* Animal Lore tells you the following details about a creature if used directly:
o Exact numeric data for STR/hitpoints, DEX/stamina and INT/mana
o Elemental resistance and damage percentages
o Exact numeric data for wrestling, tactics, magic resist, anatomy, and if applicable poisoning, magery, meditation and evaluating intelligence
o preferred food,
o the current loyalty level.
* Below 100.0 skill you can view the above statistics for any tame creature.
* At 100.0, you can view the above statistics for any tamable creature.
* At 110.0, you can view the above statistics for any creature.
* The skill's secondary function is to determine your level of control over a particular pet. It accounts for 20% of your chance to control a pet (Animal Taming accounts for the remaining 80%).
* Like anatomy is a complementary skill for healing, Animal Lore supports the Veterinary skill. You need a minimum of
o 60.0 skill points in Animal Lore and Veterinary to be able to cure poison
o 80.0 skill points in Animal Lore and Veterinary to be able to resurrect a bonded pet.
* Animal Lore is a target-based skill, this means you have to use it on numerous targets to keep gaining if you use it directly.
* It can also be raised passively through taming or use of the Veterinary skill.
Optimizing your gains
Animal Lore is more effectively raised through passive gains from Taming and Veterinary than through direct use. If you want to raise it by direct use, you should set up the following macro in your client: "last target - use skill: Animal Lore - next target". With help of this macro the game will cycle through available targets in your area without requiring you to target each creature individually. Just keep in mind that at a skill level below 100.0 you are only able to successfully lore tame creatures.
Loyalty
Also described as "happiness", this is the state of your pet you can determine by using the Animal Lore skill directly on the creature. It can be anywhere between "wonderfully happy" and "confused". The lower your pet's loyalty, the harder it will be for you to succeed in commanding it. A pet in the "confused" state will hardly ever obey. Spamming a command is more likely to drop loyalty even faster and cause the pet to go wild. The best thing to do is to feed the pet immediately.
Loyalty Levels
"wonderfully happy"
maximum loyalty
"extremely happy"
"very happy"
"rather happy"
"happy"
"content"
"content, I suppose"
"unhappy"
"rather unhappy"
"extremely unhappy"
"confused"
in extreme danger to go wild, also the state of newly tamed pets
before feeding them
Your pet's loyalty changes constantly and is affected by the following actions: Feeding your pet and issuing successful commands (only for pets with a taming difficulty higher than 29.1, ridgebacks and swamp dragons excluded) raise your pet's loyalty. Failed commands and leaving your pet's "line of sight" for an extended period of time drop loyalty. The loyalty of your pet can not be improved over time by training.
Orneriness
Orneriness is the difficulty level of control over a pet, based on your skills in Taming and Lore and the pet's taming difficulty. The higer your skills and the lower the pet's difficulty, the easier it is to control and vice versa. The orneriness of your pet can not be improved over time by training. Here is the rule set the game uses to determine control ability:
* The following only applies for creatures with a taming difficulty above 29.1. Creatures with a minimum taming requirement of 29.1 and below (plus ridgebacks and swamp dragons) do not perform skill checks and can be controlled 100% by anyone, regardless of their skill.
* The actual formula for combined skill is Effective Taming=(Animal Taming * 4 + Animal Lore) / 5.
* If Effective Taming is less than or equal to the Pet Difficulty then Pet Control %=70 + 14 * (Effective Taming - Pet Difficulty).
If Pet Control % is less than 20 then Pet Control % becomes 20.
* If Effective Taming is greater than the Pet Difficulty then Pet Control %=70 + 6 * (Effective Taming - Pet Difficulty).
If Pet Control % is greater than 99 then Pet Control % becomes 99.
* Important: all calculations are done using integers (i.e. for example 951 for taming skill instead of 95.1), so if you don't convert your skill values to an integer before you start calculating, the result will not be accurate. Rounding does not occur until division, so you only lose your decimal place at the very end. (Example: 99.66 would be converted to 99.6. Anything after the first decimal place is truncated, not rounded up or down as per regular mathematical rounding rules.)
Designer Oaks confirmed the accuracy of these formulas in his interview with the Pacific Rangers Council on 02/28/03.
