So I just started taming...

[Arcades]

Ok been playing this game for 11 yrs, just started a tamer a few days ago...and wow, it is a totally new experience for me! But that being said, although I knew the rigorous training and time needed to train my skill, I'm looking for any advice on gaining faster, well, faster than what I am now!

So for starters, I have an idea about WHAT to tame at each level looking through the charts at Stratics and UOGuide, but there are a few questions that I'm curious about that I couldnt find answers too.

1.) If I am successful at taming a creature, yet do NOT gain, can I release and re-tame til I get a gain before I move on, OR should I just kill and move on?

2.) I started a fresh char with 50/50 Taming/Lore and I'm up to 60/80. I also stoned 110 Magery and 100 Hiding on the char so I can recall and hide if needed. But should I be under 250 total skill points to gain the fastest, or does it not matter?

Things are progressing, slowly, yet I'm just excited at a totally new experience once I get taming to where I can start taming some harder hitting creatures other than polar bears! It sure reminds me of the days where training melee skills meant I'd try hitting a Great Hart and have to run b/c I'd be redlined...LOL. Good memories!

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Ok been playing this game for 11 yrs, just started a tamer a few days ago...and wow, it is a totally new experience for me! But that being said, although I knew the rigorous training and time needed to train my skill, I'm looking for any advice on gaining faster, well, faster than what I am now!

So for starters, I have an idea about WHAT to tame at each level looking through the charts at Stratics and UOGuide, but there are a few questions that I'm curious about that I couldnt find answers too.

1.) If I am successful at taming a creature, yet do NOT gain, can I release and re-tame til I get a gain before I move on, OR should I just kill and move on?

2.) I started a fresh char with 50/50 Taming/Lore and I'm up to 60/80. I also stoned 110 Magery and 100 Hiding on the char so I can recall and hide if needed. But should I be under 250 total skill points to gain the fastest, or does it not matter?

Things are progressing, slowly, yet I'm just excited at a totally new experience once I get taming to where I can start taming some harder hitting creatures other than polar bears! It sure reminds me of the days where training melee skills meant I'd try hitting a Great Hart and have to run b/c I'd be redlined...LOL. Good memories!

Sadly, I found the total Skill points to ... make a difference in skill gains.

What I found to often be helpful was to have a mixture of Taming skills on Rings and Bracelets. Taming the Bulls in the Jehlom Bull Pit was / is probably the best skill gain area, I would juggle the Taming Skill Points with the Jewelry to be in the sweat spot for gains.

For example, if I felt I was a bit to high to get the good skill gains, then I would get a Jewelry combo that reduced my Taming Skill by 5 to 6 points and keep on taming.

I always killed the tame, I don't retame for skill ups. On the other hand, I have no issues in taming some one elses release. Perhaps it is just some bad information stuck in my head, but at one time I believe they were messing with the code to PREVENT people from gaining by releasing their tame and then retaming.......

 

[Barry Gibb]

1.) If I am successful at taming a creature, yet do NOT gain, can I release and re-tame til I get a gain before I move on, OR should I just kill and move on?

You will not be able to gain on a creature you tame after you released it. You will always have a 100% success chance of retaiming that creature, since you were a previous owner. You have to tame another creature to try to gain skill. The creature you just released will be slightly more difficult, for the next tamer to attempt to tame, so it is polite to kill what you just released.

An interesting note: Tameable creatures, that would give you negative karma when killed (horses, Ki-rins, cu sidhe) can be killed without losing karma, if they have been tamed and released before you kill them.

Stayin Alive,

BG

 

[Barry Gibb]

You can find the taming difficulty for all tameables here: Animal Taming
Your first question is what is meant by pretame. A fresh spawned creature is 0 Pretame. If you came across an animal that has been named, it has had at least one owner, so it will be 1 Pretame.

Focus on taming creatures that you have 40%-60% chance of success, at your current skill, your best gains will come from them.

Stayin Alive,

BG

 

[Metalstorm]

I'm in the same boat. 11 years of play and I'm taking taming seriously for the first time.
I started about 4 weeks ago and I'm up to 97.8.

What I've been doing (since skill reached 85) is taking one of my Ostards with me to the areas with Bulls.
I tame a Bull then sick the ostard on it. This trains my ostard and gets rid of the bull so a new one will spawn that I may tame. This method also keeps me in good supply of raw meat for pets and hides for my tailor.

The taming guide is pretty excelent as far as which critters to tame and at what level.

At my 97.8 level I like to mix the Bulls up with Bake Kitsunes. Being a Bard as well with high Peace helps A LOT with those little vixens

On Edit: I forgot to mention that I created a guild just for pet traing. That is why I can sick my ostard on the bull before releasing it. If you're not in a guild in Tram you have to release first.

 

[Wenchkin]

1.) If I am successful at taming a creature, yet do NOT gain, can I release and re-tame til I get a gain before I move on, OR should I just kill and move on?

As has been said already, you can only gain from a critter once, so the best way is tame then kill the spawn as quickly as you can. Pretames are only useful to other tamers, because they get harder to tame as each new tamer tames and releases them. I tend to offer to just release for others if I see them, and otherwise I tame and kill.

2.) I started a fresh char with 50/50 Taming/Lore and I'm up to 60/80. I also stoned 110 Magery and 100 Hiding on the char so I can recall and hide if needed. But should I be under 250 total skill points to gain the fastest, or does it not matter?

You will get faster GGS gains if you can keep the character's total skill points low. If you look at this page on the UO.com playguide you'll see a handy table down at the bottom which is a useful reference to your gain speed.

Wenchy

 

[Arcades]

Ahh. That table was exactly what I was looking for...very helpful. Thank you very much! And thank you for the replies, answered all my questions!

 

[uoBuoY]

One more suggestion...
When you can, train Taming with creatures (Kits, Runes, etc.) you want to have in your stable. You are going to Tame these eventually so why not start while your training? Sure makes training a lot less boring!

 

[Miss Ghost]

Boo Arcades,

We all have our own ideas and tips to pass on about taming. Ghost is a fully trained legendary tamer/mage and I am presently training another tamer/bard (mostly to hold pets for Ghost when she wants something extra and has no room in her stable).

At that 60/80 level I personally would be training, with no taming/lore/vet jewelry, on Brown Bears outside of Moonglow. They are in abundance there and I would tame, rename and realease all I could find and then keep the lsat one and have it kill all the others whilst I worked vet on it. Release that one then start all over again. I gained solidly doing that ... lore flew up and taming and vet did brilliantly. It IS boring I agree, but for me it was speed of results to get to where I could have the big beasts that I really wanted. From about 73 taming I went to the Healer woods in Ilshenar and tamed Great Harts, making them attack healers, after I had a few, to kill them off to allow the new spawn. Once gains slowed there, about the mid 80's I alternated between Gaman around the Homare Jima Gate area in Tokuno, and the Great Harts, which took me pretty quickly to GM.

Killing more dangerous things can be more fun, but if dying alot the gains will actually be slower as you will not be taming the same in numbers.

Try the various suggestions and see what seems to suit you best. Most of all have fun and remember you'll soon be after that Greater Dragon or Cu Sidhe *huggles*

 

[Tramposo]

If you look at this page on the UO.com playguide you'll see a handy table down at the bottom which is a useful reference to your gain speed.

Wenchy

Ok but you have to wait RL(real life mins/hours) to do that or in game min/hours? Cuz that would take forever to me to get to 120.0...

 

[Jesusislord]

Ok but you have to wait RL(real life mins/hours) to do that or in game min/hours? Cuz that would take forever to me to get to 120.0...

That page sucks. It's outdated.

You have a chance to gain with every success. You won't go 35 hours of successive skill use, succeeding most of the time, without a gain.

The CGS is, from my experience, the time it takes for you to be guaranteed a gain without even working it.

For example, I don't log on with my tamer for ~48 hours. I log in and get a skill gain from taming something that has a chance to fail, but succeeds (Ie, a drake). I then go out taming and and get .5 points of taming raising my skill to 110. I then log out for 50 hours before I get back on. I log in, go back and tame the first drake I see, and get a .1 skill gain.

That's pretty much how I work taming these days. Just wait a couple days for my .1 guaranteed gain, go tame a drake, release it; and go back to making money with my greater dragon until a couple days have passed again.

 

[uoBuoY]

That table uses RL time not in-game time.

You can also SoulStone all your skills except for Taming and Lore and get maybe 4 GGs per day.

 

[Sarsmi]

What I do when working a new tamer - try to have as few points on your template as possible in order to get those GGS gains more quickly.

I will also pick up herding and get a shepherds crook so I can herd the animals I'm taming, this is a huuuge time saver, and you can drop the herding later if you want to. It is incredibly easy to work up and well worth it, IMO.

Go the area you are taming (use recall scrolls to recall), IE ice isle. Herd a bunch of polar bears (or whatever), get a nice big group around you and then go find a wandering healer. I will use a 2 tame macros, one that is just animal taming and the other one is taming that will also tame my last target, to make this go into UO's macro page then make it like this:

use skill animal taming
wait for target
last target

Tame something you have line of sight to, that is, stand on the fringes and try to tame a bear that is on the outside fringe, so it will have a clear path to you. Go play a flash game on the other side of the screen for 10 seconds. If you succeed tell it to kill the healer and try to tame something else. If you fail then hit your taming macro and play your flash game some more.

This is a method I have come up with in order to make taming less boring (no chasing after the animal thanks to herding) and less intensive (no dragging health bars, changing animal names to release them, having to cast spells on them etc). You just grab a bunch of animals and try to tame them and sic them on the wandering healer (or whatever mob is in the area that can kill your tames quickly).