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Professions: The Tamer

 

Animal Taming

Updated July 2009 by Petra Fyde

Skill Details

• Animal Taming is the skill used for taming animals and tamable monsters.
• The skill’s secondary function is to determine your level of control over a particular pet. The formula for calculating this control can be found on the animal lore page (link above) The page ‘tamable animals’ can calculate this value for you.
• Not all animals and monsters are tamable.
• Your ability to tame a particular creature is based on your displayed skill. At the minimum skill level required to tame a particular creature you have a 1% chance of successfully taming it.
• Taming is difficulty-based, this means you have to tame creatures of increasing difficulty to keep gaining.
• The minimum requirement to tame a creature increases with each additional person who tames it.
• Once you have tamed a creature, its taming difficulty is reset to 0.0 for you and you will always be able to retame it on first try. You can not gain skill from an animal you have previously tamed, but you can gain skill from other people’s tames.

Taming & Retaming

Each time an animal is retamed by an additional person, the minimum taming requirement is increased.While a creature can only be tamed 5 times (provided the taming difficulty does not exceed 120.0), there is no limit to the number of owners a pet can have if it is transferred from one person to another instead of retamed. The table below will give you an example why it can be more effective to retame previously tamed creatures instead of freshly spawned ones, especially at higher skill levels:

Retaming examples
	first	second	third	fourth	fifth
General Values(adjusted skill)	minimum	+ 4.8	+ 19.2	+ 43.2	+ 76.8
Example 1a hind	23.1	27.9	42.3	66.3	99.9
Example 2a grizzly bear	59.1	63.9	78.3	102.3	135.9
Example 3a dragon	93.9	98.7	113.1	137.1	170.7

Optimizing Your Gains

Tame creatures you have about a 50% success chance on, since you will not gain from failed attempts. You can safely extend this range to 40-90% for some variety, but don’t focus on anything with a lower success chance. If you routinely need more than 4-5 attempts to tame a creature, you are wasting your time on something that is still too hard for your skill level. If you want to tame a certain creature that has a particularly good spawn (e.g. great harts, white wolves, ridgebacks), you may find that adjusting your success chance by using skill jewelry will help your gains. Always keep in mind, it’s quantity over quality – and don’t lose patience!

What to Tame at Which Skill Level

To find out what to tame for the best gains at your skill level, use the Tamable Creatures List, enter your current Taming skill, choose “Sorted by taming”, set it to display “Success 0 retames” and find the creatures that are closest to your 50% chance “sweet spot”. These numbers apply for “real” skill as well as when using skill jewelry. Taming gains can vary quite a bit from character to character, so experiment with the recommended range and see what works best for you.

Taming Tips

Sometimes gains slow down to a crawl. Don’t be alarmed, it happens to almost everyone. Here are a few things you can try to get your gains going again:

• Make sure you are taming creatures that aren’t too hard for your skill level. You won’t gain from failed attempts!
• Don’t try to raise Taming for a day or two, leave it alone. Work on a different skill or go out and have some fun hunting with your pets. When you go back to taming practice, you should gain again.
• Switch to taming different creatures. Take a journey across Britannia, look at all the interesting places to be found and tame everything that crosses your path. In the old times it was said only Tamers really traveled all across Britannia and could say “I have seen it all”

Taming Aggressive Creatures

The most important fact here is, the creature must be able to pathfind to you.and you can not tame a creature that is receiving damage of any kind. The only result from a taming attempt you would get is “The animal is too angry to continue taming“.  Stay out of the creature’s melee range and use one of the following options

• Paralyze it, then try again. Be aware that if you use a paralyzation spell, the pet’s skill loss upon being tamed will be greater than if you just lead-tame.
• Use peacemaking on the creature.
• Invoke honor virtue

Some of the most intelligent creatures do not take kindly to being tamed. “You seem to anger the beast” is most likely the result you will see quite often before you can actually start a (not necessarily successful) taming attempt. Keep trying, and eventually you will succeed. If not for the long hours of getting to this level of taming, here your “tame/last target” macro will come in very, very handy.

Battle Strategies

The idea of being a tamer, is the pet takes the hits, not you.

• Aim to keep the pet between your character and the spawn at all times, be alert, if the new spawn appears closer to you than the pet step smartly past the pet in the fraction of a second before the newcomer targets.
• Send the pet in with an attack or kill command and then move in to vet.
• Paragons in Ilshenar re-target on anything that moves. There are 3 main stragegies for dealing with this
  • Use a template with ‘stealth’ and simply walk up to the pet, you will be revealed when you begin to vet.
  • Send in the pet with the attack command, then use ‘follow me’ to bring the pet and the attacking monster to you, re-issuing the attack command when they reach you.
  • Use the teleport spell to reach your pet’s side.

Choosing the Right Pet

When it comes to filling your stable you will need to consider not only which type of pet, but how good it is for its species. For this you will find to be an invaluable resource, listing maximum and minimum attributes and resistances for each creature type. If your animal lore is high enough you will be able to select which creature to tame before making the attempt, if not you will need to tame and release till you succeed in acquiring one that meets your needs. Searching for the ‘perfect’ set of statistics could take forever but you should aim at a minimum for finding a pet which is above average for its species.

Pet Profiles

A brief look at the advantages, disadvantages and quirks of some of the more popular pets.

• The Frenzied Ostard

The first ‘aggressive’ pet most tamers add to their stable, used in a pack their damage output through pack instinct is phenomenal. However controlling 5 creatures at once, and keeping them alive, is not a task for the faint hearted.  A single frenzied is useful where you need to keep tight control on damage output, such as reducing a giant beetle to the ‘subdued’ state necessary to tame it.

• The Bake Kitsune

This giggling creature’s fairly low taming requirement, yet high hit points and damage capabilities make it a popular first hunting partner. Taming one can be quite amusing, since when wild, they have the ability to polymorph,  sadly they lose this ability when tamed.

• The Drake

Rarely seen now, a drake used to be a training tamer’s first hunting companion as he rode his frenzied ostard.

• The Nightmare

The most popular mount of most tamers, able ‘back up’ and partner to a variety of heavier hitting pets.

• The Fire Steed

Often dismissed as merely decorative these creatures have pack instinct and a pair of them can be a formidable force against the right foe, their damage output being 80% fire damage.

• The Unicorn

This creature is completely resistant to all poisons and will attempt to cure their owners when the owner has been poisoned.  However one drawback is that only females can tame and ride unicorns.

• The Ki-rin

A Ki-rin will call down the forces of nature to help protect their owners, only males can tame and ride them.

• The Dragon

Over taken by its more powerful cousin, the greater dragon, most tame dragons languish in their owner’s stable, neglected and forgotten.

• The White Wyrm

A powerful ally when used against the right foe, its beauty alone should earn it a place in most tamer’s stables.  Its damage output is 50% physical and 50% cold.

• The Rune Beetle

Most popularly paired with either a nightmare or bake kitsune its high poisoning ability allows for the quick despatching of most foes.

• The Dread Warhorse

This stronger version of the tamer’ favorite nightmare was obtained by defeating it’s former owner, a Vanguard controller. These creatures were featured in a story-arc event and are not spawning at the this time (July 2009)

• The Hiryu

This bird-like rideable dragon has a fierce attack and is capable of dismounting a foe.  Often popular with tamer/treasure hunters because of its ability to defeat an ancient wyrm.

• The Cu Sidhe

This friendly mount not only heals itself, it will also attempt to heal its owner, though sadly resurrection is beyond its abilities.  While this pet is able to take on most foes, it can be an extensive battle and often a pairing of lesser pets will achieve the objective more quickly.

• The Reptalon

The ‘red-headed stepchild’ in the tamer’s stable, this pet has yet to fulfill its potential.

• The Greater Dragon

Largest and fiercest tamable in the land, ths pet requires that its owner have no other companion (ie it takes 5 pet slots). Similar to the cu-sidhe, it can take on most foes, but it isn’t always the swiftest way to achieve your aim.