins it may give you the edge you need.

Also if you have spellweaving 66 or above i would recommend charming a arctic ogre lord as they are also immune to poison, this is a useful strategy for those who farm Miasma and may help as well.