Creature Handler (Game Mechanics)
Game Documentation - Creature Handler Mechanics
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PetsNew 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.
Training pets:
So you got your first pet eh? Congratulations! First thing you're going to want to do is train it in your 3 basic (or 4, if you're a Wookiee) commands. These commands are very simple: Attack: Makes the pet attack Follow me: Makes pet follow you Release: Sets your pet free So lets train them already! Click on the pet and open the radial, you'll see 3 new options, Store, Feed, and Train. Lets click Train. You'll see those 3 commands I mentioned. Click one of them. You will see a '?' appear in your text. this means the next thing you say will trigger this command. In other words if you click the 'Follow me' then say 'lets go' your pet will begin following you from then on when you say 'lets go' (Caps are important, and it's best to keep this on a Macro). So, you've trained your pets the 3 basic commands and now you want to name it? Well I hate being the bearer of bad news but you cannot name them until you can teach them 4 commands - meaning you will need either 'Creature Empathy I' or 'Creature Training I' or 'Creature Management I.' Once you get one of these, to name them you will need to re-teach them the commands, but this time with a Name in front of the command. For Example: 'Tiny lets go' 'Tiny attack' 'Tiny you're free' 'Tiny do a trick!' This will replace the creature's original name with 'Tiny' and will also give you some Creature Handler experience, about 134 depending on the pet.
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.
Here is a list of other commands that can eventually be taught to pets: Guard: Makes your pet attack anything that attacks you or that you attack. Stay: Makes the pet stay where you tell it. Patrol point: Adds a Patrol point to where you stand. Patrol: Makes your pet roam between patrol points, attacking any aggressive creatures that come close to it, or PC's of the Enemy faction. Clear Patrol Points: it clears all current patrol points, be sure to do this after your finished making your pet patrol. Follow Other: Makes your pet follow your target. Group: Makes your pet join your group. Befriend: Makes your pet accept orders from the person you have targeted when you say the command. Wedge Formation: Makes your pet go into a Wedge formation, which is useful when you get multiple pets. Column Formation: Makes your pet go into Column formation, which is useful when you get multiple pets. Trick1: Makes your pet do one of its tricks, costing you some mind points and healing its entire mind pool along with its mind wounds. Trick2: Same as Trick 1 except it has a neater graphic. Enrage Pet: Makes your pet go berserk making it do more damage but makes it also take more. Transfer: Transfers Ownership of pet to the person you have targeted. Only works on Other Creature Handlers. Embolden: Makes your pet braver (practically useless since your pets are willing to fight anything you tell them to unless they have changed this since beta) Storing Pets: As a Novice you can only hold 2 pets. will appear in your Data pad (CTRL+D if you use default controls) in Pet Storage devices. This thing will list its future stats and its current stats. To gain the ability to store more pets you must advance in the Creature Handler Tree. I will list the tree later in the list, so you can tell what you need to hold more. Calling Pets: Well, you're going to be calling and storing pets constantly. This is where all that harvesting is going to pay off. To call a pet you must be in either a City, in the area of a building you own, or in a camp. To call, just go to your data pad hold the left mouse-button over the creature till its radial opens, then click 'Call' your pet will appear near you. Advancing in the Creature Handler Profession: Ok, You got you a pet baby, and now your ready to advance on through the tree eh? But you don't know how to gain the experience? Well there are 3 ways: 1.Using your pet in Combat 2.Training and Naming a pet 3. Taming babies
Healing your Pet: In combat, your pet is going to get damaged. When it is damaged it will let you know. If it has Health/Action wounds it will say 'X Hungry!' (Replace X with pet name). Feeding the pet will fix this. I often get asked 'What do I feed it?' the answer is simple, anything you can eat in game: fruits, bugs, spice, it doesn't matter just because a creature is a carnivore doesn't mean you have to feed it meat. If it has Mind Wounds or damage, it will let you know by saying 'X play!' (replace X with the pet's name). This is just as simple as feeding it; just make the pet do Trick1 or Trick2 from the empathy tree (it's suggested that you train Empathy before other branches unless you like lots of down time). Also, storing and recalling your pet will bring it back full health.
Q: When my pet wants to play? What are they asking for? A: Using your pet's "trick" or "trick 2" command will sate their desire to play. This also has the side effect of healing your pet's Mind wounds as well as refilling their Mind pool. Q: I'm a CH and I keep getting a larger "?" when trying to train. What's up with that? A: That just means that your new creature didn't understand you. Keep trying. It may take a few tries, but eventually they'll get it. Q: My pet is losing Vitality. How do I fix that? A: You find a Bio-Engineer (BE) that can make Pet Vitality Packs. Be aware, however, that these can be expensive since they can't be factory produced. Also, know that each use of one of these devices will cause your pet to have a *permanent* loss of 1 point of vitality. They're really only useful if you've got a powerful pet that down some serious vitality. The change in the most recent patch took out a lot of the sting of pets losing vitality. They suffer absolutely not stat reductions until they're at less than 75%, which also makes that permanent loss much less of a bother. Q: About Pet Stims. What's the deal with them and where can I get them? A: They are a special kind of stim that can only be used on pets. They are different in that they require *no special skills* to use (and therefore give no xp either), and also work on a different timer than do normal medical stims, so a CH or Medic that has the medical skills to use normal stims can use both on his/her pet (or medical on themself and pet stims on their creature). These can be very expensive also, again due to the fact that they cannot be mass-produced. Plan on paying somewhere in the neighborhood of 1k-2k per stack of 12-20 depending on the quality and effectivness, and assuming you can find anyone to make them for you at all, of course.
Q: How do I heal my companion? A: You can use either Medical Stims, which require some degree of Medic skills, or Pet Stims wich have no skill pre-requisites.
Q: I bought bearded jax form the bazaar/vendor but I can't use it, options are examine, detroy and tame. When I try to tame it I get an error. So how does a Non-CH use a pet bought from the bazaar? A: You can't buy pre-trained pets from the bazaar; pets sold there are consider in "deed" form. You'll need to find someone with at least novice CH skills to tame and train it for you, at which point they'll be able to pass it back to you for you to control. Unfortunately, once the creature has been tamed it is in data format so can only be passed from hand to hand. Q: How do I know what my pre-trained pet's commands are? I can't seem to get it to do anything! A: If you look at your creature in your datapad, it will have the commands that it knows along with the verbage that it will respond to invoke that command listed. For example, it will have "Attack: Fluffy attack" and similar. Q: How do I name my pet? Do I have to wait for it to become fully grown? A: You do not have to wait. Any trained creature can be named as young as a baby. The way this is accomplished is using its name during training. You click on it, select "train" and then the command you'd like to teach it. Use its desired name as the first word of the command. After learning 4 commands this way, the pet will figure out you're calling it by name. For example, if you wanted to name your new Rancor "Fluffy", you could train the attack command as "Fluffy attack", the follow command as "Fluffy follow", and so on. On the fourth such command the Rancor would now have "(Fluffy)" above its head. Once a pet has been re-named, you can change the commands to whatever you like, omitting the name if you desire.
I think I read somewhere that all babies come in at 1/10 of their adult HAM. They then grow at 1/10 per 12 hour period from taming... so it takes 5 days from taming to reach maturity.
krowa - the current HAM and difficulty level are not proportional as you tried to understand them. The HAM starts as 10% of full grown and increases in 10% spurts (or should) until full grown. The difficulty level changes, but it doesn't grow by 1 for each cycle. Albino - sorry to tell you, but they do not grow regardless of being logged in. 2 weeks ago I had a mountain dewback, grand wrix, and greater sludge panther that were about 50% grown and did not increase a single point in HAM when I returned from vacation 10 days later. And since I only log in once a day, I only get a 10% increase per day. From what I've seen, pets will grow 10% every twelve hours if you have logged in recently. Logging in once a day gets me one cycle. I think there were times that I was logged in for 6 or more hours straight that I might have grown by 2 cycles, but don't quote me on that.
Unless the devs have changed it without telling us (not like they ever do that) pets grow once every 12 hours IF you are logged in. So the fastest way to get them to grow is to log in at least once every 12 hours. It doesn't matter if you call them, feed them or anything else. It is all based on you logging in once every 12 hours. Some people think that means they have to log in 12 hours from when they tamed the pet. That's not true either. You don't have to log in exactly 12 hours from when you tame them. You just need to log in once sometime during every 12 hour period after you tame them.
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