Herding

[nightshark]

I have been using herding in the demo and there's a few key differences with it.

Firstly, herding is difficulty based in the demo. It is not difficulty based on UOSA, you can GM from a rabbit. From what I can tell, herding difficulty in the demo is based from the required taming skill of the animal you are targeting. There is a hint that when you target yourself with a shepherd's crook, it says "that being can not be tamed". If you try to herd an animal that you do not have the skill for, there is no special message. You will just fail every time and never gain herding.

The second difference is how the targeting works in the demo. When you first use herding in the demo, you receive the usual "what do you wish to herd blah" message. Upon targeting, a skill check is done. If the skill check fails, there is never a second target.

Another really interesting difference, is that you can't herd or tame anything that is in the Moonglow zoo pens. You can herd and tame animals that you bring in from outside, but attempting to herd or tame animals spawned inside gives an overhead message on the animal "You can't tame that!" or "You can't herd that.". This may happen on provocation as well, I did not test it.

The third, most notable difference, is that it is not possible to gain skill from failure with herding. Out of roughly 200 attempts on a llama from 25-30 skill, I never gained once from failure and gained probably 50% of the time on success. I posted a thread back in 2010 about it not being possible to gain skill from failure during T2A, however was told that I was wrong because the demo allows you to gain skill from failure. Does this warrant another look? I will be testing out other skills and will report my findings on them.

edit: direct link to thread

[Vega/Delo]

Where have u been hiding??

[nightshark]

Had a serious sc2 addiction

[Kaivan]

I have been using herding in the demo and there's a few key differences with it.

Firstly, herding is difficulty based in the demo. It is not difficulty based on UOSA, you can GM from a rabbit. From what I can tell, herding difficulty in the demo is based from the required taming skill of the animal you are targeting. There is a hint that when you target yourself with a shepherd's crook, it says "that being can not be tamed". If you try to herd an animal that you do not have the skill for, there is no special message. You will just fail every time and never gain herding.

You are quite correct. In the demo, the herding skill checks the taming difficulty of an animal before attempting to herd it successfully, which is probably why the odd taming related messages exist. It is confirmed to still be difficulty based during T2A:

2) Get rid of the mechanic that allows for stat gain doing very easy things
that will not raise skill anymore (the phantom arrow and/or herding a
rabbbit/bird/cat/ or sheep, for example), or at least severely cripple the
rate of stat gain in these cases. I'd almost suggest making herding a
non-difficulty based skill, but pretty soon you'd see monster harvesters
adding herding to their repertoire.

Here is the relevant code for that:

Code: Select all

    integer Q4AD = getObjVar(usedon, "petCanTame");
    integer success = testAndLearnSkill(user, 0x14, 0x08 * Q4AD, 0x32);

The second difference is how the targeting works in the demo. When you first use herding in the demo, you receive the usual "what do you wish to herd blah" message. Upon targeting, a skill check is done. If the skill check fails, there is never a second target.

This is no doubt a difference between our coding system and the demo, since we perform the herding check after the second target.

Another really interesting difference, is that you can't herd or tame anything that is in the Moonglow zoo pens. You can herd and tame animals that you bring in from outside, but attempting to herd or tame animals spawned inside gives an overhead message on the animal "You can't tame that!" or "You can't herd that.". This may happen on provocation as well, I did not test it.

This is due to the fact that on OSI servers, anything spawned within the confines of the Moonglow Zoo had the "petCanTame" object variable removed from it to prevent players from macroing certain skills. This has an effect on herding as seen in the following code:

Code: Select all

  if(isMobile(usedon))
  {
    if(!hasObjVar(usedon, "petCanTame"))
    {
      ebarkTo(usedon, user, "That being can not be tamed.");
    }

The third, most notable difference, is that it is not possible to gain skill from failure with herding. Out of roughly 200 attempts on a llama from 25-30 skill, I never gained once from failure and gained probably 50% of the time on success. I posted a thread back in 2010 about it not being possible to gain skill from failure during T2A, however was told that I was wrong because the demo allows you to gain skill from failure. Does this warrant another look? I will be testing out other skills and will report my findings on them.

This is the most complicated question, and is something that we can only test with empirical evidence at this time, since the overall skill gain system is embedded in the core of the demo and requires a lot of work to crack into. If there is direct evidence presented in the other thread of skills gaining from failure, we can extrapolate that it is possible to do with all skills, perhaps up to a specific skill level.

A few other notes regarding herding as well. There are two relevant patch notes from after the demo to consider:

Herding no longer prompts you saying that the creature can follow you.

and

An exploit with herding has been fixed.

The first patch note refers to the following code in the demo, which was modified to remove the ability to have an animal follow you:

Code: Select all

      if(!isHuman(usedon) && (hasObjVar(usedon, "petCanTame")))
      {
        Q46A = 0x01;
        animal = usedon;
        targetLoc(user, this);
        systemMessage(user, "Click whom you wish the animal to follow, or where you wish it to go.");
        return(0x00);
        break;
      }

The second line refers to a rather minor exploit where players could herd themselves and gain skill:

>"An exploit with herding has been fixed."
>
>I must know, who was exploiting herding and why?

You can herd yourself and you get stat gains. Interesting thing is
you stop gaining herding skill at 25 which means you just get the stat
benefits with no skill atrophy.

This was due to a minor bug in the code that wouldn't abort the herding skill check if the target couldn't be tamed. The relevant code is as follows:

Code: Select all

  if(isMobile(usedon))
  {
    if(!hasObjVar(usedon, "petCanTame"))
    {
      ebarkTo(usedon, user, "That being can not be tamed.");
    }
    integer Q4AD = getObjVar(usedon, "petCanTame");
    integer success = testAndLearnSkill(user, 0x14, 0x08 * Q4AD, 0x32);

The fix is adding a return(0); on the line following ebarkTo, which prevents the skill gain. Interestingly enough, this also seems to point to the idea that you can gain skill on failure, since you certainly can't even perform the check on yourself, but it does have numbers that comport with your own number of 25 (I assume displayed skill), where you seem to stop gaining. This may mean that it was possible to gain off of failures in the demo up until 25 skill points and then no further. It's certainly worth looking into.

[nightshark]

This is the most complicated question, and is something that we can only test with empirical evidence at this time, since the overall skill gain system is embedded in the core of the demo and requires a lot of work to crack into. If there is direct evidence presented in the other thread of skills gaining from failure, we can extrapolate that it is possible to do with all skills, perhaps up to a specific skill level.

Cheers, I will be testing as many skills as I can in the demo for skill gain. I have a firm belief that skill gain from fails was not possible in era. In my opinion it's pretty game changing. Many of the skills on UOSA (and all RunUO shards) are most effectively raised by spamming actions you have little chance of success with - it should be a really terrible way to gain, if skill gain from failure is not possible.

[WarmApplepie]

Let me finish all my macroing before we go all cray cray please!