Taming Difficulty
Taming Difficulty
Taming Difficulty is the hidden per-creature value that gates every Animal Taming attempt. Every wild creature in Britannia carries an internal minimum-skill number that defines the Tamer's success curve against it: characters at or below that number have near-zero chance to succeed; characters at the difficulty value plus 24.9 points are at the canonical 100% chance ceiling. Between those endpoints the success rate climbs linearly. Taming Difficulty is the single most important number a Tamer needs to know about a target — it dictates which pets are reachable on the current build, where the next training plateau sits, and whether a particular creature is a viable target at all.
The difficulty is read by the Crystal Ball of Pet Summoning (purchased from Animal Trainer NPCs) — target a creature and the ball reports its required taming skill plus the player's current chance. There is no in-client UI exposing this value any other way; veterans memorise the ladder for their training tier.
The success formula
The skill roll combines Animal Taming and Animal Lore — Taming carries the dominant weight, but Lore contributes meaningfully to the check. The canonical formula:
| Term | Contribution |
|---|---|
| Animal Taming skill | Primary — must approach or exceed the creature's minimum |
| Animal Lore skill | Secondary roll — also gated against the creature's value |
| Pet slot budget | Hard prerequisite (the Tamer must have free slots equal to the pet's slot cost) |
Both rolls must succeed; failing either ends the attempt. The minimum-skill threshold for a 0% chance ceiling is the creature's Taming Difficulty itself. The 100% chance ceiling is Difficulty + 24.9. The slope between the two is linear — at Difficulty + 12.5 the chance is roughly 50%.
A Tamer at 120.0 / 120.0 (Real Skill from a Power Scroll) is at 100% chance against any pet whose Taming Difficulty is 95.1 or lower. The hardest pets in the game (Cu Sidhe, Greater Dragon, Hiryu) sit just under that ceiling, which is why the canonical "Tamer of every pet" build is 120 Taming + 120 Lore.
Why first attempts on monsters always fail
The first attempt against any creature classified as a "monster" (rather than a plain animal) automatically fails regardless of skill. There is no cooldown — the working pattern is to bind the Animal Taming use to a macro and spam it until the timing roll lets the actual skill check fire. After that first hurdle the formula above takes over.
This is the canonical reason every Tamer has a "Last Object + Last Target" repeat-target macro mapped to a hotkey. Without it, taming a Cu Sidhe means clicking through several dozen menu trees by hand.
The taming difficulty ladder
These are the canonical reference points for the Tamer's training and end-game roster:
Animals (low difficulty)
| Creature | Taming Difficulty | Slots |
|---|---|---|
| Dog, cat, rabbit, sheep, cow | −12.4 to −0.1 | 1 |
| Pig, goat | 0.0 | 1 |
| Horse (basic) | 0.0 | 1 |
| Llama | 11.1 | 1 |
Mid-tier (the "skill ladder" range)
| Creature | Taming Difficulty | Slots |
|---|---|---|
| Black bear, panther, brown bear | 17.1 – 31.2 | 1 |
| Polar bear, walrus | 47.1 – 51.4 | 1 |
| Grizzly bear, dolphin | 41.1 – 47.1 | 1 |
| Snow leopard, great hart | 47.1 – 53.4 | 1 |
| Frenzied ostard, forest ostard | 53.4 – 65.9 | 1 |
| Desert ostard | 77.7 | 1 |
| Giant beetle | 77.7 | 2 |
| Bull frog | 65.9 | 1 |
Advanced (the post-90 plateau)
| Creature | Taming Difficulty | Slots |
|---|---|---|
| Ridgeback, savage ridgeback | 77.7 – 83.8 | 2 |
| Bake Kitsune | 80.7 | 2 |
| Frost dragon | 83.8 | 3 |
| Rune Beetle | 83.8 | 3 |
| Lesser hiryu | 89.7 | 3 |
| Triton | 89.7 | 3 |
| Najasaurus | 89.7 | 3 |
| Reptalon | 95.4 | 3 |
| Nightmare | 95.4 | 4 |
| Fire steed | 95.4 | 4 |
End-game (the canonical "120/120" pets)
| Creature | Taming Difficulty | Slots |
|---|---|---|
| Hiryu | 98.5 | 5 |
| Cu Sidhe | 98.5 | 5 |
| Greater Dragon | 107.0 | 5 |
| White wolf, Dire wolf | 31.0 – 65.9 | 1 (cheap end-game variants) |
The Greater Dragon at 107.0 difficulty is the canonical "120/120 isn't enough" target — even a fully scrolled Tamer is only at ~71% chance per attempt and may need multiple tries before the roll lands. This is what motivates the Powder of Fortifying macro stable: durability-extend a backup mount so the run-out-and-retry workflow doesn't burn pet slots.
Pet slots vs. difficulty
Animal Taming success only validates the skill check. The pet slot budget is a separate, hard prerequisite: a Tamer must have enough free slots to accept the pet, or the tame fails on the slot-count check before the skill roll fires.
The standard slot ceiling for a GM Taming + GM Lore + GM Veterinary template is 5 stable slots, and every pet costs 1–5 slots. The endgame pets (Cu Sidhe, Greater Dragon, Hiryu) all cost 5 slots — so the Tamer has to choose between one flagship pet and a stable of utility pets. Stable juggling means returning the current pet to a Stable Master before taming a different one.
The slot ceiling can be raised via Tokuno-rewarded slot increases and via the post-Pet-Training revamp's "+1 slot" pet upgrade option; both are runtime-character bonuses, not a difficulty-related mechanic.
How Pet Training changed the picture
The Pet Training revamp introduced a deeper layer on top of the difficulty system: after taming, the Tamer can spend Pet Training Points to raise the pet's base stats, swap its damage type, add abilities, and more. The base Taming Difficulty is unchanged by this — a Greater Dragon is still 107.0 to tame regardless of how much training the Tamer plans to do afterwards.
But Pet Training did make some lower-difficulty pets viable end-game choices — a fully-trained 3-slot pet can outdamage an untrained 5-slot pet. This rebalanced the meta away from the "always tame the highest-difficulty pet" pattern and toward "tame the pet whose trained ceiling matches your build."
Difficulty interaction with Animal Lore
Animal Lore reads the pet's stats and queries its training points. It is also rolled in the success check — characters with high Taming but low Lore experience a measurable success-rate reduction.
The canonical Tamer template keeps Taming and Lore at parity (120 / 120 after Power Scrolls). Splitting them — say 120 / 100 — reduces the effective check by roughly the Lore deficit, costing late-game pets even when nominal Taming exceeds the difficulty.
Why difficulty shows as a skill threshold (not a percentage)
The reason difficulties are quoted in fractional skill points (e.g., 98.5, 107.0) and not in percentages is that the success formula consumes them directly: the chance computation uses raw difference. This is deliberate parallel to the Barding Difficulty system, which uses identical fractional-skill threshold notation for its own (Music + Bard skill) check.
Some early UOG/Stratics references list difficulty as a "minimum skill" (the floor below which the chance is 0%); other references list the "100% chance skill" (Difficulty + 24.9). Both refer to the same number — the floor and the ceiling are 24.9 points apart and scale linearly between.
See also
- Animal Taming — the skill itself; full training ladder, stable mechanics, bonding
- Pet Training — post-tame stat raising and ability customisation
- Power Scrolls — the +120 cap that brings every difficulty within reach
- Barding Difficulty — the parallel mechanic for Provocation / Peacemaking / Discordance
- Provocation — the bardic skill whose check format inspired the difficulty notation