I’d like to thank UOForums.com for accepting UOCraft to their new Partnership Program!

UOCraft now has a forum set up at UOForums.com:

UOCraft Forum

Feel free to contact me through the forum or these methods. And if you don’t already make a habit of spending time over at UOForums, I highly recommend it! Great community, great resources.

UOCraft presents a new taming tool to help you pick the best pet for your next monster brawl: the Best Battle Pet Tool.

This tool compares the monster’s lowest 2 resists to each pet’s highest two damage output types. When a match is found, it then looks at the monster’s highest damage output type and compares it to the pet’s lowest 2 resists. If a pet is strong in damage output but weak against the monster’s damage, it is eliminated.

The result is a list of pets that have a good matchup in damage output versus the monster’s vulnerabilities, and no major weakness in terms of resist against the monster’s damage type.

Of course, there are many other variables when choosing a pet for battle, such as: will you be hunting solo or with a group? Does your pet need to act as a meat shield as opposed to a damage dealer, or do you have another meat shield coming along? Can you feasibly stand close enough to a lower-hit-point pet to keep it healed throughout the battle?

As such, just because a pet makes the Best Battle Pet list doesn’t mean it’s the best pet in every situation. I leave the more subtle variables up to you, the Animal Whisperer.

What the Best Battle Pet list does do, however, is put you in the right ballpark for experimentation with different pet options when your goal is to deal out damage. It’s a lot more creative than grabbing Frank the Tank every time you go out, and particularly when hunting in groups with other tamers, can be a lot more effective.

This can also free up opportunities to take out combinations of pets so that, for example, you can have a magic caster along with a melee damage pet, or a poisoning pet to go with the melee damage, etc.

Try it out! You might just find some new favorite pets!

http://www.uocraft.com/best-battle-pet-tool/

Note: If you find a pet or monster that you’d like to see listed in the tool, contact Kitiara. You can view the list of which pets are available at the bottom of the results page after submitting your monster choice.

I made a few tweaks to the Pet Power Calculator today. As always, if you encounter any problems or oddities, please let me know!

• Fixed the Trained meditation skill value for regular dragons (thanks to Ezekiel Zane on the UO Stratics Tamer forum for the heads-up).
• Tweaked the max fresh-tamed eval and anatomy values on bane dragons, thanks to data from adamx on UOForums.
• Tweaked the data input interface. Stats, Resists, and Skills are now consolidated into columns. Using the tab key on your keyboard will still tab you through the list in the same order as before. Just looks a little cleaner on-screen and prevents the endless downward scrolling.
• Fixed the Print feature for the pet’s stat sheet so it only prints your power score and related data, instead of printing the entire web page. (Thanks again to Ezekiel for the heads-up on this one).

Enjoy!

By request, I’ve added Wolf Spiders to the Pet Power Calculator.

I’m using the Stratics Hunter’s Guide data, which sometimes is based on a small sample size, so if you run into pets that have stats or skills outside of the ranges in the calculator, let me know and I will update the calculator to reflect your findings.
Thanks, and happy taming!

http://www.uocraft.com/taming/pet-power-calculator/

I’m continuing on in Week 4 of my Couch to 5K training as I learn to RUN! My next stop will be the Brookfield Zoo Run Wild! 5K on May 15th. Wish me luck!

And, if you’ve followed the patterns around these parts over the last 8 years or so, you know that summer is coming, and with that, my most abundant time to play UO. w00t!

In 3 weeks, I will be walking in the Walk MS 2010 event for Team Kathy. We’re walking for my cousin’s wife’s mom, who has battled multiple sclerosis for years, and it greatly affects her everyday life. MS interrupts the flow of information between the brain and the body and eventually stops people from moving.

Every hour another person is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For 20,000 people in Illinois and some 400,000 nationwide, that hour has already arrived.

It’s not easy to pinpoint the cause of multiple sclerosis and so far, the cure rests on continued research. This is why I am writing to you: I need your help, generosity and support! Donate to our team, or come walk with us!

As a participant in the Chicago South Suburbs Walk MS taking place on Sunday, May 2, 2010, I am raising money so the Greater Illinois Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society can continue to provide programs and services for Illinois families impacted by multiple sclerosis while funding vital research into the cause and cure of multiple sclerosis.

The Greater Illinois Chapter utilizes approximately 88% of every dollar raised to fund programs that actively help people with multiple sclerosis and their families, public and professional education and research. A portion of your donation will help fund more than 350 multiple sclerosis research projects.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation on my behalf to help me reach my fundraising goal. No amount is too small!! Online donations can be made simply by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message. You can also send a donation made payable to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to me, or print a donation form and mail it to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Every dollar makes a difference in leading the movement against multiple sclerosis.

Check out my personal page to learn why I’m walking in this great event on Sunday, May 2. You can even check on my fundraising progress, and if you’ve made a donation, look for your name scrolling in the fundraising honor roll. Your support is so important to me and to Kathy and to all those living with multiple sclerosis.

I truly appreciate your support and will keep you posted on my progress!

Thank you!

Donate online via my Walk MS 2010 page!

By request, I’ve added the High Plains Boura to the Pet Power Calculator. Since the Stratics Hunter’s Guide only has 1 reading on the stats and resists of these creatures, my data was pulled as a combination of data from this thread (particularly Tina Small’s compilation – Thanks, Tina!) and 12 of my own readings (for a total of around 60 readings).

If you find any high plains bouras that fall outside of the calculator’s ranges (it will tell you, via a message if your numbers exceed our recorded maximum’s, or via odd percentages if they fall below the recorded minimum’s), please let me know! My contact info is at the bottom of the calculator. Thanks!

Test out your high plains boura now!

Thanks to Lord Roland over on UOForums (and many others over the past few months!) for the heads-up on a divide-by-zero error that the Pet Power Calculator was throwing. It only threw the error when a Trained pet was input with the Untrained option checked, but still… errors are bad. So, I finally put in some error catching to output a notification when the wrong training option is chosen, or if you have a miracle pet that exceeds the maximum values recorded by Stratics (and thus by my calculator).

So – if you input a trained pet with the Untrained option checked and your pet’s stats or skills exceed the maximum possible for freshly tamed, untrained pets – or if you input a pet that has higher stat or skill values than the maximum possible overall, you’ll receive a message that looks something like this, in your results:

Training Note: Your pet appears to have been trained, or exceeds the max possible Anatomy skill recorded for this type of pet. Anatomy skill has been voided from this calculation. Please double check your input and retry using the Trained option. If you did use the Trained option and continue to see this message, please contact Kitiara with your pet’s information.

I hope that helps alleviate some of the calculation confusion! If nothing else, it’s prettier than PHP divide-by-zero warnings. My contact information, FYI, is at the bottom of the Pet Power Calculator page.

As always, if you notice anything acting strangely on the calculator, please let me know. Thanks!!

I’ve been working on adding a long-requested feature to the Pet Power Calculator: a resist calculation that gives higher priority to the pet’s strongest resists while negating some of the value of the pet’s weakest resists.

In theory, a pet that has extraordinary max values in one or two resists would be used to fight monsters that deal damage in those high resist areas. Let’s say a pet has awful cold resist. You wouldn’t likely take that pet out to fight against monsters that deal primarily cold damage. Therefore, the fact that the pet has low cold resist isn’t very important. If the pet has a very high max possible physical resist, though, you would want the pet to have a very high physical resist. A mediocre physical resist value on a pet with a very high possible physical resist is worth less, relatively speaking.

So – the highest resists should be worth more and the lowest worth less.

In the “current” version of the calculator, all resists are given the same weight. (That is, they’re averaged straight-up, with each resist value worth the same amount towards the overall power score).

I’m testing out the addition of a weighted average to the pet’s resist score (which then becomes 65% of the overall Power Rating).

The only pet that is using this “beta” feature currently is the Greater Dragon.

The g-dragon’s highest resist categories are Physical and Fire, with max possible ratings of 85 and 90, respectively. Those are quite nice max’s, and a g-dragon with 85 phys resist and 90 fire resist would be fairly significantly prized, regardless of what its other resists were. Therefore, I’ve weighted the greater dragon’s resists at 35% each for phys and fire, 5% for cold (the lowest resist for the g-dragon), 10% for poison, and 15% for energy.

To illustrate, a dragon with the max possible phys and fire resists and average numbers in the rest rated a 4.8 on the “new” calculator versus 4.2 on the “old” calculator.

A dragon with the max possible phys and fire resists and the lowest possible cold, poison, and energy resists rates a 4.5 on the “new” calculator.

In contrast, the same dragon with the minimum possible phys and fire but max possible cold, poison, and energy rates only a 2.8 – because its phys and fire resists are low, and those are the two most important resists for this creature.

(Note: Creatures with power ratings of 4+ are exceptional pets; 3.8+ are very good; 3+ are average, and <3 are below average).

I'm interested to hear your feedback on the implementation of this feature. It is currently only active for greater dragons. You can post feedback to this thread at UOForums:
http://www.uoforums.com/f1153/experimental-new-feature-in-the-pet-power-calc-55824/

If it is successful, I will add the feature to other creatures, and will also implement the same sort of weighting for pets with important skill variations. (For example, a high poisoning skill on a rune beetle is of higher importance than skills generally are on other creatures).

You can try out this new feature at:
http://www.uocraft.com/taming/pet-power-calculator/

Be sure you’re inputting data for a greater dragon. Otherwise, you’ll see the “old” results.

Thanks!