Returning tamer...

[pyrex]

Have not played for a very long time, but have decided to come back and give it a shot.

Started again last night, and still getting to grips with everything. I was able to find a keep spot in trammel very close to brit, which sent me dead broke instantly.

The loot system is completley different, and from what i've been reading luck is majorly important now.

Just a few questions..

My main is a tamer, with 100 in taming/lore... i will be looking to get a greater dragon at some stage... but wondering what the easiest path for me to get the 120 taming/lore scrolls would be? Is it feasible to hunt for these, keep in mind i only have regular dragons/white wyrms/nightmares stabled at the moment.

If not feasible to hunt for these scrolls in any length of time, where are some decent areas to hunt for cash? I used to hunt the elder gazers, blood elementals and sometimes ogre lords. I assume that these are now very outdated - is there anything that will drop a good amount of cash that i can kill? I literally have no idea where to go now.

One other thing, lucky jewelery and + tamer gear... given my options, would the best bet be again to try and buy this stuff, or is there any way to hunt for it and get it in a reasonable amount of time?

Oh, and one more stupid question, if i havent used one of those power scrolls am i able to still raise a stat above 100 if i manage to get a taming bracelet or something... or so i still need the scroll to go above my real skill?

Thank you.

 

[DreadLord Lestat]

Have not played for a very long time, but have decided to come back and give it a shot.

Started again last night, and still getting to grips with everything. I was able to find a keep spot in trammel very close to brit, which sent me dead broke instantly.

The loot system is completley different, and from what i've been reading luck is majorly important now.

Just a few questions..

My main is a tamer, with 100 in taming/lore... i will be looking to get a greater dragon at some stage... but wondering what the easiest path for me to get the 120 taming/lore scrolls would be? Is it feasible to hunt for these, keep in mind i only have regular dragons/white wyrms/nightmares stabled at the moment.

If not feasible to hunt for these scrolls in any length of time, where are some decent areas to hunt for cash? I used to hunt the elder gazers, blood elementals and sometimes ogre lords. I assume that these are now very outdated - is there anything that will drop a good amount of cash that i can kill? I literally have no idea where to go now.

One other thing, lucky jewelery and + tamer gear... given my options, would the best bet be again to try and buy this stuff, or is there any way to hunt for it and get it in a reasonable amount of time?

Oh, and one more stupid question, if i havent used one of those power scrolls am i able to still raise a stat above 100 if i manage to get a taming bracelet or something... or so i still need the scroll to go above my real skill?

Thank you.

Okay, for a greater dragon you can start with 110 taming and lore. You should be able to afford those fairly easily. If you can find a 115 taming cheap, you can go 115 tame and 105 lore, still have the same control chance which I believe is 99%. This will give you a chance to save up for 120's if you so choose to go that far. You can easily find cheap taming and lore jewelry to get you maxed to your newly bought power scrolls.

Luck suits (from my understanding) don't give you higher end loot, just more loot giving you a chance to get better loot. People rarely buy looted items with all the imbued stuff out there. If you have an extra character spot, I would consider creating an imbuer. You don't have to take it high or even keep it, just use it to unravel all of the loot you take. It is worth much more as imbuing ingredients.

Bloods are excellent source of income to get back into things. Once you get a higher end pet like a cu or greater dragon you can tackle more. If your vet is high enough, you can continue to fight with white wyrms, mares, rune beetles and dragons.

 

[Wevie]

Thread hijack:

I'm a returning tamer, also. Just back this week!

100.7 Animal Lore
114.8 Taming

Interested in a greater dragon.

Can I control it?

How the HECK do I tame it? I've tried and tried beating it into submission and having a bard spam area peace. Always one hit dead.

If I can't tame it, how much can I expect to pay for one?

 

[uoBuoY]

...How the HECK do I tame it?...

Honor Taming


pyrex...

You can't raise skills any higher than their current cap...not with jewels or anything else except a scroll.

Don't shop for 120 scrolls. I give away 5s and 10s or at least they are very affordable...if you can find them! Start with 5s and 10s right now because above 100 Taming is raises very, very slow.

GDs and Cu' are terrific tanks and need little healing but their damage sucks. 5 Frenzieds put out the highest DPS but can't tank anything. A Rune Beetle and a Bake Kitsuni or Nightmare is next in DPS (the Bake has better for manna but you can ride a Mare). With my excellent Rune/Bake combo, 120 Disco and ~2,400 luck, I can easily generate ~500k/hr (based on gold, marties, named armor and unraveling all the other stuff). And it's not hard or dangerous!

Just my opinion

 

[Tina Small]

You might try tsuki wolves, onis, or rune beetles in Tokuno if you're looking to raise some gold. Or rotting corpses in Doom. Also, fairy dragons in the Abyss drop a lot of gold (as well as bandages). If you're really feeling rusty and just want to ease back into hunting with a tamer by killing stuff that isn't trying to kill your tamer or pets as soon as it spots you, kill wisps in the wisp dungeon in Ilshenar (kinda WNW of the Honesty gate) or at the champ spawn north of the Spirituality gate in Ilshenar. Check the Hunter's Guide here on Stratics if you aren't sure where to find any of these monsters.

If you could post which shards you're both playing on, that would give people a better idea of whether or not they have anything they can give you to help you out.

For example, to tame greater dragons, you will want a suit with good resists. If you don't have one already, try asking in general chat or on the shard's trade forum if someone would be willing to make you a six-piece suit (with LRC if you need it) and indicate you don't have a lot of gold to spare. Six-piece suits with high resists and full LRC but no other mods (e.g., no mana regen, LMC, or luck) are not terribly difficult for an artificer to make and the materials for them are cheap. If you kill bouras to get the boura pelts for the artificer to use to max the resists and provide the old-style gems, that would help lower the cost even more. An artificer could also make you some basic jewelry with skills on it for very little cost.

And, as BuoY pointed out, you really don't have to use 120 scrolls. You can definitely get by with 110s or 115s.

 

[PzB74]

Build up honor and use it to tame the GD.
I did so solo with only 110 modified taming / lore.

Died some times but it worked. Go whack up Ogre Lords to raise your honor back up. If you have patience to get it to lvl 3 first it will be much easier.

 

[maroite]

Try using the enhance client and invis taming GD's... and everything else in the game.

JD and I have explained how to do this in several threads. I can literally solo tame anything in the game, and I don't have to work my honor to do it.

If you're going to use a peacer, don't area peace either. It won't really work well on the GD's. You need to target them for the best results, and even then its not that great.

If you don't want to use the EC (no clue why a returning player wouldn't give it a try...) then try finding a friend who can spam invis on you while you attempt to tame it.

 

[Wenchkin]

Invis taming is also pretty easy with the classic client too, that's the method I use on the worst aggro critters.

Honor and peace aren't necessary for a tamer, I tame with pretty much the same method I started out using years ago, the only thing that's really changed is my equipment and I use invis more

Don't be too smitten with greater draggies if you're just back in game though, there's lots of new critters you can play with to get back into the swing of things. I know everyone and their dog seems to rave about them, but they are just one pet out of many. And erm, if you're out of practice I wouldn't recommend trying to tame one of the most challenging pets in UO hehehe.

I'd go for a kitsune or two and a rune beetle first as they're easily controllable at your skill level and useful pets to have. You can team up the kitsune with either your mare or runey for some hunts. I use my mare with runey, and yeah WW or normal draggy too. Hiryu and cu sidhe are good too, though the cu needs more than GM taming and you need to be an elf to tame one. It's basically a case of having a variety of pets to call upon depending what you're hunting.

Just in case you missed the links in the FAQ, the taming guide pages here on Stratics will give you a good source of info while you're finding your way in game. Link.

Wenchy

 

[PzB74]

Can you link to a thread about invis taming...?
In case I've missed something

Try using the enhance client and invis taming GD's... and everything else in the game.

JD and I have explained how to do this in several threads. I can literally solo tame anything in the game, and I don't have to work my honor to do it.

If you're going to use a peacer, don't area peace either. It won't really work well on the GD's. You need to target them for the best results, and even then its not that great.

If you don't want to use the EC (no clue why a returning player wouldn't give it a try...) then try finding a friend who can spam invis on you while you attempt to tame it.

 

[Old Man of UO]

... Luck suits (from my understanding) don't give you higher end loot, just more loot giving you a chance to get better loot. People rarely buy looted items with all the imbued stuff out there. ...

Luck does increase the chance to bump the intensity of the loot, not just get more loot. But you can't go above the max intensity for that creature. Also, it increases the chance for special drops like artifacts.

Certain loot items still sell well, but it is much more complicated to find loot that will sell. Mostly loot with max intensity that is expensive to imbue, like 25% Enhance Potions or 20% LRC. Imbuing has really been detrimental to looting.

 

[Wenchkin]

Invis taming is really just invising yourself as much as you can to avoid being attacked. There will be a wee bit about it in the FAQ fairly soon, but really that's all there is to it.

With a greater, beat it down to a sliver of health first, then it won't fry you in your boots.

After that all I use is a simple macro to invis myself when I need it. I precast invis, run till I'm beside the animal in a position I can start taming and drop the spell on myself. It just saves Mr Draggy from noticing and starting to fry me before I've started trying to tame him Then hold the tame last target macro till you start a tame and you can cast invis spells on yourself as constantly as you want at that point, depending how snarky the GD is. In EC you can make a macro that tries to tame and can repeat up to 10 times.

Never forget about test centre when you're trying new stuff out though - I'd recommend trying it out there till you feel comfortable with your macros and timing.

If it's not a GD, I don't use invis very much at all, straight lead taming works pretty well on most critters.

Wenchy

 

[PzB74]

- So you can actually invis yourself after the taming attempt is successfully started and avoid the flamethrower? The only challenge would then be to invis quickly enough when you fail, start over and invis again.

The old type items with invis charges should be very handy here.

Not sure I would have subdued to an invisible tamer though, would have been slightly sceptical, especially with an IQ of 450 rolleyes:

 

[Wenchkin]

Yup, you can sometimes get a few spells dumped on you before the invis kicks in, but if the draggy is beaten down it does a lot less damage so that shouldn't be fatal. If I haven't started an attempt yet I tend to just keep an eye on the healthbar and when I know I'm near dead I back off and heal.

There are invis potions too, but I've never really tried those. No particular reason, but all my tamers tend to just cast invis.

Wenchy

 

[PzB74]

If you're using invis spell you also need a high meditation skill.
- If not you'll be disturbed a lot and be eaten...

I like invis potions, good to have as backup.

 

[Wenchkin]

You can invis tame with 0 med, just not for very long lol. I don't have med on my main tamers, just the necro/weaver who casts like a loony. It's do-able

High med would be handy if you wanted to tame a lot of GDs, but most pets don't need more than a quick invis, if that, to tame. Or you can use another pet, have it stopped and staying while the wild pet attacks it. Keep it vetted and it will keep the wild pet occupied while you tame.

Wenchy

 

[[JD]]

There's a little more to it than just invising tho, if you listen closely all pets make 2 types of sounds. One is an "Yes master" sound you might hear after being issued an "all follow me" command for example. The other is an "I'm gonna rip your face off and stomp on it but not before I hit you so hard your grandchildren will feel it" angry type growl. This growl is the same one you hear when a pet disobeys an order. Essentially, pets communicate Yes, or No.

When taming just before it attacks, it will make the angry growl. A smart tamer will use that as their queue to pre-emptively invis themselves rather than wait for the fire in the belly to well up and burn them to a crispy critter.

I go one step further. Using EC I actually pre-cast invis and have the target up and waiting, while I spam tame... GD's and other future pets don't seem to attack me much

I beat GD's down rather than honor tame. That way if you mess up during the tame you're dealing with a weakened pup of a dragon, vs a full health, angry, fireball one shotting dragon (eep).

Best bet is to come with plenty of resists (all 70s), protection on, ability to heal and invis yourself, spam tame macro.

Can be done with lower levels of taming (115), but for least amount of pain try to get a 120 scroll eventually as it reduces failed taming attempts and quickens the taming process overall.

A mage tamer has the easiest time taming hard to tame pets. If your tamer is a non mage tamer (archer, bard, etc), might want to consider stoning skills around to turn him into one whenever you go special (and by special I mean, can melt your face off) pet hunting.

 

[Wenchkin]

*grins* Taming is as complex as you want it to be JD, invis taming included

Wenchy

 

[[JD]]

Is she always like this? How does anyone roll with her?

 

[Old Man of UO]

Is she always like this? How does anyone roll with her?

Yes, but she means well, has good advice, and actually will start to grow on you with time.

 

[Wenchkin]

Is she always like this? How does anyone roll with her?

I was trying to be gentle and succinct.. I know the latter is a pretty rare occurrence for me, but I thought I was pretty snark free lol.

Wenchy

 

[[JD]]

Gentle like a shark methinks. Naughty naughty.. I'm gonna have to watch out for a girl like you

 

[Jlapps]

There's some subtext beneath this conversation beginning to develop