Animal Taming

Animal Taming is the discipline of bonding wild creatures to a master's will. A trained Tamer commands a stable of beasts that can outdamage and outlast almost any solo combat character — Greater Dragons, Cu Sidhe, Bake Kitsune, Rune Beetle, Triton, Nightmare, White Wolf — pets that fight, tank, heal, and travel alongside the player. Tamers have been one of UO's most enduring template archetypes since launch and remain among the most powerful PvE templates in the modern game.

The skill works hand in hand with Animal Lore (which evaluates and queries pets) and Veterinary (the only way to heal or resurrect a pet). The three together are the canonical Tamer-Vet template; without all three, a Tamer is forever leaning on others.

Taming a creature

To attempt a tame, the Tamer must be:

• Within 3 tiles of the target.
• With no obstructions between them and the creature.
• Targeting it with the Animal Taming skill.

After the attempt begins the Tamer can stray up to 10 tiles away and the attempt continues. Losing line of sight ends the attempt; the creature being damaged ends the attempt.

The roll completes after a few seconds with a success or failure message. Most monsters (as opposed to plain animals) instantly fail the first attempt regardless of skill — there is no wait period before retrying, so the working pattern is to bind taming to a macro and spam it until the timing roll succeeds. After that first hurdle, the actual skill check rolls.

What gates a successful tame

Success on the skill check is gated on three factors:

1. The Tamer's Animal Taming skill versus the creature's hidden taming difficulty.
2. The Tamer's Animal Lore skill — also rolled into the success calculation; pure-Taming-no-Lore characters tame poorly.
3. The number of slots the creature requires versus the Tamer's free pet slots.

Higher-end pets (Cu Sidhe at 5 slots, Greater Dragon at 5 slots, Hiryu at 4 slots) consume most of a Tamer's stable budget. A single 5-slot pet locks the Tamer into the solo-pet pattern; lower-slot pets allow stable juggling.

Stable slots

The base stable slot count is 2; each character earns more via skill: a GM Tamer / GM Animal Lore / GM Veterinary template has access to 5 stable slots, with additional slots available via Tokuno-rewarded items. Slots vs slots-required gates the entire pet inventory — a Tamer must plan their stable around their slot budget.

Bonding

After taming, a creature is temporary — if it dies, it is gone forever. Bonding the pet (a 7-day process during which the Tamer feeds the creature its preferred food daily, eventually triggering the bond) makes it permanent and resurrectable via Veterinary. Without bonding, every death is a real loss; with it, a Vet's resurrection brings the pet back at the cost of some skill points (which can be re-trained).

Veterinary — the lifeline skill

Veterinary is the only in-game method to heal or resurrect a pet. A Tamer without Veterinary cannot bring a dead pet back. The standard Tamer template is:

Training

Training Animal Taming is slow — every successful tame consumes the target (no further skill gain off that creature) and every attempt takes several seconds. Most veterans recommend taking Taming as a starting skill so the early pace happens during character creation rather than during the gear grind.

To accelerate the spawn rate of new training targets: release each tamed creature, kill it, watch the spawn timer tick. Keeping a few tamed creatures under control to help cull the rest is a working tactic.

The skill ladder

Tribal Paint and the Ilshenar Savage Camp

The post-100 grind is dominated by the Ilshenar Savage camp because of its uninterrupted Ridgeback spawn pen. Approach the camp in Tribal Paint (a body paint dye applied with paint orbs from the Savage encampment quest line) and the Savages treat the Tamer as one of their own. The camp's pen at the south end spawns two Ridgebacks at all times; a Tamer can grind there for a full session without breaking line of sight or facing other-spawn interruption.

Pet skills, stats, and the post-taming retention

Once a creature is tamed:

• It starts with half its wild HP. Healing and time bring this back to its new max.
• Skills above 100 in its wild form are capped 10% lower in the tamed version. A wild dragon at 110 skill becomes a 99-cap tamed dragon. Paralyze-tame style ("paratame") loses more than 10% — over 15% in the worst case.
• Skills below 100 retain their full cap. Each can be re-trained up to 100 or to the new cap.
• The DEX cap for newly tamed pets is 125. Pre-patch creatures with higher DEX still exist on legacy shards but cannot be re-created.

The original article-level "everything below is old information" caveat reflects the pre-Pet-Training refactor; modern pet behaviour follows the Pet Training system, which lets a Tamer add skill points to a pet via training points earned through pet kills. See the Pet Training article for the full mechanic.

Equipment for the Tamer

A working Tamer wears different gear for different taming targets. Several principles:

• Eater armor. Each creature has a damage signature; taming-specific eater suits absorb the relevant types. A Cu Sidhe taming run wants Cold + Energy + Damage Eater on the suit; a Greater Dragon run wants Fire + Physical + Damage + Kinetic Eater.
• No Reflect Physical Damage parts. RPD reflects damage onto the attacker — which damages the would-be pet, ending the taming attempt. Strip RPD from the taming suit.
• Avoid insured prized items. Insurance cost compounds on Prized items; cheap-to-replace gear is the better Taming-suit philosophy.
• Hit Point Increase + Hit Point Regeneration are the two most useful armor properties for sustained tame attempts.
• Don't paratame pets that can have GM+ skills. The 10%+ paratame cap penalty means a paratamed Greater Dragon caps significantly lower than one tamed by the standard repeat-attempt method.
• Damage the wild pet first. Pets with low HP are slower; lowering a target's HP before attempting taming gives the Tamer easier kiting.
• Carry Orange Petals. They block paralysis poison from interrupting taming. Cheaper than insurance.

Mastery — Combat Training and Beastmaster

The Animal Taming Skill Mastery unlocks at 90 real Animal Taming skill after reading any tier of the Animal Taming Mastery Primer. Activated, it grants the The Beastmaster title and several special abilities:

• Combat Training Mastery — buffs an active pet with damage and survivability bonuses for a duration.
• Bait and Switch — pet-swapping mechanic.
• Other Mastery-tier abilities tied to pet control.

The Combat Training Mastery activation is itself the canonical 90-to-120 grind: cast on a pet, dismiss the target popup, repeat. The mastery-cast interaction trains Animal Taming skill without requiring fresh wild-creature targets.

The serious pet types

Not every tameable creature is worth the slot. The high-end stable inventory clusters on a few species:

A Tamer with a Greater Dragon can kill nearly any solo PvE content; a Tamer-Bard pairing (Discordance + Tribulation + Greater Dragon) is among the highest-DPS solo combinations in the game.

Strategy notes

• Take Animal Taming as a starting skill. The early grind is much faster during character creation's accelerated-gain window than later via direct training.
• Bond every keeper pet immediately. Feed daily until the bond message fires. An unbonded pet can never come back.
• Veterinary is non-negotiable. No skill substitutes; even Magery's Resurrect doesn't work on pets.
• Animal Lore is half the tame check. A pure-Taming character with low Lore tames much worse than the same Tamer with paired GM Lore. Always raise the two together.
• Don't take a 5-slot pet to a Champion Spawn solo. Champion-tier waves can wipe a single pet faster than Veterinary can heal. Two 3-slot pets are often safer.
• Pet Training is its own discipline. After taming, the Pet Training system lets you spend training points to add skills to the pet. Read up before deciding which pet to invest in.

See also

Animal Lore, Veterinary, Pet Training, Tameables, Pets, Pet Guide, Stables, Magery, Discordance, Provocation, Skill Masteries, Power Scrolls, Greater Dragon, Cu Sidhe, Bake Kitsune, Rune Beetle, Hiryu, Triton, Nightmare, White Wolf, Polar Bear, Ridgeback, Bull, Dagger Isle, Delucia, Healer's Grove, Ilshenar, Savage Camp, Tribal Paint, Orange Petals, Combat Training Mastery.