The Taming Forum FAQ *please read before posting* Updated 04/04/2012

CONTENTS

[Latest Updates: Updated links to work with the new Stratics site & removed empty links.]

Welcome to the Tamers Forum <-- *please read this section before posting on the forum - thank you *

This FAQ is arranged in sections starting as with training your taming skills, then taming and training your pets and finally guides you on to handling them and hunting. Click the link titles to move to the relevant guide.

Skill Overview & Training Guides

Stratics Guides -

• Animal Taming
• Animal Lore (Page includes a detailed explanation of the pet control formula)
• Veterinary
• Herding
• Tamer Templates
• Taming Areas
• Training Pets

Tamer's Forum Guides -

• Some tips for efficiently training your tamer
• Using skill increase items for taming skills
• Tamer Training Guide
• Animal Lore Training Guide
• Veterinary Guide (Training, vet macros and Vet FAQ's)

Calculators

• Stratics Tamable Animals page - displays a list of all tamable creatures. It can be configured to show you chance to tame or control.
• Pet Power Calculator Provides a rating for your pet based on it's stats, resists and skills.
• Pet Control Calculator - Another calculator to check your pet control.
• Stable Slot Calculator - Calculates your available stabling.

Interesting Pets

• Chicken Lizards and Battle Chicken Lizards - A beginner's guide to breeding chicken lizards.
• Pack Instinct Creatures - An overview of how pack instinct works and a list of all pack animals by type.
• Mechanical Pets - A guide to the mechanical pets (golem, clockwork scorpion, clockwork leather wolves, vollem) and how they're made.

Taming Aggressive Creatures

Basic taming methods

• Lead Taming, by DreadLord Lestat
• Beaten into Subjudigation Guide, by DreadLord Lestat

Pet Training Guides

• Stratics - Lady Ghost's guide
• Kane's Pet Training Guide

Pet Care & Handling

• Control Slots, Pet Bonding & Resurrection, Commands/messages, Pet Loyalty & Stabling
• NPC Veterinarians Guide
• Preferred Foods (at the bottom of the page, scroll down )

General Q & A's

Q: What does it mean when I try to tame an animal and I get the message, “You seem to have angered the beast!”?

A: Some pets have what is referred to as an "angering cycle". This means that when you try to tame that creature, there is a chance that you'll simply make the creature angry. When this happens even a normally passive creature like the cu sidhe will attack the tamer.

What to do? Just keep trying! Often tamers will hold down a key macro'd to use animal taming skill > last target and stay near the creature. Eventually you will break through the anger cycle and start a tame. With a passive animal like the cu sidhe, you can then cast invisibility and it will stop attacking you.

You can't avoid these anger messages entirely, however they are less frequent if you have high animal taming skill. This is why tamers who regularly tame higher end creatures will often have 120 taming. You can use skill items to reach 120 and reduce the anger messages.

Q: I tried to tame something but I get a message saying I can't tame it!

A: This message indicates that the creature concerned cannot be tamed. It can be found on creatures that can normally be tamed, because they are in a champion spawn. Also, during events and invasions, some of the spawn might be untameable in certain locations.

Q: Where can I find and tame a dread warhorse?

A: Dread warhorses were tamed during an event and no longer spawn. At present they can only be obtained through trading with other players. This may or may not change in future.

Bane dragons have very similar features to dread warhorses and may be a suitable alternative.

[To discuss or contribute to this FAQ, please visit this thread - thanks!]

Welcome

Welcome to the Tamer's Forum!

Please take time to read the Stratics Rules of Conduct and adhere to these rules when you post here. Repeatedly violating these rules can result in a suspension of your posting privileges. Also, check you understand the rules about signature file sizes.

A few requests...

Please check search before you ask - We really appreciate it when new users search the forum before asking a commonly answered question.

Check the FAQ too - This FAQ will expand to cover the most common topics, and links to some great resources for tamers.

Be polite - We all disagree at times, but please post in a respectful way and leave your ego at the front door. Leave feather ruffling to the chickens. And remember, we can all check your post history, so if you act like a jerk, it'll stick

Use descriptive titles when you start a thread - "Help!" isn't descriptive, "my nightmare won't bond after 7 days" is better. We can find things more quickly that way, especially through forum search.


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Posts can be reported by clicking the triangular warning sign at the bottom of that post (below the poster's username). Please use this button responsibly!

If you have any questions about this forum or you're having problems here, please PM me (Wenchkin).

Wenchy
UO Tamer Forum Moderator

Some tips for efficiently training your tamer

Some tips for efficiently training your tamer

Working with the Guaranteed Gains System (GGS)

• Ideally, before you begin training a tamer, it helps to understand how gains work in UO and how to maximise your chances. Animal taming has a reputation for being time consuming so I want to introduce you to our gains guide here on Stratics.

• The GGS will yield the fastest gains when your character uses no more than 350 skill points in total. To check your skills total, look at the bottom right of the skills gump. Naturally you can't stay below 350 skill forever, so here are a few tips to make the most of GGS.

• The hardest/slowest/most expensive skills to raise should be the first skills you train. Then all the "fast gains" are being put to good effect.

• Soulstones can be used to store trained skills, so you can raise easier skills and simply stone them off to train the next skill.

• A developed character can still speed up their GGS gains by using soulstone(s) to move skills off during training. Skill totals of up to 500 and 700 will give you slight increases in speed compared to a 720 skilled character, so they're an option if you can't drop to 350.

• There is an option to flush skills from a soulstone, so any skills you are lowering can be removed quickly to free up skill points. You can also use this option to drop a really easy skill from your template - eg meditation.

Miscellanous Training Tips

• Combine your taming training with other activities like zoo donations or taming new pets to ease the boredom of simply training in the same location all the time.

• Resource collection while you train animal taming can earn you extra gold and provide you with useful supplies.

A few examples:

• feathers from chickens for your archer's arrows/bolts.
• sheep fleece - spin into yarn, weave cloth and snip into bandages for training veterinary skill.
• Raw meat - stockpile as pet food for your carnivores.
• Hides/skins - sell to other players or use for your crafter.

Using skill increase items for taming skills

Using skill increase items for taming skills

Skill items can be obtained to increase your skill in animal taming, animal lore and veterinary skill. There are no skill items to increase the herding skill.

Skill items have a number of uses for tamers:

1. To increase taming skill so you can tame an aggressive pet more easily, or raise skill taming "harder" animals than you'd use without skill items.
2. Boosting up your control of a pet by increasing animal taming or animal lore skill.
3. Bonding with a pet when you don't have enough trained skill to reach the minimum skill level required to establish a bond.
4. Increasing your vet skill so you can resurrect a dead pet.
5. increasing your stable capacity if you need some extra room.

You need to have the items equipped to maintain most of the above benefits, but I'll outline them in more detail below.


1. Increase taming skill so you can tame an aggressive pet more easily, or raise skill taming "harder" animals than you'd use without skill items.

Many tamers will stop training animal taming and lore at around 110 skill, because this gives them decent control of all the commonly used pets. However, when a tamer goes to tame a new pet (for example a cu sidhe) they will have greater success and probably tame the creature faster if they can "boost" their taming skill to 120. So you'll find a lot of tamers cap their real taming at 110 but use a 120 taming powerscroll and wear a skill item to raise their 110 taming to 120, so they can tame new pets quickly. If you can't afford a 120 powerscroll though, a 115 is enough for most purposes.

During taming training, you might want to try moving up to a new creature, or tame some of the common hunting pets as you raise your skill. In this case you might want to boost your taming skill up. So again, you could add a skill item to your equipment and expand your training horizons.


2. Boosting up your control of a pet by increasing animal taming or animal lore skill.

Probably the most common use of skill items for taming is to improve your control of a pet. I would recommend that you train your taming and lore skills up to control your pets without items, but taming is a slow skill to raise. So tamers may use skill items while they're training.

On a more cramped template where skill items are a permanent feature, I recommend training "real" skill on your taming skills if they're essential to the template. Then swap your skill boosting items to your "support" skills. This ensures you have good pet control all the time, and gives you the flexibility in changing skill boosting items for something else, because removing an item won't reduce your pet control. The other handy thing is skill items for say meditation are much cheaper than those for taming!

Skill item control only work while that item is equipped. Take care to re-equip these items after death before you command a pet. Otherwise, the pet will be likely to refuse commands and lose loyalty, with the risk of the pet going wild if you don't stop to feed it and re-equip your items. This loyalty fall will be faster if you fall really far below the skill required for that pet. So if you're above 90% control without items, it won't be so much of a problem. You might not even notice the drop in control for a few commands. If you only have 50% control without skill items though, loyalty will fall quite swiftly and you'll certainly notice the lack of control! So if you think you might forget an item equip, or you just want more peace of mind, it's best if you're close to the skill required to control a pet "naturally".


3. Bonding with a pet when you don't have enough trained skill to reach the minimum skill level required to establish a bond.

Items which increase your animal taming skill can be used to bond a pet if you don't have enough trained skill to bond with that pet.

Firstly, ensure that your combined natural and item boosted skill is at or above the creature's minimum taming skill. This skill is the bare minimum you'll need and bonding won't succeed below this skill level. Note, to control the pet you'll need to be above this skill level (minimum taming skill + 5.0 skill is a rough estimate for 99% control).

You must have your skill items on when you feed your pet to bond it. So when you want to start bonding, equip the items and feed your pet, then after 7 days elapse, feed the pet again with your skill items on. If you forget you will probably get a message telling you that your skill is too low. Put your items on and try feeding again. This should work, but if it doesn't you may want to try stabling the pet for another day and retrying, and if that doesn't work stable it for a further 7 days and feed again.


4. Increasing your vet skill so you can resurrect a dead pet.

You need 80 skill in both veterinary and animal lore before you can resurrect a dead bonded pet. Skill items will count towards your skills here so if you haven't reached 80/80 skill, you can add items to resurrect a dead pet. Or just to increase your success rate to save bandages. Either way, just equip your items and vet the pet as normal.


5. Increasing your stable capacity if you need some extra room.

You found a great pet, but when you go to the stables there's no room - whoops! I'm sure all tamers encounter this problem sooner or later. The solution is to have a few skill items tucked away so you can boost your skills up to a level where you get an additional stable slot. After obtaining 5 stable slots when your taming skills combine to 240+ skill (or 7 if you have the extra 2 slots from the Stygian Abyss expansion), you'll get an additional stable slot when your taming, lore or vet skills reach 100, 110 or 120. So the easiest option is to boost one or more of your skills to the next landmark level. Make sure you have those skill items in a safe place though, otherwise if you lose them you'll be short of stable space.

Happy taming and safe travels

Wenchy

Wenchy's Tamer Training Guide

Wenchy's Tamer Training Guide

The following guide is designed so you are always taming creatures around your sweet spot for gains. Ideally you want to tame creatures around the 50% success rate because you can't gain from failed taming attempts. I have tried to choose creatures in the 50-60% success rate at each level to reduce the failed attempts while not making it too easy.

This list works best alongside the tamable animals list. Should you hit a gain block with your tamer on this guide, enter your skills into the animal list page and look for other creatures in the 50-60% level. You can open it out to 40-90% success and still get gains, so don't be afraid to try that if you have trouble. If you do think I've really messed up with something though - please drop me a PM

When taming, quantity counts. For the best gains you should aim to tame creatures quickly one after another. If you're looking for each new creature then you won't be able to gain as quickly. Kill things efficiently by telling them to kill (for example) a nearby wandering healer or a bigger animal if you can't kill them swiftly by yourself.

And don't forget to have fun with your tamer while you train!

Skill
0-30: NPC Stable Masters will train you. Or chickens and rabbits at Jhelom/NPC farms.

30-45: Cows, goats, pigs and sheep at Jhelom farm or Delucia.

45-55: Hind at Healer's Grove, Barrier Isle or outside Delucia. Timber wolf in beside the Huntsman.

55-60: Boar at Jhelom Farm. Or horses, desert & forest ostards, rideable llamas (T2A) Lowland boura (SA).

60-65: Polar bears and walrus on Dagger Isle or Llamas at Jhelom farm.

65-70: Brown bears near Moonglow Zoo. Note: these can be donated to the zoo.

70-85: Snow leopards on Dagger Isle. Or tame grey wolves and panthers.

85-90: Great harts at Healer's Grove, outside Delucia or Barrier Isle. Or grizzly bears.

90-95: White wolves on Dagger Isle.

95-100: Gaman at Homare-Jima or Hotaka Plains. Or bulls at Jhelom Farm or near Delucia.

100-108: Bulls at Jhelom Farm or near Delucia.

108-120: Ridgeback and at Ridgeback Ponds in Central Ilshenar.

Animal Lore Training

Wenchy's Animal Lore Training Guide

Animal lore can be raised in two distinct ways - actively and passively.

Active skill gain

Active skill gain is obtained through using the animal lore skill directly. You could do this on your own pet or stand somewhere busy and lore other players' pets.

Once you reach 100 animal lore skill, you can also lore wild tameable creatures and at 110 skill you can lore monsters too. These skill levels will allow you more variety in where you train at the higher skill levels.


Passive skill gain

By passive skill gain, I mean gaining animal lore skill while using another of the taming skills. In other words, you can get gains while you tame animals and also while you use the veterinary skill to heal them.

Unless you're in a hurry to train animal lore, passive skill gain is the simplest option and the one I'd recommend first.

Passive gains while taming - While you're taming, have your animal lore skill set to rise. You'll have a chance to gain in lore during each tame attempt.

Passive gains while vetting - During normal hunts you'll often need to vet your pets. Animal lore has a chance to gain each time you vet your pet, so you can simply hunt with pets and get your gains as you heal them. This works best if you have your pets taking steady damage and you don't have to move around looking for spawn.

For a more controllable version, take two tamed animals somewhere quiet and say "all guard me" followed by "all kill" and target one of the pets to start them fighting. You'll need to be guilded for this to work, otherwise the pets won't damage each other. If you're not guilded, you may need to stick with the method outlined above where you hunt with pets instead.

Note: the guard command is important because without it you and your pets will be flagged as criminals and if you're in town this means you and your pet(s) will be guardwhacked. In Felucca outside town you will be flagged grey as a criminal and other players can attack you. So please be careful

If you're new to sparring your own pets together, look for a pair that won't hurt each other too aggressively. You might struggle to keep up with the bandaging! I used to start with bears and I either set a macro up for healing the individual bears or I made a longer macro in UOAssist to heal one then the other with a pause in it. See my vet training guide for more info.

Don't I need to lock my other skills to get animal lore gains?

No. This used to be a common training tactic, but if you want to train animal lore on its own, I suggest saving bandages and just lore creatures for gains.

Veterinary Guide

Wenchy's Veterinary Guide

First, some commonly asked questions about the Veterinary skill...

• How much vet skill do I need in order to cure poison or resurrect a pet?

To cure poison the minimum is 60 points in animal lore and veterinary skill.
To resurrect a pet the minimum is 80 points in animal lore and veterinary skill.

• I understand a pet loses skill points when resurrected. Is the point loss the same regardless of who resurrects it (self, another player, or vet NPC)?

If you or another player resurrect the pet, the skill loss is 0.1 per skill.
If an NPC veterinarian resurrects the pet, you lose 0.2 per skill. For more info about using Veterinarian NPC's click here.

• What are enhanced bandages and where can I get them?

Enhanced bandages are used like normal bandages, but they add 10 points to your healing or vet skill. So a tamer with 90 vet skill will heal their pet as if they had 100 vet, just by using an enhanced bandage. Note this only effects the amount of damage you heal, not your success rate. If you're not at your skill cap an enhanced bandage can enable you to reach the minimum skill requirements to cure poison (60 skill) and resurrection (80).

Enhanced bandages are produced by the Fountain of Life, a house add-on gift which was released to mark UO's 8th Anniversary. You can use 8th Anniversary Token's to claim a fountain. It is then placed in a house and automatically locks itself down. To create enhanced bandages, place a stack of normal bandages into the fountain. Each (real life) day the fountain can convert 10 normal bandages into enhanced bandages.

Training the Veterinary Skill

To train veterinary skill, use bandages to heal a pet. It doesn't matter how difficult or easy the task is - in other words you don't need to resurrect pets, cure poison, just basic vetting will get you to your desired skill cap. That said, if you only heal a tiny amount of damage, you'll get a message of "you heal what little damage your patient had" and this indicates that you didn't heal enough damage to have a chance of gaining vet skill.

NPCs at the stables will train you to approx 30 skill.

Next, buy as many bandages as you can carry.
(New players can shear sheep, then use a spinning wheel and loom (tailor's shop) to make cloth. Cut the bolts with scissors, then cut the resulting cloth again to make bandages.)

Now set up a bit of pet damage so you can heal it

My preferred method is to select a pet I want to train. While I train it on monsters, I get vet gains and I loot gold to buy more bandages. This method does require more attention and input from the player and may be more dangerous for a new character. You want to hunt creatures that do a decent amount of damage so you can vet constantly, but not so much damage that you can't keep up.

The safer/less involved method is to make two pets fight each other and vet the damage. Some pets can do a lot of damage to each other, so to begin with I suggest taming 2 bears or horses.

If you're training in Trammel, you need to be guilded before your pets will do damage to each other.

Set the fight up as follows:

1. Tell your pets to guard you ("all guard me") ** This is important, otherwise you and your pets are flagged criminal and can be guard whacked in Trammel facet cities or attacked in Felucca **
2. Tell one pet to kill the other, or just say "all kill" and target one of your pets.
3. Have the health bars showing for both pets and vet the one taking most damage.

Beginners might find it easier to make one of the pets passive once the fight starts, so only one is taking damage at a time.

To set this up, start your pets fighting, then tell one pet to stop then ask it to stay or follow you so it doesn't wander off. I command my pets by name for this so they don't both stop fighting, e.g., "Freddy stop", "Freddy stay". You can then focus your vetting on one single pet.


Useful Macros for Veterinarians and Vet Training

You can use either individual macros to vet each pet or create a macro to heal one pet then the other.

Enhanced Client - Drag your stack of bandages to the empty box in your macro then set to stored target. Repeat for the second pet and set the macro to repeat the maximum 10 times.

Or make a macro to heal your current target and click on the pet you need to vet - drop the stack of bandages then select current target.

Classic Client - The macro I used to vet goes like this - Select next > Follower, Bandage target> Last Target. Clicking that macro will cycle through your followers each time so you heal one pet then the other. To heal just one of two pets I often just switch to my Last Object, Last Target macro.


UOAssist Veterinary Macros

To vet a single pet one bandage at a time

Start to record the macro.
Double click a stack of bandages.
Target the pet.
Stop your macro.

Right click on the "use item" line in the macro display window and select "Convert to 'use item type'"

To assign a key to trigger this macro, click the keys tab in UOA and scroll down the list till you find the corresponding Play Macro 5 or whatever macro slot you've recorded in. Click in the space above the "clear hotkey" button and hold down the key(s) of your macro.

Your macro's now ready to use, and you can set macros up for as many pets as you want. I used two macros and simply changed the target (right click the target line, select reset target and click on the pet you want to switch to.


To vet two pets one after the other with a number of repeats

Start to record the macro.
Double click a stack of bandages.
Target the first pet.
Double click the stack of bandages again.
Target the second pet.

Repeat that a couple of times to save you having to repeat the macro every single time. I had about 5 repeats of vetting pet 1 then pet 2.

Stop your macro then you should see something like:

Code:

Use Item
Target
Use Item
Target

Right click on the "use item" text in the UOAssist window and select "Convert to 'use item type'" from the little menu. Do that for all the Use Item lines in your macro. This basically changes your macro so it uses any bandage stack, rather than the stack you set it with.

You can use this macro later on different pets by right clicking on the "target" lines and selecting your new pet 1 and pet 2.

Note, you'll need to add in pauses after each "target" line to give your character time to apply the bandage before starting to apply it again. To do this, click on the "target" line then click the "Pause After" button on the left. I used to use 1500-2000 for my vetting. Fiddle with the timer until it works well for you.

To assign a key to trigger this macro, click the keys tab in UOA and scroll down the list till you find the corresponding Play Macro 1 or whatever macro slot you've recorded in. Click in the space above the "clear hotkey" button and hold down the key(s) of your macro.

Voila, you're ready to test your macro out!

This does all seem like a lot of fuss, but once you know how it's done, a UOAssist macro is really quick and easy to setup. Honest!

Happy vetting!

Wenchy

Herding Training

The Herding guide will be added here soon, please check back later

Thank you!

Wenchy

Lead Taming By Dreadlord Lestat

Lead Taming By Dreadlord Lestat

Lead taming is a taming technique used on aggressive mobs. Lead taming is not difficult but can be rather painful. You need to make sure that you are prepared mentally and physically before attempting to tame them or you may find your world turning to black and white while you run around looking for a healer. OoOOooOOo!!!

Step #1

Make sure that you have enough taming to tame your prey. The closer you are to the minimum tame level, the longer it will take to get off successful attempts. You can use power scrolls and skill jewelry to bump up your taming to make it easier and smoother. You also need to make sure that you have stable room for your new pet. Too often, someone sees a must have pet and forgets to check their stable before taming it and then they are out of room and cannot pull a pet out of the stable to make room for their new pet due to followers. You can also use power scrolls and jewelry to bump up stable room but make sure you make room before the next time you pull a pet out.

Step #2

You will need to make sure that you come prepared. I would advise bringing plenty of greater cures and heal potions. I would also suggest bring a few trapped boxes for when they decide to cast paralyze on you. If your tamer that uses healing, then bandages are a must. If you use ninjitsu then smoke bombs are great for difficult situations as are invisibility potions. High resist armor will also be a great help. You can build a set that is high in all resists or piece together certain resists only if you limit your taming to certain mobs. The last thing that I would recommend is equipping a balanced (spell channeling if you can find one with both) bow. The bow will keep you from auto attacking the mob. If you damage the mob through auto attack it can disrupt the tame attempt. With a balanced bow equipped, you will still be able to chug pots.

Step #3

It is always good to bring an ally or two, especially when attempting to tame the big nasties like Greater Dragons, Reptalons, and Cu Sidhe’s. You never know when you will need an emergency heal, invis, or get hit by lag. A friend can keep you alive or distract your mob while you heal up. A bard can be your best friend. Contrary to popular belief, there is no penalty for taming a mob that is peaced or discorded. Some tamers refuse to tame a peaced mob because they enjoy the challenge but they will rarely object to it being discorded as it greatly reduces the damage you take. You may also want a friend to beat down the mob for you a bit before attempting to tame it.

Step #4

Now you are ready to go out and try your luck. You have to be within 3 tiles to start your tame attempt. Once you see “you begin to tame the creature” you know you were successful in starting the tame, now you need to start walking away and it will follow while your attempt continues. Make sure that you stay within 7 tiles of the mob but out of reach of physical attacks. There is not much you can do about magical attacks other than wear your high resist armor and have friends casting heal on you. Also keep in mind that you need to stay in sight of the mob, don’t go around corners and try to keep away from obstacles that can get between you and the mob. You may get lucky and tame it on the first attempt or it might take many attempts. If the attempt fails, just rinse and repeat until you see those magical words “it seems to accept you as master” Now you are done, feed your new friend to begin the bonding process. I always do it right away as I have seen too many people stable them immediately after and forget to feed them costing you a week of extra bonding time since you failed to start it the first time. Once it has bonded, unstable it and take it on a dungeon tour!!

Beaten into subjugation guide by DreadLord Lestat

“Beaten into subjugation”

By Dreadlord Lestat

There are four creatures in game that must be “beaten into subjugation” before being able to be tamed. These creatures are the giant beetle, the giant ice worm, the fire beetle, and the iron beetle.


The giant beetle is found in the N/E and S/E solen hives. It is a pack animal that can hold up to 1600 stones that can also be ridden as a mount. It requires 3 control slots and is a meat eater. 29.1 is the minimum required taming skill to tame, though these can be owned by anyone.


The giant ice worm is found in the icy regions and only comes out when a green thorn http://uo.stratics.com/database/view.php?db_content=gameitem&id=2583 is planted in the snow. The giant ice worm requires 1 control slot and is a meat eater. 71.1 is the minimum required taming skill to tame and control.


The fire beetle is found in the Yomotsu Mines. It is unique as it can be used to smelt ore while mining and is also can be ridden as a mount. It requires 3 control slots and is a meat eater. 93.9 is the minimum required taming skill to tame though these can be owned by anyone. It is a miner’s best friend.


The iron beetle is found in the underworld. It is unique as it can mine for ore though it is slow and cannot be counted on to mine faster than a player. It also changes color to the color of the ore it just mined. It requires 4 control slots and is a meat eater. 71.1 is the minimum taming skill required to tame though these can be controlled by anyone.

If you try to tame one of these without beating it into subjugation, you will get the message *you must subdue this creature before you can tame it.* In order to beat it into subjugation, you must take it’s health below 25% at which time you will get the message *the creature has been beaten into subjugation* You can now start to tame it. If it goes over 25% health before being tamed, it will need to be subjugated again. Try not to use spells that cause damage over time like poison. That can backfire on you by killing it before you can tame it.

Fire beetles can be a pain to tame due to surrounding spawn but bring in a nice price when sold due to the difficulty in taming one. Many tamers don’t bother with them though that doesn’t decrease a miners want for one.


Additional Comments as posted by Uthar Pendragon

Nice write up. Just to add my 2 cents about the fire beetle and the iron beetle. Here is how I usually tame them.

I will precast an invis and then run up to near the beetle and invis. This will break aggro of anything that has targeted you running into the area. I will then cast a quick spell like magic arrow at the beetle. Why you ask...
This seems to put the beetle into a quicker run than normal. what this allows you to do is to pull the beetle into a less hairy section of the dungeon to make your tame attempt.

two quick side notes, this speed is broken by any hits on the beetle. so if your too close and it is able to get a swing on you, they will not follow you as fast. I will also set up the area I am pulling to tame. Luring off the side spawn to have a clean area to work on your tame. Usually I can get the small spell off and get the beetle out of the area before anything else aggros on me with this method.

Honor taming would work fine, you would just have to break aggro after subjigation andbefore taming. Although I dont ever waste Honor on a beetle myself others may find it useful here.

I then use summons (natures fury works well and are easialy dispelled), ev's and mares work well. Although I usually find my mare always seems to get that explode off just before I mount him and hop on my mare just in time to see the beetle die to this delayed spell.

Hope this helps others make them a less aggravating tame.

KaneK89's Pet Training Guide

Below is a copy of Kane's original pet training guide. If you want to read the original discussions, you can find the original thread here.

Creatures with Pack Instinct

Creatures with Pack Instinct
by Wenchy

When you use 2 or more creatures with the same pack instinct, their damage increases. Mixing equine and feline for example, won't get a bonus. Pack instinct adds to the damage each pet does, for the 2nd and subsequent pets you control, up to the max of 100% with a pack of 5.

The bonus only applies to your own pets, so if you went out with your guildmate and you each had a pack animal, the pack instinct bonus wouldn't apply. They would need to be used by the same tamer.

The bonus is applied as follows:

2 pets = +25%
3 pets = +50%
4 pets = +75%
5 pets = +100%

Here is a list of the pack instinct creatures and the type of pack instinct they have. Note there are a few other beasties with pack instinct, but they aren't tamable so I have left them out of the list.

Bear - Black Bear, Brown Bear, Grizzly Bear, Polar Bear

Bull - Bulls (like you didn't guess that one!)

Feline - Cat, Cougar, Hellcat (Large), Hellcat (Small), Panther, Snow Leopard

Ostard - Desert Ostard, Forest Ostard, Frenzied Ostard

Canine - Dark Wolf (Familiar), Dire wolf, Dog, Grey wolf, Hell Hound, Hell Hound (leader), Leather Wolf (untameable - see the mechanical pet version instead), Timber Wolf, White Wolf.

Demon - Fiend (summon), Fire steed, Imp

Equine - Fire Steed

Arachnid - Frost Spider, Giant Spider, Scorpion, Wolf Spider