I found out that this is not the case, and it's still not clear to me how exactly the transition from old stable system to new stable system is working.
I found out like this:
My brother claimed his old-system pets from a stablemaster that had full stables. I tried to say "stable" to that stablemaster (which normally would have open spots since my brother claimed some), and he said his stables were full (which is more-or-less what I expected--that claiming animals from the old system wouldn't free up space in the new system). However, when my brother said "stable", the spots were available for him to restable those pets that he pulled out of the old system. However, when he tried to hold those spots with other newly tamed animals from the stable so that we could go farm with his dragons, the stablemaster would say that it's full even though he got the prompt to stable the animals: it only let him use the "newly available" stable spots for the pets that were reclaimed from the old system.
Hence, my new (better... or not?) understanding behind the new stable mechanic is this:
It appears that we have a "grandfathered" stable system running in parallel with the new per-stablemaster mechanic. In some way, the grandfathered system retains all the space for former animals (even when they are claimed), but it appears that no new animals can be entered into this system. My brother and I didn't have time to explore it much, so it's not clear exactly what the details are with this parallel system. Some things I would explore if I personally had some animals stabled under the old system (perhaps others could provide answers to these questions).
Assuming you just pulled an animal out of the "grandfathered" system:
- Can you only restable it back into the old system through that same stablemaster, or could you take it to another "full" stablemaster and still get it into the old system?
- Do you lose the "grandfathered" spot if you pull an animal out from a stablemaster that is not full at that time? I suppose this would be a decent way of phasing out these grandfathered stable spots (although people could potentially ensure that their grandfathered spots remain open forever).
- Does the opportunity to restable grandfathered pets disappear after a while, or could you always bring those pets back to that stablemaster to be stabled, regardless of the per-stablemaster system being full.
- If I pulled out a grandfathered animal from stable A, and my brother pulled out a grandfathered animal in stable B (both stables being full under the new system), would my brother be able to restable his animals in A and I restable my animals in B (swapping grandfathered spots)?
Anywho... just thought I'd share some observations (possibly incorrect) regarding the new patch.
. Any damage you do (ranged or otherwise) appears to get the monster's aggro for monsters who are after some tamed animal behind a wall.
