Master Taming in Ultima Online

In Ultima Online Animal Taming is the King of all PVM (player vs. Monster) skills and will allow you go tank anything in the game including dark fathers in the doom gauntlet, peerless bosses, champions and even the harrower. Animal taming is also the best all around skill for hunting monsters, treasure hunts and can even be viable in PVP (player vs. player). Animal Taming is the best all around skill for making money in UO. This guide will show you everything you need to know to gain skill quickly, pick a template and what kind of pet you will need to be a top notch tamer.

Unfortunately, animal taming is the hardest skill to raise in Ultima Online. If you are planning on making a new tamer, you should consider purchasing the Advanced Character service from Ultima Online and instantly starting out with 85 animal taming and animal lore skills. The reason why animal taming is so hard to raise in UO is because gains are scarce at higher levels and you must seek out animals to tame and the taming process itself takes about a minute.

What to Tame:

0-50 Reroll, it's not worth your time to start out with less than 50 skill

50-60 Tame timber wolves and hinds. Timber wolves at The Huntsman 90° N, 24°E

60-85 Great Harts, Ilshenar in the Healer's Grove at 58° N 16° 44' W which is NW of the Shrine of Sacrifice

85-110 Gaman in Tokuno Islands, Savage Ridgebacks in Ilshenar

110-115 Gaman, Savage Ridgebacks, Swamp Dragons, Hell Hounds

115-120 Swamp Dragons, Savage Ridgebacks, Nightmares, Unicorn, Kirin, Dragons and Dire Wolves

To gain quickly, you want to tame creatures that are not aggressive, spawn close together and can be quickly disposed of after taming so that a new creature will spawn. For example at the grove in Ilshenar, you can rapidly tame Great Harts and command them to attack wandering healers, the healer will instantly kill the great hart and a new one will spawn for you to tame.

If you start out with 85 skill from the advanced character service offered by Ultima Online, you can wear jewelry and items that increase the taming skill and be ready for action immediately. The Library Talisman, Birds of Britannia, gives a +5 bonus to both animal taming and animal lore. Taming jewelry is commonly available on player run vendors with animal taming bonuses up to a +15 taming on each piece. To raise animal lore and veterinary skills you should be in a guild, have two pets such as polar bears attack each other and heal them, this will cause you to gain in both skills. However, you may prefer to tame your greater dragon and to train it in combat for animal lore and veterinary skills.

The best pet in Ultima Online is a greater dragon for all uses. No tamer uses Cu'sidhe, White Wyrms, Rune Beetles, Dragons or Nightmares anymore for hunting. This is because a greater dragon has the best survivability and deals the most damage of all possible pets. Consider that a greater dragon has over 60 in most resistances, 1,000 hit points, can have legendary magery and does 25-65 damage with its claws and has a fire breath attack that can deal out over 100 damage and it's easy to see why Ultima Online tamers prefer the Greater Dragon. To control a greater dragon you need at least 105 animal taming and 120 animal lore skill combined or the equivalent. A greater dragon is capable of tanking any peerless except for Chief Paroxysmus and can stand up to the damage of a Dark Father, Harrower or Champion Spawns better than any melee warrior.

Taming Templates:

Tamer/Weaver

Animal taming, Animal Lore, Magery, Spellweaving, Spirit Speak, Necromancy, Meditation

This template is ideal for Champion Spawns and Peerless bosses because it has strong pet healing, word of death, essence of wind and wither for area of effect mana draining. Use magery's Greater Healing spell to keep your pet alive with spell weaving's gift of renewal spell added in for extra power. You do not want to get close to most champions and peerless monsters so veterinary is only useful for resurrecting your pet if it dies. Use Gift of Life instead and you can leave your veterinary skill on a soul stone. When your champion or peerless boss is low on life, transform into wraith form and cast the word of death spell and get all your mana back from drains.

Stealth/Tamer

Animal taming, Animal Lore, Magery, Veterinary, Stealth, Hiding, Meditation

The stealth tamer creeps along with his pet deep into champion spawns, letting monsters target his greater dragon. If the champion spawn gets raided, he sneaks away to fight another day. This type of tamer can get deep into dungeons, summon up his pet and be ready for action. By swapping out meditation or veterinary, this type of tamer could also use the stealing skill to pick up rares like the academic books in Bedlam or doom artifacts.

Bard/Tamer

Animal taming, Animal Lore, Magery, Veterinary, Musicianship, Provocation/Discordance/Peace, Meditation

The Bard Tamer is ideal for soloing difficult monsters. For example, named monsters, paragons and large crowds of mobs such as the undead spawned by the Dark Father can all be controlled, weakened and pacified by a skilled bard. Note that discordance is not recommended for the peerless boss Travesty because Travesty has the ability to make a copy of the character and will use discordance on your entire party which can lead to a wipe.

Animal taming is definitely one of the best skills that you can have in Ultima Online the following links will be useful to you as you begin your taming career:

DrMMO.com - http://drmmo.com - Read my other Ultima Online guides here.

The Taming Archive - http://www.tamingarchive.com/ - The taming archive has detailed information about pets, calculators and other useful resources but is a bit outdated.

UOCraft.com - http://www.uocraft.com/ - Has updated taming calculators for controlling pets, stable slots and a utility to tell you if you pet is powerful enough to keep or if you could do better.