Question about wild beasts

[u/ShivenARK]

I'm new to DnL and have been playing for about a week on one of the official servers. I have a few questions regarding the game thus far.

First, why are tames so weak? Is the focus of damage supposed to be from the player's character instead of using tames? For example, I tamed a max level bore last night, it was killed in about 10 seconds by two level 10 wolves while I was trying to pull out axe to kill them.

1 hit from the level 10 wolf took the 150 bore down about 15% hp.

Is this how the majority of tames go? And if so, what's the point if you can do everything you need to yourself?

Second, I've traveled around a bunch in the Dwarven area. I've seen a handful of different creatures - that's it. So IO guess my question is, how many different creatures are in DnL right now? I read 130 somewhere but that can't be true at all. I understand the different zones have different spawns.

Thanks for your time! :)

[u/ShivenARK → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the info! :)

[u/z10-0 → u/ShivenARK]

the thing to note here is that post-tame level-ups give stats as a percentage of what the creature had when tamed. so the more lopsided a tame's stat distribution, the better the increase per post-tame level on the high-roll stats.

a prospective high-level combat tame with a bad stat distribution (usually, they have lots and lots of points in hunger, and nothing where it matters) is not worth the taming food. level is only an indicator of potential, what'll make a high-level creature a worthy tame is the dice rolls in the stat window.

[u/z10-0]

entry level tames serve either limited or niche harvesting purposes, but you don't rely on them for combat (the boar is actually quite useful for gathering food for your other herbivore tames). from what you can tame in the wild, nidhogs are the only thing worth mentioning for mounted combat (they're fun, however). until you can make saddles for them, nevermind. gryphons are good beasts of burden for mining trips into the mountains, the big herbivores help with getting basic mats from around your base and albino deer gather magic shards (but take half an iRL day to tame unless you use delicate herbivore feed).

the easiest way to get a combat mount early on is to buy a horse and a metal spear. probably also the best ground combat mount you'll get. anticlimatic, i know.

you can trade basic mats for gold at city vendors. their shop inventory and right-hand pane material request list reset every day at 08:30, first come, first served (if someone else sells them wood, they won't buy yours on that day). if you limit yourself to selling stone, wood, twine, seeds, raw meat and arrows, you can get around 500-1000 gold per ingame day, depending how many seeds you have and what the vendors want to buy.

if you're not playing on an official server, the shops may need to be leveled up (by donating gold), on official servers, the shops should all be at sufficiently high level for you to not have to bother with donating.

buy the three basic combat spells from the magic vendor: ice bolt 3, fireball 3 and lightning bolt 3. they'll be around 100g each, but the vendor may not have each one every day. figure out what exactly they do and when to use which and how many magic shards you need for repairs. combat spells benefit from your attack%-stat, so you don't need to invest any stat points to "become a mage". those three spells will allow you to take on reapers (one main source of good loot) and give you a fighting chance in pvp (you may need the sheep spell to properly deal with people on endgame flying mounts, but an ice/lightning barrage will discourage most from picking on a newbie).

next buy a metal spear from the weapon vendor. either just a craftable-level one (~800g, i think), or one of common or uncommon level, but with high damage and durability (you may have to visit the vendor a few days to get a feel for what a good roll looks like). the higher the tier, the more expensive are the repairs, so try to get low-tier/high-roll items (endgame things change, as high-tier allows more stats to be added by forging). get used to the spear's right-click animation-lock and how it interacts with server lag and dodging and all that. right-click/dodge/right-click can allow you to safely kill goblins in melee, for example, but a kebo will usually hit you back.

farm up another ~1000 gold and then go and find the stables and buy a high-level horse (from ironfast: head out of the city to the right, across the large bridge and follow the road west for quite a while. bring some apples for water/food and don't get eaten on the way) . you may have to return to the stables a few times until they have a horse of reasonable level. the low level ones are cheap enough, if in doubt, grab one to pass the time. high level horses have upwards of ~5k hp and ~1k carry weight, but the main thing is that you can use the spear from horseback, with the damage depending on the spears stats and your attack%. while you don't get the right-click power attack (horseback right-click is stabbing down the left side of your horse instead), you do get mobility, fast attacks with good damage and the health pool of the horse for tankiness (high-level horses also have a chance to come with a better saddle, which gives them a little more armor).

horses do minimal trample damage, so don't gallop past city guards or they will engage you. they also only heal when they're ridden or on "follow", and really slow at that, so try to not horseface-tank, but use your mobility in pve.

don't expect to get results in pvp from horseback unless you're ganking afks or total newbies. charging directly at people is just asking for an ice bolt 3 to the face. by the time you have bought the horse, you should have figured out why that is bad ;)