Animal Taming

Animal Taming lets you turn wild creatures into loyal pets — from a simple horse to a fully levelled Dragon. This page covers the taming process itself, how pet control and commands work, and what happens when things go wrong (low loyalty, death, or a lost pet). For pet levelling, abilities, feeding and bonding, see Beast Mastery. For everything a pet does once you own it (each order in detail, Strict Orders, friends and transfers, the pet windows, resurrection and release), see the Tamer's Guide.

Requirements to Tame ↑ top

Before you can start taming a creature, all of the following must be true:

Skill — your Animal Taming must be at least the creature's minimum taming requirement (see Tamables for the full list).
Follower slots — you need enough free follower slots for the creature. Every player has a maximum of 5 follower slots.
Previous owners — a creature can have at most 5 owners in its lifetime. Each previous owner adds +6.0 to the taming skill needed.
Subduing — some powerful creatures must first be beaten down to below 10% health before they will accept taming.
Special restrictions — a few creatures only accept tamers of a certain gender or race.

The Taming Process ↑ top

Use the Animal Taming skill and target the creature.
If the creature can anger, there is a chance it turns on you instead — the further your skill is above its requirement, the safer you are. At 20+ points above the requirement the anger chance bottoms out at 10%; at or below the requirement it is 95%.
If it does not anger, your character starts sweet-talking the creature. This takes 9–12 seconds (3–4 attempts of 3 seconds each).
At the end, a skill check decides success. The check ranges from 25 points below to 25 points above the creature's (owner-adjusted) requirement — so more skill means better odds.

During the attempt you must stay within 8 tiles, keep line of sight, and stay alive. If the creature takes any damage during the attempt, taming fails. After an attempt (success or fail) there is a 30 second cooldown before you can tame again.

Taming attempts also passively train your Animal Lore skill.

Controlling Your Pet ↑ top

There is no random "control chance" roll on UO Sagas. Instead, a pet simply obeys you if you meet its skill requirements — and refuses everything if you don't:

Your Animal Taming must be at least the pet's minimum taming requirement.
Your Animal Lore must be at least 80% of that requirement.
If the pet's loyalty drops below 25%, it ignores all commands until fed.

Common mounts and beasts of burden — Horse, Pack Horse, Pack Llama, Desert/Forest/Blizzard/Skadi Ostard, Necrophorus — skip the skill check entirely and can be controlled by anyone (only loyalty matters). Exception: a Necrophorus that rolled the Rage ability requires full taming skills, like a Nightmare.

Pet Commands ↑ top

Speak the command in-game, either to one pet by name or to all pets at once:

Command	Effect
`all follow me` / `[name] follow me`	Pet follows you
`all follow` / `[name] follow`	Pet follows a target you choose
`all kill` / `all attack`	Pet attacks a target you choose
`all guard me` / `[name] guard`	Pet guards you
`all stay` / `[name] stay`	Pet stays in place
`all stop` / `[name] stop`	Pet stops what it is doing
`all come` / `[name] come`	Pet comes to your position
`[name] drop`	Pack animal drops its load
`[name] friend`	Add a pet friend (can command the pet)
`[name] transfer`	Transfer ownership to another player
`[name] release`	Release the pet back into the wild
`[taming`	Opens the Taming Control window — all orders, combat range and Strict Orders in one panel

Most commands are also available from the pet's context menu (single-click the pet).

The Taming Control Window ↑ top

Instead of typing speech commands you can manage every pet from one panel: the [taming command opens a card per pet with one-click Kill, Guard, Follow and Stay buttons, a loyalty bar, the pet's combat range, and the Strict Orders toggle that makes a pet act only on your explicit commands. The Tamer's Guide covers the window, Strict Orders and what each order actually does.

Loyalty ↑ top

Loyalty is your pet's happiness. It slowly decays while the pet is out in the world and is restored by feeding (drop the right food on the pet — roughly +10 loyalty per successful feed).

Non-bonded pets: full loyalty drains in about 24 hours.
Bonded pets: full loyalty drains in about 48 hours.
Loyalty does not decay while a pet is stabled or being ridden.
Below 25% loyalty the pet shows distress and stops obeying commands.
At 0% loyalty the pet goes wild — the bond breaks and you lose it.

Feed your pets before logging off. See Beast Mastery for food types and the full loyalty table.

Pet Death and Recovery ↑ top

Bonded pets that die become ghosts and follow you. They can be resurrected with the Veterinary skill (bandages) or the magery Resurrection spell. Bond your pets — the safety alone is worth the wait (see Beast Mastery for bonding).

Non-bonded pets — and pets lost in other ways — are not gone forever on UO Sagas. The shard has a pet recovery system:

When a pet is killed, cut down by guards, goes wild from neglect, is released, or is otherwise removed, it is not deleted. It is moved into a recovery holding area instead.
Recovered-away pets are kept for 14 days, with their level, abilities and name intact.
Within that window, contact the staff (in-game help/Discord) — they can look up your lost pets and summon them back to you.
After 14 days the pet is permanently purged.

So if your levelled Dragon dies unbonded in a dungeon: don't panic, but don't wait two weeks either.