Skills/Animal Lore

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Animal Lore is the study of creatures. Examine an animal to see its health, stats, skills and diet. It's also a pillar of taming: it helps your pets obey you and powers Veterinary.

At a glance

Skill cap	100 (Grandmaster), raised up to 120 with Animal Lore power scrolls
Use	Use the skill, then target a creature within 8 tiles
Main uses	Examining creatures, pet control, Veterinary
Stats it trains	Intelligence

How to use it

Use the skill: What animal should I look at? Then target a creature within 8 tiles. What you can examine depends on your skill:

Animal Lore	What you can examine
Below 100	Only tamed creatures: At your skill level, you can only lore tamed creatures.
100 to 109.9	Tamed or tameable creatures: At your skill level, you can only lore tamed or tameable creatures.
110 and up	Any creature

On a successful check (0 to 120), a three-page window opens:

1. Attributes: hit points, stamina, mana, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and armor rating.
2. Combat ratings and lore: Wrestling, Tactics, Magic Resistance, Anatomy, Poisoning, Magery, Evaluating Intelligence and Meditation.
3. Preferred foods and pack instincts.

Other messages: That's not an animal!, The spirits of the dead are not the province of animal lore. and You can't think of anything you know offhand. (a failed check).

Animal Lore and taming

• Pet control: whether a pet obeys depends mostly on your Animal Taming, with Animal Lore counting for a fifth. See Animal Taming.
• Veterinary uses Animal Lore for how much you heal and whether you can cure or resurrect pets.
• Each taming attempt also gives a chance to gain Animal Lore.

Training Animal Lore

• Every use is a chance to gain, from 0 to 120. Keep examining your own pet.
• Taming attempts train it as well.
• Below 10.0 you gain on every attempt, sometimes several tenths at once. Above that, each attempt has a chance to gain 0.1.
• The harder the attempt is for your skill level, the better your chance to gain. Your chance also drops as you get closer to your Animal Lore cap and to your total skill cap of 700.
• If you've set Animal Lore to go down (the arrow in your skills list), gains elsewhere can lower it to make room under your total cap. Lock skills you want to keep.
• Reaching 100.0 adds Animal Lore to the Skills Mastered count on your achievements.
• Animal trainers, veterinarians, ranchers, furtraders and ranger guildmasters will train you for gold: up to a third of their own skill, at most 42.0, for 1 gold per 0.1 points. Ask them (or use their context menu) to train the skill, then drop the gold on them.

Stats: each successful use has about a 3% chance to raise Intelligence by 1 point. Each stat can rise at most once every 10 minutes, and only if it's set to rise.

Suggested path

Animal Lore	How to train
0 to about 33	Buy it from an animal trainer or veterinarian.
33 to 100	Examine your pet over and over, and train it alongside taming.
100 to 120	Requires a power scroll. Examine any creature.

Power scrolls

Power scroll

Animal Lore tops out at 100.0 unless you use a Animal Lore power scroll. There are three kinds: exalted (110), mythical (115) and legendary (120). Double-click one to raise your Animal Lore cap to that number: "You feel a surge of magic as the scroll enhances your Animal Lore!"

• Animal Lore power scrolls come from champion bosses: Barracoon, Lord Oaks, Mephitis, Neira, Rikktor, Semidar and Silvani. Each champion boss leaves 6 power scrolls in random fighting, magic, bard and animal skills, handed out among the players who helped kill it. Each scroll is a 110 (60%), 115 (35%) or 120 (5%).
• A scroll only works if it's higher than your current cap. Otherwise: "Your Animal Lore is too high for this power scroll."
• Champion power scrolls are cursed: they always drop when you die, even from a blessed container. Use them or bank them quickly.
• Raising the cap doesn't raise your skill. You still have to train the extra points.

Tips

• Check a pet before you buy it from another player.
• Find out what your pet eats so you can keep it happy.

See also

• Animal Taming · Veterinary · Herding · Tameables