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I have a Necromage Dread Spider with Poison Breath. Used him as my AoE pet for awhile until i realized FWW+PB Najasaurus was better for that.
Spiders are fun! I have too many to count in various builds... probably at least 12. You have to make sacrifices with them though, since innate Necromancy, Magery, and Poison eats up 3100 Intensity. You can train Necromage for 1 point, which will remove Poison/Magery and allow you to add another special.
Fair warning, they will not build like any other pet you have made. You will not get 700 Str, full regens, 600 HP and full scrolls. Sacrifices and decisions need to be made on where to spend the points, and you will more than likely have to settle for 350-400 Hit Points on the spider, depending on what you are going for. However, with that said, I have done Despise many times solo with my 400 HP spiders. I even took a Repel/Life Leech spider to Blackthorn Captains for fun, and he was able to kill one.
A little known fact that most people do not realize about Dread Spiders. They have a spawn native to Tokuno and can get Bushido and Ninjitsu. I don't have a Ninja spider (yet!), but I do have a couple with Bushido. Bushido/Life Leech has great sustain, even with 300 hits -- 600+ hit points are overrated
Just goes to show though, that you don't need a perfect pet build for it to be effective. Just some forethought and planning for what you want to accomplish with it, and to scratch it's chin and tell it what a good little spider he is.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
FYI in the pet build on your website if I select necromage it costs 1501 training points. Nice to know it really just costs 1 point.Spiders are fun! I have too many to count in various builds... probably at least 12. You have to make sacrifices with them though, since innate Necromancy, Magery, and Poison eats up 3100 Intensity. You can train Necromage for 1 point, which will remove Poison/Magery and allow you to add another special.
Fair warning, they will not build like any other pet you have made. You will not get 700 Str, full regens, 600 HP and full scrolls. Sacrifices and decisions need to be made on where to spend the points, and you will more than likely have to settle for 350-400 Hit Points on the spider, depending on what you are going for. However, with that said, I have done Despise many times solo with my 400 HP spiders. I even took a Repel/Life Leech spider to Blackthorn Captains for fun, and he was able to kill one.
A little known fact that most people do not realize about Dread Spiders. They have a spawn native to Tokuno and can get Bushido and Ninjitsu. I don't have a Ninja spider (yet!), but I do have a couple with Bushido. Bushido/Life Leech has great sustain, even with 300 hits -- 600+ hit points are overrated
Just goes to show though, that you don't need a perfect pet build for it to be effective. Just some forethought and planning for what you want to accomplish with it, and to scratch it's chin and tell it what a good little spider he is.
I understand sacrifices will have to be made with dread spider stats, and I'm OK with that. I plan to make a necromage, life leech, and maybe poison breath.
I tamed a pretty good one last night, very close to max resists and high STR/HP too, but only 147 dex. I saw one that had 170 dex, but sadly the rest of its stats were garbage.
In my opinion, if the Dread Spiders spawned as a 2 slot pet, instead of 3, they would be a MUCH more fun, and usable pet.
Thanks for noticing, this has been fixed (you may need to refresh your cache if it's still showing wrong, Shift+F5 on the planner).
This is one of the specs I have done despise with. Necromage + Life Leech gives very good sustain. I usually tell him to attack and let him do his own thing until wave 4, then I bring him back to clear for the Piper.
Life leach is the only special, plus Necromage? So the Aoe is from the Necro AOE? That is awesome! Also did you full scroll him?
You blow my mind all the time! Now I have to try this lolSpiders are fun! I have too many to count in various builds... probably at least 12. You have to make sacrifices with them though, since innate Necromancy, Magery, and Poison eats up 3100 Intensity. You can train Necromage for 1 point, which will remove Poison/Magery and allow you to add another special.
Fair warning, they will not build like any other pet you have made. You will not get 700 Str, full regens, 600 HP and full scrolls. Sacrifices and decisions need to be made on where to spend the points, and you will more than likely have to settle for 350-400 Hit Points on the spider, depending on what you are going for. However, with that said, I have done Despise many times solo with my 400 HP spiders. I even took a Repel/Life Leech spider to Blackthorn Captains for fun, and he was able to kill one.
A little known fact that most people do not realize about Dread Spiders. They have a spawn native to Tokuno and can get Bushido and Ninjitsu. I don't have a Ninja spider (yet!), but I do have a couple with Bushido. Bushido/Life Leech has great sustain, even with 300 hits -- 600+ hit points are overrated
Just goes to show though, that you don't need a perfect pet build for it to be effective. Just some forethought and planning for what you want to accomplish with it, and to scratch it's chin and tell it what a good little spider he is.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
I've always tried for 700 STR on my pets, but it's clearly not going to happen with a Dread Spider. Should I try for 700 INT on him instead? I tamed a better one this morning with 163 Dex; I've probably killed 50+ of them between last night and this morning, trying to get the best one I can. I guess I should make some builds on the website now that it's fixed. BTW a bush spider with life leech sounds awesome, but only 300 HP-not so much.
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One of the fun things about a Necromage Dread Spider, is that it'll boost it's own damage output by Corpse Skinning the foe, because their melee deals 80% Poison damage. They'll occasionally cast Curse Weapon too, which allows them to self-heal for half their melee damage output. If you train the Dread Spider up to GM Poisoning as well before switching it over to Necromage, it can still occasionally inflict DP with it's Poison Strike spell. Putting Poison Breath on it allows it to re-train Poisoning to GM after a death. But yeah, Magery+Eval and Necro+SS each taking 1,000 points really messes with the power potential of a lot of pets. Magery+Eval should only take up 500 points, not the 1,000 it currently does. Same with Necro+SS.Spiders are fun! I have too many to count in various builds... probably at least 12. You have to make sacrifices with them though, since innate Necromancy, Magery, and Poison eats up 3100 Intensity. You can train Necromage for 1 point, which will remove Poison/Magery and allow you to add another special.
Fair warning, they will not build like any other pet you have made. You will not get 700 Str, full regens, 600 HP and full scrolls. Sacrifices and decisions need to be made on where to spend the points, and you will more than likely have to settle for 350-400 Hit Points on the spider, depending on what you are going for. However, with that said, I have done Despise many times solo with my 400 HP spiders. I even took a Repel/Life Leech spider to Blackthorn Captains for fun, and he was able to kill one.
A little known fact that most people do not realize about Dread Spiders. They have a spawn native to Tokuno and can get Bushido and Ninjitsu. I don't have a Ninja spider (yet!), but I do have a couple with Bushido. Bushido/Life Leech has great sustain, even with 300 hits -- 600+ hit points are overrated
Just goes to show though, that you don't need a perfect pet build for it to be effective. Just some forethought and planning for what you want to accomplish with it, and to scratch it's chin and tell it what a good little spider he is.
Eval and Spirit Speak are 1000 intensity each, Magery and Necromancy are 500 intensity each, so the intensity used on Magery/Eval or Necro/Spirit Speak tames is 1500 total intensity points. (and the one point to train/turn it on)
It does affect a lot of pets negatively.
Chiv 500
Mysticism 500 + 20 for 120 focus
Spellweaving 500 points and arcane focus increases the higher spellweaving goes.
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SouthPaw
Lore Master
Messed around with the planner...these guys are even more tight on points than than a AI/Chiv ram. I'm still going to try to make it work.
Right now I'm looking at Necromage + Life leech
500 HP, 300 Mana, 700 Int, 300 STR.
Regens: 20/5/30
Resists: 80/80/45/100/60
110: Wrestling, Eval int, Spirit Speak
105: Tactitics
120: Parry, Resist Spells.
Right now I'm looking at Necromage + Life leech
500 HP, 300 Mana, 700 Int, 300 STR.
Regens: 20/5/30
Resists: 80/80/45/100/60
110: Wrestling, Eval int, Spirit Speak
105: Tactitics
120: Parry, Resist Spells.
YES!!! Please recommend it to the DEVS.. Its about time they do this! This would make a lot of pets more useful.
Yeah, my bad. I knew it was ridiculous compared to the cost of Chiv, Mysticism and SW.
Do spiders have chins?
Only way to find out is to try scratching one!~
On its chin..
Yep..Ridiculous. About time some1 brings this to the Devs? We all would be massively grateful!
SouthPaw
Lore Master
Got my Dread Spider to 5 slots today. It was a tough choice but I ended up going with Necromage, Life Leech, and Armor Ignore. I very nearly took Poison Breath instead of AI.
500 HP, 300 Mana, 700 Int, 300 STR. (182 Dex when I bless him and 784 Int)
Regens: 20/0/30 (made the choice not to put 5 into stamina regen, not sure how needed that is or how much focus helps with stamina regen)
460 or so TP left for scrolls.
This is the first pet I've tried Necromage on. So far I like it! Pet uses teleport, which I wasn't expecting, I guess the magery side of it is magery mastery.
Points are SO tight with this animal (hence no stamina regen). I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere near 700 Str, so I thought, may as well go 700 Int for the mana regen help.
What is the spell that places skull candles on the floor and what does it do? Whatever it is, he uses it pretty often.
His skills are pretty low right now, especially necro/ss. I got his wrestling and eval int up to 80 tonight before logging off.
I LOVE life leech! It helps so much in keeping the pets health up, even with low strength. I had a real scare while training him though; After I took armor ignore, the special abilities option disappeared and I hadn't taken life leech yet. So I took necromage and then the special abilities showed up again. I was swearing like a sailor for a minute there.
I don't see this spider becoming a crazy damaging pet that everyone hunts with, but so far he's a lot of fun to play around with. I imagine if you made one with Bushido and Life Leech and gave it 120 wrestling/parry it would make one hell of a tank.
500 HP, 300 Mana, 700 Int, 300 STR. (182 Dex when I bless him and 784 Int)
Regens: 20/0/30 (made the choice not to put 5 into stamina regen, not sure how needed that is or how much focus helps with stamina regen)
460 or so TP left for scrolls.
This is the first pet I've tried Necromage on. So far I like it! Pet uses teleport, which I wasn't expecting, I guess the magery side of it is magery mastery.
Points are SO tight with this animal (hence no stamina regen). I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere near 700 Str, so I thought, may as well go 700 Int for the mana regen help.
What is the spell that places skull candles on the floor and what does it do? Whatever it is, he uses it pretty often.
His skills are pretty low right now, especially necro/ss. I got his wrestling and eval int up to 80 tonight before logging off.
I LOVE life leech! It helps so much in keeping the pets health up, even with low strength. I had a real scare while training him though; After I took armor ignore, the special abilities option disappeared and I hadn't taken life leech yet. So I took necromage and then the special abilities showed up again. I was swearing like a sailor for a minute there.
I don't see this spider becoming a crazy damaging pet that everyone hunts with, but so far he's a lot of fun to play around with. I imagine if you made one with Bushido and Life Leech and gave it 120 wrestling/parry it would make one hell of a tank.
It is the Necro Mastery Conduit. From the UO Wiki on Skill Masteries:
The necromancer creates a conduit field at a targeted location that causes all targeted necromancy spells to effect all valid targets within the field at reduced spell strength based on necromancy skill, spirit speak skill, and mastery level.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
My tamer is necromage and I've never noticed the candles before when I've used conduit. I have a Necro Ram and I don't think I've ever seen him use it and he has much higher skills than the spider. Odd. Thanks for your reply Tabby Kapak!
Hmmm, this makes us wonder, does Necromancy not come with the Necro Mastery, and Necromage gets BOTH Magery Mastery and Necromancy Mastery?
SouthPaw
Lore Master
When I get home tonight I'll take my necro ram out for a little hunt and see if he does it, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I'll update tonight if the ram does it or not. Spider does it quite a bit.
It is a Necro spell. It does look cool. @PlayerSkillFTW told me what it was a while ago.
Makes you want to toss down a blanket and have a picnic.
Makes you want to toss down a blanket and have a picnic.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
Maybe I should take him around some undead stuff and see if he'll use the Command Undead mastery spell. There's an old thread on stratics where a guy swore his necro pet used Command Undead.
How would you like to have a pet spider that has a pet Skeletal Dragon? LOL.
I think I'll name my spider Lucas, after that cute spider on youtube.
How would you like to have a pet spider that has a pet Skeletal Dragon? LOL.
I think I'll name my spider Lucas, after that cute spider on youtube.
Unfortunately, Conduit doesn't work for pets. They'll cast it, but their single target spells won't chain off of it, so it ends up being a waste of Mana. For players, Conduit+Poison Strike on a large group creates a cluster bomb effect, where each victim gets hit with the main strike, then they all get hit with multiple splash hits too. Big AoE damage.
Here's my Necromage+Poison Breath Dread Spider, Lolth. She still has enough TP for 120 Wrest, and either 5 other 120 skills at 20 points each, or AI, or Life Leech. Looking back, i should've went with 10 SR, and some HPR. Still, Consume Damage+Vetting keeps her alive for what i use her against.
One of the added benefits of having Poison Breath on a Necromage Dread Spider, is that it allows the Dread Spider to sometimes inflict DP with it's Poison Strike spell (including the splash hits) at GM Poisoning. It also gives the Dread Spider a way to regain Poisoning skill after death. Train the Dread Spider to GM Poisoning before swapping it to Necromage for this.
Here's my Necromage+Poison Breath Dread Spider, Lolth. She still has enough TP for 120 Wrest, and either 5 other 120 skills at 20 points each, or AI, or Life Leech. Looking back, i should've went with 10 SR, and some HPR. Still, Consume Damage+Vetting keeps her alive for what i use her against.
I stopped using my necro Ram after that. He does it very often but it looked cool.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
I took my necro ram out hunting last night and I didn't see him cast it even once. Got the necromage spider out and he does it once in awhile (about every 10 minutes or so). Made me wonder if the amount of INT a pet has, has any bearing on the types of spells cast by the pet because my spider has way more INT than my ram. Or maybe it's just random chance. Still, I think it's odd that I've never seen my ram with 70+ necro cast it, but my spider that now has 40 necro started using it right away with just 20 skill. Maybe my ram lost his necro mastery book.
How much INT does your ram have @Pawain? I think mine has 370-but I'll have to double check that.
Went hunting/skilling with my spider for a bit last night, got his wrestling/tactics up to 90. Necro gains very slow, probably the slowest gaining magic in my experience-probably since they can't use any of the forms. His eval int. and SS is gaining at a good rate though. Sometimes he gets very bursty with his casting and I see a rapid number of hits on the mob. I kind of want to try out a serpentine dragon, even though I don't think I've ever seen anyone use one as a pet in game, I have an open stable slot right now and I've never tried one out. Would be interesting to see if with his massive INT if he casts the same spells as my unicorn that only has 370 INT.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
I agree, also I wish hell hounds, hell cats, predator hell cats, and imps could get to 5 slots. Really I wish everything could get to 5 slots, not sure why they can't. There's a bunch of farm animals; pig, chicken, turkey, eagle, etc. that would be fun to turn into a 5 slot monster.
Oh how I wish I could have a 5 slot Imp with necromage. They do 50% fire and 50% poison damage-perfect for necromage.
Unfortunately, at the Meet&Greet on Drachenfels last night they firmly stated they will not be doing that. We also were rather annoyed btw when we learned the imps could not go to 5 slots, after we were happy about them becoming tamable....
Ram has 370. I happened to take out my Tsuki wolf last night with necro and was playing with it. It did not make candles and has less int. It took it 16 minutes to kill a para Balron. 5 mins to get it killed while it was in heal mode.5% (Balron life)
My experiences with necro are not good.
Did they give a reason? You'd think the more variety of pets the better
SouthPaw
Lore Master
Same here and necro raises SO slow on pets. Necromage is quite a bit better than plain necro. It's a real shame how awesome Tsuki wolves look and yet we can't really use them for anything.
@Khyro
@Khaelor
I wonder if the K's have done any research into any relationship between INT and type of spells cast. Maybe it's nothing but luck or randomness, just seems odd that my spider casts conduit every 10 minutes or so and ram never does despite having much higher necro skill.
Guess we will have to wait for Larisa to post the Meet&Greet minutes, we were there but not on a char which saves the journal. It was something along the lines of small creatures shouldn't be that strong, to which the player responded with something like "it would be nicer since they block less monsters and players". To which the Devs responded with that we have the Dragon Turtle Hatchlings as small pets. We can't recall precisely, but we hope Larisa will share the minutes in the UHall later. She usually does.
So, no, there wasn't really much of a reason given we feel. Maybe that's why the Phoenix has been made bigger? They felt (s)he was too tiny for so much power?
They really need more training points. If they were same as they are and 2 slot. I think we could find something that works. They can get many Abilities.
PvPers using CC complained that they were too hard to see and target. The Devs nerfed the speed and capped PvP damage immediately. So they were not being used anymore. They did not have to change the graphic.
Earlier in the month however, they said to post on the official forums about particular pets that people feel should be 5 slot but aren't. i think if people could come up with a logical argument with specific pets some progress could be made.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
Hell Hound-need a good necro pet that has enough training points and this would if we could get to 5 slot.
Imp-I want a 5 slot pet that does fire/poison damage, currently there are none. Also another pet that could get necromage. Grizzled Mare-has unique damage type, necro pet.
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Thanks for that! We probably should go there, but we already miserably fail to keep up with just Stratics (or get any progress in game), so we have been avoiding the other forums like the plague for fear of losing even bigger chunks of our days. We read very slow, so it all takes far too much time actually. We fully realise there one can have more impact though.
Southpaw's remark seems such a good argument for upping the imp, finally a pet with GOOD use for Corpse Skin instead of it being counter productive.
As for the Phoenix remark, that was just jokingly, a tongue-in-cheek remark. We had hoped the
made that clear.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
Only problem with a 5 slot Imp is even if they made 5 slots possible, imps start at 2 slot with very low stats, even lower than a 2 slot ram, so I'm not sure how viable they would be. My dream would be to get one with necromage or AI/Chiv/Life Leech-but they wouldn't have the TP needed for that because their stats start super low.
Ultimately they need to decrease the imbue weight for magery and necro to be on par with the other magics, but I doubt they ever will. If they did it would lower the slots pets spawn at by 1 and make a lot of pets better or more viable. I don't understand why they don't let us train pets stats to caps. There would still be no way to make some crazy over powered pet with the limitations already in place on abilities and stat caps. It makes no sense for imps to spawn at 2 slots when a single flame strike or energy bolt can kill them-that's not the definition of a 2 slot pet to me.
Ultimately they need to decrease the imbue weight for magery and necro to be on par with the other magics, but I doubt they ever will. If they did it would lower the slots pets spawn at by 1 and make a lot of pets better or more viable. I don't understand why they don't let us train pets stats to caps. There would still be no way to make some crazy over powered pet with the limitations already in place on abilities and stat caps. It makes no sense for imps to spawn at 2 slots when a single flame strike or energy bolt can kill them-that's not the definition of a 2 slot pet to me.
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Some of the highest powered pets now are PP and can't be obtained anymore. You'd think they would improve TP or slots slightly on some pets to bring them closer to a usable pet that can still be obtained. Like how did a giant beetle get so good, and imps (plus a million more pets) get a raw deal.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
Bravo! *Claps*
I'd really like to know how the decision was made to make beetles 1->5 slots. Not complaining, I love my beetles, but where's the logic behind that decision? Why beetles? Why not llamas? Then you have animals like imps, rams, unicorns, kirins, dread spider, with very low stats spawning at 2-3 slots. What's the result? Most tamers running around with a Cu and rarely using anything else. Once in awhile I'll see someone using a lesser or naja, but that's about it. I get in game questions/comments about my pets all the time because I'm often the only one not using a Cu 24/7.
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1 slot pets should have never been made trainable to 5 slot (beetles/lesser hiryu), just gave too many intensity points since they have no innate magics.
The problem is, I've run the numbers and lowering the cost of magery/eval/necro/ss alone would benefit very few animals. Mostly the Bake and then the magical pets that spawn in two slot ranges currently: the nightmare, phoenix, skree, etc. It would just make more of them spawn as the lower slot. The majority of animals would stay in the same slot range just be lower in that range. So the cost would need to be lower and then each individual animal would have to be reworked to be given additional stats, which would affect hunting those animals, or reduce, again the affect would go well beyond just taming.
The point values I ran were 500/100 and 500/250.
So it would not be just a simple fix.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
What if they made magery/necro 250 TP each and eval/ss 250 TP each? Or 500/0 (don't have to spend TP for focus with mystic so why do we have to spend TP for eval/ss?) So the total was 500 TP like chiv, mystic, spellweaving.
SouthPaw
Lore Master
If they were not trainable to 5 slot would you still use them? I wouldn't. As you know, any pet that can't get to slot 5 can't get max base damage=gimped. Plus they would have a lot less HP. They may get a lot of TP, but I don't think either of them are over powered by any means.
Pets already have the cost of focus in what K and I refer to as kind of a hidden intensity. The hidden intensity of focus would be 100. We believe that's why various scrolls have the cost they do and why the original slot dropping bug required you to zero out your pets skills to have them slot drop. Their fix was to make it impossible for them to be able to reach 0 in a skill ever again.
And that is why Eval scroll costs 200 for a 1000 point skill and why Magery scrolls are 100 for a 500 point skill. So that's why the values of 500/100 and 500/250 were tested. They were more in line with the present system.
We dont use the hidden values of skills in our intensity calculator just for the sake of lessening confusion.
I will have to remember where I saved the spreadsheets, considering I did them at 5 am they could be anywhere.
I toss hate at PvP at any opportunity real or imagined when it comes to pets.As for the Phoenix remark, that was just jokingly, a tongue-in-cheek remark. We had hoped the