The Power of Sheep

[Llewen]

I'm performing an experiment. I'll provide some background first. A few of us tamers have noticed that after a pet is fully trained, with all the stats and skills on the pet lore gump at max, barding difficulty will continue to grow. A few of us speculated a couple of years ago when we had this discussion that pets must have the parry skill, which isn't displayed on the pet lore gump.

This isn't just based on speculation, there were some questions asked of a developer regarding this and it was indicated that there were skills that didn't show up on the pet lore gump, and I believe it was even mentioned that parry might be one of them.

With this in mind I am trying to train my nightmare's parry on sheep. The same way some will train parry on characters. This mare was fully trained not too long ago, and doesn't often play the role of tank, so if any pet should be a candidate for further parry training, this one should be.

I'm keeping an eye on her barding difficulty, and so far it hasn't raised. I will keep you posted as to whether it does or not. I would expect it to take some time, as I am guessing that an individual skill would have to rise significantly before it had an effect on the barding difficulty.

 

[[JD]]

I noticed the barding ability of my GD goes up, and when it does the pet is either under the affect of the bless spell, or one of its skills have gone up. I haven't kept track of seeing if it goes up after it's max trained, however. Right not it's probably 99.9, but the stray death here or there has kept it from being totally maxxed at all times.

The max I have seen on any creature is 160.0 barding ability, even if it's some peerless boss.

What are the highest barding abilities of pets that you own?

My GD is the only one which is mostly trained, its at around 147.x, and when blessed it's 149.x. My GD is not the best, its decent, maybe a 3.4 or 3.8 or something, I don't remember. I would assume if someone got a better GD their barding ability should go higher.

 

[Llewen]

I noticed the barding ability of my GD goes up, and when it does the pet is either under the affect of the bless spell, or one of its skills have gone up.

Most of my pets will record small gains in barding difficulty after they are apparently fully trained, unrelated to being blessed. I keep pretty close track of these things, so I know when there are changes.

 

[Silverbird]

160 is cap for barding difficulties. Otherwise they would become practically immune and bars useless or there would be a need to increase barding skills above 120.
One of those others not shown skills is mysticism. Skrees are supposed to own it and I sometimes wonder about focus.

 

[jeza]

And some like GD have necro I think, at least I think I noticed mine using a spell that looked like necro ...

 

[Llewen]

Well, the sheep proved a failure. An hour or two of that produced no gains. That doesn't mean there is no hidden parry skill though. As I recall I never had much luck training parry on sheep on my character that had it either. It seems to me that the ones that trained parry successfully for me were the fighters in Jhelom pit. So I'll have to try that next.

 

[Llewen]

No luck with fighters either for a few minutes, but I really didn't do it long enough for it to be conclusive. And who knows, maybe only certain pets have parry. I haven't noticed my dread gaining barding difficulty, so maybe equines don't have parry. Which would of course make sense...

 

[jeza]

Or maybe your pet already maxxed it's parry skill

 

[Llewen]

Wouldn't see how that was possible unless blue on blue training trains parry as well as magery. Because I did put in about 24 hours total of blue on blue magery training. But when I trained it's combat skills it wasn't tanking the elemental I don't think.

 

[Stupid Miner]

Wouldn't see how that was possible unless blue on blue training trains parry as well as magery. Because I did put in about 24 hours total of blue on blue magery training. But when I trained it's combat skills it wasn't tanking the elemental I don't think.

Parry gains has nothing to do with the weapon skill of the creature you're fighting.

 

[Llewen]

Parry gains has nothing to do with the weapon skill of the creature you're fighting.

There's something more to it than just being hit. I don't know whether it's weapon skill, or something else, but there is something. I know when I was training my parry dexxer, I tried the sheep and got nowhere. He didn't get any gains until I went to Jhelom and disarmed the fighters there (female specifically) and let them beat on him.

I'm thinking that at one time the sheep may well have worked, but if that is the case, something has changed, because I don't think they work anymore. At least they didn't for me. But regardless, my mare didn't gain any barding difficulty either way, so that leads me to two possible conclusions, either blue on blue training works for parry, and her parry was already maxxed out, or nightmares don't have the parry skill.

 

[Aibal]

Sheep still work just fine for parry gains. I took a character from 0 to 120 in about 2 hours a month or so ago. If you were training a parry dexxer, if you also had bushido on the template you needed to equip a shield for gains. If not, then the weapon you equipped should have been one in which you had no expertise (ie. if you're a swordsman equip a fencing weapon).

 

[Llewen]

Sheep still work just fine for parry gains. I took a character from 0 to 120 in about 2 hours a month or so ago. If you were training a parry dexxer, if you also had bushido on the template you needed to equip a shield for gains. If not, then the weapon you equipped should have been one in which you had no expertise (ie. if you're a swordsman equip a fencing weapon).

Well that's odd, because it didn't work for my dexxer.