Pets Unbonding & Skill Loss.

MissE

In relation to this thread: Recovering Power Scrolls from pets and how difficult it is to get scrolls for pets another issue is this:

Last night I was doing Miasma with my greater beetle (one of only two pets that I actually have 120 tactics and wrestle on, and it unbonded with the the normal text saying 'your beetle decides it doesn't want a master' etc

I had lored the beetle about 2 mins before this happened and it was 'wonderfully happy so I have no idea why it unbonded.  I have 107 natural tame/vet/lore and 13 of each on a ring to take it to 120 skill.  Never had a pet unbond like that before.

What concerned me was firstly that now we are spending millions and millions on scrolls pets should NOT unbond instantly without some kind of message saying that they are unhappy. @Kyronix can we please get some kind of message to say 'your pet is not up to strength as it is hungry' or something similar so that this sort of thing doesn't happen?  It can be done as it says something like that for bane dragons when they need feeding.  While losing a pet was always a disaster, losing a scrolled pet after spending millions gps on it and hours doing the pet training is tragic.  A simple message would  not be game breaking surely?

I dragged miasma off so that I could retame the thing and got it out of the labyrinth and found much to my horror that all the training I had done on it was pretty much destroyed.  It had been maxed on ALL skills, now it is:



Has this changed?  Last time I retamed an unbonded pet, years ago, it lost about 2-3 points in trained skill not 30% or more.  I mean ok, that is like hours and hours and hours of work to redo over an unexplainable game mechanic that allows a pet to go from wonderfully happy to unbonding in the  space of 2 mins.

Not a very happy tamer this morning at all.

MissE

Lex

Don't forget that it might get hit by the patch99 "release/tame" code too and nerf it to the ground xD
(well hopefully not)

The skill loss is dumb. Losing pets is dumb too cause you can lose it from lag if you forgot to feed it, and accidently issue lots of commands during lag.

Margrette

I asked about this issue two days ago in the Test Center subforum in the thread for discussing the publish that is currently on Test Center.  Have not received a reply yet.

https://forum.uo.com/discussion/comment/482/#Comment_482

MissE

Well you can see above what it's skills went down to. It was 120/120 etc on all skills.  I am NOT happy, this is total b/s

Margrette

It's weird that poisoning didn't take a hit.  Or did it?

MissE

nope that is it's lore i took just after it was retamed. Poisoning stayed at gm.

Garth_Grey

Except for the Poisoning, that looks an awful lot like VvV stat loss. Any chance you were orange and didn't know it ? I'm going to assume the beetle didn't die at some point ? Weird, regardless.

MissE

I was 120/120/110/110/100  110 on parry which now doesn't show as the wrestle has dropped below 100 (no idea what it's parry will be now it was 110) and med and focus were both 110 and show the same.

MissE

Garth_Grey said:

Except for the Poisoning, that looks an awful lot like VvV stat loss. Any chance you were orange and didn't know it ? I'm going to assume the beetle didn't die at some point ? Weird, regardless.

Naa never been vvv, I was in miasma. And no, the beetle hadn't died in ages. It's skills were max.

Pawain

MissE said:

Well you can see above what it's skills went down to. It was 120/120 etc on all skills.  I am NOT happy, this is total b/s

The skills will go back to the caps.  All pets lose skills when you release them and re tame.  

Do pets really need to lose their loyalty?  Why is this a needed part of the game.

Instead of unbonding, why not make loyalty decrease the pets ability to stay on target.  Pet gets unhappy, pet walks to the owner and stands there instead.

MissE

Yeah I know the skills will train back up, but my point is they shouldn't drop by a third or more when the thing goes wild and is retamed within 5 mins. They never used to lose all their trained skills on going wild.  I had a cu went wild yrs ago because I didn't feed it and kept giving it commands, it was gm on everything including heal (this was before the tame revamp) and after retaming it had lost about 2-3 points of skill.  Not a third or more.

Ok if I released it and it was wild for an hour or so then yeah maybe let it's skills reduce x amount per each 5 mins it is wild.  I guess it is just another thing to aggravate a person, as I said 2 mins before it went wild it was 'wonderfully happy' seems to be no rhyme or reason for it to go wild as it did.

Mervyn

https://forums.uo.com/page/tos
Applying rule 7 (by Mariah)

Ivenor

See above

SwordofExcalibur

The Devs have touched on this subject before in another forum related to UO.

Pets go through loyalty checks every so often during game play at timed intervals and through issuing commands.

I have lost a White Cu before while training resists because I issued too many commands at one time, had on mismatched gear (taming was 101 during) and wasn’t paying attention to it barking at loyalty failures.  This is not a bug, nor has one been found (yet lol.)

This happened during my newb days.  I retamed the Cu but experienced stat loss.  It was frustrating.  But taming is fun, so I didn’t give up.

10 months later, I have never lost one pet since, mainly because I listen to pets sounds.  It helps if you turn on sound too, otherwise, you have to watch when your pet bucks at you.

I’m also careful to watch loyalty and just feed occasionally, failure or not.

Its super easy to manage pet loyalty once you learn the ropes.

As far as making the game more difficult, the large stat loss is punishment enough for making a mistake.  

UO is known for its harsh rules in game-play, something unheard of in the modern gaming age.

The idea is to balance challenge and fun with throwing your keyboard at the wall and breaking it to logout.

Mistakes happen.  I dislike pet loyalty checks, but they are totally manageable and easy.

Mervyn

Continuing application of rule 7

Ivenor

See above.

Ivenor

SwordofExcalibur said:

(...)
Pets go through loyalty checks every so often during game play at timed intervals and through issuing commands.

I have lost a White Cu before while training resists because I issued too many commands at one time, had on mismatched gear (taming was 101 during) and wasn’t paying attention to it barking at loyalty failures.  This is not a bug, nor has one been found (yet lol.)

This happened during my newb days.  I retamed the Cu but experienced stat loss.  It was frustrating.  But taming is fun, so I didn’t give up.

10 months later, I have never lost one pet since, mainly because I listen to pets sounds.  It helps if you turn on sound too, otherwise, you have to watch when your pet bucks at you.

I’m also careful to watch loyalty and just feed occasionally, failure or not.

Its super easy to manage pet loyalty once you learn the ropes.
(...)

So, if I understand it well, the basic is feed them to the gills when they are out of the stable? And, in a partially related question: pets in Stable stay "frozen" happines-wise, or they must be taken out of the mothballs ciclically to "feed & air" them?
TIA!
Ivenor

SwordofExcalibur

I usually slap food on the pet if I am in a long battle or in long training sessions as part of my skills rotation.  I’m not obsessive about it though.

I play with sounds on and music off and have a playlist on.  I’ve learned to listen to pet cues when they buck.  That just comes with practice.

I also hit F5 where my Lore macro is in my rotation, usually after a long battle.

I halted with spamming the All-Follow and All-Kill macros when the pet fails to switch target, wont move due to mobs blocking it, or out of frustration with the pet.  Spamming commands seems to beg a loyalty check lol.

Also, I swap gear.  The smartest thing I did was have 240 real skill on Tame/Lore.  That sets your success to control any pet like to 95% or so.  May be higher.  Read that 10 months ago.

On stabling, I never saw the Devs say loyalty checks happen in stable.  They only said it was outside in real time, over time the 24 hour real time day.  It’s searchable on other forums.

Ivenor

SwordofExcalibur said:

1) Also, I swap gear.  The smartest thing I did was have 240 real skill on Tame/Lore.  That sets your success to control any pet like to 95% or so.  May be higher.  Read that 10 months ago.

2) On stabling, I never saw the Devs say loyalty checks happen in stable.  They only said it was outside in real time, over time the 24 hour real time day.  It’s searchable on other forums.

1) I use a 120al/120at/120vet and till now never had a loyalty failure. Lost some pets (even unbounded) in battle (sigh!), but they never have gone wild on me till now.
2) Hmmm. I ask because I noted that I stabled a well feeded White Dragon as WH, but when called it out with the BoPT it rated only EH...
Cheers
Ivenor

SwordofExcalibur

Hmm.  It’s possible then, perhaps.  I’d have to go back and dig up that thread.  

Tim

A hint if you use agents on ec client from UOs own wiki Agents Settings in the Enhanced Client – Ultima Online

Hot Tip
A less obvious use of this agent is to feed your pet! For a greater dragon set is as follows:- add by type – target a stack of raw ribs or other appropriate meat in your backpack, set the quantity to 1, set default container – click the cursor on your pet. A single click on the restock agent button will now feed your pet one piece of meat from your stack should he lose loyalty in the middle of a battle, provided of course that you have a stack of the correct food in your backpack.

but of corse we all know about that so feel free to ignore me like everyone else 

Violet

Our guild is filled with tamers, none of us have ever had a pet go wild that wasn't our own fault.  Like SwordofExcalibur, we listen to cues. One thing we don't do is feed, unless we have left them somewhere for a very long time and loyalty has dropped to rather happy.  Another thing we don't do is spam commands. We have tried to replicate this bug, unsuccessfully.

Ivenor

Violet said:

Our guild is filled with tamers, none of us have ever had a pet go wild that wasn't our own fault.  Like SwordofExcalibur, we listen to cues. One thing we don't do is feed, unless we have left them somewhere for a very long time and loyalty has dropped to rather happy.  Another thing we don't do is same commands. We have tried to replicate this bug, unsuccessfu

Why don't you "auto-feed" them, regardless of the situation? Fear that the Pets become overweight and lazy?
Seriuosly, why?

MissE

Mervyn said:

https://forums.uo.com/page/tos
Applying rule 7

Did I miss something?  Not sure what these posts are for, anyways, no idea why my pet unbonded, as I said, was wonderfully happy and 2 mins later unbonded.  I have had a tamer 12 yrs or longer, (in fact I have 5 tamers) and I was doing NOTHING different in my farming miasma than I have since the mob was put in game.   Maybe it was just a hickup, who knows.

Anyways, the point of this post is that with the amount of money we are required to spend on pets now, it would be nice to actually GET A MESSAGE if the pet is unhappy.  When using the bane dragon you get one once it needs feeding, can't see a reason why we can't  have something similar for all pets.  It would certainly assist in preventing unwanted unbonding. 

Poo

lost my Frost Dragon last week the very same way.
im a 120 real skill and i dont play with sound on.
i was having some sort of lag issue im not sure if it was computer, internet or the Shadowguard but i had a spell where it seemed i was going through thick mud, gave a couple orders and bam, pet wild.
retamed and left, pet took a hit in everything.
now, with a 120 real skill on a pet that is what.... 106 to control?
really they should not go wild, the control change with that set up is 99%
that should be the perk for slogging through all the months to get to 120 real skill and then invest all the time and money into making the pet.
at any rate, ive been doing this for over 20 years and this is the first time i have ever had a pet go wild.
so my play style has not changed so something in the game changed.
i feed my pets regular and i lore them regular to make sure everything is going good and check skills and such, nothing was different when i lost my Frost Dragon.

i had to take a couple days off playing UO after because i was soooooo ticked off.

MissE

@Poo, don't want to say glad it happened to you too, as I am not, but at least I know there could be some reason for it if it happened to you as well.  I watched a Greater Dragon do it to a friend a little while back in the Grizzle peerless in Bedlam (since the pet revamp) one sec the dragon was fine the next it unbonded, and he hadn't been giving it any instruction, nor spamming it at all etc.  I figured it was maybe due to the goo that thing spits out, but the GD was on full health and fed so perhaps not.  My alliance leader has said he has had a pet unbond the same way.  So who knows maybe there is a problem somewhere, I guess wait and see how many more reports there are.

Ivenor

Hmmm... could it depends too by the original alignment of the Pet?
I mean, is it possible that originally "evil" pets could have the tendency to repeal more easily their taming & Master when under heavy stress, as, eg., in Combat?
Just a tought...
Cheers
Ivenor

Margrette

@Poo and @MissE, did your pets that went wild see any change in their stats and resists?   Have you been able to retrain their skills?

Mariah

MissE said:

Mervyn said:

https://forums.uo.com/page/tos
Applying rule 7

Did I miss something?  Not sure what these posts are for, anyways, no idea why my pet unbonded, as I said, was wonderfully happy and 2 mins later unbonded.  I have had a tamer 12 yrs or longer, (in fact I have 5 tamers) and I was doing NOTHING different in my farming miasma than I have since the mob was put in game.   Maybe it was just a hickup, who knows.

Anyways, the point of this post is that with the amount of money we are required to spend on pets now, it would be nice to actually GET A MESSAGE if the pet is unhappy.  When using the bane dragon you get one once it needs feeding, can't see a reason why we can't  have something similar for all pets.  It would certainly assist in preventing unwanted unbonding. 

Apologies for the confusion, in future I will sign moderation edits I may feel obliged to make

Max_Blackoak

the same thing happened to me a while back.
I was running 120 real skill taming, lore, vet and had a 4 slot lesser hiryu with bushido and goo kill the undead champ spawn in deceit. During level 2, my pet all of a sudden went wild in the middle of thickest spawn. I had not spammed commands at it previously, the only thing I did when it went wild was I told it to all follow me all guard me and bam it went wild. It had been wonderfully happy a couple of minutes before.
I was on the same screen the entire time. It happened in that large room before the stairs down to the next level.
I was able to retame the pet and take it back to the stables to re-bond.

MissE

Margrette said:

@ Poo and @ MissE, did your pets that went wild see any change in their stats and resists?   Have you been able to retrain their skills?

I posted above what happened to my beetles skills with a screenie. It was fully trained and all skills at max ie 120/120 upon retaming within 2-3 mins of it going wild its skills dropped back to 84/120 etc.  For some reason poisoning, med, focus stayed at 100 and 110 respecitvely, perhaps as those skills don't show in the lore gump as xxx/yyy but just xxx.  Not sure what it's parry will be at until I get it back to gm (100/120) as parry has disappeared, but I suspect it will be 110 where it was before going wild as it also only displays as xxx.

Its STATS didn't change ie hit points, dex, int etc

You can retrain them to the original levels it just takes the same amount of time it took you originally to get em trained back up.