Training / Naming

[Vidar]

Training Your New Pet

So now that you've successfully tamed a baby animal, the first thing you're going to want to do is train it some commands. As a Novice Creature Handler, you have access to three commands: Follow, Attack, and Store. Every time you tame something, you should immediately teach it all three of these (unless, of course, you're about to be chewed up by its parents).

When you teach a pet a command, what you're doing is binding that action to a particular spoken phrase. Once you bind "Attack" to the phrase "Sic'em, Fido!" you can make your pet attack your lookat target simply by having your character say that phrase aloud (in this case: "Sic'em, Fido!").

To do this, choose the "Attack" sub-option under "Train" on your pet's radial menu. The radial menu will disappear, and a little question mark (?) will float off your pet's head. This indicates that it's waiting for you to speak the phrase you want to associate with this command. At this point, just make your character say "Sic'em, Fido!"

If you're successful, you'll gain a little Creature Handling XP and you'll get the message "You have trained your pet a new command." If you fail, you'll get the message "Your pet doesn't understand you." In this case, choose "Attack" from the "Train" menu again, and then speak whatever phrase you wish to bind to the command again. Keep repeating the process until you're successful (it shouldn't take more than a few tries in most cases).

Once you've bound this particular command to a spoken phrase, there's no need to use hotkeys or radial menus to issue the order to your pet. Now and in the future, simply speak the phrase (i.e. "Sic'em, Fido!") to command your pet. You can see the phrase that has been bound to each of your pet's commands by looking at its Pet Control Device in the Datapad (CTRL+D). This is the exact same system used for Droids and Faction Perk pets (like storm troopers). Rather than having to earn extra commands for Droids and NPC pets, however, you'll have access to all possible commands right away.

If you start out four commands with the same word (i.e. "Bob attack," "Bob stay," "Bob release," "Bob group") then your pet's name will change to that first word (in this case, "Bob"). Note that, as a Novice Creature Handler you only have access to three commands. You'll need to advance and learn more if you want to name your creatures. Once a pet has learned its name, you can teach it again to assign different strings to those commands without causing it to lose its name (as long as you don't start four commands with the same word - unless you want to change its name). Keep in mind that there is a name filter in place, so you cannot have a pet named "Obiwan." The name filter doesn't provide feedback to the player, so if you're not seeing a name change after four commands, you might need to try something different.

While it's tempting to train your pet with very short phrases (even single characters), I advise against doing so. Many players find shouts of "a," "a," f," "a," extremely annoying in open chat. A good alternative is to use the /tellpet command. Not only is this invisible to other players, but it has a greater range than just speaking aloud.