Ultima Online Herding - the skill uo.com publishes no numbers for at all

For official shards · Wilderness skill · Int/Dex · caps at 100 — no Power Scroll exists for it · every figure sourced

Herding drives tameable creatures with a shepherd’s crook — to a spot on the ground, or after you, indefinitely. Put plainly, it lets you direct the movement of any tameable creature, either to a particular spot or following your character for as long as you like.

uo.com does not give a definition. It opens its Herding page in character, and the line tells you more about where the skill stands than a paragraph of analysis would: “Useless skill, so they tell me, and maybe it does take a little ingenuity to turn a coin from it, but oh the fun you can have with a lowly shepherd’s crook and an ounce of mischief.”

This page is short, and that is the finding. uo.com’s Herding page publishes no skill numbers at all — not a range, not a herd size, not a success chance. There is no Power Scroll and no Skill Mastery. What follows is the whole of what is published, and then a list of what is not.

uo.com publishes no numbers for this skill

Said first, because it is the most useful thing on the page. The uo.com Herding page describes what the skill does in prose and gives not one figure. Specifically:

[!] The range at which a crook can target a creature is not published. Neither is how far a herded creature will travel to reach its destination.
[!] How many creatures can be herded at once is not published. There is no published herd size, at any skill level.
[!] “Distracted” is never defined. uo.com states that a herd can be distracted and broken up — and stops there. What distracts a herd, what the chance is, and whether skill affects it are all unpublished.
[!] No threshold table exists on uo.com. There is no published “at X skill you can do Y” for Herding anywhere.

The one success rule is unpublished, and it is as simple as a rule can be: your chance of success on each order equals your current skill level [!]. A linear mapping of skill to success chance, with no steps in it. At 70 Herding, a 70% [!] chance per order.

What it does, and the one thing it does that nothing else does

Double-click a shepherd’s crook and target either a location or yourself. Creatures then walk to the destination, or follow you, at walking speed — which is the practical limit on how quickly a herd can be relocated. The crook works whether it is in your hand or in your pack.

Herded creatures do not consume follower slots. This is the genuinely distinctive property, and it is the reason the niche uses below work at all: Herding moves creatures you do not own and have not tamed, without spending any of the follower slots that a tamed pet would cost. The trade is that a herd, unlike a pet, can be distracted and broken up.

What can be herded is tameable creatures. Examples include horses, Great Harts, Bulls, Polar Bears, Snow Leopards, White Wolves, Grizzly Bears, Cu Sidhe, Unicorns, Fire Beetles and Greater Dragons.

The four uses uo.com actually publishes

uo.com is candid that the skill is niche, and then lists real applications for it anyway. All four are from its Herding page:

Guiding “good”-aligned creatures such as unicorns and kirins into areas with aggressive monsters, then looting the results.
Temporarily redirecting a dragon away from its target, to give a warrior time to heal.
Moving reptalons away from bosses.
Cutting a specific creature out of a spawn so it can be tamed cleanly — a direct Animal Taming support use, and the clearest published synergy the skill has.

uo.com also notes Veterinary is useful if you are herding creatures to hunt alongside.

Is it worth having?

Not a numbers question, but a real one about the skill’s standing:

uo.com leads with “Useless skill, so they tell me” and frames its whole page as what a creative player can still do with it. No Power Scroll, no mastery, no role in any standard template.
On the other side, the skill still works as described, still has several training paths and a creature ladder, and uo.com does not call it obsolete.

Whether it is worth the points is a judgement call, not a settled fact.

In PvP

[!] uo.com states no PvP application for Herding. Every use uo.com publishes is PvM or pure utility. Nothing is claimed here.

In PvM

Real, and narrow. All of it is the four published uses above: pulling a dragon off a target to buy healing time, moving reptalons away from bosses, steering unicorns and kirins into monster areas to farm the aftermath, and isolating one creature from a spawn so it can be tamed.

The no-follower-slot property is what makes these possible — a tamer can do all of it without committing any of the slots their actual pets occupy, which is why the skill survives on tamer templates that have points to spare. The limits are walking speed, and the fact that a herd can break up for reasons nobody publishes.

Caps, stats and training

Herding has no Power Scrolls, so its ceiling is 100.0 real skill. There is no 120 for this skill — it is one of the 23 [!] skills with no scroll. It contributes to the 720 total skill cap like any other, and it has no Skill Mastery: uo.com’s masteries page does not list it.

Primary stat Int, secondary Dex.

uo.com does not publish a creature ladder, so every range in this one is unpublished:

Skill	Creatures
0–30 [!]	Buy from an NPC Shepherd
30–35 [!]	Polar Bears
35–40 [!]	Snow Leopards
40–50 [!]	White Wolves, Grizzly Bears, or Great Harts
50–70 [!]	Bulls
70–85 [!]	Cu Sidhe, Unicorn, or Fire Beetles
85–100 [!]	Greater Dragons

NPC trainers are the Rancher, Shepherd, Ranger, Ranger Guildmaster and Vegetable Seller. The Guaranteed Gain System applies as it does to every skill, awarding a mandatory 0.1 when nothing has been gained inside your bracket’s window, and a Scroll of Alacrity raises each check from 0.1 to 0.2–0.5 for 15 minutes.

What is not published

Collected, because for this skill the gaps outnumber the facts:

[!] Crook targeting range, and how far a herded creature will travel.
[!] How many creatures can be herded at once, at any skill level.
[!] What mechanically counts as “distracted” and breaks a herd.
[!] Any threshold table on uo.com — the page carries no skill numbers whatsoever.
[!] Any stated interaction with Animal Lore. The uo.com Herding page does not mention it.
[!] Any stated interaction with Carpentry. A shepherd’s crook is intuitively a carpentry product, but uo.com’s Herding page does not say so, so it is not asserted here.
[!] Any PvP use at all.

Where these come from

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.

Every skill in the game

This is one of fifty-eight. The full skill list has all of them — what each does, its stats, where it caps, and which skills it works with.

The other 6 wilderness skills:
Animal Lore · Animal Taming · Camping · Fishing · Tracking · Veterinary

The spell books

Magery · Necromancy · Chivalry · Bushido · Ninjitsu · Spellweaving · Mysticism