Ultima Online Animal Taming - control chance, bonding, the stable, and the pet training caps

Making the tame

The mechanical conditions:

• A clear path must exist between you and the creature.
• A creature currently taking damage cannot be tamed.
• Standing in melee range produces “The animal is too angry to continue taming”.
• Range: the tamer must be standing within three tiles [!] to begin an attempt, and the creature may move up to ten tiles away [!] during the attempt without breaking it.

On the odds, uo.com publishes one hard figure and one piece of advice. The figure: at the minimum skill level for a given creature, the success chance is 0.2%. The advice: failed attempts grant no skill, so aim for roughly a 50% success chance and move up to harder creatures as skill rises.

[!] The success-chance curve between that 0.2% floor and certainty is not published. uo.com gives the floor and the “aim for about 50%” rule and nothing in between, so no per-skill success table can be honestly given here.

Taming difficulty, and the re-tame penalty

Every tameable creature carries a taming difficulty, and a creature that has been tamed before is harder to tame again. uo.com publishes the increase in adjusted skill per re-tame:

Re-taming	Adjusted skill change
First	minimum
Second	+4.8
Third	+19.2
Fourth	+43.2
Fifth	+76.8

That escalation is why a much-traded pet is worth less than a fresh one. uo.com states a maximum of 5 re-tames per creature where the resulting difficulty stays at or below 120.0, and the Pet Ownership page states the maximum number of previous owners is 5, after which the creature cannot be tamed again.

Selected rows from uo.com’s Tameable Creatures table, which is the reference for what to attempt next:

Creature	Hit Points	Damage	Tame @ skill
Horse	28–45	3–4	40–50
Giant Beetle	200–200	7–20	40–50
Polar Bear	70–84	7–12	50–60
White Wolf	34–48	3–7	80–90
Great Hart	27–41	5–9	80–90
Bull	50–64	4–9	90–100
Fire Beetle	200–200	19–52	110–120
Nightmare	298–315	16–22	110–120
Lesser Hiryu	400–600	18–23	110–120
Hiryu	900–1100	20–30	110–120
Greater Dragon	1002–1998	24–33	122.7
Bane Dragon	550–650	20–26	125.1
Dread Warhorse	555–650	20–26	125.1
Cu Sidhe	1000–1200	21–28	Challenging
Reptalon	800–1000	21–28	Challenging

Two things to take from it. The highest numeric requirement printed on that table is 125.1, which is above what a Legendary Power Scroll gives you — so the hardest tames need 120 real skill plus item bonuses. And some rows give a word rather than a number; “Challenging” is reproduced here exactly as uo.com prints it, because uo.com does not convert it into a figure.

Control chance - Taming is only half of it

Whether a pet obeys a command is a function of Animal Taming and Animal Lore together, measured against the pet’s difficulty. uo.com publishes the formula on the Animal Lore page:

• tamingBonus = difficultyModifier × ( taming skill − pet difficulty )
• loreBonus = difficultyModifier × ( lore skill − pet difficulty )
• skillBonus = ( tamingBonus + loreBonus ) ÷ 2
• Final control chance % = 70 + skillBonus

The modifier is 6 when (skill − pet difficulty) is positive, 28 when taming skill is less than pet difficulty, and 14 when lore skill is less than pet difficulty. Because the two bonuses are averaged, a tamer who neglects Animal Lore is running a worse control chance than their Taming number implies — and because the shortfall modifiers are larger than the surplus one, being under a pet’s difficulty hurts more than being over it helps.

What a creature loses when you tame it

A tamed pet is not the wild creature with a collar on. Per uo.com’s Pet Ownership page:

• Pet skills above 100 before taming take a 10% reduction on taming.
• Pet stats below 125 can be trained up to 125; stats above 125 are fixed at their existing value.

Put the other way round, a pet’s skill cap after taming becomes 90% [!] of its pre-taming value or 100.0 [!] points, whichever is higher. Every newly tamed pet has a Dexterity cap of 125 [!].

Follower slots and pack instinct

A character has 5 follower slots in total, and an individual pet occupies between 1 and 5 of them according to its power. uo.com’s own framing explains the design: slots “limit the number of high-level pets, summoned creatures or hirelings a character can control at any given time, while still allowing the diversity of hunting with a pack of lower level creatures.” Summons and hirelings draw on the same five.

The pack is not just a hedge. Pets of the same pack type hunting together get a published damage bonus:

Pets of the same pack type	Bonus
2	+25%
3	+50%
4	+75%
5	+100%

The pack types uo.com lists are Bear, Bull, Canine, Daemon, Equine, Feline, Ostard, Raptor. Five one-slot pets of one type is +100% damage — which is the whole argument for a pack over a single five-slot monster. The Animal Lore gump reports each creature’s pack instinct, so you can check before you tame.

Bonding, death, and going wild

Bonding is what makes a pet recoverable, and the procedure is published: feed the pet at the first opportunity, wait 7 days, then feed it again. On success “you will see the message ‘your pet has bonded with you’ and the tag ‘tame’ will change to ‘bonded’.”

When a bonded pet dies, “a pet ghost will remain which may be resurrected by a tamer with the required level of animal lore and veterinary skill” — that is 80 in both Animal Lore and Veterinary. Resurrection is not free: the pet loses 0.1 skill points per pet skill if a player tamer does it, or 0.2 if an NPC vet does. Over a pet’s life that difference compounds, which is why serious tamers carry the skills themselves.

The bond breaks if the pet is transferred, released, or goes wild. And pets left behind do not wait politely: “If you log out with a loaded pack animal beside you it will stay in game and eventually go wild, dropping the content of its pack on the ground where it will decay”, and for a pet left in the world rather than stabled, “If the owner does not log in before the 24 hour period they will be deleted as they would have gone wild by this point.”

Transfer moves complete ownership with the command [name] transfer, and requires skill checks from both parties. Failure gives “The pet refuses to be transferred because it will not obey [name]”.

The stable

Stable capacity is a function of your combined tamer skills and your expansion, and uo.com publishes the whole ladder. The stabling fee is 30gp.

Combined skill	Basic	Stygian Abyss	Time of Legends
Non-tamer	2	4	6
160–199.9 total	3	5	7
200–239 total	4	6	8
240+	5	7	9

On top of that, uo.com adds one slot for each contributing skill at 100 (giving 8, 10 or 12 depending on expansion), one for each at 110 (11, 13 or 15), and one for each at 120 (14, 16 or 18). The mastery goes further: “The Animal Taming Mastery, ‘Boarding’, also adds stable slots for master tamers and above while the mastery is active up to a final total at 120 taming of 21.”

Beyond that it is bought, not trained: a stable slot increase token from the Ultima Store costs 500 sovereigns for 3 slots, up to 7 tokens per character, “taking the maximum possible total from all sources to 42”.

Animal Training - weights, not prices

Introduced with Publish 97, Animal Training is described by uo.com as “an advancement to the traditional pet skill training through which a pet has, in the past, gained its skills”. It lets you customise a tamed creature’s stats, resistances, skill caps and abilities. You open it from the Begin Animal Training button on the Animal Lore gump, and uo.com notes the two kinds of training “may run concurrently”.

The important thing to understand about what uo.com publishes: these are weight multipliers used to price an increase, not flat point costs.

Attribute	Weight
Strength	3.0x
Dexterity	0.1x
Intelligence	0.5x
Hit Points	3.0x
Stamina	0.5x
Mana	0.5x
Hit Point Regeneration	18.0x
Stamina Regeneration	12.0x
Mana Regeneration	12.0x
Base Damage Per Second	5.0x
All Resists	3.0x

Skill cap weights, from the same page:

Skill	Weight
Magery, Mysticism, Necromancy, Spellweaving, Chivalry, Bushido, Ninjitsu, Discordance, Poisoning	0.5x
Evaluating Intelligence, Spirit Speak	1.0x
Focus, Meditation, Resisting Spells	0.1x
Wrestling, Tactics	1.0x
Anatomy, Healing, Parry	0.1x

Ability weights are all 1.0x — Magical Abilities, Special Abilities, Special Moves and Area Effect Abilities alike.

The caps. uo.com publishes combined ceilings of 2300 for Strength + Dexterity + Intelligence, 3300 for Hit Points + Stamina + Mana, and 1095 for resists combined. Individually: Strength 700, Intelligence 700, Dexterity 150, Hit Points 1100, Stamina 150, Mana 1500, and 80 for each resist.

The limits on what a pet can carry: a maximum of 1 magical ability; a maximum of 2 special moves plus 1 special ability plus 1 area effect; and up to 20 selections planned per training session.

Base damage per second is capped by slot transition, published on uo.com: 1→2 slots = 8, 2→3 = 13, 3→4 = 17, 4→5 = 22.

Some individual training point costs are not on uo.com: Cold Wind and Psychic Attack at 100 points [!] each; Nerve Strike, Talon Strike, Block, Feint and Frenzied Whirlwind at 500 points [!] each; and skill cap costs of 200 training points [!] from GM to a 120 power scroll for Magery, Evaluating Intelligence, Wrestling and Tactics, against 20 training points [!] for Resisting Spells, Meditation, Focus, Anatomy, Parry and Healing.

[!] The training point pool itself is not published — how many points a pet has, and how they are earned per stage. uo.com gives weights and caps but never the budget, and the few individual costs above do not say what budget they draw from.

Pet regeneration caps are not settled

Worth stating rather than smoothing over, because the gap is an order of magnitude.

• uo.com’s Animal Training page lists Hit Point Regen, Stamina Regen and Mana Regen caps of 360 each.
• Much lower individual regeneration caps are unpublished figures: 20 [!] (hit point), 30 [!] (stamina) and 30 [!] (mana). uo.com does not publish these.

They may well be measuring different things — the uo.com figures appear in its combined-cap list, the lower ones as individual-attribute caps. But uo.com does not say so or reconcile them. Both are recorded here; the uo.com figure is the documented one, the lower ones are unpublished, and no arithmetic has been done to bridge them.

The Animal Taming mastery

Animal Taming is the only wilderness skill with a Skill Mastery. Primers come “from all champion spawns, Scalis and Charybdis” and are shard bound.

• Whispering (active) — “The animal tamer attempts to guide their pet on the path of skill gain, increasing the pet’s skill gains”, scaled on Animal Taming, Animal Lore and mastery level.
• Combat Training (active) — “readies their pet for battle allowing the tamer to add combat abilities to their pet”, scaled on the same three. Minimum skill 90 [!], 40 mana [!].
• Boarding (passive) — “While the animal taming mastery is active the animal tamer receives additional stables slots”. Minimum skill 90 [!]; Tier 1 gives +1 stable slot [!].

Combat Training’s tiers [!] — none of this table is published by uo.com:

Tier	Ability	Numbers
1	Empowerment	5 second [!] empowerment phase, 10 second [!] unleash phase; stores physical damage during empowerment, then applies damage increase and spell damage increase bonuses during unleash
1	As One	Requires multiple pets; pets share damage while close to their master
2	Berserk	8 second [!] rage with a 60 second [!] cooldown after it; triggered by the pet taking damage; during rage the pet deals increased physical damage and takes reduced damage, cannot stealth, and receives reduced healing
3	Consume Damage	5 second [!] consume phase, 10 second [!] unleash phase; stores physical damage, then applies hit chance and regeneration bonuses

[!] The magnitudes are not published for any of them. The phases and durations above are the only ones known; the damage increase, spell damage increase, hit chance and regeneration values are not stated anywhere. [!] Whispering has no published numbers at all — no skill-gain multiplier, no mana cost, no cooldown, no duration. [!] And Boarding’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 amounts are not known at all; only uo.com’s total of 21 stable slots at 120 Animal Taming is given.

How often a mastery can be switched is not fully settled: uo.com says a 10 minute cooldown, which is the documented figure; there is also an unpublished figure of 15 minutes [!].

In PvP

• Pet damage against players is reduced by 30%. This is the single most important published PvP fact about tamed pets, and it is stated plainly on uo.com’s Pet Ownership page: a pet that hits a monster for full damage hits a player for 70% of it. Every judgement about a tamer in PvP starts here.
• Control chance decides fights. Control is Taming plus Animal Lore measured against the pet’s difficulty, so a tamer whose combined skill is low relative to their pet will fail commands under pressure — exactly when it matters.
• Transfers can be refused. Pet transfer is gated by skill checks on both parties and fails with “The pet refuses to be transferred because it will not obey [name]”.
• Berserk has a downside worth knowing. While active it explicitly prevents the pet from stealthing and reduces healing received, for its 8 seconds, with a 60 second cooldown — which matters to any Stealth-based pet play.
• [!] uo.com does not state how pets are handled in Felucca versus Trammel ruleset PvP beyond the 30% reduction, and [!] whether that 30% applies to pet special moves and area effect abilities as well as auto-attacks is not stated either.

In PvM

• Taming plus Lore is the template. The two together set control chance, gate the Animal Training system, and gate stable capacity. Veterinary is the third leg that keeps the pet standing.
• Pack instinct is free damage. Five same-type pets is +100%, which is why a pack of one-slot creatures can outperform a single heavy pet.
• Animal Training is how endgame pets are made. The published ceilings — Strength 700, Hit Points 1100, Mana 1500, each resist 80 — are the target a trained pet is walked toward, slot transition by slot transition.
• The hardest tames need more than a scroll. Greater Dragon at 122.7, Bane Dragon and Dread Warhorse at 125.1 are all above 120, so they require Power Scroll skill plus item bonuses to attempt at a reasonable chance.
• Herding pairs with it. uo.com states a herder can cut a desired creature out of a spawn so it can be tamed cleanly — and herding costs no follower slots to do it.

What is not published

• [!] The success-chance curve between the 0.2% minimum and certainty.
• [!] Whether any hard maximum exists on effective taming skill from items and bonuses combined.
• [!] The Animal Training point pool — the size of the budget, and how points are earned per stage.
• [!] The Animal Taming and Animal Lore levels required to use the Animal Training system at all.
• [!] Numeric magnitudes for Empowerment, As One, Berserk and Consume Damage.
• [!] Any numbers whatsoever for Whispering.
• [!] Boarding’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 stable slot amounts.
• [!] How pets are treated under the Felucca ruleset beyond the 30% damage reduction, and whether that reduction covers special moves and area effects.

Caps, stats and training

Animal Taming is on the Power Scroll list: 105 / 110 / 115 / 120, counting against the 720 total skill cap. Primary stat Str, secondary Int. Note that a Legendary scroll does not put every creature within comfortable reach — the Tameable Creatures table runs to 125.1.

A full training route, unpublished by uo.com [!]:

Skill	Creatures	Location
0–30	NPC Stable Master training	—
30–45	Cows, Sheep	Delucia
45–60	Hinds, Timber Wolves	Near Huntsman
60–75	Walrus, Polar Bears	Dagger Isle
75–85	Snow Leopards, Panthers	Dagger Isle
85–100	Great Harts, White Wolves	Healer’s Grove or Delucia
100–120	Ridgebacks, Bulls	Central Ilshenar
90–120	Combat Training (requires the Skill Mastery)	Any pet

NPC trainers: Animal Trainer, Fur Trader, Ranger and Gypsy Animal Herder [!]. Underneath it all sits the Guaranteed Gain System’s mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, and a Scroll of Alacrity raising each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes — which is worth saving for the 100+ grind, where failed tames give nothing.

Where these come from

uo.com Animal Taming · uo.com Pets & Ownership · uo.com Animal Training · uo.com Tameable Creatures · uo.com Animal Lore · uo.com Herding · uo.com Skill Masteries · uo.com Skills, Stats & Attributes · uo.com Skill Gain Systems. Everything here is from uo.com or the game itself; anything uo.com does not publish is marked [!] as unpublished where it appears.