Rune Beetle

[GamonHunter]

Question about rune beetles,

I know they were great once, but how are they now that they reduced the armor corrode to 50%, and what does that mean exactly, 50% chance, or 50% lower resists?

Is it worth training one up? I know they kill very fast, especially teamed up with a 2 slotter, but they seem to be a bit of a glass cannon. Will a rune with 100 wrestle be viable, or should I just use my almost fully trained Super dragon with 992 hp, and great resists, since he seems to be pretty much immortal, though I image he might kill slower than a fully trained rune, who has 115 poison, 111 eval, and 169 dex.

Opinions?

 

[Guest]

They can't tank like a Super obviously, only maybe a near perfect maxxed out Cu can take the same kind of punishment. Like many have said before on the boards lots of pets have specialties. For say Melisande a greater is great for a tank, but 3 greaters is a bit of a waste as 1 greater tanking with 2 beetles and 2 Bake would dish out far more damage along with keeping her poisoned nearly the whole fight. I'd take the beetle and bake/nightmare for pretty much any solo gold hunting over the greater as well since you're looking more to kill fast and loot over outlasting the critter.


Rey~

 

[imported_revenant2]

I believe the rune beetle's armor corruption special used to lower the target's resists to 0, but now it only takes the resists down halfway.

 

[imported_revenant2]

<blockquote><hr>

Is it worth training one up? I know they kill very fast, especially teamed up with a 2 slotter, but they seem to be a bit of a glass cannon. Will a rune with 100 wrestle be viable, or should I just use my almost fully trained Super dragon with 992 hp, and great resists, since he seems to be pretty much immortal, though I image he might kill slower than a fully trained rune, who has 115 poison, 111 eval, and 169 dex.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some things to remember about these super dragons. They do all phys damage with their melee attack, that huge fire breath attack appears to me to be fire damage, and their phys and fire resists tend to be very high when you pick a good one. They can drop as much as 85% of the phys damage dealt against them and 90% of the fire damage. A good, fully-trained one will also have extremely high melee hit chance due to the wrestling being so high, often over 120.

When compared with other pets, this makes them a wonderful tank against things that do lots of phys and fire damage, a potential high-performer against monsters with very high wrestling skill, and a great damage-dealer against things that have low or mid level phys resist.

Against some monsters, however, Superdragons are inferior. Succubus have phys resist about as high as the superdragons themselves but are relatively low in some of the other resists. I took a superdragon down to the succubus to be sure of how it would work out, and yeah. A well trained Cu Sidhe was definitely the better tool for killing a Succubus, the cu sidhe deals cold and energy damage in its melee attacks so it just killed more efficiently, and in the end I blew much more mana keeping the Superdragon healed. And the superdragon took longer to kill it.

Rune beetles are not suddenly a piece of sh*t now that Superdragons are here, no. One of their talents is being in a team with something else. The armor corruption allows the teammates to hit the target at the lowered resists levels too, and the poison is significant. And they are magery-casters, and they don't have a puny HP base.

 

[imported_tnynyn]

Since we're on the subject of Rune Beetles, are there any good tips to solo-taming theme?

 

[Conrad99]

Yes they are worth training IMO. A well trained one with a bake or a mare is deadly.

When I am unsure what I am fighting, those combos are my go to. They do some seriuos damage and can rip things apart with the armour corupt plus the magery &amp; the damage/magery of the secong pet is fun to watch things drop.

 

[Llewen]

A rune beetle with a bake or mare is still a better choice for pvp than a greater dragon. I've even killed a greater dragon in pvp with my rune/bake combo (although it takes some serious vetting and if you are being attacked at the same time, things can get tricky). Generally if there are no other tamers in the field, and no bards, I bring my beetle/bake to the fight.

If there is another tamer there with a greater dragon, and especially if I am outnumbered, it is time to haul out the dragon. If there is an effective bard there, it is also definitely time for the dragon, as my dragon is over 30 points harder to bard than my rune beetle, and over 40 points harder to bard than my bake.

However, a good bard can still mess up a greater dragon, even a fully trained one, so if you can, get rid of any bards as soon as possible...

 

[Guest]

My runey taming tips:

Get the best resist armour you can
Take a few orange petals and some heal pots with you

I tend to tame them full health, because whenever I've beat them down the gits healed so fast once I started to tame, it was daft

I basically get the runey separated somewhere quiet, eat an orange petal, rush up to it and taking care to avoid the biting end, I hold down my tame macro till I get an attempt off. If I'm low on health I'll run off screen to heal up and repeat. If you have a fast casting mage you can try invising yourself once you get a tame started.

You can also try things like using honour if you have it, confusion pots and peacemaking.

Wenchy

 

[GamonHunter]

I just lead tamed mine, (wasnt easy, but after practicing on super dragons for a week i'm a MUCH better lead tamer). I have stealth/hiding so that helps a lot too.

 

[Guest]

Atlantic bard/tamer here newly returning to UO. I've been using a Rune Beetle/Unicorn combo or my Cu. Would a Bake or Nightmare be better with the Rune for gold farming? I use the Unicorn as it was so easy to tame, no agro.

Any advice would be welcome.

 

[joblackjon]

I think between Kits, Mares and Unis, the Kit is best partner for a Rune. They kill very fast and have 50 more mana than the other 2 combined. I'm still suprised how fast a pair of high quality, trained Kits can kill stuff.

 

[Conrad99]

I agree.

 

[Antion_Vallin]

<blockquote><hr>

I tend to tame them full health, because whenever I've beat them down the gits healed so fast once I started to tame, it was daft

[/ QUOTE ]I just ride my Nightmare there, beat them down quick, then try lead taming. Peacemaking is pretty much the best option for taming any agressive critter other than the Cu Sidhe and Greater Dragon. The Reptalon and Hiryu are easy enough thanks to their Dragon Slayer weakness, but there ain't no slayer that'll work to any effectiveness on those Greater Dragons!

I switch to Peacemaking sometimes for Taming and Combat, but will switch to Discord for the best Combat offence. I eat through Soul Stones like rock candy!

 

[Guest]

Well, I have an allergy to peacemaking, the only contact it's made with a soulstone ended in a flush

Usually I use my stealth herder for runeys, sneak up, pop a petal then tame, ideally before it's sussed I'm there and cracked open the flamestrike can. Hence I rarely use my mare, because I don't want her and the runey meeting while I'm hidden.

Sometimes I'll pull out the bard tamer and provoke the runeys on each other then tame the best one. Gets them beaten down a smidge and sometimes covers me for when I'm stupid and go taming in her luck suit...

Wenchy

 

[Llewen]

I'm very fussy about what pets I tame, so when I go for rune beetles I end up killing 99% of them. I then use honour to tame the rare one I find that makes me happy. Because I use it so sparingly I don't have problems keeping my honour up.

However I have been known to tame the rune beetles I don't want to keep and give them to the zoo. In that case I para tame them. It's a bit like a ballet. I paralyze, start the tame, invis myself three times in a row, then rinse and repeat. When things are going well I can tame rune beetles this way without taking any damage, or even moving, but of course I never tame a rune beetle I am going to keep this way.

 

[Antion_Vallin]

Found a Rune Beetle with near perfect Magical and Poison skills, but it's resistances are fairly low. However, the Bake Kitsune I pair it with has high stats and resistances. Seriously, Bake Kitsunes make the best 2 slot tanks.

They need something done to the KR Bake Kitsune that doesn't make it look like a red wolf with 2 additional, barely visible, tails.