How to safely train your pets! Guide for dragons, nightmares, white wyrms, horses, chickens, ... This guide is focused on helping very new and old players, so please bear with me if it’s too detailed. Table of contents Why train? (#1) Pet skill loss (#1) Pet loyalty (#2) How commands interfere with pet loyalty (#2) Feeding and pet loyalty (#2) Why do you need a rest/pause cycle in your pet training? (#3) Ways to train (#4) 7.A Training while hunting (#4) 7.B Pet attack pet (#4) 7.C Resisting pet party (#5) 7.D Shadow elemental (#6) 1. Why train? When you use the skill animal lore on a freshly tamed pet, most of the skills aren’t gm yet. Pets can be trained until all skills reach 100. This works for all pets, but I recommend you train bonded pets (even if it dies you won’t lose it, the pet will only suffer a skill loss). 2. Pet skill loss Every time a bonded pet dies, it loses 2.5% of all of its skills. So even after a pet is already trained, it requires maintenance from time to time. Some of the skills are harder to raise then others. For example, a dragon fresh from a skill loss will GM wrestling again in one hunt, whereas resisting spells and magic will take considerably longer. back to table of contents
3. Pet Loyalty To get the training started, make sure your pet is always at max loyalty level. Pets have loyalty level and it determines the chance of the player to control the pets. Loyalty decreases with time, but not only. It also decreases when a pet refuse to obey a command. The maximum pet loyalty reached is 100 points: (100) Wonderfully Happy/ Extremely Happy / Very Happy / Rather happy / Happy / Content / Content, I Suppose /Unhappy / Extremely unhappy / Confused / Wild (0) Pet’s loyalty will not drop faster/slower if you are not online. Even if you don’t do anything: Tamed pets lose 10 loyalty per hour. This means that for a tamed pet, takes around 10 hours to go from max loyalty to wild. Bonded Pets lose 4 loyalty per hour, it takes around 25 hours to go from max loyalty to wild. Pet loyalty decrease rate: But beware, when it starts refusing to obey a command, it can go wild before the normal decrease loyalty rate. 4. How commands interfere with pet loyalty This is a tricky subject that requires attention, especially if you plan on using commands while training your pets or using them to increase your pets loyalty. In fact, pets can go wild quite fast if you spam commands on a pet with an already low loyalty level, especially if it wasn’t well fed in the first place when you started training. It can also be good for some hours and go wild in minutes. Be careful when using commands for training. How commands effect loyalty: When you say any command to a pet, "all guard me" for instance, the pet has a chance to gain +1 loyalty, but if it fails, the pet loses -3 loyalty. The chance of succeeding and gaining +1 is based on the pet’s current loyalty, base taming level of the pet, your animal taming, and animal lore skills. The more loyal your pet is, the higher is the chance of success. (Many players use commands to increase pet loyalty while farming instead of feeding it, when it already have a high level of loyalty.) Chance to control a fully fed pet (max loyalty): For 100 taming and lore, 99% chance to control dragon, 99% for nightmare and 92.2% for white wyrm. (For 99 taming and 100 lore, 99% chance to control dragon, 96.4% for nightmare and 89.2% for white wyrm). So dragons have a higher chance of succeeding in a command than nightmares and white wyrms. Nightmares and White Wyrms need to be watched more closely and fed more often than dragons, especially when your tamer isn’t a gm tamer yet. 5. Feeding and pet loyalty Always feed your pet to the maximum loyalty before starting training it (and during training if needed). It is a safe way of increasing pet loyalty. (still need to be tested: How much does a piece of food increase in loyalt? How many pieces are required from 0 to 100 loyalty?) back to table of contents
6.Why do you need a rest/pause cycle in your pet training? This is important to give a closer look because a pet that had already used all its mana, won’t have enough mana to cast higher spells, reducing its chance to gain magery skill. (you can check your current pet’s mana/and his mana status with animal lore - int) The Pet’s mana is determined by its intelligence. His passive mana regeneration rate is determined by its intelligence, and meditation skill. And it won’t fully recover if it is constantly attacking the same target nonstop. Dragons, White Wyrms and Nightmares have different amount of mana. If possible, when training magery, they should be trained separate or with separate rest/ pause cycle. To give an idea on how this works, a dragon passive mana regeneration rate of a trained dragon is around 1.5mana/secs. Considering an average of 455 int and 100 meditation of a Dragon, it will take it approximately 5 minutes to regenerate all its mana from 0 to 455. Keep in mind you will have to add/adjust this mana regeneration pause to your training. Also, a nightmare’s mana is way lower than a Dragon’s mana, so it will need a different pause then a dragon. Considering an average of 105 int and 100 meditation for a trained nightmare, it will take it approximately 2 minutes to regenerate all its mana from 0 to 105. white wyrms have usually a little less intelligence than dragons, so for an average trained white wyrm with 405 int and 100 meditation, would need approximately 4,5minutes to regenerate all its mana. So when training magery, try to train different types of pets separate or with separate cycles if you can. (if you have more accurate numbers please let me know so i can update this guide) back to table of contents
7. Ways to train There are so many ways of training, so I will write some theories and add some screenshots to it. Don’t forget when training pet’s magery to watch each pet mana’s level, it need pauses to regenerate it. 7.A Training while hunting Slower but efficient except when your pets dies… It will gm wrestling faster, but resisting spells will take a lot longer, depending on where you are hunting. 7.B Pet attack pet Make one pet attack the other and use veterinary to heal them (might be necessary one veterinary for each pet if you are training dragons, for instance). Use all guard command before making them kill each other, so they don’t attack you. This can be trained: With commands in houses making them stop, guard you and go back to fighting. Using 2 boats, and parting it for the pets to be able to regen mana and approaching/making them fight again when mana is full again. Opening and closing a door inside a house with each pet trapped on each side? (never tried) back to table of contents
7.C Resisting pet party Train your pets resisting spells with some friends! Set up a pet resisting training. Make one char cast meteor swarm from the story above where your pets are standing, inside a keep or a fortress, this set is similar to a char resist party (it has to be a larger building so they can be safe from outside danger, pets can be killed inside houses if they are too close to the walls). Pets resist increases faster than a human char. So only one caster is enough for this. This training can be done totaly afk if you take this precautions: don't use commands while training Make sure you fully feed your pet before start training. Every time you feed, animal lore to check if they are wonderfully happy If its a normal tamed pet, make sure to fully feed it every 5 hours or less!!! For bonded pet fully feed it every 10 hours or less. To feed them, press ctrl+shit to see pet bar and drag meat into the bar. (so you dont need to move them to feed, you can feed they right pet where they are standing). You can feed stacked meat to them, it doesnt need to be one at a time, just make sure you use animal lore and check if its wonderfully happy after. there is a house limit for items for you to see all bars, if you can't see your pets bar, be carefull when feeding them, you might need to gate them out, feed and gate them back in again (you can also try to remove some of the items in the house to see if the bars show again.). You can cancel the other mini bars with right click mouse button to find your pet bar easier.
7.D Shadow elemental Train your pets magery. Trap a shadow iron elemental inside a house. They don’t take any magical damage from pets. You can train magery making your pets attack it. It’s a safe way to train, but you need also to watch your pets mana level. Some ways to regenerate mana: You can either leave a blue pet (using another account) closer to the shadow (so the shadow can keep targeting it) or you can cast invisibility on the shadow before telling your pets to follow/guard you. If you follow this method, this training need to be watched more closely because involves commands/pet loyalty. You can make a macro to place a stone oven in the tile between pets and the shadow elemental and chop it at specific intervals after the pets mana is full again. When the oven is down, it will block LOS and pets won't be able to cast at the shadow, making it possible to regenerate mana. When it is chopped, the pets will start casting at the shadow again. You can combine both resisting spells and the shadow iron training. Also, it is possible to train wrestling on the shadow if you have a char healing. back to table of contents
Just one piece of advice on the shadow elemental training: 1) You can absolutely do this afk if you have a well written macro. 2) You can control pet mana pools and maximize every second of training. Keep a tile in between the pet and the elemental and place a stone oven to block LOS. While the stone oven is down your pet's cannot target the elemental and it'll allow them to regen their mana. If your macro is well written you can chop the oven at specific intervals so that your pets can regen then auto attack the elemental once enough time has passed. I can put up a picture of this if it's confusing.
Great guide Mia! During pet training, with discordance in effect, would this allow for faster gains since stats are capped lower? Can you confirm? I had not had a chance to extensively test this
Hiya @PaperSquirrels ty About disco, from what me and Fed tested a while back, seems it helps while training resisting spells, but not a huge diff on magery.
Very useful sidenote. Although magery is time consuming, this is valuable information to help save reagents
