Taming and Pet Training Greater Dragons in Ultima Online

The Greater dragon is the toughest pet in Ultima Online and is capable of tanking most of the peerless, champions and bosses in the Doom Guantlet. With a mighty dragon at your side, champion spawns are simple and you can kill any regular monsters and farm them for gold an items with ease. This guide shows you the best way to find the best greater dragons, tame them and train them to their maximum potential.

Taming Greater Dragons in Ultima Online

Taming a greater dragon is tough, a mini game in its own right. Bring a friend with you who can help keep you healed or a bard to make it go smoothly. Like all dragons, greater dragons possess a hit point based fire breath attack. The more hit points the greater dragon has, the worse its fire breath attack is.

Starting out with full hit points a greater dragon can kill you outright with one fiery snort, it's important to have your character's hit points as high as possible at all times. Not only will a greater dragon scorch you with its fire breath but it will also pummel you with magery spells and wild greater dragons can have beyond legendary skill in magery and evaluate intelligence, their spells hurt!

A good tactic is to drain the dragon's mana by allowing it to cast spells on you and to heal quickly in between its blasts and run off screen. If you have discordance, use it to weaken the greater dragon by reducing its stats and skills and use peacemaking.

Do not weaken the greater dragon too much or it will teleport and attack you with its claws. After the greater dragon is under 50% hit points fire breath deals about 64 damage each time scaling downward to 40 damage as you weaken it further.

Some UO tamers make use of the spellweaving's Ethereal Voyage spell or the honor virtue benefit of monster ignore while taming greater dragons to avoid damage entirely. Just keep in mind that both honor and ethereal voyage are both short in duration and may not last long enough for you to catch your greater dragon.

Where to go to tame greater dragons:

Wind: In the winding caverns of Wind you will find greater dragons, drakes and daemons. You can kill the lesser spawns and lure the greater dragon out by itself, town and the healer are near if you need them. To enter Wind you need at least 72.1 magery.

The Daemon Temple: The daemon temple is full of greater dragons, drakes and daemons. Pull one out and lead it into the surrounding jungle to tame, the shrine of humility and wandering healers are also in the area to resurrect you.

Destard: Destard is overrun with greater dragons, drakes, wyverns, giant serpents and worse. It's the most dangerous place to tame greater dragons due to the large amount of other spawn that constantly appears in the dungeon. It is however a good place to find a lot of high quality greater dragons. Simply run through with over 110 animal lore and pick the strongest one, lure it off and tame it while keeping an eye on your surroundings.

The Kirin Passage: At the end of the Kirin Passage in Ilshenar past the poison elementals there is a family of dragons and drakes. There are several disadvantages to taming here, first the passage is a long run if you die and there are no healers and a small spawn of potential good dragons. In Ilshenar you also may encounter a greater dragon paragon while you are out taming. If encountering paragon greater dragons doesn't daunt you, you can also find greater dragons at the valor champion spawn in Ilshenar.

Is your Greater Dragon worth keeping?

When you are using animal lore on an untamed dragon look for one with 2,000 hit points, good resists and skills of 130-140; after taming the greater dragon's skills will drop. You want your greater dragon to have excellent tanking stats, survivability, resistances and skills. Your dragon should have approximately 900 or more hit points, 125 dex and 650 intelligence after taming. Always try to get a greater dragon with high resistance so you can keep it alive with less healing the ideal numbers are: 85 Physical, 90 Fire, 55 Cold, 60 Poison and 75 Energy.

UoCraft.com has a Pet Calculator that you can use to enter your pet's stats and see if it is worth training an keeping. As a rule of thumb, you should try to have a pet that is rated at least 4.3-4.5 for pet effectiveness on a scale of 1-5.

Defenses, hit points and resist are major factors because you want a pet that is a good tank and doesn't die easily. Dead dragons don't win fights! Let your greater dragon bond for one week before beginning training because there is nothing worse than training a pet and having it die because you lost connection.

Pet Training

Shadow Iron Elementals: Shadow iron elementals are very easy training for your brand new greater dragon and should help your greater dragon get to grandmaster or higher anatomy, wrestling and tactics quickly. After your greater dragon reaches grandmaster skills, training will slow down. The main advantage to using a shadow elemental for pet training is that shadow elementals are completely immune to pet damage. You can find a secluded corner in the Yomotzu mines in Tokuno and train your pet quickly and efficiently; the downside to training this way is that it is boring and that the time you invest in fighting shadow iron elementals will not get you any loot.

Swoop: The swoop is a named purple eagle in the Twisted Weald of Ilshenar that is ideal for training your greater dragon. The swoop hits hard with 100% physical attacks but tamers can heal through these attacks easily with spellweaving, magery or veterinary. Your greater dragon will gain in all melee skills as well as magery, evaluate intelligence and meditation past grandmaster from fighting the swoops. Swoops are also great because you have a chance to earn Mondain's Legacy artifacts from them and spellweaving scrolls and decent magic items.

Miasma: Miasma is one of the more challenging named creatures that tamers use for pet training after the Swoop. Miasma can be found in the Labyrinth in Malas, North of the Umbra Moongate. Miasma hits hard and fast and can poison your pet and use the special move mortal strike. You can use the spellweaving spell Gift of Renewal to heal through both mortal strike and poison. If you are fast with your bandages you will be able to heals in-between mortal strikes and poison.

Greater dragons often cast arch cure on themselves and are easier to keep alive than most other pets. Miasma has been known to change targets when the line of sight is crossed as some daemons do, so keep movement to a minimum. Like the Swoop, you will find extra good loot while hunting Miasma such as Mondain's Legacy artifacts, spellweaving scrolls, chests and high quality magic items. The Labyrinth is a highly dangerous UO environment and you must vigilantly watch for additional monsters.

Thrasher: Thrasher is a named crocodile that lives in the Blighted Grove in the southern edge. This creature can train your greater dragon past grandmaster skills and is extremely easy to kill and rapidly reappears after death in a small easy to control area. Thrasher drops a black tail that looks like a black piece of flax that can be turned into Heartwood to Thallary the Cloth Weaver for a bag of treasure. In the area where Thrasher spawns you will find samples of corrupted water which look like Mondain's Legacy hair dye bottles which are part of the quest offered by Jamal the Fisherman which unlocks the blacksmithing recipe for making the bone machete.

Lady Melisande: Lady Melisande is not that tough she is one of the easiest peerless bosses in Mondain's Legacy. I have seen tamers with untrained greater dragons take her out without too much problem and get good pet skill gains.

If your greater dragon is untrained, go to Lady Melisande with another tamer who has a trained greater dragon and let them attack first, once the other greater dragon has aggro or hate on Lady Melisande send your greater dragon in next. Although your untrained greater dragon will still take area of effect damage and an occasional hit, the first greater dragon will take most of the damage while your dragon trains.

Once your greater dragon is fully trained you will be ready to take on most of the peerless, champions and doom gauntlet bosses in the game and enjoy having the very best tank and damage dealing pet Ultima Online has to offer.

Resources:

UO Craft: http://www.uocraft.com/taming/pet-power-calculator/

DrMMO's Ultima Online Guides: http://www.drmmo.com/