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NEWS [UO.Com] Publish 97 Comes to TC1

Great DC

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It wont let me raise HP for some reason, at least not on the first run through the progression. It said it was already completed. May be due to the fact it has firebreath. Well see when I finish it to add more again.
 

Caitlyn Snow

Seasoned Veteran
Stratics Veteran
So I trained up a kitsune. Has still about 20 percent more before I get to add stuff but with gm battle skills plus 115 Parry it takes down swoops alone no problem. Granted I use discord but that's just because swoop will knock stamina down something horrible.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

BrianFreud

Lore Keeper, Wiki Maker, & Doer of Crazy Things
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@Kyronix, what about mages in all this? EVs and Blade Spirits are technically "pets", even if summoned. Same with the 8th level summons. The 8th level summons have been worthless for forever, Blade Spirits take too long to summon and are too easily auto-dispelled, and EVs are relatively weak when you're limited to only 2. In the old days before control slots, I could have a team of EVs going, and my mage could do fairly well.

But in comparison to the pets Tamers will have access to after this publish... As well, RC's are far better summons than anything a pure mage can summon. Given that the 8th level spells are dominated by summoning spells, is it possible for mage summons to also be reexamined, to buff up BS and EVs, and to make the 8th level summons actually worth summoning?
 

CovenantX

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Frenzied Oztards are ridiculously OP without even leveling to 2 slot pets...

low follower-count pets shouldn't be able to have an increase in base damage, unless it's incrementally based on follower slots.

a single frienzied ozzy in a pack of 5 (just 1/5 attacking) does 28-42 damage with an auto-attack to another player with 70 physical resist.... if I use all 5, the player dies instantly... yea that's not OP at all, this isn't even the most overpowered part either... hell hounds & hellcats would be stronger for pvp because of firebreath dealing that damage without the chance of missing.


This is why you should be able to change damage types and add Slayer bonuses to pets.... instead of increasing all the base damage against everything.


Edit: There's also a bug with increasing base damage, it seems crossing a server line resets it back to the default base damage level, effectively erasing points allocated to it prior to the reset.
 

railshot

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Frenzied Oztards are ridiculously OP without even leveling to 2 slot pets...

low follower-count pets shouldn't be able to have an increase in base damage, unless it's incrementally based on follower slots.

a single frienzied ozzy in a pack of 5 (just 1/5 attacking) does 28-42 damage with an auto-attack to another player with 70 physical resist.... if I use all 5, the player dies instantly... yea that's not OP at all, this isn't even the most overpowered part either... hell hounds & hellcats would be stronger for pvp because of firebreath dealing that damage without the chance of missing.


This is why you should be able to change damage types and add Slayer bonuses to pets.... instead of increasing all the base damage against everything.


Edit: There's also a bug with increasing base damage, it seems crossing a server line resets it back to the default base damage level, effectively erasing points allocated to it prior to the reset.
I fully support the slayer and damage type idea for pets. Had high hopes it would be implemented. I also would like to point out that while Ostards and Hellhounds maybe OP for PvP, they are next to useless in PvE. Any mob worth hunting can usually kill one of them before you can figure out which one to heal.
 

Emily the Tamer

Adventurer
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Stratics Legend
Anyone know of an easily accessible house on Test Center that has public crystal and corrupted portals? It would be more convenient for testing if we could more easily pop around to different hunting grounds. If it doesn't exist, could the Devs possibly place one?
I have one of each on my TC house inside Luna walls, Northwest corner ^^
 

Cetric

Grand Poobah
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So I finished one full training bar on a nightmare. The raising of dex and stam on these pets is gonna create havoc in pvp. My nightmares resists are now 80 80 80 45 80. It has 150 dex/stam, 120 wrestling, 120 bushido, 100 parry, had the ability to disarm, nerve strike, ai, onslaught, and dragon breath. It has 50 HPR, 50 SR, 30 MR. Also has 700 intel, 456 mana. All that and its still a 4 slot ridable nightmare that can still be trained up further. Oh yeah almost forgot, I raised it base damage from 16-23 to 26-35. LOL

Taming in pvp after this will dominate all templates in game. How funny.
Cool... I came back just in time to see the end of uo pvp. How refreshing.

Ironically. One publish after they did a good job balancing pvp.

These abilities and other stuff from pets should not effect players or something. This is the biggest joke I've ever seen. How could this of been thought to be a good idea?
 

Great DC

Lore Master
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Cool... I came back just in time to see the end of uo pvp. How refreshing.

Ironically. One publish after they did a good job balancing pvp.

These abilities and other stuff from pets should not effect players or something. This is the biggest joke I've ever seen. How could this of been thought to be a good idea?
FYI, I finished training it to lvl 5 and its still ridable and I raised its HP to 808 and added 115 parry on top of what was in other post. LOL
 

Cetric

Grand Poobah
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FYI, I finished training it to lvl 5 and its still ridable and I raised its HP to 808 and added 115 parry on top of what was in other post. LOL
The hell man. Curious. Can you see how much taming you need to control? Wondering if it's the same as a nightmare before lol

Either way... This is the most absurd thing that could be introduced. These pets are like... I can't even classify how powerful that is against players
 

Emily the Tamer

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Stratics Legend
First and foremost, sorry for being late to the part, school has me super busy. Let me begin by saying that I really love the updated lore sheet, and I really love the new tameables. Those are always good and exciting.

But now for the meat of this post.

As I mentioned, I've not had time to personally check out this new training, so I've only been able to base my opinions off of information I gathered from other players. That said, from what I've heard and read, I hate it. I hate it a lot. I hate everything about it. I think a pet revamp is completely unnecessary, and therefore there's no good way to go about it. It's as if the devs think the only pet anybody uses ever is a greater dragon/turtle (far from true), so they're trying to make a bunch of pets able to be as strong as a greater dragon (far from necessary).

From what I hear, and I REALLY, REALLY hope I'm wrong, but you can basically take any non-GD/turtle pet (nightmare, cu sidhe, bake or what have you) with garbage base stats, take a 4.5+ rated version of that same species, special train them both in the same categories, and you pretty much won't be able to tell the difference between the two. Do you see my signature down there? All 15 of those cu sidhes are mine. Do you know how many of them rate 4+? Do you know how many hours I put into finding each and every one them (save my blaze, 2nd best gift I've ever gotten, thank you Kings)? Someone please tell me that I'm misunderstanding this, because if that's the way it works, that's a gigantic middle finger to all of the work I've put into these guys, and I'm sincerely considering quitting the game entirely.

If it works the way I think it does, my options will be to 1) basically get over the fact that I've spent so many painful hours searching for my beautiful non-GD/turtle pets, because now I can just give super buff any old pet's hp/stats/resists anyway ("Oh but there's tradeoff! They take more slots now!!" you say. Nope. Not the point), or 2) keep them as they are, proud of the work I put into them while accepting that what were once amazing pets will now be sub-par.

Even putting that aside, I think that being able to power up a pet as much as is currently possible is entirely too much. There's no need to let people make every 3+ slot pet as strong as, or even close to as strong as greater dragons. The varying pets are good as they are. When I still had my reptalon, tigers, dread, bake, beetle, and ostards in addition to my cu sidhes and dragon on my main character, I used ALL OF THEM because they are all good and useful for different things. I would've had an even higher variety of pets in my stables - hiryus, nightmares, white wyrms, unicorns, skrees - if I weren't a cu sidhe hoarder and/or we had more stable slots to play with, and trust me, I'd have found a good way to use each and every one of them. If someone can't find a use for the many different kinds of pets ultima has to offer the way they are now, that's a problem with the player, not with the pets. I pretty much only use cu sidhes on my main tamer because I just love cu sidhes that much, but I still use lots of other kinds of pets NOW on my other tamers because THEY ARE ALREADY GOOD! As was previously expressed by someone else, this will mess EXTREMELY with combination pets, and one would have to either throw out their entire stables and figure out a way of playing without them, or just accept having sub-par pets. I simply see no reason for this gigantic overhaul, and again, no good way to go about it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

However, as I already said, I haven't had a chance to do it myself, and probably won't for a while. So, I suppose my insight is, for now, to be taken with a grain of salt. I can only sincerely hope that once I can actually try it, I'll change my mind. But honestly, I don't see how that will be possible unless they nerf/change/get rid of A LOT OF the proposed stuff.
 

Thrakkar

Certifiable
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Stratics Legend
As I mentioned, I've not had time to personally check out this new training, so I've only been able to base my opinions off of information I gathered from other players. That said, from what I've heard and read, I hate it. I hate it a lot.
Seriously? You're ranting about sheer assumptions? I'd suggest you leave out the strong feelings until you tested it yourself.

I think a pet revamp is completely unnecessary, and therefore there's no good way to go about it. It's as if the devs think the only pet anybody uses ever is a greater dragon/turtle (far from true), so they're trying to make a bunch of pets able to be as strong as a greater dragon (far from necessary).
...
There's no need to let people make every 3+ slot pet as strong as, or even close to as strong as greater dragons. The varying pets are good as they are. When I still had my reptalon, tigers, dread, bake, beetle, and ostards in addition to my cu sidhes and dragon on my main character, I used ALL OF THEM because they are all good and useful for different things.
Your opinion. I object.
A GD has the highest HP, high resists & high DPS. Thus it is easy to keep alive and inflicts high damage. Sure a mare & rune Beetle or a pack of frenzieds would inflict higher damage, but they're harder do keep alive (if even possible, because for some things you need a meat shield to tank like a GD is.)
So bringing more pets closer to a GD means MORE VARIETY. And that is a good thing. Not everyone wants to be forced to a handful of pets. There are so many pets in UO and 95% of them are useless or just usable in some very specific situations. It's about time this changes!

Do you see my signature down there? All 15 of those cu sidhes are mine. Do you know how many of them rate 4+? Do you know how many hours I put into finding each and every one them (save my blaze, 2nd best gift I've ever gotten, thank you Kings)?
Actually I do not even want to know.
No everyone has the time or the nerve to sink hours and hours and hours into searching all those 4.5+ pets.
I have 2 GDs and the "better" one rates to 3.7. He's a super viable pet. I have yet to find content, that other GDs can do, but he can't. So the pet rating is highly overrated anyways.
Now people have the chance to take their above average pets and improve them. Every hour I spend training my pet I know that I get closer towards my goal. That's a good thing as well.
It's not some super rare lottery where I could spend months looking for that one pet with that one color and super high stats.
 

Emily the Tamer

Adventurer
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
(The quote thing is being wacky, so excuse the way I'm about to lay out this post)

- "Seriously? You're ranting about sheer assumptions? I'd suggest you leave out the strong feelings until you tested it yourself."
Well no, not really pure assumption, I've talked to several people and read over posts to try to get a good grasp of what all can be added to a pet. Anyway, that's why I put the disclaimer, and begged someone to tell me that my understanding of how it's going to work is wrong. I even said at the end that for now what I'm saying should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt until I find time to actually check it out myself, and that I very dearly hope I can learn to love the changes, as much as I doubt I can.

- "Not everyone wants to be forced to a handful of pets. There are so many pets in UO and 95% of them are useless or just usable in some very specific situations. It's about time this changes!"
Notice my bit in the post about "If someone can't find a use for the many different kinds of pets ultima has to offer the way they are now, that's a problem with the player, not with the pets." I use all of my pets, obviously not all of them everywhere, but still quite variously, and they are effective as they are now.

- "No everyone has the time or the nerve to sink hours and hours and hours into searching all those 4.5+ pets."
Nope, but you can buy such pets from people who do. I'm not really sure why you have a problem with the game rewarding people for putting more hours and work into it, especially since, to you, "the pet rating is highly overrated anyways."

- "Now people have the chance to take their above average pets and improve them."
Improve? No. Improve would be one thing. Maybe overcap a couple skills, or add a special move, or give a decent boost to str/int. I could almost certainly get on board with that.This:

"My nightmares resists are now 80 80 80 45 80. It has 150 dex/stam, 120 wrestling, 120 bushido, 100 parry, had the ability to disarm, nerve strike, ai, onslaught, and dragon breath. It has 50 HPR, 50 SR, 30 MR. Also has 700 intel, 456 mana. All that and its still a 4 slot ridable nightmare that can still be trained up further. Oh yeah almost forgot, I raised it base damage from 16-23 to 26-35. LOL"

is not "improving." This is absolutely absurd. This gives a player the ability to take any pet of a species, even one that rates 0.5, and then boost its power to way beyond that of a current theoretical 5.0 specimen. There is absolutely no reason to be able to do that, and it absolutely crushes all of the work and hours that I, and many others, HAVE put into finding the best of the best of pets.



Obviously a lot of this will be changed/nerfed/removed and it will be a very long time before this stuff actually gets published to live servers, but that's why I'm here and ranting - to give my 2 cents on what needs to be changed/nerfed/removed. The way it is now is completely insane, and once I can get a week where I'll have time to actually look at it, I'll post more in detail. I posted now mostly in hopes that someone can tell me that I'm misunderstanding how this stuff works, because as of now, to me, it sounds like a complete disaster.
 

CovenantX

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Well, to be completely honest with this pet revamp, pretty much every pet, becomes the same thing....

you can make pets different, as in, with their special attacks or which spell-schools they use.. But, all the resistances are going to end up being the same... the stats will end up being the same.

There are "best" options... and others that sound good but aren't worth using.

Now, I hope it's changed before it goes live... but when you can have 5 identical pets like this:
Pub97frenzied Ostards.jpg

Normal base damage of a frenzied ostard is only 11-17, since this pet has gained 100% with it's training, I was able to "imbue" resistances up to 70s & 80s, base damage from 11-17 to 24-33 (slightly less than 105% increase of base damage) then you factor in the pack damage bonus from having 5 of these the damage to a player with 5 frenzied ozzys with 11-17 base damage, each one does roughly 20-25 damage per hit.

with the increased base damage, each ozzy hits for 38-56 per hit to an actual player.
If you want pets to do ~80-120 damage per hit in pvm while you can have 5 of them.... ADD SLAYER BONUSES to pets, you don't increase the base damage so that everything just melts in seconds...

I can tell you though, If this goes live, and single slot pets are able to be rolled with stats like this.... I won't have any sampires or wammies anymore.. they're all going to be 5 oztard disco-tamers.
you can't beat essentially ~3 Armor Ignoring sampires worth of damage with a single character.
 
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Emily the Tamer

Adventurer
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Stratics Legend
Well, to be completely honest with this pet revamp, pretty much every pet, becomes the same thing....

you can make pets different, as in, with their special attacks or which spell-schools they use.. But, all the resistances are going to end up being the same... the stats will end up being the same.

There are "best" options... and others that sound good but aren't worth using.

Now, I hope it's changed before it goes live... but when you can have 5 identical pets like this:
This. This is exactly what I'm ranting about "on assumptions."

The countless hours I put into finding several 4+ rated pets all go completely down the drain when you can take just any old specimen and turn it into something beyond even what a 5.0 would look like. This isn't "improving an above average pet." Being able to add in one or two special moves or skills would be "improving a pet." Being able to take ANY PET and make it insanely good, and NOT EVEN HAVE ANY VARIATION within the hp/stat/resist improvement, but all pets ending exactly the same in those things REGARDLESS of where they started, is completely atrocious. The pride of finding, taming, and owning exceptional specimens of certain kinds of pets is the greatest source of joy for those of us who are primarily tamers. I can't begin to tell you how rewarding it is to say that I tamed a 4.9 rated cu sidhe, I tamed a 4.4 dragon with two legendary skills, I tamed an actually decent 4x legendary dragon, I tamed a 4+ with a 130.3 wrestling cap as well as another legendary skill. (I know dragons can't receive the special training, but my point is, this is what I DO in the game, it's my reason for playing, and so these changes are going to impact me greatly!) As well, selling these high-end pets serve as a substantial source of income. To have this completely wiped away would be a stab to my 8-year-taming heart. Anyone can find the time to farm up and then train a decent, useable pet; it takes a special passion and dedication to find the best of the best (but if you really want one, you can buy one; just be prepared to hand over a hefty sum, as such pets are WORTH a lot of gold). It shouldn't change that you have to put in time and effort into the game to be rewarded with exceptional pets.
 

Thrakkar

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Notice my bit in the post about "If someone can't find a use for the many different kinds of pets ultima has to offer the way they are now, that's a problem with the player, not with the pets." I use all of my pets, obviously not all of them everywhere, but still quite variously, and they are effective as they are now.
I bet you do and I have absolutely no problem with it.
But the thing is (and that is also the part you didn't quote from me), for lots of things (all the end content stuff) you need a tank, which just boils down to a meat-shield with high resists. How many pets are there to fulfil that role? Two?
Also the different kinds of pets for different kinds of jobs aren't a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure, a GD would do the same job almost as well as that one specific pet (special pets like fire beetles aside). So the average player isn't going to have 30 pets for 30 different activities. They just have one GD, because amongst the pets, the GD is the sampire: It does a lots of damage and is able to survive.

Nope, but you can buy such pets from people who do. I'm not really sure why you have a problem with the game rewarding people for putting more hours and work into it, especially since, to you, "the pet rating is highly overrated anyways."
Buy? Yeah sure, since they go for abysmal prices you have to sink time into aquiring the gold. Not much better. But rest assured, I do not care, because yes, pet rating is highly overrated. I still believe that. I'm happy with my 3.7 GD (except that I'd like to have another pet with those stats, which what do you know, would be possible with the new system) and I would never spend gold on pets just because they have marginally better stats.

I have absoluetly no issue with rewarding people for putting more hours and "work" into it. The new system will encourage people exactly to do that. Spend more time training their pet.
It just won't be such a chore & lottery anymore. When I want to play a game in my spare time I defintely don't want to just camp one spot, just lore animals, kill them, wait for respawn, rinse and repeat. That's no fun. Probably also not for you since you used the word "work" here.

and it absolutely crushes all of the work and hours that I, and many others, HAVE put into finding the best of the best of pets
Yeah, so now also the average joe will be able to enter the tamers elitists club of high rated pets. What a drama.
I really hope you had fun spending all those hours, because usually that's why people play a game. So neither do I have a problem with it nor do I begrudge it to you, if you had fun. Noone can take that time from you. So nothing gets cruhed here. And that's cool. But it doesn't entitle you to anything.
But the current system is far for being optimal or fun (please see the "chore & lottery" part above).

Improve? No. is not "improving." This is absolutely absurd.
They just put up the inital draft of the revamp on the TC. If they stick to the current release cycle (every 3 months), then the patch will go live early/mid may. That's two months to go. So most probably the sky isn't falling as much as people think.
And the most important part of it is, regardless if you can just slightly improve a pet or make it totally overpowered, it simply doesn't matter. The revamp is coming. And a trained pet will ALWAYS be better than a legacy pet, wether by just a margin or a great deal.
 

Thrakkar

Certifiable
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Well, to be completely honest with this pet revamp, pretty much every pet, becomes the same thing....

you can make pets different, as in, with their special attacks or which spell-schools they use.. But, all the resistances are going to end up being the same... the stats will end up being the same.

There are "best" options... and others that sound good but aren't worth using.

Now, I hope it's changed before it goes live... but when you can have 5 identical pets like this:
View attachment 63953

Normal base damage of a frenzied ostard is only 11-17, since this pet has gained 100% with it's training, I was able to "imbue" resistances up to 70s & 80s, base damage from 11-17 to 24-33 (slightly less than 105% increase of base damage) then you factor in the pack damage bonus from having 5 of these the damage to a player with 5 frenzied ozzys with 11-17 base damage, each one does roughly 20-25 damage per hit.

with the increased base damage, each ozzy hits for 38-56 per hit to an actual player.
If you want pets to do ~80-120 damage per hit while you can have 5 of them.... ADD SLAYER BONUSES to pets, you don't increase the base damage so that everything just melts in seconds...

I can tell you though, If this goes live, and single slot pets are able to be rolled with stats like this.... I won't have any sampires or wammies anymore.. they're all going to be 5 oztard disco-tamers.
you can't beat essentially ~3 Armor Ignoring sampires worth of damage with a single character.
I tried to test it but I wasn't able to get past that dreaded 1%. So basically if you level up a pet, it doesn't necessarily mean, that it gains an additional control slot requirement?

Yeah, that frenzied for sure is a beast. I don't even want to know, what a pack of five can do. But there's one downside. It just has 125 HP. So if you don't have a GD or a sampire as tank, you can't use them in end content, because dead pets don't do any damage.
 

R Traveler

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If anyone finds where Dragon Wolfs spawn, or even better, if anyone can send me screenshots of some Animal Lore screens for it, I'd be most appreciative. Same for the Frost Mite, Triceratops, and Lion. :)
I have seen few times Frost Mite in journal but newer seen it on screen.
I think it tries to spawn and get deleted because something went wrong.
 
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Petra Fyde

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I've not put as much time into this as I would have liked to yet. Question: Is it possible to take a 3 slot pet and train it, but stop aat 4 slot, or will the training take it up to 5 without the opportunity to stop? Anyone know or is this a question for @Kyronix ?
 

Emily the Tamer

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I bet you do and I have absolutely no problem with it.
But the thing is (and that is also the part you didn't quote from me), for lots of things (all the end content stuff) you need a tank, which just boils down to a meat-shield with high resists. How many pets are there to fulfil that role? Two?
Also the different kinds of pets for different kinds of jobs aren't a bad thing, but I'm pretty sure, a GD would do the same job almost as well as that one specific pet (special pets like fire beetles aside). So the average player isn't going to have 30 pets for 30 different activities. They just have one GD, because amongst the pets, the GD is the sampire: It does a lots of damage and is able to survive.
I actually find that (since I actually use them regularly) pet combinations, and most of all ostard/hell hound packs, tend to put out more damage than dragons do, even if they do not take damage as well. That's the tradeoff. But I can see the rest of your point, they can't deal damage if they're dead. Personally I solve this problem by playing with other people who can provide a tank, but can see the concern if you're a primarily a solo player. I still just don't see the ability to make a nightmare like that guy posted as being necessary. It's way too much.

Buy? Yeah sure, since they go for abysmal prices you have to sink time into aquiring the gold. Not much better. But rest assured, I do not care, because yes, pet rating is highly overrated. I still believe that. I'm happy with my 3.7 GD (except that I'd like to have another pet with those stats, which what do you know, would be possible with the new system) and I would never spend gold on pets just because they have marginally better stats.
Correct me if I'm wrong...but that sounds to me like you basically want a bunch of pets with greater dragon stats, except one looks like a dragon, one looks like wolf, one looks like a horse, one looks like a snake...ok maybe they each deal different types of damage and some can be mounted...seems rather pointless to me personally, but I suppose if that's what you want, then yeah, you'd enjoy this system.

I have absoluetly no issue with rewarding people for putting more hours and "work" into it. The new system will encourage people exactly to do that. Spend more time training their pet. It just won't be such a chore & lottery anymore. When I want to play a game in my spare time I defintely don't want to just camp one spot, just lore animals, kill them, wait for respawn, rinse and repeat. That's no fun. Probably also not for you since you used the word "work" here.
Isn't that pretty much what you'd be doing when you do the special training, without the loring part? As it is now, the best way to train a pet doesn't even kill the monster.

Yeah, so now also the average joe will be able to enter the tamers elitists club of high rated pets. What a drama.
I really hope you had fun spending all those hours, because usually that's why people play a game. So neither do I have a problem with it nor do I begrudge it to you, if you had fun. Noone can take that time from you. So nothing gets cruhed here. And that's cool. But it doesn't entitle you to anything.
But the current system is far for being optimal or fun (please see the "chore & lottery" part above).
"Now people who don't put in the same work will get the same reward as those who did, big whoop." I don't know how to explain to you that it's crushing that I put in my time and effort into these pets, and now anyone can do what once took something special to do. Have you never had a passion for something and been rewarded by the time and effort you put into it, even if that time and effort itself sucked?

They just put up the inital draft of the revamp on the TC. If they stick to the current release cycle (every 3 months), then the patch will go live early/mid may. That's two months to go. So most probably the sky isn't falling as much as people think.
And that's why I, and many other people, are here and putting their opinions - to express what we feel needs to be nerfed/changed/improved so that it can be adjusted accordingly. That's why this thread is here, to give feedback, and that's what I'm doing.

And the most important part of it is, regardless if you can just slightly improve a pet or make it totally overpowered, it simply doesn't matter. The revamp is coming. And a trained pet will ALWAYS be better than a legacy pet, wether by just a margin or a great deal.
Of course, but there are certainly some ways to go about doing this that are much, much worse than others. And I'm giving my input in what would be terrible and what would be not so awful. I think that as it is now, it's far too much. Actually, I kind of like the idea of training pets so you can add on things they didn't have at all before like extra special moves and skills, but touching pet stats and resists is disastrous. But again, I'm waiting until I can physically try it all myself before going into much more detail with it.
 

Zalan

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@Kyronix can you take a look at White Wyrm. They seem to be fairly under powered at 4 slots pet. They retain the same stats and skills as the Legacy version. At 4 slots they gain nothing and have around 400 Hit Points. Were a 3 slot Super Dino has 700+ Hit points, Very High Resist, Life Letch, etc.

Its just my observation pets are not balanced for the number of control slots they take. Pets should be added at a slower rate and looked at individual. Maybe start out with Legacy pets, and add newer pets overtime. After all this is Ultima Online and not Pokemon Online.
 

King Greg

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A for Concept Dev's
F for releasing it in it's current form, even on test center.
Gm's, Em's, advisors. Make a panel to play with things and give feedback before it even hits test center. Hell reward players for sending in meaningful feedback and testing out specific combinations with pixel crack on the server of their choice. "I helped test the new taming changes and all I got was this lousy shirt" You never want your paying Clients to be the first ones other than you Debugging your content.


1. Test the End Results and see how the balance effects PvP/Pvm and get that straightened out first.
- All Abilities
- Max Stats/control slots
- Combination pets
2. Test the time and difficulty to train the pets to the end results.
- How many of what level creature is this going to take and what is the time frame to do it. What time should it take to do.

Add a gate to Auto Level our pets so we can play with the different combinations without having to waste hours of our life to test your concept.

Add a bag of Powerscrolls/full powerscroll book to the bank for players who don't have access to what they need on the main servers and don't feel like killing their transfer timers.

There is a LOT OF content and possible combinations here. Do NOT rush this.....
 

petemage

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"Now people who don't put in the same work will get the same reward as those who did, big whoop." I don't know how to explain to you that it's crushing that I put in my time and effort into these pets, and now anyone can do what once took something special to do. Have you never had a passion for something and been rewarded by the time and effort you put into it, even if that time and effort itself sucked?
You can't explain it because there is no sane reason for it. I see how you are attached to your pets on a personal level, but that aside, it's just natural for the game to evolve.

Players once carried GM armor, than had to upgrade to OP imbued, reforged and lately high end loot armor.
If you once had your beautiful pure mage, you likely had to carry on to mysticism or at least necro to keep it viable.
Your lovely swordsman? Likely a paladin or sampire now.

I'm pretty sure tamers will be able to evolve as well.

What you express up there is only a mix of greed and grudge. Nobody is taking anything away from you. All the hours of fun you had taming your pets and all the priceless adventures you experienced with them and your friends are yours. It only makes it more accessible (imho more fun) to newer people. You are free to enjoy it all over again with the new system and hopefully even better pets than back then. And with your years of experience, you should also do fairly better than new people.

Plus, if it is really like you make it to be, the revamp will actually reward those still exercising taming over those sitting on 10 year old pets. So I don't fully agree on your "effort/reward" musings as well.
 
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Emily the Tamer

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Nobody is taking anything away from you.
It only makes it more accessible (imho more fun) to newer people.
What are you all not getting? Pets that are regarded as the best of the best, and the effort that went into them, will become obsolete. With this change, it becomes irrelevant that I put my time and effort and passion into obtaining them. Something that was once amazing and rare and valuable will become disposable. Now, anybody can put in substantially less effort than I (and many other high level tamers) have, and get, quite literally, the EXACT same reward. Why is it so difficult to understand that this is not okay?

All the hours of fun you had taming your pets and all the priceless adventures you experienced with them and your friends are yours. You are free to enjoy it all over again with the new system and hopefully even better pets than back then. And with your years of experience, you should also do fairly better than new people.
With more reading, thinking and consideration, I'm not opposed to a change period end of story no questions. I *still* don't think a pet revamp is necessary, but if done decently it could certainly be good and fun. Again, I think the idea of tacking on extra special moves and skills is really interesting. But touching stats and skills, the very base of what separates a good pet from a bad one, in my opinion cannot be anything but detrimental.

Plus, if it is really like you make it to be, the revamp will actually reward those still exercising taming over those sitting on 10 year old pets
Not sure what you mean by this...elaborate?
 
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zamot

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Finally get some time to test ad the server goes down
Crap. Really wanted to test out my vollem to see what I could do with it.
 

Thrakkar

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Correct me if I'm wrong...but that sounds to me like you basically want a bunch of pets with greater dragon stats, except one looks like a dragon, one looks like wolf, one looks like a horse, one looks like a snake...ok maybe they each deal different types of damage and some can be mounted...seems rather pointless to me personally, but I suppose if that's what you want, then yeah, you'd enjoy this system.
It's mostly about cosmetics, yes, visually and acoustically. Why this seems rather pointless to you especially, I don't really get. After all you called yourself a cu hoarder. Why exactly cus? The only thing that sets them apart are cosmetics (yeah, in addition to the healing skill and bleed attack, but both of them aren't big game changers)

Isn't that pretty much what you'd be doing when you do the special training, without the loring part? As it is now, the best way to train a pet doesn't even kill the monster.
No. The only thing that both have in common is spending time.
The new system is progression. Baby steps towards a bigger goal.
The current one is lottery. The first pet you lore could be a 5.0. Or it could take you a year or even longer to find a 4.5+.

"Now people who don't put in the same work will get the same reward as those who did, big whoop." I don't know how to explain to you that it's crushing that I put in my time and effort into these pets, and now anyone can do what once took something special to do. Have you never had a passion for something and been rewarded by the time and effort you put into it, even if that time and effort itself sucked?
You had all your "prized" pets, when it was extremely hard to get them. Noone can take that achievement from you.
And it will be still that hard to find an untrained colored 4.5+ pet. Your only point seems to be "I had to do it the hard way, now everyone else has to do it the hard way as well". That doesn't sound very mature.
But taming is evolving just like other parts of the game do. @petemage already elaborated that very good in his post and there's nothing to add to that.
 

Thrakkar

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1. Test the End Results and see how the balance effects PvP/Pvm and get that straightened out first.
- All Abilities
- Max Stats/control slots
- Combination pets
This is simply not possible. There are less complicated games than UO which have the same issues. There are so many variables to this, one cannot even remotely try to figure out all effects on PvM and PvM for all possible combinations of attributes, stats, slots, pet combos, playstyles etc...
In a complex scenario like UO is, this is always an iterative process. That's why it is on TC already.

Add a gate to Auto Level our pets so we can play with the different combinations without having to waste hours of our life to test your concept.

Add a bag of Powerscrolls/full powerscroll book to the bank for players who don't have access to what they need on the main servers and don't feel like killing their transfer timers.

There is a LOT OF content and possible combinations here. Do NOT rush this.....
Agree with all 3 of them.
 

Mervyn

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Hi, i have a question about this patch:
Is ingame information on taming going to be available to all players?
Or are you going to hide the information ingame so only elite old player know it like you did with armour inherent bonuses on publish 81?
 

R Traveler

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Unless they do something to boost pet training progress to at least 95%, I have no reason to test it anymore. I made 3% so far. :bdh:
 

Larisa

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I've not put as much time into this as I would have liked to yet. Question: Is it possible to take a 3 slot pet and train it, but stop aat 4 slot, or will the training take it up to 5 without the opportunity to stop? Anyone know or is this a question for @Kyronix ?
You can stop training it when you want to.

My unicorn currently is a 4 slot pet, I can train it to 5 if I want to but I don't have to.
 

Larisa

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Why can't I get past 1%


....
What pet are you training and what lvl of training are you on?

I am on lvl 2 of training, meaning I had already completed (With help) the first 100% training stage and added stats to my pet...now I am training it again.

I too was stuck at 1% after roughly 6 hours of training. Kyronix looked at it and said I was about half way to 2%

Kill things with higher fame and karma...I was on Myrmidex Warriors and switched to Lady of the Snow and am now at 2%...the higher the training level the longer it takes.
 

cazador

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What pet are you training and what lvl of training are you on?

I am on lvl 2 of training, meaning I had already completed (With help) the first 100% training stage and added stats to my pet...now I am training it again.

I too was stuck at 1% after roughly 6 hours of training. Kyronix looked at it and said I was about half way to 2%

Kill things with higher fame and karma...I was on Myrmidex Warriors and switched to Lady of the Snow and am now at 2%...the higher the training level the longer it takes.
So it's impossible to train lower slot pets. I can barely kill a bear. At I really supposed to train a pet for 10 hours just to test this ****

They wonder why this will be scripted in approximately..2 days.
....
 

Cetric

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@Kyronix It is fairly obvious how game breaking this is to pvp, and overpowered it is in pve. A comprehensive list of all abilities and changes should be made, in great detail for the players to analyze and explain the problem versus looking at test center and thinking "oh neat" a new thing I can do. How long it takes to train was mentioned as your focus, but the concept as a whole being acceptable should replace it.
 

cazador

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What pet are you training and what lvl of training are you on?

I am on lvl 2 of training, meaning I had already completed (With help) the first 100% training stage and added stats to my pet...now I am training it again.

I too was stuck at 1% after roughly 6 hours of training. Kyronix looked at it and said I was about half way to 2%

Kill things with higher fame and karma...I was on Myrmidex Warriors and switched to Lady of the Snow and am now at 2%...the higher the training level the longer it takes.
Wait so how are people getting to 100% there hasn't even been enough time to afk a full 100% are they actually setting everyone's pet up to 100% if so, you don't find that kind of dumb? You patched and said..test me! But want people to grind for 1000's of hours to test lol? Or am I missing something? I want to try combinations of pets spells and the such..I can already see 3 pets that are potentially broken but will 10000% be patched the way they are because I lack the time to grind a pet on test to prove it.

Edit: even though as we all saw with Glenda..proof doesn't always matter in UO
....
 

Emily the Tamer

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It's mostly about cosmetics, yes, visually and acoustically. Why this seems rather pointless to you especially, I don't really get. After all you called yourself a cu hoarder. Why exactly cus? The only thing that sets them apart are cosmetics (yeah, in addition to the healing skill and bleed attack, but both of them aren't big game changers)
I can go out on any day and immediately obtain all the different kinds of pets. Cu sidhes spawn normally coloured 84% of the time, rarely coloured 0.2% of the time, and blaze 0.004% of the time. Having one of each isn't nearly the same as having one of all species of pets, and now it won't even be special to have a GOOD one of every type of pet, since now they'll all be equal. (And I can't quite put my finger on it really, I've just always had a special fondness for them. I still remember the first time I ever saw a cu sidhe, and I've been in love ever since. They just appeal to me.)

No. The only thing that both have in common is spending time.
The new system is progression. Baby steps towards a bigger goal.
The current one is lottery. The first pet you lore could be a 5.0. Or it could take you a year or even longer to find a 4.5+.
To an extent, this is sort of true. But even now I'm continuing to improve my stables, and I sincerely think of it (and always have) in a much similar way that you see this training - step by step, bit by bit. All of my colours started out as being just the first one I found. Then I found, say, a low 3 and replaced my first one, then I found a mid-high 3 and replaced the low 3, etc. I still have colours that are below 4s (though admittedly it's largely due to reluctance to replace stamina-bugged pets, even if they have otherwise poor stats), and I continue to progress towards better. Many friends have done the same with dragons, continually cull and replace the old with little-by-little better ones, maybe occasionally hitting the jackpot early on. And every time I find an improvement on a colour, even just by .2 or .3, it is rewarding.

And I realize that, like you said earlier, not everyone has the time for this, but I continue to insist that if you really want a high-end pet, you can buy one. You claim that earning gold is also a time-sink, but so will be the new training system, and I really don't feel like either of those things (will) take nearly the kind of time it takes to actually find said high-end pet. EM events, roof, doom, scalis, spawns, IDOCs can all be good sources. PvPers want exodus keys for their fisters, and crafting/imbuing still has a place in the UO world. You can even play the old buy low, sell high game. Gold is easy to earn if you do it efficiently, and there are many ways to do it.

You had all your "prized" pets, when it was extremely hard to get them. Noone can take that achievement from you.
True.

And it will be still that hard to find an untrained colored 4.5+ pet. Your only point seems to be "I had to do it the hard way, now everyone else has to do it the hard way as well". That doesn't sound very mature.
And I don't think it sounds very mature to say "well I don't have that much time on my hands, so just let me have what I want for less effort," but that there is simply difference in personal opinion.

But taming is evolving just like other parts of the game do..
Again, I can get on board with changes. At first I was opposed to the whole thing, I'll admit, but now giving it more thought, being able to add bushido, area effect (devs, PLEASE be careful that this doesn't make pets attack other players in pets and trammel like with the skeletal dragons!), and mortal strike is a pretty neat idea. What I cannot accept is that anybody can train any pet of a species to the same overcap stats and resists as anyone else, making naturally good pets obsolete and worthless and no different from any other pet of the same species. I also think that being able to add as many of the special skills and moves as you can now is way too much, but, ya know, I'll take it 15/10 times over messing with stats and resists.
 

Larisa

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Wait so how are people getting to 100% there hasn't even been enough time to afk a full 100% are they actually setting everyone's pet up to 100% if so, you don't find that kind of dumb? You patched and said..test me! But want people to grind for 1000's of hours to test lol? Or am I missing something? I want to try combinations of pets spells and the such..I can already see 3 pets that are potentially broken but will 10000% be patched the way they are because I lack the time to grind a pet on test to prove it.

Edit: even though as we all saw with Glenda..proof doesn't always matter in UO
....
I know Kyronix has set a few pets at 100%...if he's on when you are ask him to do that...right now he's emphasized the importance of testing length of time it takes to train...I am also trying a fresh tamed dread spider and he's stuck at 1% but with low HP I can't take him many places yet lol.

I think because it's the weekend we won't see him as much, but hopefully he'll pop on a few times. Remember this is just the first rough phase of the publish, I honestly don't think they are going to rush this one through so we have time to test things thoroughly.
 

cazador

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I honestly don't think they are going to rush this one through so we have time to test things thoroughly.
After all the years and 90+ publishes you still keeping the faith is admirable, but we all know the reality. :(

As for training..I've killed 30+ greater dragons and it didn't budge from 1%. I can easily say. It takes too long. This was the exact reasoning I said and pleaded NOT to make a huge pet system because it would be a huge clunky buggy mess. At first glance you can already see potentially massive issues especially in pvp(partially because in PvM a GDrag is still the best option) even with a Level 5 dinosaur. Now where the real issue comes into play..am I really supposed to train a pet for hundreds of hours to test that. The time training should be laid out and discussed. It should of been level and fame based. If a level 4 dreadmare takes 1000 greater dragons to level up, a level 2 bull shouldn't as well. Which as it's currently set is the case. It's just illogical, and we need 0 testing to all agree on that. On top of it all the % shouldn't be 1-2-3-4-5 if it takes 100 dragons to jump up a level. It probably should be 1.0% - 100.0% at least then you would see improvements. I'm all for a small grind. It shouldn't be an hour nor should it be 48 in game hours. That's the reason scripts exist! Even a quest with enchanted food would be great in keeping it non grindy in the forefront. I.e. Kill 100 mongbats the reward is an Enchanted Fruit with magical properties that bumps the progress up say 3%. There has to be a goal..or people get annoyed. Which is exactly why every system they make gets immediately scripted and ruins pretty much 100% of all the content they spend time implementing.


It may sound like I'm pancakes..well, I partially am. I don't hate the idea of a pet revamp. I think it's going to bring MANYYY new tamers into UO who have never tamed a horse. The problem is, will this turn UO from Parry Fister Mage online into, UO Pets Online overnight.

....
 

zamot

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Test center back up. Training seemed to be going alright. But hen I lored my pet and parrying is now at flat lines. it was at 91.5
 

Uriah Heep

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@Kyronix can you take a look at White Wyrm. They seem to be fairly under powered at 4 slots pet. They retain the same stats and skills as the Legacy version. At 4 slots they gain nothing and have around 400 Hit Points. Were a 3 slot Super Dino has 700+ Hit points, Very High Resist, Life Letch, etc.

Its just my observation pets are not balanced for the number of control slots they take. Pets should be added at a slower rate and looked at individual. Maybe start out with Legacy pets, and add newer pets overtime. After all this is Ultima Online and not Pokemon Online.
My fav was always the WW. Hate reading this...I had high hopes the glorious and lovely WW was finally gonna get some love and be badass like GD or even better. oh well...
 

Uvtha

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As was previously expressed by someone else, this will mess EXTREMELY with combination pets, and one would have to either throw out their entire stables and figure out a way of playing without them, or just accept having sub-par pets.
It shouldn't effect any current pet combo or make any current pet as is any less effective at anything currently in game. The only difference will be relative. If you are happy with your pets as they are, then it's not an issue. Some people may have stronger pets than you, but who cares? You can also make a "new" pet, and still enjoy your old ones. The only difference I think is the perception of what "good" is.

The countless hours I put into finding several 4+ rated pets all go completely down the drain when you can take just any old specimen and turn it into something beyond even what a 5.0 would look like.
Two things I guess:
1) Do you mean same type of pet vs same type of pet? If that's the case then the high stat pet will still be the "best" pet. The higher the tamed stats, the less points you have to invest in stats, the more you can spend in special moves and the like. Finding those high roll pets in the wild will still be worth doing. Think of it as making armor with arms lore vs making armor without arms lore. With those extra free resists you can make a much better suit.
2) If you mean any pet vs your specific 4.5, say a Drake compared to a Cu, we really don't know yet what level of alteration we can expect with level ups, but I highly doubt it's going to be as extreme as you are imagining it, even if it's very high on test currently. I think there are only a few critters out there with base stats that don't need serious alteration to be considered as good as a non elite cu. Like an alligator for example, you will probably have to burn all of your development points on resists, since they basically have none.

But anyway you clearly don't care that Cu's aren't the strongest pets in the game, even if with perfect stats they are vastly inferior to GD's so what difference would it really make?

Bottom line, if you have a pet with high stats right now, that pet is still valuable. Now it's up to you if you want to train that pet with the new system, but if you do, then it will have a leg up on a common pet of the same type. So in that regard your effort wasn't wasted.

But it's good to bring up these concerns while the system is still being worked on.
 
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Uvtha

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Normal base damage of a frenzied ostard is only 11-17, since this pet has gained 100% with it's training, I was able to "imbue" resistances up to 70s & 80s, base damage from 11-17 to 24-33 (slightly less than 105% increase of base damage) then you factor in the pack damage bonus from having 5 of these the damage to a player with 5 frenzied ozzys with 11-17 base damage, each one does roughly 20-25 damage per hit.
You couldn't have 5 of them. If you train a frenzy it gains a control slot, so at most you could have 2. 11-17 in a pack of 5 is 22-34 x 5 = potential damage limit of 170. 24-33 in a pack of 3 at most (with one untrained ostard) 36-49 x2 + 16-25 = limit of 123. So survivability would be better (obviously), but the damage impact would be like 30% less.
 
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