Outdated info

[Caelas]

Glancing through the stickies trying to find info on how to start a tamer...I'm noticing a lot of this info is old...years old. Obviously a lot changes throughout the history of the game, so I'm not sure if I should trust the stickies.

Anyway, I am thinking of started a tamer once my Archer is taken care of. I'm thinking a mage/tamer...

What skills and stats should I look at having?
Should I raise any skills before another? (similar to GMing Music as a bard before anything else)

 

[Nenime]

Hi Caelas,

welcome to the animally side of UO. Start your stats like that:
(you may tweak it later if necessary)

I think you should choose to be an Elf.
100 Str
25 Dex
100 Int

Skills of course would be:
Animal Taming (at least 110)
Animal Lore (at least 110)
Vet (GM is good, more is better but not absolutely necessary unless you need extra stable slots)

Magery, Eval Int and Medi depends on your wishes. You could go for 120 each. Or - if you play a bit around with the points you have left and combine it with jewelry and other equipment, you could add another skill like perhaps Spellweaving or Focus for extra Mana Reg.

In my opinion you should start with Magery. High Magery will help you a lot - be it first only for recalling/gating. Let Eval Int and Medi just rise as they come. You may use a spell channeling Minus-Magery-Weapon especially for the higher circles.

For Taming set up a Last-Target Macro and put it on a easy to access key. You will use it ... well, often. Get the first few points from a Trainer (about 30), then go to the sheep farm in Yew and off you go. Tame-kill-tame-kill etc. is the procedure. You may also collect the wool after you callously slaughtered the poor sheeps. You'll need this later for Veterinary.
Lore raise pretty quick because there is a skill check everytime you 'speak' to the pet and this will be 2-3 times pro taming attempt. High Lore doesn't alter you taming success chance but it's important to control a pet, you'll need that later too.
Vet raises really fast. Although the success chance is difficulty based, the gains oddly are not. So vet till the sun goes down and eventually you hit GM. No need to grind-train it, let it rise while you're hunting.

One last word about the optimal taming range. As a rule of thumb, you can say it's best when the pet's Taming Difficulty is 25 points lower than your actual Taming skill. I don't know how much you hate the KR client but there's a new player reward statuette (Skill Tutor Statuette) which will tell you the skill difficulty (for any skill). So go get one if have the chance.

Sorry for bubbling away. I just can't keep it short.

 

[Caelas]

Don't appologize about babbling, as long as the babble is good information, which this is.

So when I go to make the character, should I aim to start a couple skills high, or a few on the medium side? Something like Magery 50 Taming 40 Lore 10, or some other combo?

 

[Nenime]

Yes, that would be a good idea but you can drop Lore to start with. When you're at 70-75 in Taming, your Lore skill is probably near GM already. It rises fast. Taming is definitely the one for 50 starting skill.

To give Magery a boost is also useful. But it rises fast too and when you already have another decent developed character - which I know you have - you probably found some good mana-reg pieces and/or LRC. Two or three weekends grinding Magery and you should be GM. On the other hand, all the other skills rise even faster or passively so yes, go for Magery.

To reach my standard 500-characters-per-post I would like to add this: A Mage-Tamer is cool and you probably will be very happy with it but if you start a new char anyway then take a minute to think about building a Bard-Tamer. Some Bard skills are hard to raise and you later you will be glad that you already started at mid-level.

A Bard-Tamer template would be:
Taming
Lore
Vet
Music
Peace (very useful for taming aggressive beasts) or
Disco (very useful for killing aggressive beasts)
Provo is great too, but not as common as the other two.

 

[Legacyee]

If you are starting from scratch then I would add Herding(don't laugh) it will save you a lot of time, no more chasing after animals you just herd them onto your health bar, you may be surprised how much fun it can be

 

[Caelas]

Herding? Oh my GM Herder. THAT would be funny! I'll keep it in mind.

Nenime...tamer/bard...I thought of that. I already have a mage/bard...about half way done and I kinda got bored with it. Not sure if it was the bard part or the mage part that bored me.

And yes, I do have access to decent armor

 

[Sarphus]

If you're doing herding, do it on a different char that's stealth/ninja/shepherd. It's MUCH more fun that way.

As for mage/tamer, there are several good ways to do one. The first key decision you have to make is whether you want to use a mage weapon or not. If you're using a mage weapon you probably want to take magery to 120. If not, you probably want to stop at 106 (the point when you stop fizzling lvl 7 spells).

Most lvl 8 spells are summons, which means they consume control slots. Pets are a much better way to spend control slots than summons if you're a tamer.

I would recommend taking taming/lore to at least 110 each either real or adjusted skill.

If you plan to cast a lot of spells, I would recommend getting med.

the standard 6x 120 mage/tamer (taming/lore/vet/mage/med/eval) is still viable, but you can beat it with several hybrids assuming you have the right gear for your hybrid.

If you're doing mage/tamer, I would suggest starting with 50 taming and 50 Magery. Vet and lore both gain pretty fast. Taming is extremely slow. Magery is easy to train, but costs money (something you might not have)

If you're not using a mage weapon, you want to pick up a set of super slayer spellbooks. Your pet will do good dmg on its own, but if you tack on a slayer flamestrike you will really start to pack a punch. Also, it's good to note that chain lightning and meteor shower do just as much dmg as flamestrike to TWO targets. If you hit more than 2 targets you start to do less dmg. if you're a mage/tamer, your pet can tank a few things while you rain down death from above with meteor and chain lightning.

mage/tamer builds can go a lot deeper strategically, but I think it's better to let you get your feet wet rather than bombarding you with tons of information.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Now for the Tamer / Peacemaking

IF you can put a high percentage LRC suit together then forget magery as a starting skill. Just buy it up to 33 or so and (assuming your 100% LRC) just cast spells.

This is what I did on my tamer for the second account, I have him set up as a Stealthy/Honor Tamer. So what you will see instead of stealth is Peacemaking (the tamer on the other account).

Initial Skills (assuming you do NOT buy an advanced character token)

Taming (50)
Veterinary (50)
anything for the 3rd

make dex as low as you can

Maintain the ratio of 5:4 for STR:INT (I think str(115), int(95), dex(15))

Get a rune book and fill it with recall scrolls. Mark the Jeholm Bull Pin and Mark your Home spot.

Turn all skills down except taming.

Get Taming Jewelry high enough to tame Bulls OR go to Ice/Dagger Island and do not use Jewelry and do Polar Bears.

When you can do Bulls do them at the bull pen.

It helps a lot if you have the means to kill the tames. I used Forest Ostards (Trivial to you 50 taming and does not require lore) then Frenzied Ostards, then Bake Kitsunes etc.

Try to keep your Total Skill points as low as you can while still being able to Tame Bulls. This invokes the GGS more frequently.

Try to get jewelry with the highest Tameing you can get, I have +29 and +27 for my tamers. Don't be shy in terms of lower values so you can switch them in and maintain the ability to tame bulls (80.0 to 85.0 worked well for me as a range).

Now once your taming is real 85+ and assuming you acquired +25 or higher Taming Jewelry, your good to have Cu's, Hiryu's, Dread War Horse, Nightmares (Note these are all ridable's and GOOD Killers).

Now you may want to turn up Lore. Just lore your pet repeatedly untill it caps. It wont take all that long. You should burn at the very least a 105 Lore PS, 110 is a better level as itr grants and additional stable spot.

Once your Taming and Lore are 107+ you can have and control anything in the game to date. Trust me, Taming will be a NIGHTMARE to raise.

Now you can take one of two paths.

One you can focus on Veterinary or you can focus on Magery.

If (well when) you do Veterinary get tons of bandages and get yourself a pet that gets hurt. Some scenarios that work really well here is to grab a Shadow Ore Elemental and train up a Mare, War Horse, Hiryu, Cu, Greater Dragon. They can NOT kill the SoE and will get damaged. Your Vet is at 50, doing the SoE you will be mid to high 80's before you know it and you can choose to just raise it through normal play or continue on.

Now Magery. Get that 100% LRC and just cast spells, let meditation and focus rise (aka turn up magery, meditation and focus).

When that is done, now go buy a load of Bard Instruments at the tinkers. Set Music up and just play the instrument, don't even bother buying it up. Get it to GM and it wont take long at all.

Now Buy up Peacemaking and peace one of your pets until it is GM, again it wont take long.

You now have a fundamentally functional Tamer. If you burn a 115 or 120 Taming PS then take a Killer Rider and go do the Ridgebacks in Ilshenar. When you get bored and trust me you will, don't push it just go have some fun. You will be getting to the 1 GGS per 24 hours and that will be just about the size of things. That is NOT literaly true as the Ridgebacks would give me 5 to 8 skill ups before I got bored and went and had fun.

Now then for some not so obvious.

The Slayer rules work the same way for Barding. You get a Barding Instrument with a correct Slayer vs what your barding and you gain +15% chance to bard.

Exceptional Barding Instruments, give you a +10% chance to bard. Hint: get exceptional instruments

You can try to Peace a Greater Dragon but good luck with that, even if you do, 99% of the time it wears off with the first "You anger ..." and you tend to be toasted.

I went and killed White Wyrms and raise Fame, Karma and Honor. Doing this and it is about 4 hours to level 3 Honor and that will Tame you a Greater Dragon ...

Everything else, the Exceptional Instrument and 120 Peacemaking will pretty much just freeze the mob your trying to tame, except the Cu's and Hiryus, but normally they are far easier to deal with peaced than not. Anything lower and you can mostly just stand your ground and they want to kill you but cant get out of Peace Mode to do it. This can be a problem after you tame them as they will remain peaced and will want to follow you but cant get out of peace mode. That is until Peace wears off.

If your pet is not doing so well, then peace its opponent. This tends to be better than veting as the MoB stands there sand dies while your pet kills it.

I use My Peace Tamer to control the Battle for my Pet, except for some High end mobs this works wonders and of course you always have the get out jail free card (aka area peace).

IF your a veting Tamer, then Lore will take care of itself as it will get a skill up check when you vet your pet.

 

[Nenime]

Wow, this post was even longer but full of good informations. I just want to stress one point: the GGS. I don't know if you're going to raise your Taming skill above 100 real (which I think you should) but if you do, GGS will be your friend. Therefore, the less overall skill points you have the sooner you can expect a GGS gain. Actually, besides Taming you need only a few points in Magery for Recalling, Healing and maybe Mind Blast for killing - but even that can be replaced (loaded Spellbook for Recall, Pots for Healing and another pet for killing). As EnigmaMaitreya pointed out, all other skills can be raised later. Good point!

Uh, about the Bard part. I won't commend this here because this is mainly the Tamer Forum but I must correct one thing: AFAIK Slayer Instruments give 20% success bonus (not 15).

 

[Caelas]

Ok, well, I do believe my brain just melted with all this info! Thanks for the replies.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Uh, about the Bard part. I won't commend this here because this is mainly the Tamer Forum but I must correct one thing: AFAIK Slayer Instruments give 20% success bonus (not 15).

I will go back to the Barding calculator(?) or page here and verify that 15%.

I picked up a Flute of Renewal Slayer Reptile(?) (Dragon Group) and use it vs Hiryu's and Greater Dragons. Everything else gets the Exceptional treatment. But make no mistake I Honor Tame Greater Dragons.

Obviously I want you to be right.

I also picked up a few Swords of Prosperity (Mage -0 Weapon) and as Sarphus said, it makes a difference. I have also tuned the two tamers to have 45% DCI even at the expense of Resists on their suits. The Combination of the DCI and the Mage Weapon keeps them from being hit for real ... most of the time. As an example, taming Cu's I may get the You are Bleeding part of the attack but I take no damage, well over time I take a little damage from the Bleeding but it wears off.

I suggested the Rune Book full of Recall Scrolls as that does not require magery as far as I know.

Of course I did it as you suggested I had magery to a point were I could recall but I sincerely regretted it the higher my tamming got.

I think when the second tamer hit 85, his total skill points were some where around 300 to 350.

 

[Nenime]

*laughs* Na, Enigma, your thoughts were excellent and I know that you know about all that. My reply was addressed to the OP, Sir Caelas. Sorry for this confusion.

BTW, I looked up for this Slayer thing. Here's what I found on UO Playguide - or UO Herald, what it is now called:

Each of these magical instruments will give the bard 10 skill points worth of difficulty modifiers against a certain class of creature. However, possessing these instruments does not cause the bard to be vulnerable to other types of creatures. Instead, when using the instrument against the opposing creature type, the attempt has a difficulty penalty instead of a bonus.

As an example, an instrument of Daemon Dismissal (labeled in the fashion of "a lute [Daemon Dismissal]") will increase the bard's chance to use a barding ability against any variety of Daemon by 20% (when that instrument is used). When used against an elemental, however, the bard's chance of success is reduced by 20%.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

*laughs* Na, Enigma, your thoughts were excellent and I know that you know about all that. My reply was addressed to the OP, Sir Caelas. Sorry for this confusion.

BTW, I looked up for this Slayer thing. Here's what I found on UO Playguide - or UO Herald, what it is now called:

Each of these magical instruments will give the bard 10 skill points worth of difficulty modifiers against a certain class of creature. However, possessing these instruments does not cause the bard to be vulnerable to other types of creatures. Instead, when using the instrument against the opposing creature type, the attempt has a difficulty penalty instead of a bonus.

As an example, an instrument of Daemon Dismissal (labeled in the fashion of "a lute [Daemon Dismissal]") will increase the bard's chance to use a barding ability against any variety of Daemon by 20% (when that instrument is used). When used against an elemental, however, the bard's chance of success is reduced by 20%.

Oh thanks for doing that for me and I am glad to get it straight. I have no clue were the 15% came from.