Posted on: Tue, 04/30/2019 - 18:31 By: Khyro

How To Raise Animal Taming Skill

 

This guide will show you how to approach Animal Taming in order to raise your skill.

Animal Taming 0-90 is still one of the slowest skills to raise. 

Fortunately, 90-120 has been made incredibly easier with the addition of Skill Masteries.

0 - 30 or 50 Animal Taming

 

The fastest way to level Animal Taming to 50 is to select custom skills at character creation and set Animal Taming to 50. If you have already made your character, there are a couple options still:

  • Create a new character (if you have a free character slot), and start them with 50 Animal Taming
  • Use a Soulstone to remove the 50 Animal Taming from the new character
  • Overwrite your <50 Animal Taming with the 50 Animal Taming from the Soulstone, then delete the new character.

This may sound like a joke, but it will save you so much time if you can start with Animal Taming at 50!

If you cannot or do not want to use the method above for starting with 50 Animal Taming, you can at least purchase around 30 Animal Taming skill from an Animal Trainer NPC to give you a head start.

If you are on Siege Perilous where you cannot buy skills, follow the general taming guide below!

 

0 - 90 Animal Taming

 

Leveling Taming works similarly to leveling other skills, where you want to target a "Sweet Spot" of difficulty. Too Easy and you won't see good skill gains; Too Hard and it will take too long to successfully tame something and slow down your skill gains.

Ideally, you want a target difficulty of around 50%, but anywhere from 40% to 80% can work. With Animal Taming, quantity over quality matters more, as long as you target the sweet spot of difficulty.

Now where this becomes difficult is you have no way to easily see at a glance your success rate for taming a specific creature. You could get a Crystal Ball of Knowledge, which can give you a rough idea of the difficulty when you attempt to tame a pet.

However there is another way to quickly determine the success rate of taming a specific creature:

  • Creatures with a Taming Requirement 25 less than your Animal Taming skill will have a 50% chance to tame.
  • Creatures with a Taming Requirement 50 less than your Animal Taming skill will have a 100% chance to tame.

With the above in mind, you can...

Target Creatures with a Taming Requirement 20 to 40 less than your current Animal Taming skill.

This will keep you in the 40% to 80% success rate range.

You can also use our Animal Taming Chart to quickly find pets in your range to tame.

You can also use our Pet Taming and Control Chance Calculator to manually figure out your success chance when taming an animal.

Tips and Tricks

 

  • After Taming a creature, you can Rename it and then Release it. This will allow you to easily identify which creature you have already tamed, so you do not tame it again.
     
  • Soulstone off as many skills as you are able. The Skill gain system in UO works based on your current skill total for all skills. If Animal Taming is the last skill you are leveling, you most likely have 500+ points in other skills that are working against your skill gains. By temporarily removing these skills with Soulstones, you will lower your total skill value, allowing Animal Taming/Animal Lore to gain more frequently. Then just re-add the skills from the Soulstones when you are done skilling.
     
  • Utilize an Alacrity Scroll combined with the Guaranteed Gain System  in order to start your training session with a big gain.

90 - 120 Animal Taming

 

You finally powered through Animal Taming to get to 90 (or you used a Mythic Token, which is perfectly acceptable!), and you have heard about using Skill Masteries to speed up your skill gains (or maybe you haven't, that's OK, keep reading!).

Skill Masteries were introduced with the Time of Legends (ToL) expansion, so your account must have this expansion applied to it in order to utilize Skill Masteries. If you do not have ToL, then you can continue with the advice from the 0 - 90 section, and continue to find creatures in that sweet spot range.

 

What is a Skill Mastery?

Skill Masteries are essentially specializations for your character. You can only have one Mastery enabled at a time, and they will augment your abilities in the matching Skill depending on Mastery Level, and your real skill value. You acquire Skill Masteries by consuming an appropriate Mastery Primer for the specialization you wish to pursue.

What is a Mastery Primer?

Mastery Primers come in 3 editions: Volume I, Volume II, Volume III

Primer 1     Primer 2     Primer 3

Primers can drop from all Champion Spawns (including non-Felucca ones), and Peerless Bosses.

You can also get a Level 1 Primer from completing the quest "A Time of Legends". 

Note: You do not need to consume Primers in order. You also do not need to use all 3 volumes. If you consume a Volume 3 primer, you do not need to consume a Volume 1 or Volume 2. 

The easiest way to acquire a Primer is typically Vendor Search or asking in General Chat. Most people will give away Volume 1 primers for free. Once you have any volume taming primer and a Book of Masteries (below), you are good to go.

 

How Do I Use a Skill Mastery?

In order to utilize a Skill Mastery, you need a Book of Masteries, which is essentially a spellbook containing all available Mastery abilities. Only the abilities for your chosen Mastery will be available to use.

Mastery Book

Consuming a Primer Volume is not enough to "activate" that Mastery, you must choose which Mastery to enable through the context menu of the Book of Masteries (even if you have only consumed one primer).

Single-Click (CC) or Right-Click (EC) on the Book of Masteries to bring up the context menu. Choose Switch Mastery to bring up a gump containing all your known Masteries. To level Animal Taming, you will need to make sure you have the Animal Taming Mastery enabled.

 

How Do I Level Animal Taming With A Mastery?

You need only a Volume 1 Animal Taming Primer at minimum, and a Book of Masteries. It is not necessary to acquire an expensive Volume 3 Taming Primer in order to proceed with this tutorial.

To raise Animal Taming, you want to use the Combat Training mastery, select your pet, then ignore the menu that appears. The act of starting Combat Training is enough to trigger a skill gain (not a guaranteed gain). You can repeatedly do this for as long as you have mana. 

Using Combat Training uses a large chunk of mana, so it is highly recommended to have 100+ Meditation, and as much MR on your suit as possible to facilitate your Mana Regeneration. 

 

Can I Macro This?

Yes, you can! The next section will go over how to setup appropriate macros in each client.

Macros for Combat Training

 

Note: AFK Macroing is against the Terms of Service. It can and will get your account actioned by Broadsword. 
We do not encourage or condone using the below Macros for AFK Macroing.
However, they are perfectly legal to use if you are at your computer and not AFK.

 

Classic Client

In the Classic Client, follow these steps to setup a Macro to make enabling Combat Training easier:

  1. Go to your Options menu
  2. Go to the Macros tab
  3. Create a New macro
  4. Assign your preferred Keystroke
  5. Assign the following Actions
    1. CastSpell - Combat Training 
    2. WaitForTarget
    3. LastTarget

CC Taming Mastery Macro     CC Taming Mastery Macro

Now Apply and Save your Macro.

Press your Hotkey that you assigned during macro creation, then target your pet once.

Now you can simply press the Hotkey to repeat the macro, as long as your pet is in range.

 

Enhanced Client

In the Enhanced Client, follow these steps to setup a Macro to make enabling Combat Training easier:

  1. Open your Macros menu (either from the Hotbar, or from the ESC menu)
  2. Create a new macro
  3. Name it something convenient (such as CombatTraining) and set an Icon if you prefer
  4. Drag the Combat Training ability from the Book of Masteries to the Macro
  5. Add a Delay action from the Other section of the Actions list. Set this for 1-10 seconds (you need at least a 1 second delay, otherwise you will use the abilities faster than you can cast. It can also help space out the mana usage better)
  6. Right-Click on the Combat Training action inside the macro, and choose Target -> Current.
  7. Check the box for Enable Repeating, and set the repeat count to 10

EC Combat Training Macro     EC Combat Training Macro

 

Now save your macro and drag it to your Hotbar.

Target your pet and press the Hotbar button you assigned to the new Macro.

You will cast Combat Training 10 times with a single button press thanks to the Repeat function.

However, we can do better than 10 times...

Edit the macro you just created, and then repeat the 2 actions inside the Macro manually as many times as you want:

EC Combat Training Macro

In the above example, I have the 2 actions repeated 3 times. Combined with the Repeat function of the EC Macro system, this will allow the macro to repeat itself 30 Times with a single button press.

Repeat the actions as many times as you want to get the desired effect you are looking for. Now you can run around town and talk to your friends without having to worry about constantly pressing the macro button.

You aren't going to speed through leveling Animal Taming, even with utilizing the Masteries, though it will greatly improve the speed at which you can complete 90-120 vs traditional methods.