Template: Animal Tamer

Unverified storyline

Community-derived progression adapted to this shard; tame difficulties and creature stats come from this wiki’s source-verified data, but the route awaits field verification. File discrepancies per wiki conventions.

The tamer outsources violence. Your pets fight, you command and heal — slow and fiddly early, but the endgame (a dragon or nightmare at your heel) out-earns every other template. Patience required: taming fails a lot by design (see the formula on the Animal Taming page).

Endgame goal (700.0 total): Animal Taming, Animal Lore, Veterinary, Magery, Meditation at 100, plus flex (Eval Int, or Healing). Long-run stats per era wisdom: high STR and INT, DEX last.

Character creation on this shard

Full rules: character creation.

• Stats: 45 STR / 10 DEX / 35 INT. Stats matter least for tamers — pets do the fighting. STR for carry weight and survival, INT for the Magery half of the build.
• Skills: Animal Taming 50, Magery 50, Animal Lore 20. Magery gives the superb starter kit (spellbook, 50 of each reagent, healing spells for your pets before Veterinary exists). Swap Animal Lore 20 for Healing 20 if you want bandages on day one — but Lore feeds the tame check and trains passively with every attempt.
• Gotcha: Animal Taming grants NO starting equipment. Nothing. The skill has no entry in the server’s gear table (character creation) — it is Animal Lore that grants the shepherd’s crook (and a robe). Without Lore you start with just the universal kit (1,000 gold, dagger, candle, book).
• City: Skara Brae. The tamer’s town: animal trainer, stables, and farmland taming fields on the island. Everything in Stage 1 happens within walking distance.

Stage 1 — Novice (creation → ~65 Taming)

You start at 50 Taming — past the entire NPC-training, hinds-and-timber-wolves phase of era guides (hinds and timber wolves tame at 23.1, polar bears and walruses at 35.1 — all trivial to you now). The shard’s 4×50 creation skips you straight to the mid-ladder. Tame → release → re-tame; each attempt needs a fresh or released target.

Skill	Target (MinTameSkill)	Where (era knowledge, unverified)
50 → 59	snow leopards (53.1), panthers, grey wolves (53.1)	snow/jungle wilderness
59 → 65	great harts (59.1), grizzly bears (59.1)	deep forest around Yew / Skara mainland

Era guides put snow leopards’ equivalent (“snow panthers”) at 53–59 and that matches our data exactly. While taming, kill what you tame with your previous pet — animal corpses yield hides and meat (great hart: 15 hides; bulls later: 15) — your first steady income.

Collect: hides (sell to tailors or players), meat, feathers. Money: modest; 1,000 starting gold plus hide money covers reagents.

Stage 2 — Journeyman (65 → ~95 Taming)

Goals: grind the wilderness ladder, raise Magery to ~60+ for Recall (buy the scroll — not in the starting book) and pet healing, bank Lore/Vet gains.

Skill	Target (MinTameSkill)
65 → 71	white wolves (65.1)
71 → 77	bulls (71.1) — the classic camp; 15 hides + 10 meat each
77 → 84	frenzied ostards (77.1), giant toads (77.1)
84 → 94	drakes (84.3, 241–258 hits, Rich loot), dire wolves (83.1), ridgebacks (83.1)

• Bull camps are the famous double-dip: taming gains plus bulk hides from releasing and slaughtering. Sell hides in Vesper or Britain, or to crafter players.
• Drakes flip the economics: a tamed drake (2 control slots) is your first real combat pet and every failed-tame kill drops Rich-tier gold and scrolls. From here on, hunt with what you tame.
• Start selling trained pets to players at the Britain bank — pack animals, mounts, and combat pets all move. Mind the formula: every previous owner adds 6.0 to a pet’s effective tame difficulty (Animal Taming), so fresh-tamed sells best.

Collect: hides in bulk, drake loot, gems. Money: bull hides are reliable; drake farming is the first serious income.

Stage 3 — Master (~94+ Taming)

The breakpoints, from our creature data: dragon 93.9, nightmare 95.1, white wyrm 96.3. (Era guides lump nightmare and white wyrm together at 95.1 — on this shard the wyrm is harder, and dragons actually come first.)

• Get the nightmare (2 control slots, 298–315 hits, fights as a mage) or a dragon (3 slots, 478–495 hits). Tame attempts on these fail violently — bring Recall, a healed combat pet, and patience.
• Then the top-end farming loop: Destard drakes and dragons with your dragon (FilthyRich ×2 + 8 gems per dragon corpse), and Deceit lich lords (250–303 hits, FilthyRich + necro scrolls) — era consensus top gold per hour, and your pet tanks what no armor could.
• White wyrms (433–456 hits, FilthyRich ×2) spawn in ice territory (dungeons: Ice Dungeon, unverified); they are casters (mage AI) — pulling several at once kills tamers, see mistakes below.
• Surplus gold (era figure: 100k+) goes into GM-ing Magery, Lore, and Veterinary — era guides estimate 15k+ bandages to GM Vet (unverified here).

The trade loop

Buy	Where
Reagents (pet healing via Magery)	Moonglow / Britain mage shops — reagents
Bandages (Veterinary)	Healers/tailors anywhere
Stable slots, starter Lore/Vet training	Skara Brae animal trainer

Sell	Where
Bulk hides, meat, feathers	Tailors/provisioners (Vesper, Britain), crafter players
Trained pets (mounts, pack animals, drakes+)	Players at the Britain bank, forum trade board
Dragon/lich loot, gems	NPC jewelers; players for good magic items

Decision points & common mistakes

• If a tame target’s MinTameSkill is more than ~25 below your skill, it teaches nothing — move up the table (skill gain needs challenge).
• If you keep dying while taming aggressive targets (drakes onward), tame with a tanked pet holding aggro, and stand behind it.
• If someone gifts you a dragon at ~80 taming, refuse it for training purposes: a pet you could never tame teaches you nothing and dies the moment it goes wild (control of high-end pets also depends on your skill). The classic stall is riding a gift dragon instead of grinding bulls.
• If you see multiple white wyrms, take them one at a time — they are casters and a pack of them area-bombs you off your own pet.
• Mistake: dungeon-taming too early. Wilderness targets up to bulls cover you to 77+ with no spawn pressure.
• Mistake: forgetting Taming grants no gear — budget your 1,000 gold for reagents and bandages on day one.
• Mistake: selling a much-traded pet as “fresh.” Previous owners stack +6.0 difficulty each; buyers with exactly enough skill will fail to control it.