A short review of the new pets

[Farsight]

I've been testing a lot of the new tameables in the past couple of weeks, and here I will offer a few facts and my opinions of many of them:

Ruddy boura:
Skill needed to tame = 17.1
Skill needed to control = 0
Control slots required: 2
Average hit points: 470 (approx)
Resists (average): 47/32/0/35/35

These guys are brilliant for the low end adventurer, especially if you have some magery or chivalry to heal them. I see no reason that everyone with no taming shouldn't have a pair of these.

Lowland boura
Skill needed to tame = 29.1
Average hit points: 500
Control slots required: 2
Resists (average): 55/37/15/35/35
Special: pack instinct - boura

These are great for the new tamer since they hit like a truck and have the pack instinct. When one is combined with a highland boura, you have a combination which is every bit as good as a cu sidhe in the field, depending on the situation. To test this, I put a lowland/highland boura combination against a (tame) cu sidhe in a no-interference pet fight, and the cu very nearly died before the pup's healing factor turned the tide.

High plains boura
Skill needed to tame = 47.1
Control slots required: 3
Average hit points: 600 (?)
Average resists: 59/36/51/41/33 (note: the hunter's guide has incomplete information on these)
Special: Some kind of charge/head butt... effects unconfirmed

These guys are true beasts and the starting tamer NEEDS to get one of these right out of the gates. When combined with a low land boura, you can take on nearly anything in the game with good healing. The combination isn't as effective as other two pet combinations, most notably the nightmare/dread war horse or the rune beetle/bake kitsune, but until a tamer can control the high end pets, this should be your weapon of choice.

I love boura because they allow the low level tamers some choice in pets and lets the tamer-in-training do something else besides just training.

Stone Slith:
Required taming: 65.1
Control slots required: 2
Hit points: 160
Resists: 52/ 25/15/35/35
Specials: bleed, reduce physical resists

This is the biggest overlooked pet of the new assortment. With the reduce physical resist attack, they are the ideal companion for the dread war horse or in a team of tamers where the others use their dragons. Alone, they aren't anything special. I have been running around with a DWH/slith combo and have found it to be an amazing combination. When I have a chance, I'll take my rune beetle and stone slith to hunt with my dragon-toting guildmates to see how well that works.

Survivability is a big issue with these guys.

Raptor:
Required taming: 65.1 (rumor has it this number has increased, but I'll trust stratics here)
Control slots required: 2
Hit points: 370
Resists: 47/55/45/25/35
Specials: pack instinct - raptor

I haven't played much with these, but in my experience, they are outperformed on every level by the boura. The boura have more hit points, they hit harder, and have just as much pack instinct. The only reason I see to play with raptors is that they're just cool animals.

Skree:
Required taming: 95.1
Control slots required: 4
Hit points: 250
Resists: 60/50/32/57/26
Specials: magery, sleep

Useless. Even if they required low taming and only took two slots rather than the current four I wouldn't use one. The only use for these guys is for a warrior/tamer who wants to lock a single opponent (i.e. crowd control) while they whack away, and even then, there are other pets which require high taming to control who work MUCH better for the job. It comes down to a good offense is the best defense, and skree just don't have any offensive capability.

Wolf Spider:
Information: Unknown (not yet in hunter's guide)
Control slots required: 2
Specials: pack instinct - arachnid, poison

We won't see many people running around with wolf spiders. I have a pack of two of them that I'll use because I love spiders, but they're less useful than a pair of raptors, let alone the boura pair. When combined with a scorpion, they have a massive damage output, but are no replacement for the frenzied ostard pack in that respect.

Those are all the pets I've tested so far.
My conclusion is that none of these pets will wind up in the power-tamer's rotation, since they have less offensive capabilities than the rune beetle/whatever combination and less defensive capabilities than the greater dragon. Their specials are worth looking into for the team-tamer's assortment and they're a great assortment of new animals for the tamers who aren't in the 110-120 taming range.

Note: I only looked into these pets on a PvM basis. The boura are too slow to work well in PvP and the rest of the new pets don't have enough hit points/resists to be truly effective. In my opinon, none of these pets will make a bit of difference in the PvP arena, but I haven't tested there at all as of yet (due to my dislike of taming in PvP).

 

[Goodoljoe]

Yap,Imo,whiles some are very cute,they are absolutely CRAP imo,compared to what we already had from prvious expansions and game content.Expansion is great itself but the thought put in pets is very very poor.

 

[Taylor]

Farsaight, thanks for the review. Nicely done.

 

[Poo]

question.

in PVM:

1. skree as a 2nd or 3rd in pet with a pack of tamer on a peerless?
how does the skree do there? it HAS to have something good on it for being so damn high in tameing and so many taming slots...... dosnt it?

mine will bond tomorow and im gonna take it out with my guild and see if it can contribute in a group setting cause its very apparant that its no stand alone.
im hoping it will be like bringing a rune beetle with some greaters to get the poison and the corupt armor that they drop on the mobs.

2. raptors, same as above, how do they do in dealing out damgae in a group setting? i know with ozzies i bring in a pack with my guildies and let them put their greaters on the mob, then i send in the ozzies and they deal out 300+ hp per second, so i was hoping that the raptors would be the same.
anyone try?

3. spiders, again, very same question as the above 2.

i think we can all agree that no one of the new pets is a power tamer pet.
but i hope they can fit in somewhere in the group setting.

ill experiment this week.

 

[Farsight]

Feel free to experiment. I would hate to be the only one with experience on the subjects.

I'll still offer my opinions to the questions you posed.
1. The skree's problem is that further damage will break the skree's sleep. So while it could be useful in a small group (but not as useful as peacemaking), in a larger group, the effects of the skree will be minimized.

2. Since there are half as many raptors in a pack as ostards, they do... half the damage, or about 150 a second against a decently armored opponent. My own tests were against other raptors and boura, as I have bonded my two wolf spiders, a stone slith and a pair of boura and thus my stables are once again full. The advantage of the raptors over the ostards is they have much higher resists and hit points, making them easier to take to the big fights.

3. Wolf spiders aren't as good as raptors in pairs, but if you add in a scorpion, the three can easily top 200 points of damage a second. Add in nearly constant poison and they're pretty fun to hunt with. Up until now, I haven't had any trouble with them getting killed, and the 100% poison resist is useful when fighting poison-using monsters (I want to take them to an arachnid spawn when they're fully trained), but they're mostly a niche pet, and less practical than a pair of fire steeds and an imp.

 

[guum]

Very interesting. My next question would be, now that there are pets that are genuinely useful at less than 100/100 taming/lore, what kind of template can be put together at either just JoaT taming/lore, or more like 50/50 (to make use of the highland boura) that would be useful in either champ spawn or peerless situations? It sounds like the highland boura can take a few hits, but obviously the resists are a lot lower than a greater's...the lowland is probably more interesting to completed templates, since they have low taming requirements, do decent damage, and have enough HPs so that if they take a stray hit (or AoE hit), they won't necessarily go down. Too bad there's no AoE heals in UO (hint, hint devs), but some sort of melee/tank template with minimal taming/lore might be usable with a pair if they can be kept up -- the range on close wounds wouldn't be an issue if you're meleeing anyway. Maybe, for peerless, a disco/melee character with a pair of LLBs would be effective...sampires are too template-cramped already. Not sure how to keep them up in the upper levels of a champ spawn without a lot of vet and/or magery. I suppose it'd be easy enough to fit the requisite taming/lore on a withermage for a HLB/LLB combo, and they're on foot anyway.

Hmmm...I'm sure someone has a better idea than me.

edit: Any idea what the taming/lore required is to control LLBs? I'm guessing it's not the same as Beetles -- zero (which have the same taming requirement).

 

[legendsguy]

you know, the real question is, now that we have greater dragons, just what exactly -can- UO bring in for us? we already have the best. i mean, i understand a desire to want an even more powerful creature as that's in our nature, but even the dragon is too powerful. it looks to me that UO was like, 'well, they have the best already, but we can surely give them some neat lower-end tameables until they can control a dragon' and in that regard i think they succeeded greatly.

i don't look at this as UO being lazy, i think they did really good when it comes to new tameables. alright, so the skree takes too many control slots, but it sure was ingenious and that's what taming needs more of anyhow--pets that aren't just for dealing damage (since the greaters will always win), we need pets that can be utilized in more creative ways.

 

[Farsight]

Very interesting. My next question would be, now that there are pets that are genuinely useful at less than 100/100 taming/lore, what kind of template can be put together at either just JoaT taming/lore, or more like 50/50 (to make use of the highland boura) that would be useful in either champ spawn or peerless situations? It sounds like the highland boura can take a few hits, but obviously the resists are a lot lower than a greater's...the lowland is probably more interesting to completed templates, since they have low taming requirements, do decent damage, and have enough HPs so that if they take a stray hit (or AoE hit), they won't necessarily go down. Too bad there's no AoE heals in UO (hint, hint devs), but some sort of melee/tank template with minimal taming/lore might be usable with a pair if they can be kept up -- the range on close wounds wouldn't be an issue if you're meleeing anyway. Maybe, for peerless, a disco/melee character with a pair of LLBs would be effective...sampires are too template-cramped already. Not sure how to keep them up in the upper levels of a champ spawn without a lot of vet and/or magery. I suppose it'd be easy enough to fit the requisite taming/lore on a withermage for a HLB/LLB combo, and they're on foot anyway.

Hmmm...I'm sure someone has a better idea than me.

edit: Any idea what the taming/lore required is to control LLBs? I'm guessing it's not the same as Beetles -- zero (which have the same taming requirement).

I've been thinking about this one too. Exactly what kind of template can maximize the use of the boura?

I've come up with a few conclusions.
1. Any given template can control a pair of ruddy boura (which aren't as good as a rising colossus, by the way), which are only slightly less good than a lowland boura. This means that if 10 people are doing a champ spawn, you can have 20 boura running around.

2. Anyone who starts with 35 taming and lore for 100% control of low land boura can now have a handy pet all the way through the training process that costs only 100 gold to ressurect if nobody else is around.

3. A warrior type wouldn't want to use the boura in the long run, since healing is a problem. A mage may want to take the boura on low end or group hunts only, since if the boura dies, you have to go all the way back to town if you don't have a tamer friend next to you. Even though energy vortexes aren't as effective, at least you can use as many of them as you want.

I do have an experiment running on an alt-character where I'm going to use boura as a primary pet to see how far I can get on just a little bit of skill, but this plan will take a long time to execute.

 

[maroite]

Different forms of dra gons? Greater White Wyrms, or Dra gons of varying color with different forms of breath weapons?

There is a ton of stuff that they could do for taming, but don't.

I was very disappointed with the pet selection in SA.

The raptors, I tamed two, and bonded them and then trained them to about 80 wrestling. I then went to destard, and they could take a dragon, but GD's were way too much. Low resists and phys only damage. Not to mention meager hp and no special ability that I know of.

I tamed a nice skree, and have been skilling it up a bit and its... meh. Its definitely NOT worth the 4 slots. The sleep is an interesting concept, and I am sure it would be nice on paper but is useless, as the OP pointed out that any further damage breaks the sleep. Low resists and HP make this a bad pet for 4 slots.

I haven't played with the sliths yet. I know that stone sliths can confuse you, which keeps your from casting spells. Got hit by one and this happened.

Haven't bothered with boura either. Just not attractive to me. They remind me of Bantha from Star Wars, and I was never a huge fan of those.

The taming business in SA is rather lackluster. I often find myself going back and looking at nightmares and greaters and rune beetles again.

 

[Farsight]

I suppose I could review the stone slith some more.

I finally took my stone slith in to see Lady Mel, and that test was a complete bust.

Without good cross healing (and there was none that day), the stone slith can not last against the area effect attacks from Melisande, which makes the stone slith a poor choice for high end encounters. It's still great for lower end encounters and monsters with no area effect attack, but for the high end work, I've returned to my bake kitsune full time (still with a rune beetle).

 

[Stupid Miner]

Need to test how JoaT Gift of Renewal works on keeping bouras healed. Close Wounds is just too weak, even with 4/6 casting it's not good enough, and you'd have to cast it all the time anyway, which kinda defeats the purpose. As long as they're not the target, they're great backup.

 

[Farsight]

I tried the ruddy boura with a mage. It worked great for wee spawn, but for the big boys, it really stunk.

So I'm sticking to the vortexes (well, nature's fury...) unless there's a tamer along for the vet-heals.

 

[Stupid Miner]

I tried the ruddy boura with a mage. It worked great for wee spawn, but for the big boys, it really stunk.

So I'm sticking to the vortexes (well, nature's fury...) unless there's a tamer along for the vet-heals.

Yea, I think they'll get the best use paired with fighters who do the tanking, Bouras can do supplemental damage.

 

[Xenobia]

Thanks for the info! I actually have not tried any of the new tameables so this was great information.

 

[Helfgrim]

Is there a trick to taming a skree, I've beat it down and all I seem to do with 110 taming, 115 lore is anger the damn thing and it heals back up to half. It agros on sight if you don't beat it down so I keep asking myself why its different than much tougher mobs to tame?

 

[Farsight]

The skree has such low wrestling and do so little damage (outside of magery damage, which will hit you anyway), that I typically just equip my mage weapon and let the skree hit me until I get the you start taming message, then I disarm my weapon and proceed to lead tame.

At 115 taming/lore, it took a couple of attempts, but it wasn't too difficult.

I didn't even bother beating it down.
(coincidently, I used the same technique against the raptors, just killing the extra raptors first and using a nightmare for defense)

 

[Old Man of UO]

Farsight, can you add into your pet descriptions the number of control slots each take?

 

[Farsight]

Farsight, can you add into your pet descriptions the number of control slots each take?

Done.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Done.

Thanks! Makes more sense to me that way.

 

[TimberWolf]

I noticed no one mentioned the iron beetle?

Anyone have thoughts? It is hard to find info on them.

What they should sell for.....?? Their value as a pet?

 

[Sara1]

They are very hard to get out of the dungeon area. I tried taming there and running out, didn't work. Everything attacked it, of course. I tried herding some. That went well as long as I wasn't revealed and being around 10 hrs old, it did happen a few times. Then when I got them to the rottworms, someone with a greater drag was killing the worms and the beetles all ran to kill him. It took several times to get one all the way to the entrance, then I took it too far and the guards killed it. lol My final try, though, I herded 3 succesfully to the front and tamed them one at a time. I was going to give one to a friend's miner. Can't transfer to him cause he has no taming. Wish I knew how much I would need on my miner to control them. They take up 4 slots but can mine for anything a miner can if the owner has the skills. Hope to find out more about these little things.

 

[Farsight]

Iron beetle's value lay in the iron beetle scales for quests.

They're not great offensively, not great defensively, an I couldn't get it to work as a miner.

At four slots and not significantly better than a fire beetle, I really don't see the point.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I expect that all new pets, especially the iron beetle, will be tweaked after the SA bugs have been fixed. Then I will take a closer look at those.

 

[TimberWolf]

They are very hard to get out of the dungeon area. I tried taming there and running out, didn't work. Everything attacked it, of course. I tried herding some. That went well as long as I wasn't revealed and being around 10 hrs old, it did happen a few times. Then when I got them to the rottworms, someone with a greater drag was killing the worms and the beetles all ran to kill him. It took several times to get one all the way to the entrance, then I took it too far and the guards killed it. lol My final try, though, I herded 3 succesfully to the front and tamed them one at a time. I was going to give one to a friend's miner. Can't transfer to him cause he has no taming. Wish I knew how much I would need on my miner to control them. They take up 4 slots but can mine for anything a miner can if the owner has the skills. Hope to find out more about these little things.

Um why are you trying to run them out??

Kill the first two that spawn and all the rest of the mob. Quickly tame the last one. Recall to a stable and log out and back in. You have a healthy tamed beetle.

There is a mining command on their pull down gump. I haven't tried it yet because mine is still bonding.

I also heard the rumor that gargs don't require taming to control them. But I haven't tried it!

I too would love to learn more!

 

[maroite]

They are very hard to get out of the dungeon area. I tried taming there and running out, didn't work. Everything attacked it, of course. I tried herding some. That went well as long as I wasn't revealed and being around 10 hrs old, it did happen a few times. Then when I got them to the rottworms, someone with a greater drag was killing the worms and the beetles all ran to kill him. It took several times to get one all the way to the entrance, then I took it too far and the guards killed it. lol My final try, though, I herded 3 succesfully to the front and tamed them one at a time. I was going to give one to a friend's miner. Can't transfer to him cause he has no taming. Wish I knew how much I would need on my miner to control them. They take up 4 slots but can mine for anything a miner can if the owner has the skills. Hope to find out more about these little things.

You don't have gate? :x

 

[maroite]

Um why are you trying to run them out??

Kill the first two that spawn and all the rest of the mob. Quickly tame the last one. Recall to a stable and log out and back in. You have a healthy tamed beetle.

There is a mining command on their pull down gump. I haven't tried it yet because mine is still bonding.

I also heard the rumor that gargs don't require taming to control them. But I haven't tried it!

I too would love to learn more!

Mining command doesn't seem to work, although I didn't test it with a miner character.

Not sure about the gargs not requiring taming to use them, but maybe only garg miners can benefit from their drop down menus as well... I'll have to look into it.

Other than that they're a rather sad 4 slot pet, much like the skree.

 

[TimberWolf]

Gate spells don't work anywhere in the Abyss.

TO my knowing Mining command only works if the player that controls the beetle has mining skill!....It will mine for you based on your skill level.

It just saves you the actual manual labor.

 

[Drawde2]

I thought the mining command was just a bug, due to it mining on it's own. Or so I read during the open beta. Could have been wrong though.

 

[Storm]

The mining beetle is not fully implemented Draconi stated something to the effect there was a problem with them and are turned off for now and would be looked into at later date (my guess is after most of the major bugs and such are fixed)!

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I expect that all new pets, especially the iron beetle, will be tweaked after the SA bugs have been fixed. Then I will take a closer look at those.

"Iron Beetle no longer requires taming to control (still needs SA entitlement)"

Blimey, thank God I was right!