Skills/Herding
Herding lets you guide animals with a shepherd's crook. Point at a wild animal and tell it where to go, and it walks there.
At a glance
| Skill cap | 100 (Grandmaster) |
|---|---|
| Tool |  shepherd's crook (20 gold at weaponsmiths and blacksmiths)
|
| Range | An animal within 10 tiles |
| Main uses | Moving wild animals |
| Stats it trains | Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence |
How to herd
- Double-click a shepherd's crook: Target the animal you wish to herd.
- Target a wild, untamed animal within 10 tiles. It must be a creature that can be tamed. That is not a herdable animal.
- Click where you wish the animal to go. Click a spot on the ground.
- On success: The animal walks where it was instructed to. On failure: You don't seem to be able to persuade that to move.
The check depends on the animal's taming requirement: your chance starts at 30 points below it and rises to certainty 30 to 40 points above it. If an animal is far too easy: That wasn't even challenging. Tamed animals won't be herded: That animal looks tame already.
The shepherd's crook is also a two-handed staff weapon (3–12 damage).
Training Herding
- Every herding attempt is a chance to gain. Move on to harder animals as easy ones stop being challenging.
- 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 Herding cap and to your total skill cap of 700.
- If you've set Herding 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 Herding to the Skills Mastered count on your achievements.
- Ranchers 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 5% chance to raise Strength, about a 2% chance to raise Dexterity and a smaller chance (under 1%) 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
| Herding | How to train |
|---|---|
| 0 to about 33 | Buy it from a rancher. |
| 33 to 60 | Herd cows, sheep, goats and pigs. |
| 60 to 80 | Herd bears, wolves and cougars. |
| 80 to 100 | Herd grizzly bears, great harts and other tougher animals. |
Tips
- New herders start with a shepherd's crook.
- Lead an animal to a tamer or away from a road.