Animal taming

A player with the Animal Taming skill tames a wild creature and it becomes its own: it follows the player, obeys what the player says, and the player can ride it or leave it in a stable.

How to tame

Using the skill again while you tame says you must wait; an error in a time of the script ends the taming, is logged, and locks nobody.

1. Use the skill (the skill list, then Use, or the Animal Taming button of the client). You read “Tame which animal?” and get a cursor.
2. Pick a creature within 3 tiles. If it can be tamed, you read “You start to tame the creature.”
3. Stay within 7 tiles of it, in sight, for 9 or 12 seconds. Every 3 seconds you say a kind word to it.
4. At the last time the skill is rolled. On a success “It seems to accept you as master.” and the creature is yours; on a failure “You fail to tame the creature.” and you may try again at once.

The chance is the skill against what the creature asks: nothing 0.1 point under it, a sure thing 49.9 points over it, and in between it grows in a straight line. The skill may rise as with any other. Creatures that ask more than the skill are refused at the pick: “You have no chance of taming this creature.”

You read	Why
You can't tame that!	What you picked is no creature: an item, the land, or someone gone
That being cannot be tamed.	A player
That creature cannot be tamed.	The creature has no entry in taming.toml
That creature looks tame already.	It has an owner, at the pick or while you tame it
You have too many followers to tame that creature.	Its slots do not fit in your followers
You have no chance of taming this creature.	Your Animal Taming is under what it asks
That is too far away.	The creature is more than 3 tiles away at the pick
Someone else is already taming this creature.	Another player is taming it
You are too far away to continue taming.	You went more than 7 tiles away
You are dead and cannot continue taming.	You died, also while the cursor was out
You can no longer see the creature.	There is something between you
The animal is too angry to continue taming.	It was hurt since the last time, or it is fighting

A creature that is tamed leaves its spawn region, which brings another in its place, and goes for nobody any more, whatever it hunted before, and the guards of a town leave it alone: a tamed dragon is not a monster to them. It still defends itself when it is hit.

What a pet does

A tamed creature follows its owner: it walks when it is more than 2 tiles away and runs from 7, it takes three steps a think when it runs to keep up, and when it cannot get there in ten steps, or falls more than 16 tiles behind, it is moved to a free tile beside the owner, never behind a wall (if there is none it stays). Farther than 24 tiles, on another map, or with the owner not in the world, it stays where it is. A creature that sleeps because no player is near does not follow: a pet left far behind is met again where it stood. A pet that is hit defends itself.

The same goes for a creature a game master gave with tame, one taken out of a stable and one that was ridden: they follow by default. The order of a pet is kept with it, apart from those three cases, which forget it.

Travelling with you

When you take a moongate, step on a teleporter, speak to one or open a gate of the spell Gate Travel, your followers arrive with you, at the same spot: the pets and the hirelings of yours within 3 tiles (the square of tiles around you, diagonals included), on your map, that have not been told to stay and are not fighting. A pet farther away, standing, or busy with a fight is left where it was. A summon nobody commands, such as a blade spirit, does not leave with its caster.

Recall and Sacred Journey bring only your bonded pets, as ModernUO’s do: a pet you have not bonded, a hireling or a summon stays. The Teleport spell, the staff commands, the jail and the help menu send nobody with you.

What you can tell it

Say the words within 14 tiles, as the owner and alive. With all before them they are for every pet of yours near; with the name of the pet first (a horse stay) they are for that pet only.

Say	The pet
come, all come	Walks to you and stays beside you
follow, follow me, all follow, all follow me	Follows you
stay, all stay	Stands where it is
stop, all stop	Stops what it does, the fight too, and stays
guard, all guard, all guard me	Stays near you and fights whoever fights you or it
kill, attack, all kill, all attack	Asks for a target; the pets fight it, then go back to what they did
release (with its name)	Asks if you are sure; yes lets it go: it is wild again, belongs to its spawn region once more, and you have one follower less
friend (with its name)	Asks for a player: that one becomes a friend of the pet (see Friends)

The same commands are in the context menu of the pet, which you open by clicking it: Kill, Follow, Guard, Stop, Stay, Rename, Add Friend, Remove Friend and Release, from 14 tiles. Each does what its word does, with the same roll of obedience. The Enhanced Client’s icons for guard, follow, kill, stay and stop choose the same entries.

Rename

Edit the name of the pet in its status bar (the status says you may, for a pet of yours that is not a summon). The name is 1 to 16 letters, with no digit, space or symbol, and none of the words of banned_names.toml; you are told “Pet Old renamed to New” and the players around see the new name in their health bars. The name stays with the pet through a ride and the stable, and goes when you release it. Rename in the menu only reminds you to edit it in the status bar, and a summon cannot be renamed. Staff may rename any creature they reach.

Friends

A friend is a player, up to five for a pet, who may tell it to follow, stay and stop (alone or with all, or by the menu, which has those three for a friend), and nothing else: never kill, guard or release. The pet rolls to obey with the friend’s own Animal Taming and Animal Lore, as it does for its owner, so a friend with no skill is not obeyed by a dragon. A friend’s follow makes the pet follow that friend, until the owner gives it any order. Use the word friend with the name of the pet or Add Friend in the menu, and pick the player with the cursor: you are told “Pet will now accept movement commands from Player” and the player is told it has been granted the pet. Remove Friend picks a friend and takes it off. A pet that is released, or deserts, loses its friends, and so does one a game master gives to somebody else. A summon has no friends. A friend whose character was deleted keeps its place among the five until the pet is released.

It will not fight you, another pet of yours, or what is dead. Sending your pets against an innocent makes you a criminal, as if you had struck it yourself, unless that one is fighting you. A pet that flees by nature, such as a rabbit, fights when you send it, and when it is hit. Transfer, drop and patrol are not built.

Loyalty, food and obedience

A pet is loyal to you from 0 to 100, and starts at 100. Time wears it down: every hour ([ultima.pets] loyalty_drain_minutes) each pet in the world loses 10 (loyalty_drain), as long as you are in the world too: a pet whose owner is away keeps what it has. Below 10 it looks around desperately; at 0 it has decided it is better off without a master: it is wild again, as if you had released it. A pet in a stable or under you is not in the world, so it loses nothing; it keeps its loyalty there and comes back with it.

Feed it: drag food on it, from two tiles or closer. It eats the whole stack when its creature eats that kind of food, and gains 10 loyalty for each item (food_gain), up to 100. A horse eats fruit, vegetables and bread; a cat, meat and fish; a dog, meat only. Food it does not eat is given back, and the pet shies away. The kinds each creature eats are the food of taming.toml, the items of each kind are in pet_food.toml.

Orders can be refused. Every order but release rolls a chance, from your Animal Taming and Animal Lore against the skill the creature asks, less one hundredth for each point of loyalty it lacks (ModernUO’s rule): a creature that asks 29.1 or less, or a game master, always gets obeyed. With the creature asking 70, Taming 100 and no Animal Lore the chance is 22%; with both at 120 it is 99% at full loyalty. A pet that obeys gains 1 loyalty (obey_gain), even when it could not have refused; one that does not growls, loses 3 (disobey_loss) and does not do what you said; if that was its last loyalty it goes wild. A kill order rolls once you have chosen the target.

Followers

A player may have 5 followers ([ultima.pets] max_followers, 1 to 50). Each creature counts for its slots, usually 1: the creatures of yours that are in the world, and the one you ride. A creature in a stable counts for nothing. A creature of yours that a game master rides counts for you, not for the rider. The count is in the status window of your character (followers 2/5), shown again when you tame, stable, claim, mount or dismount, and when one of your creatures dies. The stable does not look at the limit when you take a pet out, so a player can hold more than the limit by stabling and claiming. A hireling counts for 2.

What can be tamed

The creatures of data/taming.toml: about 75, with the skill each asks and the slots each counts for. A game master can still give any creature that can be ridden with tame, and ignores the limit.

Healing a pet

A clean bandage on a wounded creature heals it with Veterinary and Animal Lore, as the healing does a person with Healing and Anatomy.

Bonding and raising a pet

A pet bonds with its owner through food. The first food the owner gives it that it eats starts the count; the next one after a week ([ultima.pets] bonding_days, 7) bonds it: “Your pet has bonded with you!”. The owner needs the Animal Taming the creature asks, unless it asks 29.1 or less. Releasing the pet, or taming it again, breaks the bond. A bonded pet stays bonded through the stable and under a rider; the count of a bond that is not finished starts again after them. The game master’s tame gives a pet to its new owner without the bond. Animal Lore shows (bonded) or (tame) by its name.

A bonded pet that dies leaves a corpse that remembers its owner, its loyalty and its bond; a pet that was not bonded dies for good (the staff can still raise its corpse with resurrect, which brings back a wild creature). Use a clean bandage on the corpse: the healer needs 80 points of Veterinary and of Animal Lore, and succeeds with a chance of (Veterinary - 68) / 50; the owner is the healer or stands within 3 tiles of the corpse (“The pet’s owner must be nearby”). The wait is the one of a ghost. The pet is born again where the corpse lies with 10 hit points, its owner, its loyalty and its bond, as a new creature; if its slots no longer fit the owner’s followers it cannot be raised. The Veterinary bandage is the only way ModernUO raises a bonded pet: its Resurrection spell refuses a dead bonded pet (“Target can not be revived this way.”), and neither ankhs nor healers raise one. Only Spellweaving’s Gift of Life does, and that school is not built.

Animal Lore

Use the Animal Lore skill, pick a creature within 8 tiles and, if the skill check (from 0 to 120) passes, a gump of two pages tells what it is. The page shows the same whatever your skill is; the skill decides which creatures you may look at: a tamed one always, one that can be tamed from 100 points, any other animal or monster from 110. Under those points you read “At your skill level, you can only lore tamed creatures.” or “… tamed or tameable creatures.”, and “That’s not an animal!” for what is no creature. A creature farther than 8 tiles or out of sight is refused first (“That is too far away”, “You can no longer see the creature”). Failing reads that you can’t think of anything you know offhand.

• Page 1: hits, stamina and mana, strength, dexterity and intelligence, armor rating, damage, and the loyalty rating, from wild (a creature with no owner, or with no loyalty) to wonderfully happy.
• Page 2: wrestling, tactics, magic resistance and anatomy, magery, evaluating intelligence and meditation (--- under 10 points), the kinds of food it eats and the Animal Taming it asks.

The texts are the client’s own. When the last roll of the taming is reached, Animal Lore gets a try of its own, so it grows while you tame. pet.lore also gives the slots of the creature, which the gump does not show. Resistances, elemental damage, regeneration, barding, pack instincts and bonding are not shown.

For scripts

The Lua module pet: pet.info(creature), pet.followers(player), pet.max_followers(), pet.tame(player, creature), pet.hire(player, creature) and pet.hire_period(creature) (see Hirelings), pet.loyalty(creature), pet.control_chance(player, creature), pet.obey(player, creature) and pet.feed(player, creature, item) and pet.release(player, creature) (lets a pet go; true if it was yours), pet.attend(player) (true for the one pet that answers the “all” words of the owner now) and pet.lore(creature) (armor, damage, foods, loyalty, bond and the taming data in one table) and pet.corpse(corpse) (the owner a bonded pet’s corpse remembers, and whether it fits their followers); the skill scripts are scripts/skills/animal_taming.lua and scripts/skills/animal_lore.lua.

Not built yet

Raising a pet with Gift of Life (Spellweaving is not built); the bond count kept through the stable; gold, metal and leather as food; transfer (the secure trade exists; the transfer of a pet is its own slice), drop (no pet carries a pack) and patrol; and the pets of a player who is offline stay where they were.