Animal Taming
Contents
Pet Shrinking
Players can shrink a pet, making it look like a small statue. Shrunken pets weigh 25 stones. By holding your cursor over the shrunken pet, you can get info on it such as stats, skills, etc. There are 3 shrinking objects in the system: Shrinking Potions, Leashes, and Hitching Posts (see Taming Crafter for details).
WARNING! Make sure you do not shrink your pets while poisoned, they will continue to lose hit points and die.
WARNING! If you go overweight you may drop your pets to the ground and lose them!
Note: You can also store your pets in the stables
Note: The [getpet command can recover lost pets (must be bonded)
Pet Ball of Summoning
The Ball of Pet Summoning can be used to bring a pet from any location in the game world (even the stables) to your location. If you lose a pet and have no other way of retrieving it, or if the pet becomes bugged and can't be targeted, having it linked to a pet ball may be your saving grace. Link each of your pets and place the balls in a safe location for emergency use.
Taming Crafter
Tamers can make items such as shrink potions, dyes, leashes, etc, all in relation to taming, using the Brush tool (bought from Animal Trainers). This gives Tamers a way of making gold by selling these desirable items. Tamers can shrink their pets and sell them on vendors for a nice profit!
Using a Pet Bonding Deed
Players can bond their pet(s) by buying a pet bonding deed from the vendor stone at the Town Center. After buying a pet bonding deed, double click it and target a pet.
You can also bond your pet by feeding it and stabling it for a week, then feed again.
WARNING: Many of the Boss monsters have the ability to unbond pets, make pets go wild and can cause stat loss...If your pet dies in an unbonded state, it's permanent!
WARNING: You must have the minimum requirements in animal taming and animal lore to control your pet and keep it bonded! If your animal lore is too low you may lose your pet bond and your pet can permanently die!
Controlling your Pet
In order to control your pet, you need high animal lore skill. The higher the skill, the better control. You can also feed your pets less with high skill. See Animal Lore details
Each pet has a "happiness" rating that can be revealed by using the Animal Lore skill on it. In order from best to worst, these are:
- Wonderfully Happy
- Extremely Happy
- Very Happy
- Rather Happy
- Happy
- Content
- Content, I Suppose
- Unhappy
- Rather Unhappy
- Extremely Unhappy
- Confused
Over time a pet's happiness level will drop on it's own (much faster if it can't see you). Furthermore, a pet will lose happiness every time it ignores one of your orders - And the more happiness it loses, the more likely it will ignore again. If a pet's happiness drops too low it will return to a wild state.
On the other hand, every time a pet accepts one of your orders it will gain a small amount of happiness, so a skilled tamer need just about never worry about annoying his or her charges. However, every now and then a pet will ignore a few times in a row and then it's time to bring out the food.
Pets do not get hungry and so do not need to be fed on a regular basis, but they do love food and a single piece will typically take them from the depths of despair right back up to the Wonderfully Happy level. Each species has different preferences, which again can be revealed via the Animal Lore skill.
To feed a pet, just drag and drop a food item onto it. One unit will have the same effect as many. Note that this will cause the pet to stop whatever it was doing so you may need to give it a fresh order afterwards.
Note that some pets will take "food" they don't "prefer". For example, a White Wyrm finds gold just as acceptable as meat.
Note: Most donation pets require a minimum 120 animal lore skill. In order to control these pets better, you will need to aquire bonus skill lore gear
Also see Control Chance
Pet Commands
Follow
The pet will follow the target until ordered to do otherwise.
Stop
The pet will cease all actions until ordered otherwise. While stopped, it will wander around in a similar fashion to a wild creature, but will not attack targets even if it is assaulted.
Come
The pet will attempt to go to your location using more advanced pathfinding methods then with the Follow command. Those with magical abilities may attempt to Teleport directly (but will fail due to a house related "bug fix"). As the pet will Stop upon reaching you this should only be used if it has gotten itself stuck somewhere.
Stay
The pet will stand still until ordered to do otherwise.
Guard
The pet will follow it's master and attack anything that assaults that person or itself. Only the active pet can actively guard, and any damage that pet deals is credited to the owner.
Kill
The pet will attack the target until either the victim or itself is dead. Once it has felled the enemy, it may attack any other creatures that are hostile towards it. The owner receives credit for all damage dealt within two minutes of giving this order - for long battles, it should be periodically repeated to ensure your character receives looting rights.
Drop
Causes bonded, non-pack creatures to drop whatever they might be carrying. Allows you to for eg. salvage arrows that might have been shot into your pet.
Release
The pet will be removed from your service. This will cause summoned creatures to disappear immediately, though monsters may use their new found freedom to attack you!
Verbal Command Options
All pets (and some summons) will respond to orders if you simply "say" them. To give orders in this way, just address your pet with the command you wish to issue. For example:
"Spot Stay"
Assuming you've got old faithful Rover will you, he'll stay still until given a new instruction.
Commands which result in a targeting cursor (Follow and Kill) can be followed with the term "me" for quick use. For example:
"Spot Follow Me"
This will cause your pet to follow you around.
Finally, you don't have to address your pets individually unless you really need to direct them that way. Announcing your commands to "all" will cause all creatures under your control to respond.
"All Kill"
Upon giving the kill command and selecting a target in this way, all your pets will plunge into the fight. Choose your active pet carefully - this will be the one your target focuses it's return attacks on.
Note that you cannot address a pet in any other way then the "all" method if it has a space in it's name. You might consider creating a macro to quickly "say" all the commands you commonly use; these can of course include additional actions if you so choose
Feeding your Pet
It is important to feed your pets often or they may become unhappy and unbond! To find out which foods your pet will eat, you will need to use Animal Lore skill on it.
Using food to bond your pet
In addition to buying a pet bonding deed, your pet can also bond naturally after one real world week. When you first tame your pet, feed it. To find out which foods it will eat, you will need to use Animal Lore on it. After one real world week of having your pet in either your house, pack, or stable, feed it again and it will bond to you.
By bonding a pet, your pet will turn into a ghost upon death, giving you the option of resurrecting it. Bonded pets can also recall with you.
Pet Slots
Players have 5 pet slots by default. Each pet requires a number of pet slots be available to command a certain type of pet. For example a Nightmare Steed takes up two slots and a dragon takes 3 slots. So you could ride a Nightmare and command a dragon at the same time, but you could not command 2 dragons at a time. You can increase your pet slots up to 10 by using evolution dollars.
Max pets slots on one player character is 10
Pet Leveling
As pets fight they will gain experience points. As they gain more experience, they will gain levels. At each level, the pet will gain some ability points for the owner to distribute to that pet's stats, resists, damage, etc.
Pets only gain experience from physical attacks at this time. The amount of experience gained per attack is based on the creature it is fighting. If the creature is weak, the pet will gain a small amount each attack. If the creature is strong, the pet will gain a larger amount.
When a pet gains a level, the owner can then click once on the pet and open "NPC Info" from the context menu. From this menu you can see a lot of stats about your pet: Level, Max Level, Next Level, etc. At the lower part of this menu, there are be 3 buttons. One is for pet breeding. If the pet is at or above level 9, you will see a button for pet breeding. The second button will allow you to distribute any ability points your pet may have (click the red diamond to bring up the ability point distribution menu.). The third button will simply allow you to exit the menu. Once you have the ability points distribution menu up, you will have options on where to apply your pet's ability points. Some options might be locked depending on your pet's level. As your pet gains in levels, it will unlock more options on where to apply ability points. You may save the ability points for later. as they can be applied at any time.
Pets gain 4-7 ability points per level. Each level takes 100,000 experience point to gain another level.
WARNING: Do not try and spend points to improve stats while your pet is cursed or blessed. If you add points while the pet has a spell/buff you will lose all the additional points/benefits when the spell wears off.
HINT: Make sure you tame pets that have a high max level of 28-30 to get the most ability points to apply to your pet. Also try to level your pet up to it's max level before breeding it.
Resistances unlock after level 9.
Pets' min/max damage unlock after level 19
Pets' stats unlock after level 39
You also have an option to make any pet have 50 max levels with donation
Pet Breeding
Pet breeding can be a very profitable venture, especially if you know where the rare animal spawns are located.
See Animal Breeding
Pet Stat Loss
When bonded pets die, they have a 25% chance to suffer a stat loss. There are 3 different things that could happen upon death:
- The pet's ability points could be halved upon death
- The pets total exp could be halved upon death
- The pet can suffer a 5% stat loss (strength, intelligence, dexterity).
Warning: Many of the Boss monsters have the ability to turn pets, make pets go wild and can cause stat loss...be careful!
You can repair some stats on a damaged pet, see the Animal Repair System
