UO Second Age

Should I go back to the hell hounds & cats to gm my taming from 98 where it is now?

Or do I let it gm over time by playing? How much of a difference is there in controlling two dragons from 98 to gm. Right now they listen to me half the time and Im gm lore 98 taming.. Im constantly feeding them.

Any input on this appreacited

There really won't be any noticeable of a difference. I'd let it GM in your spare time or when taming dragons.

Keep dragons fed and minimise commands given... I generally don't give them a single command when farming.

Hemperor wrote:There really won't be any noticeable of a difference. I'd let it GM in your spare time or when taming dragons.

Keep dragons fed and minimise commands given... I generally don't give them a single command when farming.

Alright cool cool thanks

Lore is what controls pets not taming.

LudKrud wrote:Lore is what controls pets not taming.

Not true.

As for the original question, I'd get it through normal gameplay. Or maybe train it up to 99.0, then normal gameplay.

For some reason, I've noticed that skill gain really seems to slow down around 99.0. It may simply be the case that it's some kind of exponential (logarithmic?) math, such that it literally is twice as hard to gain at 99.0 than it is at 98.0, who knows.

As for the impact on controlling your dragons, since control is 80% Taming and 20% lore, you should find 98/100 to be about 98.4% as effective as 100/100. Given that I find 100/100 to succeed around 90% of commands, you might find 98/100 to succeed at around 88.5% of commands.

Mikel123 wrote:

LudKrud wrote:Lore is what controls pets not taming.

Not true.

As for the original question, I'd get it through normal gameplay. Or maybe train it up to 99.0, then normal gameplay.

For some reason, I've noticed that skill gain really seems to slow down around 99.0. It may simply be the case that it's some kind of exponential (logarithmic?) math, such that it literally is twice as hard to gain at 99.0 than it is at 98.0, who knows.

As for the impact on controlling your dragons, since control is 80% Taming and 20% lore, you should find 98/100 to be about 98.4% as effective as 100/100. Given that I find 100/100 to succeed around 90% of commands, you might find 98/100 to succeed at around 88.5% of commands.

Agreed regarding taming being essential for control.

I don't have a lot of experience with taming, but from what my bro has told me, even at something like 95 taming 100 lore, you basically have 0% chance of controlling dragons (it was a long time ago that we talked about this, so I may be way off)... if its a linear function from 0% at 95 taming to 90% at GM, then having 98 taming would be about 54% chance of controlling the dragon (which seems to jive with the OP's experience. This could possibly a more accurate function to use than Mikel's. However, I'm speculating at least as much as he is (again, I don't even have a tamer, I just know a little about my bro's experience).

I realized, obviously my math is wrong, because you clearly have 0% the effectiveness of 100/100 at say 50/50.

However, I can't imagine your brother's experience is accurate.

When I say 90% at GM, that assumes "Wonderfully Happy". Have your brother feed his dragon, then try like 50 commands, feeding the dragon after each time it balks, and see what he gets for successes and failures. If it's as bad as he and the OP are reporting, we have a major accuracy issue, as I'm pretty sure back in the day one could transfer a dragon to a 90/100 friend, who would have a playable ability to control it.

Even at 100/100, I found the impact of lower-than-wonderful happiness levels to have a really harsh impact on dragon listening. For example, at "Very Happy" I felt it was only about 20% of the time that I could get the happiness back up to Wonderfully without feeding the pet, and purely from succeeding commands.

IIRC, someone mentioned that here it's -5 happiness for a failed command, and +1 for a succeeded command. But, I have a nagging memory of it only being -3 on production shards.

Wow very helpful interesting thread this turned into sweet thanks everyone

This maybe a myth...who knows?
But I heard a rumor that if you release a newly tamed pet and retame it, it isn't so ornery.