Dragon Taming Randomness

[Ronk]

During T2A (or maybe UOR) I recall hopping on the test server that OSI had. You could set skills. I set taming to 100 and went to tame a dragon. Back then, the method was to get a dragon down to a sliver of health so it was fleeing, and then tame it. I don't believe this happens here...dunno if its a bug, inaccuracy, or just a fact that people know better.

Here are some taming docs I found from the period:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 66e6ed161e

This link talks about how dragons get really nasty when you try to tame them. It also notes the above mentioned method of getting them low on health.



http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... faacce1449

The above link is about a 'march of the dragons' event. The player hosting talks about how all dragon masters should bring their pets and how impressive the sight of 40 dragons would be. Note, this is a shard wide event and 40 is the impressive number? Good bit of era proof that shows one tamer didn't have 40...though it doesn't explain why.



http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 52753b0d01

The above link talks about how difficult dragons were to tame. One guy talks about how he tamed it, then he had to feed it a ton so it'd quit attaking him (and anyone else) on screen. Another mention of a heavily wounded dragon while taming. (Note, there were also reports in another thread of dragons randomly attacking people in town, thus they recommended you keep your dragons out of town).

Now, this statement is purely hypothetical, but maybe dragons should be a lot harder to order. Much like trying to order a frenzied without any animal lore? Requriing lots of food to keep happy. If this is the case, it would help explain why people didnt' have 40 dragons given the amount of food and effort you'd expend constantly trying to order and/or have them around. Sounds like they, rightly, have a mind of their own and unless you constantly feed and order them not to, they may just decide to randomly eat someone.


http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 33f7c989ee

The above is the 3rd thread ive seen where they say dragons attack you on sight now. He mentions this is a problem because if you hit a creature you are taming it'll become to angry to tame. He also notes that 19 out of 20 times, trying to tame a dragon will just make it angry.

On a side note, its also the 2nd thread ive seen where someones said that dragon loot sucks.



http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 6a53336b15

The above link, I find interesting. Its a guy bitching about how powerful dragons are, how easy they are to tame, and how everyone has them. At first I thought this was supporting our 40-50 dragon turrets here...till I read on. He notes he saw 4 dragons at moonglow (Dragons everywhere is 4?). Then he notes that guilds always roll with a dragon in tow...1 dragon?

Someone replying to this pseron notes that multiple dragons is pointless because inevitably one of them will cast mass curse and all of hte dragons will begin fighting each other. Makes me wonder why the tamer wouldn't have just said 'all stop' to get them to quit....unless they couldn't.

He also notes "Every dragon I have ever
tamed has cost me ~100 of each heal reagent and up to three hours to tame. " Which points toward the idea that dragons are very hard and slow to tame (19 fails that cause angriness vs 1 success)

", the tamers on SP got together
and started making these massive invasions, up to 10 tamers with dragons at a
time into the jerk hangouts,"
Why get 10 tamers with dragons if each tamer has 40 dragons?

He also says:
"Raising a dragon tamer takes far more work than jerks are willing to do, with not much reward before you get there (other than buying dragons and using them for hunting like I do, but you have to be extremely conservative because they are not that difficult to lose and can be very hard to replace). "
Easy to lose, difficult to replace. Hmmm.

Another quote from him:
"They do indeed tend to have too much mind of their own. Fact is, in some circumstances, someone who knows what they doing could probably kill one of multiple dragons easier than the sole dragon of a tamer who has only one. Dragon tamers tend to use 2 for hunting heavy stuff, but one for pvp. "
Two and One...not 40, not 10.

Another quote from this guy referencing the difficulty of taming dragons:

"I was recently healing one of my providers as he worked on a dragon for a long time. He put in about 100 attempts and that dragon just would not tame. I believe there is a relation between difficulty of taming and the strength of the critter, so I imagine that one would have been The Badass Dragon. In that time I threw about 60 heals, even though he did use the duck-and-cover method. This dragon could Cook!"

Here is a quote, the first case, of someone recounting more than 4 dragons...
" Fact is, like anything else, in this case dragons are best used in numbers (again, without the magery to cast Mass Curse) and by surprise. Take 7 of them and lay an ambush around a dungeon level teleporter, and by the time someone can see after stepping through they are dead. "



Just some random searchings from the google groups in the 98/99 era.

[Mikel123]

There is a vast difference between 1998 and 1999 in terms of knowledge and understanding of the game, development of characters, etc., which I think can explain some of the language used in these forums.

You definitely can get dragons to flee at low health here (or, you could a year ago, I should say... this is what I typically did). I can see how it would be a requirement in 1999 with a bad connection and a non-7xGM. For UOSA, I still find it worthwhile to do beat them down first, to save gps on heal reagents, and to make sure I don't get rolled by a 45-point fireball, an energy bolt, and a claw swipe. But it's not really required of a built character with a good connection.

Your "should be harder to order" link is from Jan 1998, which is actually before pet orneriness was a part of the game. So, irrelevant to us.

As for food, I have mentioned many times that a piece of food should not instantly reset a pet's loyalty all the way up to Wonderfully Happy. That said, I also think the success rate of commands for a GM Taming/Lore tamer at "Very Happy" is much too low, too. So maybe it evens out.

Re: losing dragons, bear in mind, if you lost connection or the shard went down while you were out with dragons, you'd most likely log back in dead, and your dragons would be long dead too, since they'd still be in the world once it went back online.

I assume the Mass Curse post, from 1999, is referring to white wyrms. Dragons, I think, took a bit of training to get to level 7 spells.

[Sandro]

You can't keep comparing the way people play on this shard, to how people played during 1999 on production servers.

The simple fact that we've had 10+ years of experience to learn the best way to gain skills, macro efficiently, amongst other things completely throws that debate out the window. Add razor into that + plenty of time to learn how to properly create and manage macros add a whole new twist to the game.

You cannot compare 1999 gameplay to 2011 gameplay, period.