Creature Handler Archive
Thread: Learning abilities faster?
My fastest way is to find the lowest level pets with specials that you can. Bring up three of them and DO NOT group with them. Attack something several levels above the pets (but easy enough to take yourself) and send in the pets to get at least one hit. Lairs are also good. Send pets against a lair and pick off the spawns. Lower level pets have to gain more "taming levels" but they gain them so fast that they are the easiest. And being able to have three working at a time increases the learning rate. This really only works for L1 skills though. L2 skills might be able to be done similar but in pairs since the skills tend to come off higher tames. L3 skills just plain take time to learn.
Vuldranye
I find it goes faster in a grinding group... especially if there is at least one CL 80. Also, grinding 2 or 3 low CL pets at the same time seems faster to me.
That said, if you have a choice between two creatures with the same ability, use the lower level one.
If you end up grinding a real low level pet, tank for it. The hardest part about grinding a CL 1 pet is that it gets incapped... a lot!
If you are hunting solo with a low level pet (CL 20 or lower) get the level 15 missions that the newbie towns have on their terminals and grind on them... with your pet ungrouped. You can grind 2 or 3 pets at a time this way.
If you have a pet of a decent CL and a lower level pet that you can call at the same time, you can take normal missions for your CL and get both decent pet xp and decent ch xp.
Have your pets attack lairs once they are empty.
Short answer: use the pet to kill as many mobs as you can.
It's pretty much a random process, and I think the mechanism of learning abilities is still mostly unknown. It's not 100% tied to maturity level (since I've learned abilities at rollover, midway between rollovers, and just about everywhere in between). It does seem to be tied to xp grants, since I've never seen an abilty learned in the middle of combat (although I'm usually too busy to watch the combat spam that closely). I'm figuring that each xp grant has a chance of learning the ability, with the odds going up as the total training xp of the pet gets higher. It might be total number of "kills" done by the pet. The odds may also be tied with the ability level (so it takes more xp/kills for an L2 to be a "sure thing" than an L1).
Lets say, for the sake of argument, that the odds of learning an ability is equal to training xp / 2000. You kill a low-level mob, and earn 200 training xp. There's a 0.1% chance you learn the ability. The next kill gives another 200 training xp for 400 total, giving you a 0.2% chance to learn the ability. This continues until you eventually get a good roll and learn the ability. For this to really work, the pet would have to remember the total xp, so if it rolled over at 5k, when it's at 1k after the first rollover, your odds are 6000 / 2000, or 3%.
Looking at those numbers, it's probably not quite that bad in the actual game.I'm just trying to throw out a possible implementation that could've been used.
Maisland wrote:
If you end up grinding a real low level pet, tank for it. The hardest part about grinding a CL 1 pet is that it gets incapped... a lot!
Vuldranye wrote:
Maisland wrote:
If you end up grinding a real low level pet, tank for it. The hardest part about grinding a CL 1 pet is that it gets incapped... a lot!
A great way to level CL1 pets is to send them against a low level lair. The spawns will attack you and then you can waste the lair. I was getting one full level or more per lair with a pair of kreetle on Tatooine.
Vuldranye
I have noticed something, and perhaps the community can help verify my suspicion on this.
If you send your flewt against flewts, or your dewback against dewbacks, YOU get the aggro, not the pet.
I've seen this happen with hermit spiders as well.
This basically allows you to auto-tank for your critter. With the flewts and hermit spiders this is VERY handy as they are quite fragile.
hmm, i haven't noticed it but a friend was saying that squalls *always* go for her and not her pet, i bet her pet at that time was a squall. i'll test this out, you've made me curious!
SioBabble wrote:
I have noticed something, and perhaps the community can help verify my suspicion on this.
If you send your flewt against flewts, or your dewback against dewbacks, YOU get the aggro, not the pet.
I've seen this happen with hermit spiders as well.
This basically allows you to auto-tank for your critter. With the flewts and hermit spiders this is VERY handy as they are quite fragile.
KMad wrote:
hmm, i haven't noticed it but a friend was saying that squalls *always* go for her and not her pet, i bet her pet at that time was a squall. i'll test this out, you've made me curious!
SioBabble wrote:
I have noticed something, and perhaps the community can help verify my suspicion on this.
If you send your flewt against flewts, or your dewback against dewbacks, YOU get the aggro, not the pet.
I've seen this happen with hermit spiders as well.
This basically allows you to auto-tank for your critter. With the flewts and hermit spiders this is VERY handy as they are quite fragile.
This is generally true and I managed to level a couple of womp rats very rapidly by sending them to kill more womp rats. But this is not true of every species, especially those which have a "cannibal" varient - dewbacks, for instance, will happily much on other dewbacks.
At the end of the day much depends on how you fight whether you grup or solo, what skills you have, etc, etc. Best bet is to not to be afraid to experiment.
I tend to use a combination of the above tactics depending on the situation.
Oh, and since no one has mentioned it yet, using different attack commands for multiple pets allows you to do things like send in the higher level pets first to take aggro then sending in the tiny pets to get XP off the heavier mobs. Especially useful when you have a mid and low level baby to train.
GFoyle wrote:
Oh, and since no one has mentioned it yet, using different attack commands for multiple pets allows you to do things like send in the higher level pets first to take aggro then sending in the tiny pets to get XP off the heavier mobs. Especially useful when you have a mid and low level baby to train.
i am always doing that! in certain pet combos, i re-train the attack command to "dkill" instead of "kill" and put a /pause 2; /tellpet dkill into the my misc macro. my macro named misc i have tied to the - on numpad and i change it based on what pets are out, put in /tellpet stun etc.
i did not know until this week that you can tie macros to your numpad (or any key) and therefore not need the icon to take up a space on your toolbar, i think i found that out on this board. wowsa that has changed my life!!! my whole guild was laughing at me cuz i kept going on about how great this new (for me) discovery was 
GFoyle wrote:
This is generally true and I managed to level a couple of womp rats very rapidly by sending them to kill more womp rats. But this is not true of every species, especially those which have a "cannibal" varient - dewbacks, for instance, will happily much on other dewbacks.
I'm CL58 now, MCH/MBE, and have no combat skills what so ever. I have a Tuskan Rifle or something like that I can use and I raise low level critters fighting Varactyl and Bantha on Kashykk. I can attack and hold aggro, taking minimal damage since I have armor from my Novice Ranger class, and heal far faster than I take damage since I have a few medical skills.
The moral of the story kids is that you don't need allot, if any, knowledge to use a weapon. My pets caused the bulk of the damage since I useually keep a pet near the level of thetarget out. However, now that I've started training high level pets, I have to agree that joining a grinding group is the best option. Just remember to be courtiouse and not automaticly assume the size of a full grown Graul or Rancor would cause an annoyance in the group.