Questions about taming in T2A time period?

[Corwin]

Hi all,

I played Corwin of Amber of the Wind Elders guild on Atlantic, Lake Superior, Siege Perilous, and Angel Island. I've also been in the guilds Skara Brae Rangers on LS, and Battle Vortex on Angel Island. Well, Angel Island is apparently dead and I was wondering where everyone would be wandering off to and found this site and forum and noticed a lot of confusion about taming rules back in the early days. My memory is fading too, but I did start my first tamer in the t2a days before stable limits so I can speak a bit about how things worked before that patch and also after it.

I'm still not sure exactly which era this shard is shooting to reproduce, but I'm going to rattle off some facts about taming back around that time period that'll hopefully help you guys to understand how it was (or was not) balanced:

1. Back when a tamer could walk around with 12 dragons, "All Kill" worked only on the closest animal. There was a patch when EA changed this and it was a disaster and I believe was reverted until limits were put in. Anyone trying to actually fight with a dozen dragons had to have a dozen "all kill" macros or one really long one. It was not and should not be insta-death *if* you guys don't have pet limits.

2. "All follow" worked on all pets, but with more then 3 pets it was extremely unreliable. I never used more then 3 pets because of this. It was something like if one pet stumbled in to another pet, it would start wandering off. You could spam "all follow me" but the loyalty was adjusted such that pets would start to lose loyalty and randomly go wild. Hard to say exactly how it worked, but while you could recall in with a dozen pets or hang around moongates or the stable and do some damage, you couldn't effectively chase anyone down.

3. "All guard me" worked but I believe the pets would start wandering around. It wasn't typically used though because of some quirks. I believe it had to do with reflect. If a blue cast a spell off your magic reflect, your pet would attack them and flagged. If it was in a guard zone it'd get whacked.

4. Flagging in general was buggy as heck as your pet had it's own timers. If you attacked a grey with a pet, and he stayed engaged with you but away from your pet, he'd turn blue to your pet and then if he hid forcing you to "all kill" again you'd get flagged and potentially guard whacked.

5. At one point, and perhaps this was fixed before the era you're shooting for, if you recalled as a firebreathing animal was starting its animation ... it would never firebreath again.

6. Firebreathers attacked reds making Dragons and Mares very dangerous (unless ridden) to be used by a red or in any sort of mixed red/blue party. There were also some guard zone games possible because of this behaviour that I don't recall exactly.

7. It seemed like the pets aggressor list would stay stuck for a long time and if you recalled to town to get supplies while leaving your pet in a dungeon you could end up guardwhacked if your pet decided to re-engage someone you'd been fighting a long time ago.

8. Back in the day, the spawner didn't spawn a new animal until the old animal had left the sub-server. The interesting thing to note is that a pet in a stable on the same sub-server would block the spawn. Smart folks managed this and controlled every spawn that had a stable on the same sub-server. Mares were originally an above ground spawn in t2a and impossible to get because the spawn was blocked, but eventually this was moved to the Terathron Keep. The fire temple was empty of dragons, you had to go to Wind or Destard to tame them, and White Wyrms were popular because they spawned in the Ice Dungeon, but rather dangerous to get because of the spawn. Same for the TK - most players died from just the spawn when they tried to go there - even without the help of PK guilds. The best tamers knew how to manage the spawn.

9. Pet gating was a valid tactic to be used against pets, but it had some limitations. I don't think it worked in town to out of town because of the warning query, but the query wasn't always in the game.

9. Pet speed was very slow, but "all follow" did kick the pet in to a higher movement rate and could be combined with "all kill". Unfortunately tamers whined that was too slow too, so EA in their infinite stupidity allowed pets to "warp" to catch up. This led to the pet warp bug that lasted on for quite a time, but basically unless you had a perfect connection you could not make any ground on a pet that was commanded to kill and follow you.

10. Pet speed would also slow down as a pet was damaged and attacking pets in general was a sound strategy, even by a well equipped meleer. Pets back then didn't dispel everything in sight, so a flock of earth elementals or daemons or EVs were all effective counters in certain situations.

11. A trained dragon or a white wyrm would at times cast mass curse. This would flag you to everyone in the area of the pet and potentially get you guard whacked.

12. The period just after control slots and stable limits were added was perhaps the most balanced. You could still warp War Horses, and sometimes another pet would warp in response to "all kill" but most of the pvp tamers prior to this period quit using their tamer (or moved on to using War Horses). Pet bonding, pet balls, and bolas unfortunately changed all that.

One of the most dangerous thing that RUNUO has done to pet balance is fix the bugs, while some of those bugs granted excessive power, they also limited the damage a tamer could do and created a rather sizable learning curve for new tamers.

[tekai]

1 - Is in game, and ill never agree with it. I didnt spam all kill but this is a dead, fully beaten horse.

2 - Is in game, learn to feed more, most of us with bunchs of pets feed every second or third kill. Youv never seen a meat shop at 999 meat?

3 - Pets did not wander after an all guard me

4 - flagging in general on the server is not correct, is slated to be fixed.

5 - This is not true, i remember my nightmare flop - firebreathing many many times with the animation.

6 - this is in game

7 - This is accually in game i believe, would require testing but how often does one of the servers tamers go grey? i rarely do.

8 - Spawn changes to such things as the nightmare ect were made before our target time frame.

9 - is in game, you can steal dragons all day long

10 - is in game, dragons do not dispell, but white wyrms do and they should and did.

11 - dragons did not mass curse, wyrms did, do and it is in game currently. its a pain in the ass to farm monsters with wyrms or a dragon / wyrm combo

12 - war horses? wasnt that factions!? lol wrong time frame.

make a tamer, its not as easy as it looks. we feed like crazy, its a very micro-management class.

[Corwin]

I believe any magic casting pet would mass curse if you got its magery up high enough - not an easy thing to do, so I won't say that with 100% confidence.

I think it was a similar situation with dispel. There's a lot of stuff a low magery pet just couldn't or wouldn't cast until it had higher magery.

Anyway, unlike the other threads, I'm not trying to claim how anything should be, I just saw some requests for input from tamers who actually played during the period and I thought I'd share what I could manage to remember.

It's just important to understand all the reasons why pets didn't run amuck back in the day. Heck, I still remember the time there was no skill check on transferring a pet. Anyone could own one and control one, but few did because thanks to the bugs, hassle, and perhaps more importantly the other options available it wasn't worth the bother.

There wasn't much back in the day a mage couldn't kill with an EV, or Daemon; and if you were in a big rush you cast magic arrow on a blade spirit and even the largest monster would insta-die. lol

Even on in to t2a there were a ton of tricks. What was the one on shame 4? You case an EV up on a pillar and it would kill blood elementals but couldn't be dispelled?

As taming bugs got fixed and cheap farming tricks were eliminated ... it just simply led to more and more tamers to the point today where pvm'ing is pretty much synonymous with being a taming guild.

[Corwin]

5 - This is not true, i remember my nightmare flop - firebreathing many many times with the animation.

I wasn't clear. I meant if your firebreather was fighting a player and they recalled just as your pet was about to breath fire, it'd get bugged.

But again, I think that might have been before the era you're shooting for - pretty close though.

[Kaivan]

Hi all,

I played Corwin of Amber of the Wind Elders guild on Atlantic, Lake Superior, Siege Perilous, and Angel Island. I've also been in the guilds Skara Brae Rangers on LS, and Battle Vortex on Angel Island. Well, Angel Island is apparently dead and I was wondering where everyone would be wandering off to and found this site and forum and noticed a lot of confusion about taming rules back in the early days. My memory is fading too, but I did start my first tamer in the t2a days before stable limits so I can speak a bit about how things worked before that patch and also after it.

I'm still not sure exactly which era this shard is shooting to reproduce, but I'm going to rattle off some facts about taming back around that time period that'll hopefully help you guys to understand how it was (or was not) balanced:

1. Back when a tamer could walk around with 12 dragons, "All Kill" worked only on the closest animal. There was a patch when EA changed this and it was a disaster and I believe was reverted until limits were put in. Anyone trying to actually fight with a dozen dragons had to have a dozen "all kill" macros or one really long one. It was not and should not be insta-death *if* you guys don't have pet limits.

2. "All follow" worked on all pets, but with more then 3 pets it was extremely unreliable. I never used more then 3 pets because of this. It was something like if one pet stumbled in to another pet, it would start wandering off. You could spam "all follow me" but the loyalty was adjusted such that pets would start to lose loyalty and randomly go wild. Hard to say exactly how it worked, but while you could recall in with a dozen pets or hang around moongates or the stable and do some damage, you couldn't effectively chase anyone down.

3. "All guard me" worked but I believe the pets would start wandering around. It wasn't typically used though because of some quirks. I believe it had to do with reflect. If a blue cast a spell off your magic reflect, your pet would attack them and flagged. If it was in a guard zone it'd get whacked.

4. Flagging in general was buggy as heck as your pet had it's own timers. If you attacked a grey with a pet, and he stayed engaged with you but away from your pet, he'd turn blue to your pet and then if he hid forcing you to "all kill" again you'd get flagged and potentially guard whacked.

5. At one point, and perhaps this was fixed before the era you're shooting for, if you recalled as a firebreathing animal was starting its animation ... it would never firebreath again.

6. Firebreathers attacked reds making Dragons and Mares very dangerous (unless ridden) to be used by a red or in any sort of mixed red/blue party. There were also some guard zone games possible because of this behaviour that I don't recall exactly.

7. It seemed like the pets aggressor list would stay stuck for a long time and if you recalled to town to get supplies while leaving your pet in a dungeon you could end up guardwhacked if your pet decided to re-engage someone you'd been fighting a long time ago.

8. Back in the day, the spawner didn't spawn a new animal until the old animal had left the sub-server. The interesting thing to note is that a pet in a stable on the same sub-server would block the spawn. Smart folks managed this and controlled every spawn that had a stable on the same sub-server. Mares were originally an above ground spawn in t2a and impossible to get because the spawn was blocked, but eventually this was moved to the Terathron Keep. The fire temple was empty of dragons, you had to go to Wind or Destard to tame them, and White Wyrms were popular because they spawned in the Ice Dungeon, but rather dangerous to get because of the spawn. Same for the TK - most players died from just the spawn when they tried to go there - even without the help of PK guilds. The best tamers knew how to manage the spawn.

9. Pet gating was a valid tactic to be used against pets, but it had some limitations. I don't think it worked in town to out of town because of the warning query, but the query wasn't always in the game.

9. Pet speed was very slow, but "all follow" did kick the pet in to a higher movement rate and could be combined with "all kill". Unfortunately tamers whined that was too slow too, so EA in their infinite stupidity allowed pets to "warp" to catch up. This led to the pet warp bug that lasted on for quite a time, but basically unless you had a perfect connection you could not make any ground on a pet that was commanded to kill and follow you.

10. Pet speed would also slow down as a pet was damaged and attacking pets in general was a sound strategy, even by a well equipped meleer. Pets back then didn't dispel everything in sight, so a flock of earth elementals or daemons or EVs were all effective counters in certain situations.

11. A trained dragon or a white wyrm would at times cast mass curse. This would flag you to everyone in the area of the pet and potentially get you guard whacked.

12. The period just after control slots and stable limits were added was perhaps the most balanced. You could still warp War Horses, and sometimes another pet would warp in response to "all kill" but most of the pvp tamers prior to this period quit using their tamer (or moved on to using War Horses). Pet bonding, pet balls, and bolas unfortunately changed all that.

One of the most dangerous thing that RUNUO has done to pet balance is fix the bugs, while some of those bugs granted excessive power, they also limited the damage a tamer could do and created a rather sizable learning curve for new tamers.

1. This command currently works in the same manner that you describe. I can't say that it is designed to force the closest animal to be the one attacking, however it does, at the very least, only effect a single animal at a time.

2. The "all follow" command currently works in the same manner as the "all kill" command based off of supporting evidence that points out that any target command that was combined with the all prefix would work in this manner (this is non-inclusive of commands that end with "me" due to the implied nature of the command).

3. We don't have any documented evidence of any of the quirks surrounding the guard command, so the command itself works as it would have naturally been intended to work.

4. I can't say for sure whether we have independent timers for animals that force their masters to take responsibility for their actions, but I am fairly sure that is the case (I'll have to check with Derrick on this one, or he may drop by in this thread).

5. Generally speaking, we try not to replicate any gameplay damaging bugs of the period. Since this particular bug would fall under that category (and, unfortunately, there is a lack of documented evidence from the time frame supporting it), it won't be seen here.

6. This is functioning here.

7. As with item 5, we won't try to replicate any of the significant bugs of the era.

8. This is a function of animal spawns that we do know about and do want to address. This is a big ticket item, as it will require us to rework the way that spawns are handled in more than just their sub-server aspect, so I wouldn't expect to see things operate in this manner any time soon.

9. Pet gating does currently work here.

10. Pet speed does currently work at a very slow pace. Their movement speed is also effected by the follow command, and can be combined with the kill command. However, pet warping, which was a late UOR function for specific animals (and only until an initial attack was made), is not functioning here.

11. Pet speeds do slow down, as do other creature's speeds, when they take significant amounts of damage. Creatures also need to attempt to dispel if they have the required magery to cast the spell, and they do not do so instantly, nor do they succeed every time.

12. There is a large body of evidence that shows that white wyrms did indeed cast mass curse, however there is no evidence suggesting that dragons had the same functionality. I cannot say that we currently have white wyrms casting curse (again, Derrick will be able to answer this).

I hope this answers your questions as best as possible.

[Hemperor]

There was a major tamer overhaul here, you'll have to thank Kaivan for that one, and it is pleasing to hear someone state era experiences that fit perfectly into the system here. Enjoy the shard!

[MatronDeWinter]

4. Flagging in general was buggy as heck as your pet had it's own timers. If you attacked a grey with a pet, and he stayed engaged with you but away from your pet, he'd turn blue to your pet and then if he hid forcing you to "all kill" again you'd get flagged and potentially guard whacked.

This, each pet had it's own independant flag. If you wanted to use a pet in a guild war you HAD to "all guard me" so it would flag green before telling it to kill an orange. If someone was "attackable" but not "criminal" and they were not in the 2 minute war timer with your pets still, the tamer and pet would get guardwhacked in town if you commanded the kill.

I tried finding evidence on this once, but came up with nothing really usfull, so GL proving this one, but I would love to see it implimented.

On a lighter note, I'm glad to see that pets now attack when released. I didnt see any patch notes (changes) for this, but a big thanks to the staff for implimenting this proper feature.

Pack horses should not turn grey when told to guard, they should turn "green" if your guilded or stay blue (but become stealable from) if your not(sort of like a perma-grey status but only to the owner). However if you were grey and someone attacked you, resulting in the pet attacking them, you and your pet would be guardwhacked.

As for pets guarding items, the whole system is working in reverse here, this command should not even work in town. If I tell a tamed pet to guard a stack of gold outside of town (where it worked), whoever picked up the gold would flag grey and the pet would instantly attack them, no delay for aggressing. This worked on doors, ultimately resulting in the removal of doors outside of town as players would make small animals guard doors (to say the LL room) and then noto-pk them when they flagged grey. You could always click an item and see

[guarded]
500 gold

so whenever you saw a tame near an item, you always would check the item with a single click.

Here is what I could find in a quick search on item/player guarding.

http://wiki.uosecondage.com/index.php?t ... atch_Notes

3/18/98

* Last minute changes:
o Guarding now expires if the pet moves too far away from the guarded item.
o Opening the paperdoll of a guarded player is no longer a criminal action.

hanges to pet guarding:

* Pets will be immediately aggressive when a guarded object is used or taken.
* Guarded objects and people will have [guarded] over their head when looked at, and approaching them will give you a warning.

# You will not be able to guard items that are in towns.
# Items that are in towns will be considered not to be guarded when they are left there or if they move, when they walk there. The [guarded] tag will go away to indicate this. When they leave towns, the tag will be restored and all previous guarding will resume.
# It will no longer be possible to guard items in containers.
# You will not be able to guard living things other than players and other pets.
# Getting or using a guarded item will now flag you criminal. (This includes using doors, for those who wish to guard their houses with pets/hirelings).

[MatronDeWinter]

I should also note, that the "guard an item" system worked in this manner until past our era

Quoted from patch notes in 2000.

Pets will now only guard their owner’s corpse.

I do however think that pet-loyalty decreases at a much too rapid rate currently. I think we might be using the scales from 2000..

Fixes for various messages with relation to pet commands. Tamers who give commands to their pets that the pet does not follow will find that their pets will go wild faster than previously

I should not be losing 1 whole loyalty level with each command. As it stands if I give 1 "all kill" command, the pet immediately jumps from wonderful to extremely happy.

But that's just speculation on my part.

[tekai]

Yay i was almost totally verbatim keivan.

Thats awesome stuff on guarding items matron. and it makes me laugh, thats why there were no doors one day

[Corwin]

Do White Wyrm's loot on the server? That was another original feature that was coded out at some point or another because you could just fill dungeons with tamed white wyrms then come back later, lead them back to town, and then collect the loot by typing "all drop".

It always made things more interesting, though, when you died trying to tame one and it'd grab your reagent pouch. I think it always grabbed what it considered your most valuable item.

I'm not sure the right way to deal with loyalty. Successfully issuing a command generally raised loyalty (why you could keep your horse happy by spamming "all follow me") but a failed command lowered it. A white wyrm was naturally more ornery because it required something like 99 control. In my memory, with 3 pets (either all dragons, or wyrms) they behaved just fine and there was no reason to constantly feed them. But there was something about dragging around a big flock that caused problems. There were also various "bad spots" where a pet would just ignore all commands and it's loyalty would decrease at an accelerated rate. That might have been due to a line of sight bug and perhaps code they were messing with to make pets unhappy if their owner left their sight.

[MatronDeWinter]

Do White Wyrm's loot on the server?

Yea

[Hawkins]

I think you might want to double check pet warping. I had a White Wyrm run me down on a mount just a few nights ago.

[Fwerp]

Welcome, Corwin.

I remember you very well, I was BEELZABUB. We were friends, then not so much. Anyway, welcome to the shard and if you need help getting started, let me know. I'm in IRC when I'm playing as Fwerp.

[Corwin]

Welcome, Corwin.

I remember you very well, I was BEELZABUB. We were friends, then not so much. Anyway, welcome to the shard and if you need help getting started, let me know. I'm in IRC when I'm playing as Fwerp.

Hmm... thanks for the offer, but your name isn't ringing a bell. Did you go by some other names? Which shard? Guild?

[Mikel123]

Does anyone remember Frenzied Ostards having 170-180 dex when they were first introduced? I could swear this was the case. Then they moved them down to 125 or so when that whole bonding thing came about and you could actually Animal Lore your pets to see their exact STR, DEX, Magery, etc.

My frenzy has a dex somewhere in the 90's according to repeated Anatomy targets, which I'm pretty sure is not era accurate.