Animal Taming

This article may need cleanup to meet quality standards.
Please help improve this if you can. The Discussion page may contain suggestions.

Animal Taming is a combat skill which provides the ability to tame certain creatures. Animal Lore is also necessary in order to control creatures that you tame. Some creatures are categorized as beasts and also require the Beastmastery skill in order to tame and control. Without the appropriate Animal Lore or Beastmastery you may be able to tame a creature but it may not listen to your commands.

In order to tame, you need to equip a weapon called a crook and use the ability of it to tame a creature. By default, the ability is bound to the Q hotkey. You can buy a crook at any carpenter shop for 1 .

Control Slots

The number of creatures you can have actively following you is determined by the number of control slots available. Every player has 5 available control slots whether you are a tamer or not. Currently, there is no method to gain more. When taming, bear in mind that a horse currently being ridden counts against this number (but not while dismissed). A horse is currently the only pet that can be dismissed into a statue.

Stables

You can store your pets at any stable within the world. It cost 50 in order to stable a pet. However, withdrawing a pet from the stables is free. Currently, the maximum amount of pets you can stable is 14. Every player, whether they are a tamer or not, has the same amount of stable slots. There is no way to increase the number of stable slots available. Additionally, stables are not localized to a region or city. Meaning that, if you stable a pet in one city, you can withdraw the same pet from a different city.

Pet Menu Interactions

You can interact with your pet by right-clicking on them. The following options are available depending on the type of pet:

Inspect - Brings up a paper doll character sheet for the pet. This displays the pets stats and gives you the ability to lock, increase, or decrease stats based on your choice. (However, this is currently not working as intended and has no effect on the pets stats).
Rename - Allows you to rename a pet.
Release - This will release the pet back into the wild. Once a pet is released it cannot be tamed again by anyone.
Dismiss - This option is only available on horses at this time. Dismissing a horse will turn it into a statue and place it in your backpack.
Open Pack - This option is only available on pack horses at this time. In order to turn a horse into a pack horse, you must apply a saddle bag to it.

Commands

If you open your skill book and select Animal Taming, there is a skill associated with it called command pet. You can use this skill to tell your pets to attack without using the chat command. If you click on an individual pet with the skill first, it will command only that pet to attack instead of making them all attack. Additionally, if you use the skill and click on the somewhere on the ground, it will tell your pets to move to that location. This is very convenient when your pets are in the way of a corpse or a doorway that you are having trouble clicking on. Also, this skill is useful when you are dismounted and want to attack with your pet(s) but do not want to command your horse to attack. However, the command has a 1-sec global cooldown. The chat based commands do not have cooldowns.

Chat based taming commands are: All Follow, All kill, All attack, All Stay, All Stop, All Guard [Me]. You can also use an individual pet's name to command just one instead of saying all.

You can create custom hotbar abilities for taming commands.

NPC Trainers

The following NPCs are generally located at the stables and can train your animal taming skill to 30 for 3 :

Creatures

Required Animal Taming/Animal Lore	Creatures	Control Slots	Location/Comments
0	Beetles	1	Jhalir
0	Rats	1
0	Rabbits	1	Most starting zones
0	Chicken	1	Most starting zones
0	Turkeys	1	Most starting zones
0	Snakes	1	Barren Lands, around the Gatekeeper and along the path to Oasis
0	Sand Snakes	1	Jhalir
4.1	Giant Rats	1	Most starting zones
4.1	Bats	1	Black Forest
23.1	Hind	1	Most starting zones; Hind slow down 45+ but quantity helps compensate
23.1	Fox	1	Upper Plains
23.1	Wolves	1
29.1	Horses	1	Most starting zones; Dark Brown horses are in the Upper Plains and Light Brown are in the Southern Rim
39.1	Black Bears	1	Most starting zones
41.1	Brown Bears	1	Most starting zones; very low population in Helm
50+	Crabs	3	Mer Beach crabs have 7+ spawn points but a slow respawn time; it is also Guarded. The Eastern Range Peninsula beach is in the Wilderness and has 3 spawn points with a respawn time of only a few minutes.
53.1	Black Wolves	1	Very low population in Eldeir. Crossroads, Pyros Landing, Oasis or Valus have better spawns.
53.1	Grey Wolves	1	Very low population in Eldeir. Crossroads, Pyros Landing, Oasis or Valus have better spawns.
53.1	Desert Wolves	1	Jhalir
59.1	Crocodile	1	Black Forest
59.1	Great Harts	1	Most starting zones. Good success from 61.
59.1	Grizzly Bears	1	Most starting zones
65.1	Coyotes	1	Most starting zones.
71.1	Elk	1	Located on Sacred Isle, south of Lake Tethys, near Mer Beach by Helm, and the Eastern Range Peninsula.
75.1	Dire Wolf	4	Serpent's Pass Wolves Den. A Rabid Wolf has a rare chance to spawn as a Dire Wolf.
76.3	Dire Bear	4	Northern Denir.
??	Giant Crabs	4	The Eastern Range Peninsula beach is in the Wilderness and has 3 spawn points with a respawn time of only a few minutes. Each crab has a very rare chance of spawning as a Giant Crab.
93.9	Ancient Crocodile	4	The Black Forest. Extremely rare.

Taming Guide

Animal Taming Skill Level	Creatures	Location/Comments
29.1-41.1	Horses	Most Starting Zones. Save the horses by dismissing them and turning them into a statue and you can sell them to players for decent silver early on. You can also tame Black Bears at 39.1.
41.1-59.1	Brown Bears	Most Starting Zones. At 53.1 you can also tame all types of wolves in addition to Brown Bears. You can also continue to tame Horses and Black Bears until 59.1.
59.1-71.1	Great Harts, Grizzly Bears	Most Starting Zones. At 65.1 you can also tame coyote.
71.1-84.6	Elk, Coyote, Great Harts, Grizzly Bears, Crabs, Emperor Scorpions	Elk are very scarce. So you will have to tame Coyote/Great Harts/Grizzly Bears as well as Elk until 84.6. This skill range is considered by most tamers to be the worst part of the grind from 1-94; this is due to there being a severe lack of animals that require skill level 70+. Therefore, the majority of your gains will be on animals which require skill level 59.1. This will be a very slow process all the way to 84. It's not completely unheard of to tame 75+ animals without a single gain--just keep pushing! The new taming requirement for Crabs is not yet known. Previously, they required 84.6 but it has been lowered in the latest patch. The best place to tame Crabs is at the beach on the Eastern Range Peninsula. Emperor Scorpions do a lot of damage and are aggressive creatures; they also require Beastmastery.
84-94.1	Huntresses	These spawn at the Spider's Nest in the Black Forest and require Beastmastery. Their spawn rate has been recently increased as of the latest patch.
94.1-100	Wyverns, Dreads	Wyvern's spawn at Wyvern's Rest; they hit incredibly hard and cast poison as well as energy bolt. Dreads require 95.4 and spawn in the Oasis but are incredibly rare.

For a list of beasts and details on the Beastmastery skill, visit their respective pages.

Helpful Tamer Tips

If you train Healing and Animal Lore to 60 each, you can cure poison on your pet with bandages. If you train them to 80 each, you can resurrect your pets with bandages.
Pets can also be resurrected using the Resurrect spell.
Even if a pet is not tamed, you can still resurrect it. However, you must flag chaotic in order to do so. You will lose -8 Karma.
When taming aggressive creatures, it is easiest to have another pet attack it in order to get aggro. Once it has aggro, put the pet on follow and it will go passive-aggressive and will not attack back. Then you can proceed to tame the aggressive creature while healing the pet that is tanking it. This not only makes it easier but also allows you to get extra Animal Lore and Healing gains if healing with bandages.
If a creature is attacked by another creature or a player while you are trying to tame it, it will tell you that the creature is too angry to be tamed. It is not possible for a player to not attack back even if they do not have a weapon equipped. So the creature must be kited or tanked by another players pet that is on follow and passive-aggressive.
If you stay behind a tree, an aggressive beast will lose line of sight and will not attack you. However, you can still tame it.
If an aggressive beast chases you, you can lure it around for a little bit and it will eventually give up on you leaving it much easier to tame.