UO Second Age

I tested with herding on the demo and identified a few inaccuracies.

#1. In the demo, the skill check happens when you target the animal. You only get the target for choosing where you want it to move if the check is sucessful. Currently on UOSecondAge you are always asked where you want the animal to go, and the skill is checked after that. Here are two screenshots illustrating the series of events (see the journal):




#2. In the demo, targeting a mobile will put the herded animal into follow mode, following the target. Note that the message upon a successful herding is "Click whom you wish the animal to follow, or where you wish it to go." Currently on UOSecondAge following is not an option, and targeting a mobile causes the herded animal to simply walk to the square the mobile was standing on.



Targeting yourself to get an animal to follow you does a SECOND skill check. If the second skill check is successful you get "The animal begins to follow you." and of course, it starts following you. You also get a message over your own head saying "that being can not be tamed" which appears to be a bug related to the second skill check. Or perhaps doing a second skill check at all is a bug itself.



Note that attempting to get an animal to follow anyone other than yourself fails. I tried other rats, the wisp, NPCs, and other player characters. If the second skill check is successful when attempting this there is no message and no reaction from the animal.

Thanks for checking this out, and for the post.
The following patch seems to apply to this:

Ultima Online Patch Notes for 09/16/1998 wrote: Herding no longer prompts you saying that the creature can follow you.
An exploit with herding has been fixed.

Hard to say what the "exploit with herding" was, but it may have related to the skill gain check.

Does anyone else have recolection on the herding sequence from within era?

But to clarify, that patch is just removing some sort of prompt. Following itself has always been possible with herding and still is. Here's stratics on shepherding:

Second option, target yourself. The creature will follow you at a easy walking speed until you release it by sending it to a targeted point. There appears to be no limit to the size of the herd you may amass, they take no follower slots, but they can be distracted.

http://uo.stratics.com/php-bin/show_con ... tent=30661

And here's a guide from well after t2a which also includes a screenshot:

• You can make an animal follow you by targeting yourself.
• You can only herd tame animals if you control them.
• To stop a herded animal from following you, target the animal and direct it to walk somewhere.

http://mongbatica.com/farming&herding.htm

Great stuff. Thanks!
Would still like to know what the exploit was.

Derrick wrote:Great stuff. Thanks!
Would still like to know what the exploit was.

At some point you could herd energy vortexes (everyone was doing this), but I think that's way before this timeframe. This patch is refering to the ability to macro-gain stats by herding the same animal over and over, because the skill would never increase past 25 (difficulty based).

Source:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.game ... 6d609f4867