Pet Claiming

[platypus]

Just my 2 cents, since I've been a GM tamer here for about a year and a half. I don't think I've ever seen a dragon dispel, and I've EVed/BSed dragons thousands of times and have had EVs casted on my dragons dozens of times. I know for a fact that dragons/other pets do gain skill at a decent rate. Dragons that I farm with regularly for about a month do eventually cast e-bolt and lightning on a regular basis. I have never seen a dragon mass curse, however, so I don't think that spell is in their "spellbook".

[Mikel123]

I'd love to see one of these e-bolting dragons.

I have one that does lightning and one that doesn't, and again, I farmed with them for two solid months.

If you haven't seen them Flamestrike either, it probably means they just can't do level 7 spells yet. I was under the impression that Mass Curse was in their spellbook, but I'm not 100% positive about this.

In any case, to sum it up: sources say fresh dragons should dispel (here they don't) and should be able to enter Wind after about an hour of fighting level 8 summons (here, there's no chance at that).

[platypus]

I tried taking my e-bolting dragons into wind and it didn't work, so their magery would have to have been below 80. I doubt you could get one to FS at all, since I'm pretty sure theres a cap on their max skills. They probably cap out at like 75ish, just enough for them to e-bolt once in awhile.

[Caswallon]

The dragons magery cap is high, around the 90s, and they should eventually flamestrike.

They gain skills far too slow here, and also spawn with magery too low imo. I think Mikels earliest find of 44.9, which is earlier than my 30.1-40.0, coupled with the fact that nothing in the demo spawns with magery below 40.0, coupled with all the era statements from usenet about dragons dispelling and very occasionally ebolting in a wild state, and the fact that dragons were originally found to be trainable with a 6th circle spell[dispel], while not 100% stated fact, are enough proof to bump our wild dragons magery up I think.

The bonus at 40.1-50.0 baseskill would work out around the 50-60 displayed range, exactly where it should be for ebolt/dispell and fairly quick Wind entry[Which is 72 btw] after taming. And that ties in with the minimum spawned mob magery on the demo[and 44.9 is right in the middle of that scale, coincidently].

hat's all imo off course but I think there is too much there that adds up if you look at it. Added chance to dispel is a bit off a cop out if im brutally honest. I dont think we are ever going to find the relevant information on stratics archive, all the tamer stuff is missing or vague, the usenet posts are the most conclusive things found as yet.

[GuardianKnight]

They made the tamer patch notes all vague because they were stealth nerfing them from 98 to 2002. There were threads in the old siege archives on stratics forums with constant complaining about how osi thought we wouldn't notice.
So because they made every tamer nerf on the fly with limited notes, we suffer here more than we actually did on the osi servers. Every time OSI nerfed a tamer they eventually gave them something back to keep them from all quitting.

PS: i logged into my old stratics account to find that they wiped everything i ever posted. Kinda sucks.

They also got rid of the guilds forums.

[Mikel123]

I don't believe there was ever a cap on any NPC skill, magery or otherwise. I have yet to see any code that suggests such.

Also, it's 72 Magery to get into Wind, not 80.

[Caswallon]

I think this wouldn't be a very complete guide if I didn't take a paragraph to mention pet training. It's a little known fact that pets progress in skill just as players do. The easiest way to prove this is to get a fresh dragon from Destard. Chances are it can't get into Wind (72 magery req). Take the dragon somewhere safe and summon elementals for it to dispell[6th circle]. After about an hour of this take the dragon back to Wind and have him walk over the telepad. He should be able to enter now. Melee can be trained as well. There's a huge difference between a trained and untrained frenzied ostard that will make itself apparent after about 2 hours of toad taming and killing. Pets begin at random levels of skill. Some dragons can cast ebolt in their natural state while others struggle with lightning.

Bump. How is there not enough evidence in this thread from in era statements about dragon training, usenet posts about dispeling in natural state, and demo code re: lowest spawning mob magery[40.1-50.0] to have this fixed? Dragons are quite clearly not spawning with high enough magery. Wind entrance within a few hours show how much lower our dragons magery is compared to what it should be.

Increased chance to dispel is just wrong, there is nothing anywhere to suggest this is accurate behaviour, but everything to suggest dragons should dispel with the 6th circle spell.

Also why is our Ancient Wyrm still auto dispeling? That was introduced September 2000.

I know tamers are not popular but these 2 mechanics are incorrect, and I understand there is lots of other things to fix and this seems minor but surely the dragon magery is simply a case of adjusting the wild spawn data? And AW just turning off auto dispel in behaviour/abilities? Both should be dispeling in the same way as anything else, via plain magery skill.

[GuardianKnight]

Tamers are the richest class in the game and making them stronger in any way probably doesn't take priority over anything. It's kind of evident that making tamers powerful here would work against bringing people to the server, so they are kept at a certain level of suck/playable to keep the masses happy. Complaining will do no good, as a few tamers getting fed up and quitting isn't going to hurt the server compared to losing 3 potential bards/mages/dexers.

[Caswallon]

It would not really make tamers more powerful, if anything it would be more of a pain to tame wild dragons. Magery skill would still drop 20% on taming.[or was that later?] although obviously after sometime a tamed dragons magery would be higher than it currently is from the same amount of training, but our pet skill gain is so ridiculously slow it makes very little difference.

Our dragons train far to slowly, or their starting magery is wrong, or more likely both, nothing on UOSA re: dragon magery & training comes anywhere close to the numerous examples me and Mikel have dug up.

* We do not intend to ever change any aspect of normal gameplay to particularly favor any playstyle or to protect or further expose any players to the in-game risk that was a large part of this era.

If era accuracy is our goal, please fix wild dragon magery, regardless of who it effects. I shall keep beating this horse, there is more than enough evidence here to back this up.

[Mikel123]

Pets losing stats upon taming was much, much later. Like, near-AOS.

[Derrick]

There are some very good points and observations here, thanks for the thread, and sorry for the late response.

All creatures have the same spell book (if they can cast at all), the ability to choose those spells is based entirely on their magery skill.

Some adjustments will be made based on this thread, especially the AW auto-dispell which certainly is incorrect.

Thanks!

[Houshen]

Do animals gain stats, or just skills? Will a dragon's strength/HP/Flame damage go up over time?

[Derrick]

Do animals gain stats, or just skills? Will a dragon's strength/HP/Flame damage go up over time?

Yes they will gain stats the same way players do, by using related skills. Their breath damage is proportional to their hitpoints so this would go up with their strength.

[nroper1]

ive gotta say i am increasingly impressed with this shard each time i play, and im excited to know that i can make my pets stronger. It also seams to be a pretty friendly shard and well kept. heres my question though... can i train a mongbat to be strong enough to fight dragons? haha ive always wanted to for some reason.

[GuardianKnight]

ive gotta say i am increasingly impressed with this shard each time i play, and im excited to know that i can make my pets stronger. It also seams to be a pretty friendly shard and well kept. heres my question though... can i train a mongbat to be strong enough to fight dragons? haha ive always wanted to for some reason.

No you can't train a mongbat to fight a dragon...if that worked then everyone would be doing it.