Creature Handler (Game Mechanics)
Game Documentation - Creature Handler Mechanics
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SomethingNew info from the Creature Handler Designer: emote-triggered pet animations! You can: /pet, /reassure, /nuzzle or /hug a pet and it will either perform a "happy" animation, or it will sit, or it will lie down. Some pets have a "sit trick" or two. Telling a pet to do trick1 or trick2 while it is sitting will make it do the sit-trick instead, if it has one. You can /bonk, /whap, /scold, /bad or /slap a pet and it will perform an "ashamed" animation. You can /pointat or /tap a pet to make it perform the 'alert' animation. Using /summon or /beckon on a pet will either make it look confused, or will make it follow you.
So now that you've successfully tamed a baby animal, the first thing you're going to want to do is train it some commands. As a Novice Creature Handler, you have access to three commands: Follow, Attack, and Store. Every time you tame something, you should immediately teach it all three of these (unless, of course, you're about to be chewed up by its parents). When you teach a pet a command, what you're doing is binding that action to a particular spoken phrase. Once you bind "Attack" to the phrase "Sic'em, Fido!" you can make your pet attack your lookat target simply by having your character say that phrase aloud (in this case: "Sic'em, Fido!"). To do this, choose the "Attack" sub-option under "Train" on your pet's radial menu. The radial menu will disappear, and a little question mark (?) will float off your pet's head. This indicates that it's waiting for you to speak the phrase you want to associate with this command. At this point, just make your character say "Sic'em, Fido!" If you're successful, you'll gain a little Creature Handling XP and you'll get the message "You have trained your pet a new command." If you fail, you'll get the message "Your pet doesn't understand you." In this case, choose "Attack" from the "Train" menu again, and then speak whatever phrase you wish to bind to the command again. Keep repeating the process until you're successful (it shouldn't take more than a few tries in most cases). Once you've bound this particular command to a spoken phrase, there's no need to use hotkeys or radial menus to issue the order to your pet. Now and in the future, simply speak the phrase (i.e. "Sic'em, Fido!") to command your pet. You can see the phrase that has been bound to each of your pet's commands by looking at its Pet Control Device in the Datapad (CTRL+D). This is the exact same system used for Droids and Faction Perk pets (like storm troopers). Rather than having to earn extra commands for Droids and NPC pets, however, you'll have access to all possible commands right away. If you start out four commands with the same word (i.e. "Bob attack," "Bob stay," "Bob release," "Bob group") then your pet's name will change to that first word (in this case, "Bob"). Note that, as a Novice Creature Handler you only have access to three commands. You'll need to advance and learn more if you want to name your creatures. Once a pet has learned its name, you can teach it again to assign different strings to those commands without causing it to lose its name (as long as you don't start four commands with the same word - unless you want to change its name). Keep in mind that there is a name filter in place, so you cannot have a pet named "Obiwan." The name filter doesn't provide feedback to the player, so if you're not seeing a name change after four commands, you might need to try something different. While it's tempting to train your pet with very short phrases (even single characters), I advise against doing so. Many players find shouts of "a," "a," f," "a," extremely annoying in open chat. A good alternative is to use the /tellpet command. Not only is this invisible to other players, but it has a greater range than just speaking aloud. Section 6 - Storing and Calling Your Pet Until you get the Pack Management skill, you can only have one pet out at a time. Before you can tame or call any additional pets, you'll need to Store the one that's out in your Datapad. You can do this by getting close to the pet and choosing "Store" from its radial menu, by choosing the "Store" option from the radial menu of its pet control device in your Datapad, or by using whatever phrase you've bound to its "Store" trained command. Voila! The pet will be safely stored. All of your pets will automatically store after a few minutes themselves if you logout or are disconnected, so there's no need to worry about an exploding router at your ISP causing you to lose your favorite pet. Pets will also auto-store if they're incapacitated in battle (unless they are quickly healed back to their feet). You cannot manually call or store pets if your character is in combat, however, and there's a 30 second timer on pet storage once a pet himself has left combat. You can call a pet out simply by choose "Call" from his pet control device in your Datapad. You must be in a public structure, a campsite, or outside in a city to call pets. Note that your skills determine how many pets you are allowed to have stored at once, in addition to how many you are allowed to have out at once. As a non-CH, you can only store two creature pets in your Datapad at a time. You'll need to advance in the CH profession to gain access to more pet storage slots. It is therefore important to budget your storage space efficiently. Particularly if you wish to use the Tame and Release method to gain Creature Handling XP (see Section 9). Finally, pets will grow (and increase in size and strength) the longer you have them. Pets grow whether you have them out in the world or have them stored in your Datapad. You must log in regularly for them to continue growing, but you don't have to feed them (or even call them) during that period. Pets grow a little about twice a day, reaching full adulthood in the neighborhood of five to seven days (if you're logging in regularly). So brand new pets probably won't be viable for serious combat until you've had them for a while. Section 7 - Using Your Pet in Combat Sooner or later, you're probably going to want to use your pet in combat. You can either order your pet to attack a target (by selecting the target and speaking whatever vocal command you bound to 'Attack'), or you can order the pet to Guard you (assuming you have earned the Guard command and given it to the pet) and then attack the target yourself. Pets who have been ordered to guard a player will automatically defend him if something adopts an aggressive posture toward him, so just causing a creature to attack you at this point will be enough for your pet to charge into the fray. Please note that pets do NOT automatically Guard their masters, so you will have to explicitly order them to do so (or they'll just stand there and watch you take a beating). Just like players, pets are incapacitated when one of their Health, Action, or Mind bars reaches zero. At this point, an enemy can execute a "coup de grace" (a.k.a. "deathblow") to kill the pet. This is a Bad Thing, and should be avoided. All creature pets have a statistic called "Vitality" that starts at 100/100 and decreases each time they receive a deathblow. When your pet reaches 75, 50, and 25 vitality, it will receive a corresponding decrease in its statistics (i.e. Health/Action/Mind). While you can restore some of the lost vitality with a Bio-Engineer's "vitality pack," doing so will decrease the maximum vitality. Thus, if a pet is killed enough it will eventually reach a point at which its stat loss cannot be recovered. Section 8 - Healing your Pet If you have at least the Novice Medic skill, you can heal your pet's damage with stimpacks, just as you would another player. Even if you have no medical skills, you can use Pet Stimpacks (which are made by Bio-Engineers) to keep your pet healthy in battle. This is extraordinarily helpful in most combat situations, and can often make the difference between an incapped/dead pet and a victorious pet. Always keep a few stimpacks or pet stimpacks on hand while traveling. Pets can be wounded like players, as well. If your pet takes a Health or Action wound, you can heal it by feeding the pet after battle. Your pet will think "(Fido) Hungry!" out loud when it has such a wound (if its name is 'Fido'). Pets will eat anything players can eat, so travel biscuits are just as good as melons for this (beverages cannot be used... only food). If the item of food has multiple charges, the pet will only consume one charge per feeding. Though it's not a prerequisite skill, I like to have at least Wilderness Survival I from the Scout tree, to gain access to the Forage ability. This gives you a pretty good chance of finding food for your pet in almost any outdoor area, which is great for healing pet wounds on the run. Even more useful is purchasing a factory crate of food from a Chef, who can experiment more charges into each treat. This way the crate itself will only take up one slot in your inventory, and you can pull a single multi-charge piece of food out at a time. If your pet takes a Mind Wound or battle fatigue, you'll need to Play with you pet. Your pet will think "Fido Play!" out loud when it has a Mind wound (if it's name is 'Fido'). In order to play with your pet, you'll need to have taught it one of the two pet Tricks (which you get by advancing to Creature Empathy I and Creature Empathy II). Simply say the phrase that you bound to the trick, and the pet will do it (and heal his Mind wounds). The second trick heals more wounds per use than the first, but it may take several uses of either trick to fully heal your pet (depending on how many Mind wounds it has).
There are three ways to gain Creature Handler XP: successfully taming a baby for the first time, teaching a new command to a pet for the first time, and having your pet contribute to the death of an NPC or creature. The non-violent means of Creature Handling advancement is "tame and release." Simply tame a creature, teach it every command that you have access to, then release it and find something else to tame. Keep in mind that this is a form of "grinding," and is both slow and mind-numbing. Still, if you have access to a lot of commands (and only need a few thousand XP for your next skill), you might decide to close the gap with a little tame and release. A faster (but riskier) method of advancement is using your pet in combat, which is by far the more normal method. You need to kill something that's powerful enough to be a challenge to your pet (not necessarily to you) to get decent amounts of XP this way. If the target's CL is less than half that of your pet, you'll get 1 XP from the victory. If you find that you're consistently earning 1 XP per kill, then you need to find something more challenging for your pet to hunt. If you're using a particularly powerful pet to advance, this might require finding a group to go big game hunting with. If you earn the Pack Management skill and start using two pets at once, it's important to note that your XP per kill will be divided by the current number of active pets. Section 10 - Mounts Certain types of pets can be trained as "mounts," which will allow the pet's owner to ride around on it. Needless to say, this is incredibly cool and highly recommended. Normal mount walking speed is faster than a player's running speed, and the mount equivalent of burst run (called "gallop") is faster than a player's burst run (and tends to last longer). You can't make just any pet into a mount, however. At this time, the only creatures that can be mounted are: Dewbacks (Tatooine), Bols (Dantooine), Kaadu (Naboo), Carrion Spats (Corellia), Falumpasets (Naboo), Humbabas (Corellia/Talus), and Brackasets (Dathomir). All variants of a mountable species will work (i.e. dewbacks, lesser dewbacks, mountain dewbacks). Entirely different species that are similar in appearance will NOT work (i.e. NOT bagerasets, bolmas, mawgax, etc). Anyone can own and use a mount (if they have enough skill to control it as a pet), but only a Creature Handler with the Group Management IV skill can teach it the "Mount" command. Non-CHs are limited to creature pets CL 10 and below, but fortunately each currently mountable species has such a variant in the wild (lesser dewbacks, lesser plains bols, motley kaadu, carrion spats, plodding falumpasets, and lowland brackasets). A pet has to reach a certain size (which varies by creature) before the Train As Mount command becomes available in its training menu. In most cases this will be around 50-75% of its total adult growth, though some of the larger variants (like giant carrion spats and savage humbabas) may be mountable much soon. Giant carrion spats in particular can be made into mounts immediately after taming, making them a popular choice among Creature Handler salesmen. When a giant carrion spat reaches a certain size, it can even become too large to be used as a mount. When this happens, the owner will receive a one time pop-up box asking if he wishes to stop its growth, or no longer have it function as a mount. This is your only chance to decide, so make sure you choose carefully. You can climb aboard a mount by choosing "Climb On Mount" from its radial menu, or targeting it and typing /mount. You can dismount by choose "Dismount" from the creature's radial menu, or typing /dismount. You can still engage in combat while mounted, but you will be unable to use any of your special profession moves. In addition to being limited to default attacks, your mount will drastically slow down to prevent you from attacking while keeping out of your target's range (a.k.a. "kiting"). While mounted, you can give your mount a momentary boost of speed by typing /gallop. You cannot attack while galloping, but you can still be attacked. Since you cannot attack, however, the normal speed restriction while in combat is not in effect (making this a handy way to escape from tight situations). After a few moments your mount will become "winded" and return to its normal running speed while it rests (just as with a player's burst run ability). You can end the gallop earlier by using the /gallopstop command (for example, if you are already galloping and wish to stop to engage in combat).
There are various strategies for creating pet commands. While you can make all pets respond to the same commands, it would be useful to make different sets of commands, particularly when you call call 2 or 3 pets. A tank pet that is slow to reach a target could mean an faster attack support pet arrives and hits first, thus taking more damage than is wanted. Commands may be based on pet type or by pet use. Many people simply make one- to three-letter abbreviations for their pets, e.g. a-attack, f-follow, sa2-special attack 2. To create commands based on pet type you might have commands like cata, catf, catgr for a particular type of cat to attack, follow or group. That way, if you have two cats out they will peform the same actions together. If different pets' primary function is to be a tank, you may want all your pet tanks to respond to the same command regardless of what kind of pet it is. Whether graul or rancor, if they are the tank, their commands might be tanka, tankf, and tankgr. The default one- to three-letter commands might be reserved for mounts if they are out more often than other types of pets.
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