Veterinary

[Kael]

I've recently been trying to GM veterinary, and seem to have hit a bit of a wall.

First, let me start by saying that I remember veterinary gains being independent of poison or the amount of damage that you heal (as outlined in this Stratics article from 11/7/00).

Going by this, I spent roughly 15k bandages healing two bulls attacking each other to get up to 94.9 (93.9 real) skill. As it started reaching this point, I noticed my gains started going really really really slow. Now I remember veterinary taking longer than healing to GM, but this is starting to get to the point of absurdity.

Starting tonight I thought I'd give it another shot, and after using 600 bandages to still be at 94.9 skill, I thought I'd ask IRC for help. Someone suggested that I need to cure poison to continue gaining in veterinary, and although I don't remember it being this way I figured it couldn't hurt. So another 600 bandages spent curing poison, and I finally gained 0.1 to go up to 95.0 skill (94.0 real). Now I'm not sure if that 0.1 I gained was from curing poison, or finally gaining from just using the veterinary skill itself as I remembered it.

I was hoping if I could get a clarification as to how veterinary gains work here exactly, due to the mixed reports I've been getting from different people. I also don't ever remember veterinary being quite this difficult to raise, and was wondering what other people have been going through recently with this skill as well.

[alatar]

Veterinary takes years, but you don't need to cure poison to gain. I spent a couple thousand bandages just to get 0.2 / 0.3 past 96.0.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Poison seems like it would hasten gain, tamed scorpions and bladespirits might aide you in finding a good way in doing this.

[alatar]

Poison seems like it would hasten gain, tamed scorpions and bladespirits might aide you in finding a good way in doing this.

Veterinary wasn't changed to difficulty based until the patch that allowed you to bond pets was introduced, which at this point you were required to attempt to resurrect your pet in order to gain past 81.0 veterinary.

I'm almost 100% certain on this.

[archaicsubrosa77]

Yeah I just checked up on that. Vet isn't difficulty based as far as gaining though but if the damage is low enough to get the "you heal what little damage your patient had" you did not gain at all in that attempt.

You may want to set bandage timer higher if you are macroing the skill in order to ensure you are not healing 5 hps or less. That's possibly why when you were poisoning you were gaining more as the hit points had slipped past the minimum point for gain faster.

[archaicsubrosa77]

bump for edit

[Kael]

Veterinary takes years, but you don't need to cure poison to gain. I spent a couple thousand bandages just to get 0.2 / 0.3 past 96.0.

Yes, it does seem at this point that it's going to take years and over 20k bandages total to GM veterinary, but I don't think it's supposed to be quite this difficult.

Yeah I just checked up on that. Vet isn't difficulty based as far as gaining though but if the damage is low enough to get the "you heal what little damage your patient had" you did not gain at all in that attempt.

You may want to set bandage timer higher if you are macroing the skill in order to ensure you are not healing 5 hps or less. That's possibly why when you were poisoning you were gaining more as the hit points had slipped past the minimum point for gain faster.

Actually I've never seen the "you heal what little damage your patient had" or equivalent message when healing the bulls. I just really thought that it didn't matter how much damage you were healing when trying to raise vet.

[Mikel123]

Correct, it is not supposed to be difficulty-based.

I'm at 80 right now, and this is not encouraging... not looking forward to trying to GM this.

As for the "what little damage your patient had", I believe that is if the animal you're healing is back to full health by the time you finish the bandage. MAYBE if they are down 1 HP when you finish. However I am 99% sure that 2 or more HPs healed will give you a chance to gain.

It looks like there's 38 GM Vets on here and 49 GM Tamers. Was it always this ridiculous to GM?

Also... I know that when you have a 100% chance of succeeding at something, you have a 0% chance of getting a gain.

Perhaps, try having someone sparring with you to disrupt your vet attempts? That way you lower the chance of success and increase the difficulty. That may help, I don't know. If you want to get REAL slick with a 3-account macro, have your tamer working Vet on a couple animals, have a second character poisoning your tamer (for disrupting his vet attempts), and have a third character working on Healing to cure the poison

[Kael]

Perhaps, try having someone sparring with you to disrupt your vet attempts?

I really don't think that's going to help, but I suppose it's worth a shot.


So nobody knows exactly how veterinary gains are supposed to work here then, or why they are so incredibly slow?

[Zak]

Honestly i GMd vet months ago but i gmed it before i even worked on taming. I tamed two polar bears, had them attack and healed them both. GMd vet in 2 or 3 days, was easy..no poison or anything.

[Kael]

Do you remember how many bandages you went through? I haven't worked on my vet in a few days, but at this rate it's going to take me over 25k most likely

[son]

It took me months to gm vet, but I ddint do the curing business. I just healed from melee gain on some other char smacking a polar bear.

I must have gmed several chars, and changed a few chars melee, and also worked r-'s melee/wrestling many times over. I just recently gmed it. If I had to estimate, it took 40k bandages.

[Mikel123]

Yeah this skill is probably the most in need of a change in skill gain rate. I'm in the process of GMing it right now and it's utterly ridiculous. By far the hardest macro-able skill to GM here.

[Generic Player]

I GMed vet on Atlantic before the Nov 23 patch that made it work on dragons/wyrms. At that time, due to the very few people using it and the fact that it wasn't difficulty based, I GMed in about a day healing a pair of grizzly bears. Lots of people complained after the patch that gaining vet was impossible and that they got stuck in the 90s. I think the "was made difficulty based when curing poison" in the patch notes was misleading, and it was made difficulty based period. People ended up healing low health dragons to get GM vet.

[Reena Dae]

Here's the oldest information I have archived on veterinary:

http://www.tamingarchive.com/old/faqs/veterinary.html
http://www.tamingarchive.com/old/faqs/veterinary2.html (old guide)

I'm not certain what update I am referring to on the "old" guide about gains being broken, but I do remember both it and healing were horribly broken for gains for a while (I distinctly remember fighting ratmen/ettins and bandaging *them* to gain healing skill on a different character).

The Stratics guide came out after the powerhour thing, which really changed how you can skillup veterinary, so you can't go by that. I got GM in Jan 2000, and I think I might have been among the first few people to get GM after the veterinary update. I had to email Firedog (the guy who worked on the update) to get hints on how to do so.

Bandaging bears in your house should take you to 85-90ish no problem after the veterinary on dragons update. You should be able to sit there bandaging (attended) without being bored out of your mind, the gains should be that good. Going master to grandmaster... that's slow and painful. I never managed to finish on my second tamer (got into the 90's, but that was after the 7/08/00 update).

You shouldn't be getting the "bandages but they barely help" message nearly as frequently as you do on this shard, either. Especially not on pets that have barely taken less damage than what a single bandage would heal.

Poison seems like it would hasten gain, tamed scorpions and bladespirits might aide you in finding a good way in doing this.

Veterinary wasn't changed to difficulty based until the patch that allowed you to bond pets was introduced, which at this point you were required to attempt to resurrect your pet in order to gain past 81.0 veterinary.

I'm almost 100% certain on this.

Bonding was around during the 8x8 skillgain era. The best way to GM was to hop on a boat with 2 pets fighting each other and run your 8x8 app. There was never a reason to res a bonded pet for skillgains, especially when you consider the skill loss involved in raising and the fact that you're only allowed to stable 5 pets (later expanded after the 120 skill cap was added).

Veterinary after the veterinary update absolutely was difficulty based, and not just the poison curing part.