Taming a GD

[PzB74]

Anyone know a good place for a lone ranger to find a greater dragon I can try to tame on my own?

Got taming 105.5 with some jewels and is getting ready to try for the great one. Will most likely raise taming to 110 before I try, should then be a 10% success rate.

Been hoarding honor to give me an opening.

Also; if I release 2 nightmares on a greater, will they be able to bring down its strength without being killed asap?

 

[Aibal]

You can work any spawn with GD's as long as you're smart about it. When you find one you like, pull it away from the other stuff and have at it. Fire Temple may be the easiest for this, just pull away everything from the bottom room and then kill the GD's that spawn until you get what you want. Once the one you want spawns, honor yourself and go to town lol. As far as the nightmares, I'd venture a guess that they will get toasted real fast. Try to find a hiryu with high physical/fire resist and use that instead.

 

[Wenchkin]

Anyone know a good place for a lone ranger to find a greater dragon I can try to tame on my own?

Got taming 105.5 with some jewels and is getting ready to try for the great one. Will most likely raise taming to 110 before I try, should then be a 10% success rate.

Been hoarding honor to give me an opening.

Also; if I release 2 nightmares on a greater, will they be able to bring down its strength without being killed asap?

I would suggest fire temple as the spawn in there is nice and controllable and you can pull a dragon out into a quiet spot to do the actual taming.

I've always used 2 kitsune or another greater to kill greaters for taming, I think the mares may struggle, although if you were good at vetting and mounted the first mare before it died to get the dragon switching to the second, it might be possible to avoid total disaster. I'd still think it was quite a dicey proposal though. I took a cu sidhe the first time I tamed a greater, even he got minced up in short measure. I'd say kits or a hiryu are a good bet

Wenchy

 

[PzB74]

Thx, will consider the options carefully!

I understand that a Hiryu will loose half its stats when tamed.
A trained mare has ca 2.3 on the pet power calculator, would believe that I have to train a Hiryu to become better than this?

- Also got a feeling that the Hiryu will need to be reduced to low strength before it can be tamed. Since I can't control both a mare and a Hiryu at once this means I will have to use mind blast and paralyze, something my tamer isn't very well qualified to do yet.

Will consider building a bit more skills before I get to it.
One thing that is for sure is that I will tame all my pets myself

 

[Wenchkin]

Thx, will consider the options carefully!

I understand that a Hiryu will loose half its stats when tamed.
A trained mare has ca 2.3 on the pet power calculator, would believe that I have to train a Hiryu to become better than this?

The pet power calculator is designed to rate the stats/skills etc for your pet against the perfect pet of it's kind. So your cu sidhe is compared to the best possible cu sidhe stats, while a hiryu is compared to the best hiryu you can get. The ratings indicate how close your pet is to those "best" figures. So a 5 star hiryu won't have the same stats as a 5 star cu sidhe because they spawn with different features.

- Also got a feeling that the Hiryu will need to be reduced to low strength before it can be tamed. Since I can't control both a mare and a Hiryu at once this means I will have to use mind blast and paralyze, something my tamer isn't very well qualified to do yet.

I lead tame hiryu without beating them down. You can use mindblast, but I just take the hiryu somewhere quiet and lead tame it. Just watch it doesn't bite you, because a full strength hiryu packs a fierce bite. But it is feasible to do

You may want to try your tactics etc out on test centre then you won't lose any insurance gold if anything goes wrong.

Good luck!

Wenchy

 

[Aibal]

What shard are you on, I might be able to get a hiryu for you.

 

[PzB74]

That's true!

I'm kinda of the old school, dying is part of the learning and thrill part of it all!-)

Also considering to change race to Elf to be able to tame CU's.
- Is there any good reasnoning against doing so?

Thx Aibal, I'm on Europe. Would like to tame all my pets myself, the help I need is to pick up my charred remains and keep other spawn away

 

[gortman]

That's true!

Also considering to change race to Elf to be able to tame CU's.
- Is there any good reasnoning against doing so?

Guess you'd have to consider the advantages of the other races. Humans of course get JOAT and strongback - can be handy if you have a tight template. Probably the main advantage people see with a gargoyle tamer is the ability to fly and thus move at mounted speed even when all your pet control slots are filled.

Not sure if that helps or not, but there it is...

 

[PzB74]

When I tried changing race it only said "You can try this again later..."
No idea why, so it's on hold for now.

Well, went and tamed myself a Hiryu.
I died 5 times before I got it
- When I tried honoring myself nothing happened to reduce the beast's aggression after I "embraced my honor"

Ok, so my next step is to bond with the Hiryu, train it and raise my taming until it's 110 with jewelry and find myself a GD

 

[uoBuoY]

...- When I tried honoring myself nothing happened to reduce the beast's aggression after I "embraced my honor" ...

Was the Hiryu aggroed on you before you honored yourself? Because honor has no effect on aggroed beasts. You need to get the honor off before the agggro.

Disco and Peace can also make taming critters easier (except for GDs). A Discoed target will hit the tamer for a lot less damage and Peace can stop the attack for a time. Peace also let's you have some safe time to evaluate the potential pet.

In addition Disco really improves pet training. A Discoed pet will gain faster since the skills and resists are lowered by as much as 28%. The only exception might be training a pet's Magery since Disco also lowers Meditation and a pet won't cast high end spells without a lot of manna.

 

[Zalan]

This is what I recomend:
- Scroll Taming to 115 minium & 120 is even better (use jewelry if you need)
- Honor you already know this.
- Go to the Valor Moongate in Ishy. Get the attention of a Greater Dragon. Get it to follow you across the white stone bridge. This is the best area to tame in. Plenty of space with no spawn. Runaway when Embrace Honor wears off.
- Kill Cyclops, & Titans between Honor timers to keep Honor charged longer.
- Persistance, & recharge Honor if you use it up.

 

[PzB74]

Appreciate the advice!

Yeah, the Hiryu was already aggroed. Will do it before aggro next time.

I have 100+ music and some 62 disco by now.
Gaining disco is very slow. Plan was to drop Peace for resist and use honor instead. I'm not a rich guy so I can't afford a 120 taming / lore PS for quite some time.

Real taming is about 80 now, wearing 2x13 taming and lore jewels. So should hit modified 110 taming in not too long, this should give a fair chance at taming a GD (ca 10%). Need that GD to fill my cash coffers!-)

Found the spot near Valor - also got the attention of a GD but it will nuke me in no time so the plan is to get the Hiryu to reduce its health before getting to the taming.

Everything will be a lot easier if I team up with someone, but I like the challenge of doing hard things alone! That's why I keep out of dungeons, it's a long walk if you die.

Here is the template I'm aming for:
Taming: 110 (now 80)
Animal lore: 110 (now 102)
Vet: 100 (now 71)
Music: 100 (now 100)
Disco: 110 (now 62)
Resist: 80 (now 80)
Magery: 80 (now 60)

Still got 10 skill points left, so maybe magery will be buffed a bit more.
An alternative is to drop resist and train Peace to 90-100 instead.

 

[Zalan]

Should have said bring an all 70`s resist suit when taming a Greater Dragon

I normally use an ethy or disposable mount to get the greater dragon to follow me.
With a greater dragon I`ve found lead taming & beating it down not to be effective. If your Honor taming you don`t need to beat it down. If your doing this solo with 110 tame max plain on spending two to three hours to get your dragon.

If you think peace is going to help don`t plain on using target peace. Instead get peace to 100 & use area peace & invisabilty. My current greater dragon I have was tamed by melee tamer. Just havd to rember it will take alot of deaths & time Especially with only 110 tame. To be honest if you only have 80 tame focus on other critters. Go after the big gun after you have had more practice.

 

[PzB74]

Using a few hours is ok, I'm only going to get one GD and do exactly as you recommend; revert to easier critters.

I sorely do need the GD to fund all my gear, scrolls, house etc.
Guess the Hiryu will be a good stepping stone her.

- I have been a tamer before; 10 years ago rolleyes:
So I just need to freshen up. I find that I'm doing quite well starting over, much easier than the first time I started with UO.

 

[uoBuoY]

...I sorely do need the GD to fund all my gear, scrolls, house etc....

Just my opinion...

When I want to make some gold I don't take either of my very strong GDs out of the stable. I take a Rune Beetle and a Bake Kitsuni or Mare). GDs and Cus are terrific tanks, low maintenance and you can ride the Cu...but their damage per second pretty much sucks. A pack Frenzied Ostards delivers the most DPS from 5 slots but they can't tank for crap.

You definitely want a strong Rune, Bake and Mare in your stable...they may even help gaining in Taming (I don't remember the numbers!). You will be impressed with how quick they kill critters.

I sometimes farm gold and unravel junk with a buddy. We work Swoops. I Disco (120) Swoop, his Rune and Mare attack and he uses Swords/Chiv. The Swoop is down in 5-10 seconds. A new Swoop almost insta-spawns. Conservatively, that's ~6,000/minute. Many times we have 2-3 unlooted corpses on the ground! If I do Swoop alone (Disco/Rune/Bake) I bank ~180,000 gp every hour. A lot depends on the RNG. Once Disco kicks in, Swoop death is really, really quick. Most times 1-3 Discos are needed but sometimes 13 (my personal record!) are required! The RNG screws with you!

Take the Rune out of the stable first so it will be the "tank" ~95% of the time.

 

[PzB74]

I tamed a rune beetle and bake today alone using honor; no deaths!
Swoops sounds like a plan; located em today.

- Problem is 120 disco; this is a slow gaining skill. I'm at 63 currently and I'll be at 110 taming long before I get to 100 disco

So can I take out swoops using my rune beetle and bake / mare?
- Will try when the pets are bonded.

Tried to change race to elf again but found that it doesn't work on the enhanced client. Installing the old client and patching it is quite a job so I'm stuck for now.

Well, unmodified taming up to 81.7. A few more points and I'm ready for the greater dragon. Feeling confident that honor taming is the way to go here.

 

[uoBuoY]

...So can I take out swoops using my rune beetle and bake / mare?
- Will try when the pets are bonded...

I usually start training new pets before they are bonded. I just don't go to nasty places and I carry a lot of bandages. But I'm not telling you to do this. Do what you're comfortable with.

For productive gp farming I want quick kills, instant re-spawn (or a lot of spawn), as little danger as possible and as much gold as possible. With 120 Disco Swoop is UO's ATM for me! I wouldn't go there without the Disco...too slow.

Here's another approach. Use this LINK. It's a list of 99% of UO monsters sorted on quantity of gold. Bottom of the list is most gold. Click on a monster to see it's specs, location, player comments, etc. Swoop is about 25th from the bottom.

 

[Garm The Green]

That's true!

I'm kinda of the old school, dying is part of the learning and thrill part of it all!-)

Also considering to change race to Elf to be able to tame CU's.
- Is there any good reasnoning against doing so?

Thx Aibal, I'm on Europe. Would like to tame all my pets myself, the help I need is to pick up my charred remains and keep other spawn away

Im making a disco tamer on europa, if you want someone to tag along, pm me )

 

[Garm The Green]

So can I take out swoops using my rune beetle and bake / mare?
- Will try when the pets are bonded.

Don't try this without bonding! Swoop is pretty tough now and can rip up a GD, so a good swoop will destroy both your pets without training and/or disco.

Having said that, Swoops are awesome for training GDs ad Hiryus due to their high resists, HP and wrestling.

 

[PzB74]

Will do and likewise Garm!
Usually only online in the evening, got 1-2 hours of prime time when all the daily chores are done! (But I'm having next week of so that will help).

Just built a house up the road from Malas; follow the road until the end of the housing zone and up right. A custom made house called "Hammers Hold".

Indeed, not trying anything before the pets bond.
Now got a Hiryu, Bake and a Rune Beetle (with 125.7 poisoning) that will be bonded by the weekend.

I guess the Hiryu alone should be able to handle a swoop?
Should be able to heal well enough using vet and casting.
Unfortunately the Hiryu takes up 4 control slots, so can't bring another pet along. So it's either the Rune Beetle and trained mare or the Hiryu.

I'm definetly going to tame a GD soon, honor taming is just what I need.
- First Invis, then honor and then tame. If I fail, return in 5 more min and try again.

 

[gortman]

Unfortunately the Hiryu takes up 4 control slots, so can't bring another pet along.

You might consider taming a frenzied ostard (or 5) and use it as a mount. Let the Hiryu tank Swoop and let the frenzy add a little extra damage. The frenzy probably would not get any wrestling or tactics gains (Swoop's skill levels in those two areas are at or beyond legendary), but it would likely gain in anatomy (and possibly dex/str depending on current levels).

Just a thought.

 

[PzB74]

Some experiences:

Spent all level 2 honor bullets attempting to tame a GD near Valor.
(110/110 taming - lore modifieD). This should give me a 10% chance to tame.
- The 12 attempts I managed (meesed up a few times) was not enough so I'm loading up on fame and honor again

Will try to get honor into level 3 before going at it again; level 2 honor gave me max 2 attempts at taming before I had to flee. Probably died 4-5 times, but it's a learning process. Killing Titans and Cyclops in Titan valley the Lost Lands seems to be the easiest way to load up on fame and honor.

Real taming almost at 85, so I need a 115 or 120 taming / lore scroll on Europe. If anyone got one to sell that doesn't cost the shirt and the rest I'd appreciate it.

Tried to send me bonded Hiryu on a Cu Shide before moving on a swoop.
Well that didn't work out well, it was killed rather quickly before I managed to heal it. So swoops are out until I get a proper dragon in place. May try the uber poisonous Rune Beetle and mare approach but got my doubts.

 

[Wenchkin]

Pets are like players - you get the best results when they're trained. And you also need to train as a tamer to get the best from them. Training not just in skills, but also learning which pets work in each situation and being capable of taking care of them.

You could take a greater dragon to kill swoop, but I think you'll learn more if you train and practice with pets like kitsune, hiryu etc and then use them to defeat swoop. Don't give up when you're so new. You'll need pet handling/healing skills to tackle top spawns with your greater, but I think it'll be less boring for you to practice in a variety of spots with a range of pets

Wenchy

 

[PzB74]

That's very true; been working on training the Hiryu over the last week and the skills are close to GM by now. Went back to the swoop and sent it in with the Frenzied ostard as backup.

Never seen such a stand off before; an excellent way to train veterinary.
Spent hundrends of bandies and kept the Hiryu alive but not for the world if it could defeat the swoop, looks like it healed itself.

In the end I had to mount the Hiryu and get out of dodge, letting the Ostard face the music rolleyes:

This must be a very good way of training both pets and skills even though I don't get the kills yet. As soon as I can get disco skills higher up it should become easier.

It's these first stages of the game that is fun; when you have 200 mill in the bank and all the rares and pets possible to find it becomes increasingly difficult to find new challenges.

 

[Wenchkin]

Aye, once you have disco at your disposal for the critters your fighting, it really helps your pets take on harder spawn. Swoops are tough now they're buffed up, a fresh hiryu can usually tackle a non paragon balron - when I tamed my first hiryu the poor critter was straight into the bottom of the dojo killing ballies, I think for the first Treasures of Tokuno spawn. He was named Valor after that

Wenchy

 

[uoBuoY]

Something to try for training pets and banking gold...

Tsuki Wolves -- they spawn north from where you tamed your Kitsuni. There are a fair number of them, they spawn well and carry ~500gp.

 

[PzB74]

I have taken my fair share of Tsuki wolves; they don't give any fame or honor.
- The gold is good (ca 1000) no valuable drops though.

So I'm still stuck with farming Titans but lvl3 fame is hard to grow.
Will try a rune beetle and a mare against the Swoop next.

Hm, Balrons could be fun - need to find a good spot though.

 

[PzB74]

Tamed my first GD today
- First it ate my Hiryu, so I thought it may be worth a try.

Not on the top of the power list, 795 hit points but a very exciting moment Lvl 3 honor is way way better than lvl2 and allows much longer periods of peace. This time it worked on the 2nd attempt; my experience is that it's easier to tame if the target has been reduced in strength through combat first.

Also killed my first couple of swoops using a rune beetle and a mare.
- A potent combination. At 80 vet I could hardly keep up healing the beetle and when the group moved it died twice...guess I need to train both the beetle and myself. 2600 gold from taking down a Swoop now

 

[Wenchkin]

*grins* Congrats on your GD and the swoop bashin'

Wenchy

 

[PzB74]

Advice on how to best tame a GD anyone?

- I've heard that I can push it on a shadow elemental and that this will provide good training.

 

[jbfortune]

Hiya,

I find pets much more fun to train when I'm actually out killing things. You will find the skills go up pretty easily.

Maybe take it to Destard and work on killing Dragons and other Gd's. Cut the corpses for leather and take the Gems and Gold.

I'm on Europa so would be more than willing to tag along with you and help with crowd control and what not.

 

[PzB74]

Hm, when you try to tame something when you're fighting won't you get the msg "The beast is to angry to continue taming"?

Went to Destart last night before going to bed; bad idea.
Found a truly great GD with ca 2000 hp and good stats.

It seems like it could "see me" through the entrance cause putting on Honor before going in didn't work; got eaten. Putting on honor when I went in also failed miserably. Got in a taming attempt when it had its back to me but lost a lot of fame that night rolleyes:

Appreciate that, will add you to icq and I'll log on when the wife is not on call ;-) - I'm usually playing solo for 1-2 hours in the evenings, kinda hard to get into groups at it takes 100% of your attention away for many hours, but I would love to go hunting occasionally.

Also planning to create a Taming vendor with essentials like high quality instruments, (enhanced) bandies, pads of the CU shide, Totems, jewlery, armor etc. If anyone got stuff like this to sell msg me and we'll put up a vendor. Think the spot is fairly ok not far from the busy "shopping street" in Malas - Umbra in Trammel.