Animal taming

Main / Skills / Nature / Animal taming

Description

Taming is a skill used to make an animal a pet. You can only have one pet at a time, so if you have a pet and tame another, your first pet will become untamed. Pets that become untamed will return to their normal hostile or non-hostile stance; ie. if the animal is normally hostile then it will begin attacking guards and players.

There is a penalty to taming for Blacklighters; taming is still possible but with a higher level of difficulty.

Only animals can be tamed; for monsters you need to be a Priest/Priestess and a follower of Magranon or Libila.

• A Priest/Priestess of Magranon at 40 faith can cast Dominate to tame monsters.
• A Priest/Priestess of Libila at 40 faith can cast Rebirth to raise the spirit of a slain animal, monster or player as a zombie pet.

Characteristics gained

Soul / Soul strength, Soul depth

Method

You can tame an animal by activating an item that it will eat, then right-click the animal and choose Tame. For some animals the item is seeds, for others it is meat or fish (also fileted).

The QL of the taming item speeds up the taming action, for about 1 second per 20 QL.

Taming Skill and Status of Animal

• 0-10 Upset
• 10-20 Nervous
• 20-30 Submissive
• 30-40 Calm
• 40-50 Tame
• 50-60 Loyal
• 60-70 Trusting
• 70-99 Extremely loyal

The taming status can be used to know when your animal will go untame. When you tame an animal numerous times, then at a 42 taming skill, for example, your animal will have a maximum "tamed level" of [42]. Over time, this value will decay. Examining the animal to check its status can tell you on average how high this level is, with "upset" being the least reliable status, as your animal could go untame without further warning.

If a pet is hit, it will lose loyalty. Stronger animals lose more loyalty when hit than weaker animals.

Handling Pet

A pet can be ordered to go somewhere or to attack other animals or people. You can also lead a pet with a rope.

A pet can't be tamed by another person while it is your pet. A higher taming skill will probably make the animal stay longer as your pet.

You can decide if your pet should go offline or stay online when you log off. Right-click something and select Pet > Go offline/online.

You can give your pet to another person: right-click on the person and select Pet > Give away pet. They may need to type /invitations command first. They must not have a pet before. Their own taming skill must be high enough to keep the animal.

Pets and Combat

Bringing a pet into combat can be desirable, if it is strong enough it can give you a combination bonus and can more easily survive the fight. Against other players it may be enough to tip a fight your way. Against players however only champion or greenish pets are recommended and then only the stronger animals like crocodiles. Having your mount tamed means that it will enter combat with you too but often this means that in PvE whatever creature you fight will probably target your mount and not you. It is not recommended that you tame your mount for combat, this is an easy way to get it killed.

When in combat the taming level of your pet is very important. If it takes a melee hit then this can reduce its taming level. If it takes enough hits without dying it can go un-tame. This cannot be achieved with archery however, it must be a melee weapon. Thus when entering combat with a pet its important that the pet has the highest loyalty level you can achieve.

Having said that only the champion or greenish are preferred it should be pointed out that while a pet is alive and targeting an enemy it is stopping them from regaining stamina. If you can break off combat long enough to recover some yourself this also may be enough to put the fight in your favour.

Notice about Taming Difficulty

As of February 2008, when Mol-Rehan was introduced, taming was made much harder. While past mechanics allowed you to just try and tame again when you failed, the new system will make the animal go aggressive and attack you if you fail by too large a margin. Additionally, it will lose a level of loyalty when this happens. All animals also had their taming difficulty severely raised, making it very hard to tame a champion class animal and a gruesome project to tame even an ordinary bear with as high as 50 taming. You are advised to take extreme caution when attempting to tame something, preferably by fencing the animal in and taking refuge outside the gate if the animal goes berserk on you.

If you want to stop attacking a pet that has gone aggressive, move a few tiles away, right-click on ground and choose No target (if you have "Display 'no target' in menus" option checked in Settings).

If the animal has at least a single level of loyalty left after going aggressive from a failed taming, it will revert to its tamed status again after a while, provided nobody attacks it. Naturally neutral animals such as pigs, roosters, pheasants and unicorns will also return to their neutral state some time after a fail. Don't forget that deed and tower guards attack hostile animals if summoned, but only if the animal is naturally hostile. For example, guards will attack a crocodile if summoned, but will ignore a berserk unicorn.

Certain animals are much easily kept tame than others. An upset status dog can remain tame for a day or two. However, be aware that a crocodile at upset or nervous level could go untamed any second since they are very aggressive animals.

Messages

[The animal] sniffs the air and looks too nervous to focus.

Move the animal to another spot or off deed before taming.

Guides to Raising Taming Skill

You'll need:

• 1x cauldron
• 9x meat
• 1x pig
• 1x pottery flask or a Reed pen
• water

1. Fill the cauldron with the water and put the meat in and cook it till it makes a soup.

2. Get the pig and if you haven't done so already, walk it off deed.

3. Get the pottery flask and drag the soup from the cauldron to the flask. It only takes 0.25kg of the soup.

4. Tame the pig using the soup in the flask.

• Once it is tamed, repeat the process over and over till you have no more soup.

A good idea is to add 9 grains (rye or others) and 2 vegetables (potatoes, corn, etc) to the flask before the soup.

This makes the taming use 0.005kg of soup, allowing one cauldron of soup to last much longer.

(Placeholder for another method i will add later -KaiH (talk) 12:20, 7 June 2012 (CDT))

Skill Gain

Taming skillgain appears to be based on timer length, so ideal skillgain is from decent ql food at the lowest stam possible without being too tired. Being wounded ironically seems to make this easier.With about a 50% longer timer, skillgain roughly doubles, on the same animal at the same tame level (below max) -This is done at 35 taming on brown & black bear -

You can bottom out your stamina at 5 or 6 tries in a row with 44ql meat, highest gain is just before that point. It should be mentioned that you gain the same skill regardless of whether you tame a new animal every cycle or not, as long as you're not trying to tame past your max tame level.

The only time you should change animals is when you max out their level of tameness (on exmining) Skillgain at that max tame level seems to still be fairly close, maybe a little lower, but the difficulty is such that it's not worth the time for skillgain alone. So if you only had one animal to tame on, you'd be fine, though might take marginally longer over a substantial length of time.

Taming Skill Levels

• 00 Pigs, Dogs, Rats, Deer
• 05 Wolves, Cows/Bulls
• 07 Horses
• 15 Brown Bears
• 15 Young Champion Wolves
• 20 Black Bears
• 35 Cavebugs
• 35-40 Unicorns
• 40 Crocodiles
• 50+ Champion Unicorns

Beware: These levels are recommendations, not hard requirements. It is to your advantage to wait, however, as trying to tame at too low a level can result in your death or the loss of potentially hundreds of food items in the attempt.

Titles

• Animal Trainer at 50 skill
• Beast Speaker at 70 skill
• Beastmaster at 90 skill