Animal Taming
Summary
The path of an Animal Tamer is a long, oft times frustrating one, but with the ability to control animals and monsters, becoming a Tamer is a lucrative profession if given the time and patience it needs to be raised and mastered.
- Taming a creature requires both the Animal Taming and Animal Lore skills
- You must stand within 3 tiles of the creature to begin taming it, and within 6 tiles to continue taming. patch April 2, 2020
- You will never gain from a creature released after being tamed, by yourself or anyone else
- You do NOT need to feed pets to keep their loyalty up... they are self sufficient
- Taming skill gain cannot occur whilst standing within a house, Creatures can be tamed however. Patched June 2019
- Tamed Creatures who are teleported (via Recall/Gate/Moongate) will default to "Follow" mode
- Tamed and Summoned followers cannot have their damage reduced by more than 90% for any damage they take (unless specifically for an ability or effect that reduces damage to 1)
Pet Bonding
- Pets will Bond after reaching level 1
- Pack animals can NOT be Bonded
- Pets will Recall/Hike with the owner
- Bonded pets will turn into ghosts upon death
- Pets can be resurrected with 80 Veterinary skill, the resurrection spell, or by any NPC Healer
- Pets will NO LONGER suffer temporary stat/skill penalties upon resurrection as per patch Sept 14 2019.
- Pets will become untamed, unbonded and deleted after 24 hours if they are left out in the world without being given a command from their owner
Abandoned and Released Pets
- In order for a pet to not "become abandoned" they must have their Tamer approach them within Speech distance at least once every 24 hours
- If players are in game for 24 hours (i.e. not logging out) and away (more than speech distance) from their pets for a long period of time, we recommend they either use the Stables for them, or return to their pets to "refresh" their abandonment timer
- When a player releases a tamed creature, they will no longer be Pacified for 60 minutes, and will now instead be Hindered for 60 minutes until retamed by a player
- Recently released creatures that are Hindered will have a "*released*" text above their head
- Visit the Prevalia or Corpse Creek Stables or the Prevalia Zoo and speak to the Animal Wrangler to recover abandoned pets
Stables and Control Slots
- Players can speak with a Stablemaster to view their Stables
- A ridable pet does not contribute to your Control Slots tally whilst mounted. More info in Mounts
- Creatures that are stabled will not accrue stable fees after 60 days
More Options
- Retrieve Lost Followers: Behaves the same as the old mechanic, which is used to pay a fee to retrieve followers that are currently sitting anywhere in the game world and warp the to the player
- Reset Follower Level Selections: Players may click the "Reset Follower Level Selections" button and target one of their tamed creatures to allow them to redo all Stat/Skill and Trait Selections they have previously made with this creature during previous "level-ups"
- Players may use this mechanic as often as they with on their Tamed creatures, so long as they are not in combat
- Reset Follower Name: Players may click the "Reset Follower Name" button and target one of their tamed creature's to reset it's name to the default "untamed" name for that creature
- For instance, a player could have a Mongbat named "Michael", and this mechanic would reset the creature's name back to "a mongbat"
Pull Followers
- Players can now use a "Pull Followers" mechanic to retrieve any of their followers within 5 tiles (if they get stuck) once every 5 minutes
- Players cannot use the Pull Followers mechanic if they have recently been in PvP
- To activate the Pull Followers mechanic, players can type [pullfollowers or use shift-click themselves and in the context menu select "Followers" (we will be updating this context menu text to "Pull Followers" on our next server patch)
Taming Creatures with Shepherd's Crooks
When players tame creatures they will receive a bonus to Taming Success chance (scalar) equal to the combined PvM bonus from Accuracy and Damage (Tactics as %) of their equipped Shepherd's Crook or the best Shepherd's Crook in their backpack. For example:
- An Exceedingly Accurate (+20% Accuracy) Shepherd's Crook of Power (+20% Damage) will increase the taming success chance by +40% of normal (i.e. a 50% base success chance becomes 50% * 1.4 = 70% success chance)
Traits System
The Traits System has been dramatically streamlined, condensing our previous collection of over 100+ Traits down to 36, by getting rid of the bulk of the "conditional" traits that often would be so specific that many pets couldn't take advantage of them with any regularity. We have also eliminated a number of Traits that were specific to individual abilities (such as "Rend" specifically for Bleed attacks) and have replaced them with generic versions (such as "Wrath") which will appear on multiple pets but provide the same bonus effect to their respective abilities.
- View all the Traits
Trait Groups
In order to better balance tamed creatures, we have assigned each creature a Trait Group, which are preset groupings of Traits that players can select from when leveling those pets. Pets with the same Trait Group are typically ones with a similar combat style or approach, and should in most cases be able to utilize all of the Traits available in the group effectively.
For instance, the "Carrion" trait group contains the Contagion trait which boosts damage against diseased targets, and all creatures who are assigned to the Carrion trait group have been added because they are capable of inflicting disease.
| Trait Groups | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Arcane |
 Bat |
 Breath |
 Burdenbeast |
 Burrow |
 Carrion |
 Crusher |
 Feral |
 Frog |
 Generic |
 Guar |
 Mage |
 Melee Spray |
 Purger |
 Pyrrhic |
 Roach |
 Scorpion |
 Sentinel |
 Serpent |
 Spellbeast |
 Spider |
 Swamp |
||
Affinity System
The Affinity System is a progressive-bonus system that rewards characters for playing over time with a variety of different tameable creature types (requires a creature with a Min Taming of 50 or higher). Read more about it here.
Taming Notes
Passive Taming Gains
For every 0.1 skill you gain from taming creatures, you bank 0.5 passive taming points, to a maximum of 5 points banked at one time. You use these gains by killing monsters with your pets. You have a chance to get a gain from anything your pets kill, but harder monsters have a higher chance to give you a gain. You can help your pets kill the monster, they just need to do damage. (raised with Patch from June 7, 2022
Direct Taming Gain limits per creature
Each creature contains a maximum pool of available points which can be cumulatively earned as skill gain to the totals shown below:
| Skill | Points Per Creature |
|---|---|
| 0-50 | 5.0 |
| 50-70 | 1.0 |
| 70-90 | 0.5 |
| 90-119.9 | 0.2 |
Tamed and Summoned Creature Specifics
- Player pets can be pushed through freely for movement by all players
- Player pets move at 80% speed while attacking a player target
- Tamed pets will no longer use abilities within 1 second of performing a melee attack against a player. The behavior of special abilities is unchanged when fighting other creatures.
- When a player dies in a dungeon, their Pack Animals and creatures with the Mule trait will now drop their backpack's contents into the player's corpse (rather than onto the ground) - Patch notes 20191111
The following tweaks were implemented per patch notes Sept 23, 2019
- Tamed/Summoned follower PvP damage scalar has been increased to 30% (previously was 25%)
- Tamed/Summoned follower maximum melee hit chance in PvP is now 66%. (previously was 50%) They may get up to 100% chance to hit other creatures
- Tamed/Summoned followers now have a 60% reduced chance in PvP to trigger abilities against players (previously was 90% reduction) For example, an untamed ember drake has a 25% chance to trigger a flamestrike against any target after a melee attack. A tamed ember drake has a 15% chance to trigger a flamestrike against a creature. A tamed ember drake has a 6% chance to trigger a flamestrike against a player.
- Tamed/Summoned followers now have a 25% reduced chance in PvP to use a special ability when attacking a player (previously was 40% reduction)
- Tamed/Summoned follower ability cooldowns in PvP are now only increased by 50% (previously were increased by 100%)
Tamed/Summoned Creatures PvP Damage Caps
| Damage Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Melee | Capped at inflicting at most 10 Damage Per Control Slot over a 3 second window to individual players in PvP |
| Range/Spellcasting | Capped at inflicting at most 7 Damage Per Control Slot over a 3 second window to individual players in PvP. Capped at 8 tiles distance. |
Player Made Guides
- All-In-One Taming Guide and Scripts by Khal Draco and Zell
- Animal Taming FAQ by Ahamkara
- Pet Abilities and Traits
Training
| Skill | Activity |
|---|---|
| 0-50 | Train from NPC |
| 50-60 | Colossal Frog in New Player Dungeon |
| 60-70 | Cave Bear in New Player Dungeon |
| 70-75 | Scarab |
| 75-80 | Drake Whelp |
| 80-85 | Deep Crawler |
| 85-90 | Drake |
| 90-95 | Husk Crab |
| 95-100 | Dragon |
| 100-105 | Snowdrift |
| 105-110 | Earth Drake |
| 110-115 | Sphinx |
| 115-120 | Earth Dragon |