Pack Animal Guide

General | Caring for Packy | Working with Packy | Traveling | Monsters| Thieves | pack horse potentials

“Onward Mule”-Yosemite Sam — A Guide To pack animals by Guildenstern; edited by Mordanna

Updated by Petra Fyde, June 2009

General Information

There are, at this time, three creatures in game that may be used by all to carry items. These are the Pack Horse, the Pack Llama and the Giant Beetle. Each of these creatures are capable of bonding with their owner and will there for recall with the owner, negating the need to cast gate spell. In addition necromancers are able to summon a horde minion which can also be used to provide extra carrying capacity for its owner.

Note: Pack animals which have items in their packs are not subject to auto-stable and will remain in game if their owner is logged out. Pets left in this way will lose loyalty rapidly and may become wild, at this point their ‘pack’ and all items in it will fall to the ground and decay unless recovered by the owner

Pack Horses and Llamas

You may buy a pack horse or pack llama from any animal trainer, the vet and some ranchers.

The animal trainer can be found at the stables and the vet is found at ‘Britannia Animal Care’, North West Britain. Ranchers can be a little more elusive. Look for them at the farms and in Farmer’s Markets. Some ranchers are “free standing” NPCs and will sell to you without being in a shop. Pack horses usually sell between 500 and 600 gold pieces, llamas are a little less at 450 to 550 gold pieces. Prices are not fixed and vary between npcs even in the same town. Carrying capacity is 1600 stones, requires one follower slot.

NPCs do not buy back pack horses (or llamas).

Giant Beetles

Giant beetles spawn in the solen hive and must be subdued before being tamed. It is therefore usual to purchase these from players. The main difference between pack horses, pack llamas and giant beetles is that the beetle may be ridden by its owner. However carrying its owner has an impact on its function as a pack animal. This pet can log out with its owner, provided the owner is riding it. A Giant beetle can carry 1600 stones if not ridden. With approximately 525 stones it can be ridden at running speed, between 525 and 1600 stones it can be ridden, but will not move above walking speed (your mount is too fatigued). Requires 3 follower slots.

Mini Faq

Most of these Guidelines are also relevant to pets in general, so if you know enough about pets you may not need to read this section.

Q. My pack horse went wild! What do I do?

A. Well, the first thing you need to do is not worry. If you are the former master of the pack horse, you will be able to retame it. You do not need to have any taming skill to do so. This even remains true if you transfer the pack horse to someone else and it goes wild. As long as you have been its master at some point, you will always be able to retame it with no taming skill.  Immediately after retaming your pack horse, feed it!

Q.Why did my pack horse go wild?
A. Pets lose loyalty when neglected. Feeding it and commanding it to follow you will both increase it’s loyalty, leaving it out of sight will decrease it.

Bonding and resurrection

Anyone can bond with a pack animal (or any animal with a minimum taming requirement of 29.1 or below for that matter), regardless of their skill level in taming. The main benefit of owning a bonded pack animal is that you can recall with it instead of having to gate it everywhere. Other than that, if a bonded the pack animal dies, it can be resurrected by a player with sufficient lore and veterinary skill or an npc vet.

Dead Packy

Well, you can loot it, but chances are you can’t carry it. The first thing to bear in mind is, the packy’s corpse is going to disappear a lot faster than a player-character’s would, so open the corpse, you’ll find a back pack inside with all the items your packy was carrying. Remove it from the corpse. Since you probably can’t carry it, you can only realistically place it on the ground, which means other players could take the contents, but it’s a better option than hoping to get back with a resurrected pet before the corpse decays.

Caring for Packy (Stabling and Feeding)

How do I stable a pack horse?

Stabling a pet is fairly straightforward. You simply go up to a stablemaster in a stable, tell them “stable” or “stall” and the targeting cursor will come up. Click on your pack horse and you’re good to go. To get them back from the stablemaster, simply tell them “claim”, and your animal will appear. If you have several pack horses stabled, you can claim them by their name, such as “claim Packy”, or if you forgot its name, just say “claim list” and the stablemaster will give you a list of all creatures this character has stabled. Only saying “claim” to the stablemaster will make him return as many animals as you have control slots available for.

Stabling requires 30 gold pieces. If you don’t have it, they will not let you stable your animal. You do not need to have the gold on you, they will take it directly from your bank box. For detailed information on stabling pets, see the stabling information in the Tamer’s guide.

How often do you have to feed your pack horse?

Most people will tell you every one to two hours; I believe this is a good guide. Think about it, if you will: every two hours of real time is one game-time day. With that ratio, we’re really lucky we only have to feed pack horses once a day! I will typically feed my pack horse once when we begin,and then once later, after about an hour or so. Some people will tell you never, simply telling the pet ‘all follow me’ at frequent intervals is enough to maintain loyalty.

How much should you feed?

One sheaf of hay works very well, or fruits/veggies. The hay is cheaper, but it is heavier than fruit, and doesn’t stack, either. What you feed your pack horse is really up to you. Your pack horse is a frugal creature: It will be just as happy with a single apple as it is with a full sheaf of hay. There is no reason to feed the packy with more than one unit of whatever fruit or veggie you are feeding it with; each time it is fed, it will become wonderfully happy, regardless of the amount fed. Feeding it more won’t make it happier or more compliant and you just need to carry more. Your best bet is to simply feed your pack horse a little bit, regularly; rather than a lot at once.

Also, a minor note that is good to know, immediately after feeding a pack horse it will “loose” whatever its current command is, so if you have it following you, and you stop to feed it, if you do not tell it to follow you again, it will start to wander around of its own accord. I have no idea why this happens; something about feeding them makes them loose their minds.

Working with your pack horse (commands)

All the commands that work with other pets, also work with pack horses. The most useful ones you should macro, so that in an emergency you can command your pack horse much more quickly. If you prefer you can put the name of your pack horse in the macro, instead of “all”.

The usual commands that you should macro are:

“all follow me” (yes, you can say ‘all follow’ but that requires that you target yourself, which can take time you may not have)

“all stay”

“all stop”

Don’t tell your pack horse to guard you, they just get themselves killed.

Use the “all come” command when you need the pet to negotiate around obstacles.

Traveling with Packy

If you have your pack horse following you, you shouldn’t have much trouble gating with it. It will automatically go through the gate the instant you go through. No need to maneuver it through the gate before going through yourself. If your packy has bonded, there is even no need for gate travel, since you can just recall with it.

Packy and Monsters

A pack horse that has been given an ‘all stop’ ‘all stay’ or ‘guard’ command will respond when targeted, autodefend, and usually die. A pack horse that is under the ‘all follow me’ command will ignore an approaching monster.

If you are quick enough to notice the monster arriving, recall if the packie is bonded, otherwise go the opposite direction at a steady walk, as quick as you can without running. Stay only one step ahead of your pack horse, that way it will use the same path you take. The further ahead you get, the more likely your pack horse will attempt to navigate it’s own way towards you, thus increasing the chance of it getting stuck behind an obstacle.

It’s important to always keep an escape route in the back of your mind; that is, the clearest path through the brush. You can be sure, if there is ever a time for Packy to get stuck, they’ll do it when you need it least. (Note: if you are on Felucca, it is critical to make sure you know where you’re going, while trying to get away from a monster. If you are not careful to observe the terrain, you can easily get yourself stuck behind obstacles, only to have loyal Packy stop right behind you, covering your retreat, and your exit. You can sometimes push past Packy, but not always so don’t
count on it when you are in trouble.)

Dealing with Thieves (Felucca)

Thieves currently cannot steal anything over 10 stone. So, really, if you’re mining or cutting logs, thieves are more an annoyance than a real problem. If you have anything valuable on your pack horse (why???), bury it deep in a bag within another bag, within another bag, etc. It’s a good idea to do this on your person as well.

You may want to use the idea of trapped boxes on your pack horse. That is, put the ore/ingots into a trapped box on the horse (obviously if you do this with heavy items, you’ll either need more than one box, or it won’t work). I don’t know though if it’s worth it because I have more of a problem with people killing the horse than stealing things. It ought to be good in town though, especially if you name the packy “TRAPPED!” *Evil laugh*

The only other two options you have in Felucca for dealing with thieves is to get whatever is on our pack horse into
the bank as quickly as possible, or to attack the thief when they turn grey.

Conclusion

I hope these guidelines help you, if you choose to use a pack horse. I am glad to say since I figured all the above out, I have only lost one pack horse (rather than one a week!), and that was due to leaving it alone for a RL day.

Good luck!

Guildenstern

101 Uses for the Packy; by Raphael the scribe

There are a few things you can do with a pack horse that go beyond just moving around heavy stuff.

Training stealing

Pack horses are a valid (and very popular) means of training your Stealing skill. Put whatever you want to train with in your packy’s backpack, go in a crowded area in Felucca (close to a bank works best), and tell your pack horse to guard you. The latter one is very important – it won’t work otherwise. Now steal right away and watch your skill rise.

Training snooping

There is no better way to train Snooping than with pack horses,in Trammel as well as in Felucca. Just look for someone else with a pack horse or watch out for a packy without a master or just get yourself one and release it. Now double click it once, hit your “Last Object” macro like crazy and watch as your Snooping skill skyrockets.

If you have someone else get a pack horse and tell it to stay, it’s a pure pleasure to train this skill as you don’t have to run after the stupid NPCs any more to train the skill.

Doing large transactions

Doing transactions with lots of heavy stuff, like 15 kegs of potions, can be quite a nuisance because of weight limits:
You have to give a little to the other, he pays a fraction of the total amount, you wait for him to put it somewhere and start over till everything is done. For certain commodities, this has been made a lot easier with the commodity deeds, but other stuff, like the aforementioned kegs, the problem remains.

You can make your life a lot easier with a pack horse: Put everything inside and just transfer (sell) the pack horse to the other. However, this requires a certain amount of trust,as the other one can’t see what is inside the pack horse in in the trade window. You can friend him to enable him to peek into the packy’s pack, but then he will be able to take anything out of it, so this requires trust on your side.

If you have a little patience, you can still do secure transactions with a pack horse. Provided the character is ‘human’ use JoaT’ (jack of all trades, human ability) snooping, so he can see what’s inside but cannot take anything out. It will require several tries in most cases, but your trading partner can do it without loosing karma.

Of course you can do all of this only in Trammel without risking a theft or the other one just killing the pack horse.
But no-one is able to steal a keg with 100 stones anyway, and killing a pack next to a bank isn’t a wise decision either – unless you like your view in black and white.

Creating your own stable

Some players like to have a stable in their house. Well, not a real one, where you actually can store pets, but a room decorated like a stable, with hay, horseshoes and things alike.

Role-playing events

You can have a lot of role-playing fun with pack horses. For example, go to Felucca, get a few, put 10 k gold in each one (or whatever you seem fit) and announce publicly that you are going to create a caravan that will move a huge treasure on such and such date from A to B.

You can rest assured that quite a few PKs and others feel challenged to try to sabotage the caravan while your challenge is to get as much of it to the destination as possible.

If you don’t want to have everyone chasing you, do all this in Trammel with guildmates or with members of another guild that your guild is in war with. However, this requires a little more planning, as transferring and controlling of pets for members of warring guilds is limited a bit.

They can also be used as a mobile broadcasting system by placing communication crystals in their packs