Posted on: Sun, 01/06/2019 - 07:08 By: Violet

What are "Legacy" or "Pre-Patch" Pets?

 

 

Legacy Pets

In Ultima Online, when people talk about "Pre-Patch" or "Legacy" pets, they are typically referring to four specific pet types:

White Wyrm
Dragon
Nightmare
Bake Kitsune

Some may also consider Bane Dragons and Dread Warhorses to be "Legacy" pets, but those would better be classified as "Unobtainable", as there was never a change to their spawn, they just stopped spawning.

Some people (particularly on Atlantic) refer the over intensity exploited pets as "Pre-Patch", these are not Pre-Patch pets.

How Can You Correctly Identify a Pre-Patch/Legacy Pet?

White Wyrms
Legacy White Wyrms will be 3 control slots and have between ~721 and 760 Strength. When publish 97 came out, they changed the spawn range of White Wyrms greatly. White Wyrms can now spawn with as low as 350 Strength, all the way up to 760.

Those with around 350-510 Strength will still spawn as 3 slot, those above ~510 Strength will spawn as a 4 slot (this is not a precise indicator, as hits and resists will play a part in determining the Wyrm's spawning control slot). You are no longer able to get a White Wyrm with 721+ Strength that is 3 control slots. White Wyrms should have between 433-456 hits no matter what control slot they spawn as.

White Wyrms that were tamed before publish 16 will not eat gold.  These are the only White Wyrms that do not eat gold.

Dragons
Legacy Dragons will be 3 control slots. As of Publish 97, Dragons now only spawn as 4 control slots. All Dragons will  have just about 495 hits and 798-825 Strength. The only difference between a Legacy Dragons and the ones spawning now, are the control slots.

Dragons have had issues since the original "Revert Code" was put into the game to fix exploited pets. They have been notorious for reverting and losing training points. With Publish 100, you can now train a Legacy Dragon again, but you will get a warning message that its control slot will increase. This will instantly take a Legacy Dragon to 4-control slots without spending any training points, effectively making them identical to currently spawning Dragons.

Any Legacy Dragon that was fortunate enough to receive training prior to Pub 99 will retain that training and will now be a truly unique pet as they cannot be created anymore.

 

Nightmares
Legacy Nightmares will be 2 control slots, have around 300 health and somewhere around 500 strength. The health and strength will vary depending upon the time frame in which the nightmare was tamed.

Example of a Pre-Publish 16 Nightmare:

Currently, Nightmares spawn in two ranges: ~250-300 strength, which are 2-slots still, and ~300-520 strength, which are now 3-slots. A Legacy Nightmare has the strength and hits of a top end current spawning 3 slot, but still be 2-slots.

 

Bake Kitsune
A Legacy Bake Kitsune will be 2 control slots, but otherwise identical to currently spawning Bake Kitsunes. The slot calculation change in Pub-97 caused these to now spawn as 3 control slots.

What Is Not A Legacy Pet?

Dread Warhorses and Bane Dragons are not Legacy pets.

These are not a Legacy because they are not currently spawning in a different configuration than ones Pre-97. These were one time event animals, and they do have a higher natural intensity than their control slot would suggest. This makes these pets rare and unique, but not technically a Legacy or Pre-Patch pet.

Pre-Patch Cu Sidhes, Fire Beetles, Giant Beetles

4-Slot Cu Sidhes, and 3-Slot Giant/Fire Beetles are technically Legacy/Pre-Patch pets as well. However, these pets were changed in the opposite way as the others listed above. After Pub-97, these now spawn in a lower control slot than Pre-97. This effectively makes these pets useless, other than a collectors item.

History of Legacies

The Heirloom Legacy

When Nightmares and White Wyrms were introduced, they used the horse and dragon models and applied a hue overlay on them. This is why there was 4 Nightmare models and 2 White Wyrm models. 

With Publish 11, released March 14th, 2001, they changed the way Nightmares and White Wyrms spawned.  Newly spawning animals did not come in different models, but 1 single model to accommodate the Third Dawn 3d Client. .  Tamers were upset with this change and in Publish 12, July 24th 2001 they reintroduced the different models of nightmares and white wyrms.  However in doing so they changed the way they spawned.  Instead of applying a hue to the base model of similar pets (horse/dragon), they created new based models for each creature. This meant that the hue overlay was no longer applied, but instead pre-hued sprites for the White Wyrm and Nightmare were created. 

 If you Hue Id a Nightmare or White Wyrm in the Enhanced Client you will see their base hue ID is 0, which means default color (for the plain colors, there are other hue ID's for the new colors released in Pub-97).

Nightmares and White Wyrms tamed before March of 2001 are what we refer to as Heirloom Legacies. 

These pets will look different than normal in the Enhanced Client Only. Essentially they are double-hued and will appear more vibrant than normal.

 

Heirloom (Left), Normal Legacy (Right)

The same pets in the Classic Client:

 

From Left to Right: Heirloom Nightmare, Legacy Nightmare, New  Nightmare (void/shiny), Dread Warhorse

 

In the Classic Client they look nearly identical, however you can see it in the trade window.

 

Heirloom Nightmare:

Normal Legacy Nightmare:

Heirloom White Wyrm:

Normal Legacy White Wyrm:

 

Looks aren't the only place where Heirloom White Wyrms differ from their currently spawning cousins.  Their behavior differs also.   White wyrms roar when commanded instead of grunting like all other white wyrms.

 

Pre-Publish 16 Legacies:

Publish 16 introduced a lot of changes to animal taming. The same patch that gave us armor itemization gave us visible pet stats, trainable skills, stable slots, pet bonding and control slots.  Accounts that were active in this time period had their pets "normalized".  

Nightmares that were tamed before Patch 16 and active at the time the patch hit had their Hits normalized to 315 and their strength normalized to 515.

One of the interesting things that happened were to accounts that were closed at the time Publish 16 hit.  When those tamers returned, Their pets were normalized without physical resist and possible higher than normal other resists. Below is a nightmare that was tamed prior to Publish 16 but inactive when the publish hit servers.