I like the new taming/training system

[Keith of Sonoma]

Thank you Developers!

I spent A LOT of time on test learning about the new publish. I went back and forth as to whether I loved it or hated it, and I have to say I am VERY pleasantly surprised (over all) with the "finished product".
My quick takes:

1) The point amount (1501) per round is completely adequate. Pets can be trained up very nicely, without being all around overpowering.

2) The "beginning slot" on most pets is in line with where I felt they should/would be.

3) Some pets do have the ability to be trained up to replace GD's and turtles in some capacity without completely doing away with them.

4) There are A LOT of new tamable pets. It really has me thinking about which pets can be utilized in certain scenarios.

5) I had more fun with my tamer today than I have had in a long time!

6) My one complaint! I REALLY expected y'all were going to increase the stable slots (I personally figured that 5-7 was a fair" number.

Again, thank you for (IMO) a job very well done! @Bleak @Kyronix @Mesanna

 

[Lord Gandalf]

Someone finally coming up with a positive feedback on the boards

Can you please give us an example of a mountable pet that can be trained up to replace a gd pls, i havent got the time to level up a pet yet.

Is it possible to increase a pet's hp and Resists?

Thx

 

[drcossack]

Someone finally coming up with a positive feedback on the boards

Can you please give us an example of a mountable pet that can be trained up to replace a gd pls, i havent got the time to level up a pet yet.

Is it possible to increase a pet's hp and Resists?

Thx

Working on a Nightmare (currently 4 slots), and yes, you can boost HP & Resists. I finished a White Wyrm, Rune Beetle, and Dragon. All 3 of them kill a Greater Dragon with no problems (with consume damage up.)

Nightmare so far: Bumped up its resists to 80/80/57/40/60 (I left Energy alone), increased its base damage, and dumped the rest of my available points into HP. Currently has 676 HP. Testing it on a Greater Dragon now and there was a decent amount HP fluctuation at the start (went down to about 70%), but that's nothing Consume Dmg doesn't fix.

White Wyrm:HP and Physical/Fire resists, both maxed at 80, with 882 HP. If I turn on Consume Damage, it kills a Greater Dragon without any issues.

Dragon: Physical/Fire/Cold resists to 80, increased its HP to 900.

Rune Beetle: Maxed Mana Regen, Base damage, bumped up its Phys/Fire/Cold resists: 80/80/72. Left Poison alone (90) and couldn't raise Energy. Increased its HP to 845.

Going to tame additional WW/Drag/Mare/Rune Beetle to tinker with other setups, like increased skill caps. Also going to try them in Shadowguard now that they shouldn't have to hide behind a Greater Dragon.

 

[MalagAste]

Yes that's great but how do they do against something like Exodus? Slasher of the Veils... Captains? Cora? Lady M? Dread Horn??? Medusa... Navrey? A champ boss solo? Like Riki...

Most the things tamers can't do because they destroy pets... or destroy the tamers trying to heal their pet...

 

[Petra Fyde]

Yes that's great but how do they do against something like Exodus? Slasher of the Veils... Captains? Cora? Lady M? Dread Horn??? Medusa... Navrey? A champ boss solo? Like Riki...

Most the things tamers can't do because they destroy pets... or destroy the tamers trying to heal their pet...

That question will be hard to answer until someone has not only upgraded a pet but also spent the time raising any or all additional skills. The hardest thing I did on Test was cu-sidhe vs paragon greater dragon. As I've posted before, that battle can be viewed on my youtube channel

 

[BeaIank]

... Pets are the most optimal thing to use at Lady Mel.
Dreadhorn I could solo with my bard tamer running peace songs. It just took too damn long. GDs and Turtles and even Cu Sidhes can handle Navrey.
Captains, unless they have consume damage running like some of the melee ones, you can do with pets, but it takes much longer.
Baracoon can be easily soloed with a tamer. Neira as well. Mephitis is quite doable and I haven't tried Rikki much with my tamer.
Semidar didn't go too well because I have to stay close to heal with bandages and her aura wrecks me. If I could stay away casting greater heal, it wouldn't be an issue.

And I believe most of those will be easier now since you can customize your pets against their strengths and weaknesses.

 

[MalagAste]

... Pets are the most optimal thing to use at Lady Mel.
Dreadhorn I could solo with my bard tamer running peace songs. It just took too damn long. GDs and Turtles and even Cu Sidhes can handle Navrey.
Captains, unless they have consume damage running like some of the melee ones, you can do with pets, but it takes much longer.
Baracoon can be easily soloed with a tamer. Neira as well. Mephitis is quite doable and I haven't tried Rikki much with my tamer.
Semidar didn't go too well because I have to stay close to heal with bandages and her aura wrecks me. If I could stay away casting greater heal, it wouldn't be an issue.

And I believe most of those will be easier now since you can customize your pets against their strengths and weaknesses.

For me it takes WAY too long on a tamer to do the spawns... more likely to get raided... and a tamer doesn't do squat in PvP when your pet is already occupied... like trying to shoo flies from ****... can't be done.

 

[BeaIank]

T2A spawns are your friend for that.
Most of the time they don't bother checking the island spawn because it is off the way.

 

[Swordsman]

I started training a Cu, about 45% after some training on the first day. The speed is moderate, I am comfortable with the progress. This round of development is a good one, thank you !

 

[MalagAste]

T2A spawns are your friend for that.
Most of the time they don't bother checking the island spawn because it is off the way.

That's not always true... I get found there quite often.. I wouldn't do one in a dungeon that's just asking for a raid...

I don't care for PvP... Least not anymore... at one time I did but then I refused to use certain cheats and such so... usually I could stay alive but couldn't really take anyone down... either was a stand off or just my Legendary running skills keeping me alive... don't like it anymore and have enough "excitement" just trying to stay alive and get the champ done... I don't need anymore. I gave up doing spawns long time ago... was never something you could ever do on my home shard... was that way for years... big zerg guild was all there was in Fel.. they pretty much kept anyone from ever doing anything there... though over the years they finally dwindled out and died only to be replaced by 2 more... who for awhile fought over the facet keeping everyone else out... then one of them imploded and broke apart and the other was dominant for a long while then I guess they got bored because no one else ever bothered to go to fel... they tried every tactic in the book to "lure" people there.. and after being slaughtered by lies and broken promises 2 or 3 times no one bothered to go again.... I guess they got bored and left. Was able to do them for the first time at home for awhile but that changed about a year ago. Now it's back to avoiding fel.

Was doing them with some friends on various other shards would get raided from time to time but then we'd just go somewhere else for awhile till it cooled off again... but then friends decided they wanted all PvP all the time and they left to go somewhere else to do that... since I seriously can't solo much... really don't do much anymore. Besides it was getting hard to find folk around wanting to do something at my odd hours.

 

[omukai]

I like this patch, too. It's fun and gives me something to do

 

[drcossack]

Yes that's great but how do they do against something like Exodus? Slasher of the Veils... Captains? Cora? Lady M? Dread Horn??? Medusa... Navrey? A champ boss solo? Like Riki...

Most the things tamers can't do because they destroy pets... or destroy the tamers trying to heal their pet...

Exodus: Probably the same as it is with a Greater. You need a TON of heals to keep it alive.

Slasher: Don't bother. It'll still 2-shot the pets, plus the rocks will kill the pets just as quickly they do a Greater.

Captains: Should be able to tank dexer Captains fairly well if they have Greater Dragon levels of HP, but I can't speak for the damage they'd do.

Lady Mel/Dread Horn/Medusa/Navrey: Should be fine. Bring an Archer/Thrower for Melisande, and a Sampire for Medusa though.

Champ: Solo Rikky with a White Wyrm should be possible now. Even if it is, I still wouldn't do it, because it's not the most efficient way to kill it.

Love the taming changes. My only minor issue is that all of my pet's skills will be 100% before he reaches 25% of the way into the first phase of training. I'd love to be able to feed them a scroll to 120 so that all of the time spent fighting isn't wasted for the other 75% of the phase(for skills).

That's a minor issue and quite frankly it *should* take a while to train up so.... nice work UO team!

All the pets I used were maxed on their skills a LONG time ago, but I doubt that played a part in what I had to fight to get gains. But I gotta ask, what are you fighting?

 

[Dizzy]

I'm not sure I understand the limitations on follower slots with this upgrade. I'm on foot with my GD because he's not rideable and an ethy would take too many slots.

But can I now train up a nightmare to 5 slots and then ride him?

 

[drcossack]

I'm not sure I understand the limitations on follower slots with this upgrade. I'm on foot with my GD because he's not rideable and an ethy would take too many slots.

But can I now train up a nightmare to 5 slots and then ride him?

Yes.

 

[Finley Grant]

Do the Basis per make any Difference? Or will a 1.0 per after Training as good as a 4.5?

 

[drcossack]

Do the Basis per make any Difference? Or will a 1.0 per after Training as good as a 4.5?

The rating? It goes up. The White Wyrm I trained was about a 2.5. Now it's comparable to my 4.3 Greater Dragon, if not superior (depending on what I fight.)

edit: Hmm, the Pet Power Calc is gonna need an update. I plugged in my Nightmare's current stats (which was also a 2.something) and its current rating is 22.1. I did expect that since it MASSIVELY exceeds its normal maximums, but that should give you a general idea of how much stronger old pets become. Right now my Nightmare is fighting an Ancient Wyrm and 2 Fire Elementals (bottom of Fel Destard) and not having ANY trouble.

 

[Thrakkar]

The rating? It goes up. The White Wyrm I trained was about a 2.5. Now it's comparable to my 4.3 Greater Dragon, if not superior (depending on what I fight.)

edit: Hmm, the Pet Power Calc is gonna need an update. I plugged in my Nightmare's current stats (which was also a 2.something) and its current rating is 22.1. I did expect that since it MASSIVELY exceeds its normal maximums, but that should give you a general idea of how much stronger old pets become. Right now my Nightmare is fighting an Ancient Wyrm and 2 Fire Elementals (bottom of Fel Destard) and not having ANY trouble.

Pet Power Calcs just rate a pet from 0.0 or 1.0 (no idea, what the lowest is) to 5.0, which essentially means maxed out values for that TYPE of animal. In other words, a 5.0 Slime still has way lower stats/values than a 5.0 Dragon. Which makes the current implementation of Pet Calcs pretty much wortless, once you start the training process.
(TBH, I always thought mashing all stats together into a SINGLE NUMBER is bull anyway. Especially since it didn't really mean that much of a difference when hunting.)

Basically they could change it, so the new 100% is determined by the new "pet imbuing" caps. That would also allow to compare different types of pets. Nevertheless, one single number is still bull. Splitting it up into a defensive and offensive rating would make much more sense.
Oh, and of course all those new special abilites and magic schools are next to impossible to fit in a numerical rating. Also a lot of those things are also highly situational. I.e. an AoE skill is pretty much worthless when fighting a single target.

 

[Keith of Sonoma]

Yes that's gr

Do the Basis per make any Difference? Or will a 1.0 per after Training as good as a 4.5?

Yes, they matter a lot! I figure, if something already has more in the skills/stats that I am looking for already at taming, then I can use less points "customizing" them. Which allows me to put those "saved" points somewhere else.

 

[CovenantX]

Yes that's great but how do they do against something like Exodus? Slasher of the Veils... Captains? Cora? Lady M? Dread Horn??? Medusa... Navrey? A champ boss solo? Like Riki...

Most the things tamers can't do because they destroy pets... or destroy the tamers trying to heal their pet...

You can't have any pet that will successfully fight Slasher of Veils, even if your pet was 100% in all resistances, slasher would still kill it.

I'm pretty sure Slasher, Hurricane Elementals, and maybe wild golems are the only things that can kill things that have 100% in all resistances, without Armor Ignore or some form of resistance lowering debuff (Corpse Skin Discord & other pet abilities) Curse doesn't lower resistances of NPCs.


I've never used my tamer on Exodus... but aside from Slasher greater dragons can kill most/any of those mobs..... without much difficulty... besides it taking forever =X

 

[Sir_Bolo]

.

Basically they could change it, so the new 100% is determined by the new "pet imbuing" caps. That would also allow to compare different types of pets.

Actually you could simply use the new pet control slot number formula for this: I think that it is just calculated from the total "imbuing" cost of the pet's stats/abilities

Though of course you would need to calculate this number at least with one decimal place to be accurate enough...

 

[BeaIank]

Fel Coil is giving fairly nice gains to my rune beetle. .10 to .15 per kill or more.

 

[Uvtha]

Thank you Developers!

I spent A LOT of time on test learning about the new publish. I went back and forth as to whether I loved it or hated it, and I have to say I am VERY pleasantly surprised (over all) with the "finished product".
My quick takes:

1) The point amount (1501) per round is completely adequate. Pets can be trained up very nicely, without being all around overpowering.

2) The "beginning slot" on most pets is in line with where I felt they should/would be.

3) Some pets do have the ability to be trained up to replace GD's and turtles in some capacity without completely doing away with them.

4) There are A LOT of new tamable pets. It really has me thinking about which pets can be utilized in certain scenarios.

5) I had more fun with my tamer today than I have had in a long time!

6) My one complaint! I REALLY expected y'all were going to increase the stable slots (I personally figured that 5-7 was a fair" number.

Again, thank you for (IMO) a very well job done! @Bleak @Kyronix @Mesanna

I like it a lot, other than the fact that 1 slot pets are a real ass ache to get to level 2 unless you have something tank for them.