Training Resist on Frenzied Ostards

Conrad's United Raptor Owners

Training Resist on Frenzied Ostards

"WOW!!!........Look at the stats and skills on THAT Baby! ......Gee, I wonder why it only has 11.2 Resist!? A Mongbat has more!"

"Uhhh...where did his ghost go?"

"I coulda sworn he was bonded...."

It is quite common to find the proud owner of a pack of ostards ambivalent when asked about the low resist skill of his ostards. Anyone that hunts with ostards knows they WILL die eventually. More than likely, numerous times. One of the side effects of a dirtnap is that your ostards will take a marginal-to-serious loss of skill points with each death. If you were unfortunate enough to have a non-bonded ostard die, the skill loss is profound, to say the least.

Magic Resist is VERY hard to train on Ostards. More than a few fellow tamers have lamented the apparent "broken-ness" of resist gain regarding ostards. A single death can set you back literally weeks of resist training. For this reason most ostard lovers simply take it with shrug and go back to hunting. It is simply not worth the effort. My personal stance on this is one of ambivalence. If my pack gets resist gains, "Great!". If not, no big deal.

Spending inordinate amounts of time training resist often results in the actual loss of skill points instead. The ostards owner, in an attempt to raise resist, begins trying his ostards luck against successively harder monsters. Eventually, maybe even after significant resist gains, the ostard absorbs one too many flamestrikes between bandages and goes down to the mat. The trainer has actually brought the resist skill down to lower than when he started.

"I know I left that damn ship somewhere near here"

"Waking up on the floor of the Cat's Lair Didn't help"

Herein lies the folly of intentionally attempting to train Magic Resist on a frenzied ostard. That being said, lets begin intentionally attempting to train magic resist on a frenzied ostard.

First things first. Procure one bonded frenzied ostard. It is best to begin with resist training even before you begin on the combats skills. You do NOT want your ostard killing the punching bag before he has a chance to gain resist. Basically, go find one that you will want to fully train then tame it, feed it, stable and leave it there for however long it takes for it to bond to you. Then we can begin.

"uhhhh......you sure 'bout this dude?......."

"I seen that monstrousity eat GOLD before......."

One of the more popular methods of training resist on any pet is the use of other pets. Imps on up to White Wyrms can be employed for such training. The beauty of this method is the ability to use sparring partners that have the proper level of magery, in relation to the ostards resist, to maximize the chances of a resist gain. Simply put, if you have a frenzied with 70 resist, you want your Imp or White Wyrm to be in the 60-80 magery range. You can adjust a wyrm's magery by using a bonded one and killing it until his magery is low enough for the frenzied to gain consistently from it. As the frenzied gains resist the wyrm will be gaining in magery. You can switch amongst more than one opponent so as to keep their skill levels in line with each other. This method is by FAR the safest method.

Oh. Did I mention the ship? It is preferable to have either the ostard or the caster on a ship with its opponent on land to prevent slap fights. White wyrms slap REAL hard.

"Your Mama wears Army boots!"

"And your father wears Horseshoes!"

If you prefer to PVM your ostard to GM resist I can offer some advice but not alot. Most frenzieds start with around 70ish resist if you didn't para-tame it(shame on you if you did!). It so happens that there is a rather nice spawn of monsters with almost perfect magery for this level of resist. The Maze. Both the Daemons and the Imps have just the right amount of magery. You can just pop your frenzied behind a hedge and lead the spell casters over or you can bring your ostard right out on the playfield and start tearing into the minions of Hell. It can be difficult keeping the imps and daemons targeted on the ostards. Taunting works peachy. Either way, they are going to gain resist nicely as long as they don't go all ghosty on you. Try not to let this happen. Bone-Magi are decent for gains at this level of resist as well. There are several spawns that come to mind. The room on 2nd level Deceit is a nice location as most of the other inhabitants spawn offscreen leaving you alone with the magi once you have cleaned up the riff-raff. It is located South-West of "The Wall" or the Bone-Knight Room.

"Don't just stand there dummy! Attack him!"

"But then he will cast on ME!"

By now you should have your ostard in the very low 80's. The next 20 points are going to get boring if you want to do it the safe way. Evil mages. Lots of them. Evil Mage Lords. Lots of them. There are many spawns. The one in the far North-West corner of the Fire dungeon seems the most popular. The large building that is actually 2 buildings connected by a bridge in the far West of the same dungeon is much better for several reasons. The many walls allow you to control the rate at which your ostard deals with the mages. For those that prefer large open areas the mages can be led to the roofs of both buildings.

With the magery spread between the Evil Mages and the Lords you can easily GM a frenzieds resist on just these two opponents. Even though you can GM on these guys, I don't suggest it. The loot sucks and you will be a babbling idiot by the time you get ONE frenzied GM resist. Live it up and try different challenges. Titans, Elder Gazers, Dragons, White Wyrms. You would be surprised what they can handle. I'll never forget the first time I killed a Dragon with my pack.

The entire idea is to have fun. I hope I may have helped someone in their search for the "perfect pack". Good Luck and Peace to you all!

Non-Pvm Resist Gains on Frenzied Ostards.

Another method that I have been experimenting with is using other guildmembers as the casters. I have several accounts at my disposal so I decided to try a more controlled approach to resist gains. Given the volatile nature of monsters (duh.....) it can be a difficult to gauge what kinds of monsters are best for your ostards resist level.

I decided to use existing mages that I had on Pacific on other accounts. I also made a real low level mage for test purposes. I added them to the guild. I then got my first test subject, Devastation, onboard a ship about a half screen from my house.

When I started this his skills were as follows:

Wrestling = 100.0

Tactics = 100.0

Resist = 70.3

Anatomy = 89.6

Str. = 158

Dex. = 105

Int. = 28

The actually footwork is all repetition. I made numerous macroes for different chars depending on their magery and eval levels to keep their "damage-dealt" levels all the same. Modifying the delay between casts and such. That way they didn't overwhelm Conrad's Vet ability. By doing so I pretty much made this a hands-off chore. But dont go wandering off from your keyboard. One disconnect on the person vetting the ostard and you just set yourself back a bunch.

"Funny thing is......Rav really is an Archer...."

"The resist gains sucked with arrows though..."

The whole premise I was following is the fact that resist gains come best when the caster's magery is within 10 points of the recipients resist skill. It seems to work great for monsters. Imps as I said before are good for fresh tamed frenzieds because they have almost the same skill levels. Keeping that in mind I set about casting like mad.

The ONLY spell I was casting on Devastation was magic arrow for several reasons. One, I needed a baseline. It seemed a good choice for that. Easier to average damage. Two, magic arrow only uses ONE sulpurous ash. Three, almost no mana usage to contend with so the spell was cast at a fairly rapid rate. Even when manaed out you still cast one about every 2-3 seconds depending on your meditaion skill. Conrad's 106 med almost assures one cast every 2 seconds.

So all ya need to do is stock up the caster with a mountain of sulpurous ash and the guy on the ship with bandages. Get out your matchstick and get the macroes rolling.

Dev(Devastation) did gain fairly well at 70 when I had a 58 magery caster working on him. For about .6 resist gain. Then it just stopped. Another 45 mins and no more gains. Hmmm.

OK. Next I tried Rav with his 75 magery. The gains took off like mad (.7 in less then 25 mins) then simply stopped. Hmmm.

I went back to the 58 mage and got .2 more. Back to Rav. No gains.

I then logged out and tried it again the next day. I got a few points from Rav but none from the 58 mage. I then decided to try a much higher level mage and went to K'a. He is 90.6 magery.

Instant gains. Lasted for about .7 again.

I was beginning to see a pattern. Anti-macro code.

Bloody hell.

It was time to change tactics. I then started worrying less about the skill levels of the casters and more on just switching characters. I would use each one for about 15-20 mins or until they seemed to hit that skill barrier. Then switch. The lesser skilled mages didn't add as much skill gain to the mix so I stopped using them.

By the time I had figured this out, Devastation was about 75 resist.

I started using only 3 mages. They were 75, 90 and 100 magery.

It soon dawned on me that if I cast In Mani from shore I could also be casting magic arrows. This way I had Conrad and another mage working him at the same time. I just rotated 2 mages at a time sometimes changing the order.

Devastation went from 75.6 to 80.0 resist in 3 hours doing this.

The gains pretty much drop off after an hour or so. I would just do an hour a day when I got the chance. With Devastation I plan on keeping this up all the way to GM. Once he is done I am going to start on Desolation but mix in other spells to find the ideal damage/gain ratio spell.

The biggest drawback I have seen with this method is the cost. The bandages and HUGE amount of ash used adds up fast. When you start casting heals as well it gets even worse. When you compare it to PVM resist gains, I am not sure it is worth it. The gains with PVM are MUCH slower but you make gold while you are doing it. And you are ALOT more likely to loss the ostard setting him back ages in resist skill.

My argument in favor of the boat method is that once you get to GM resist a death doesnt set you back weeks. Only an hour or so of casting on it(I hope.....). Also once it is GM resist it is ALOT less likely to die in the first place. And at that point it is also easier to gain resist from high level monsters and get your ostard back up to GM if it dies.

It is up to you to decide which route is best for you, but until I fully explore the boat method I am going to stick with it. I will update this when I get more information. Cheers!

All screenshots taken with UOScreenshot Utility