Bound Pets Gone Wild (bug/story)

I was training my bound Cu at the eternal gazers and it went wild then died; I'm a garg tamer and couldn't retame it, had a GM respond to me before it died telling me to just put it back in the stable lol. 

I haven't played in roughly 18 years but I recently resubbed; bound pets were around last time I was and from what I understand they don't go wild.

I had just spent roughly 100 million gold scrolling the Cu, so essentially every bit of gold I had since I'm a returning player. GM's refused to help recover the Cu or the scrolls lost on him; it was and still is linked to a pet ball and a copy of him was on the TC for figuring out his build.

Just be careful out there everyone, what worries me the most is the lack of support for losing a pet due solely to a bug of what should be a reliable game mechanic; I wasn't even mad just surprised it bugged and unbound from me. What has me in awe though is the complete lack of customer support; I canceled my sub because everything I had was invested in that Cu with the hopes of using him for the long term, if I rebuilt and the bug happened again what then? I'm just extremely surprised at the lack of support, and I heard from guildmates that its happened to others recently and led to them unsubbing also.

I wouldn't post about this, but I honestly just really love this game and hope they fix this or at least change their customer support practices. I started this game when I was around 10-12 years old and finally recovered my account a few months ago to get back into it while recovering from spinal surgery; I've been really enjoying the game, there's nothing like it and I hope it continues to get better well into the future. Things happen, that's life, but why not help the customers when a bug causes a significant loss like that? This is a extremely fun game, help your players out and value their time/effort. Thank you

Bonded pets should not go wild. @Kyronix ;  Just make them stand still when Rather Unhappy.

There have been several instances in the past where they have recovered items for players. I recall the entire server being rolled back when items were disappearing from luna. I also recall a statement along the lines of "if you lost items, send an email and if it can be verified on a backup, it will be replaced."

But when in game mechanics made my paroxymous vanish THREE times. Nothing. Not an email reply, not a game master reply. Nothing. [I reported before it disappeared from my slots] - They appear to have extreme bias when/if they respond.

I feel your pain my friend.

There is something really inexplicable to me with this particular issue....

To loose a tamed pet on which a player has INVESTED not only considerable time in training it, but also a good amount of gold to purchase the 120 Powerscrolls applied, and might even be, at that point, somewhat "emotionally" attached to that in-game pet, is something, ESPECIALLY when happening due to a bug or a mechanic against which the player has little control or practically no recourse, that CAN WELL CAUSE THE PLAYER TO QUIT PLAYING ULTIMA ONLINE OVER IT......

Now, one would imagine that, it was in the best interest of Ultima Online that its players' base was to be as large as possible and, thus, that issues like this were to be a FIRST PRIORITY to be addressed, in order not to loose, because of it, any players....

YET, only by checking over the Years the amount of Posts and Threads either on these Official Forums or on Stratics or other Forum Boards discussing Ultima Online, it is easy to see how this has been an ongoing issue for Years and Years....

It is absolutely inexplicable to me WHY such an important issue which can cause loss of players to Ultima Online, has not yet been addressed and fixed for good.....

@Bleak , @Kyronix , can you at the very least let us know whether such an issue, VERY important to Tamers' players in Ultima Online, is being looked on and will be addressed ?

Thank you SO much.

Pawain said:

Bonded pets should not go wild. @ Kyronix   Just make them stand still when Rather Unhappy.

I have never lost a pet but I can agree with this. I think loyalty should be removed. It would absolutely help in discovering and narrowing down actual bugs making some pets disappear.

@Kyronix @Bleak

Add me to the long list of players who agree that pets going wild once they have bonded has outlived its usefulness.  In my opinion there have been enough posts on this topic to firmly establish that there is in fact a bug causing pets to go wild even though I have not personally experienced it.  It’s time to eliminate pets going wild all together.  Tamers make up a significant portion of the UO population and this bug represents a significant risk to those players and their accounts.

Urge said:

Pawain said:

Bonded pets should not go wild. @ Kyronix   Just make them stand still when Rather Unhappy.

I have never lost a pet but I can agree with this. I think loyalty should be removed. It would absolutely help in discovering and narrowing down actual bugs making some pets disappear.

DITTO  @Kyronix

I have lost 1 pet and had a couple of near misses that really impedes me playing some of the more precious pets. 
I add my voice to remove going wild from bonded pets. A regular pet can easily cost 100M+in scrolls. And then we have all the pets that don't spawn anymore whose loss is even more devastating for a tamer.
Players have been complaining about this for a few years with barely a response from the devs. Ignoring a serious issue is not helping anyone.

Thank you guys for the support; the community is great here, even recovering an old account the support was amazing and helpful, they just dropped the ball on in-game support for bugs.

To help single out the issue and be helpful; my garg tamer is 120 in all bard skills, 90 taming and lore with jewelry bumping them up to 120. I was standing against the door but the door was closed and had both peacemaking mastery songs active. The pet was without a doubt bonded though and had been bonded for a few days; I never take my taming/lore jewelry off with a pet out just in case. 

I only canceled my account because I don't know how else to send a clear message to the devs that it's unreasonable and unacceptable to lose so much to a bug and have no support recovering from it. If this was a FTP game I might understand, but I would say most of us sub cause we love the game; so what are we paying for if GM's can't effectively respond to issues like this? 

I will hopefully be back, and I am glad I posted here because I heard from two separate guilds that members had this same issue; hearing some of you guys know about this issue too, maybe it'll be addressed. It wouldn't be so bad if support would help with the damages, like I said things happen, it's how we handle them together that matters. 

Just to add an additional bit of information that could be relevant or not, but since the OP mentions the bard songs...

I experienced a bug twice over the weekend with my pets I have not seen before... I had a pet die and get bugged where the ghost could not be resurrected.  I tried some of the usual things... tried a different vet player character, tried an npc vet, tried buying new bandages, tried enhanced bandages, tried killing my character, tried honoring something and killing it... nothing worked.  My gameplay each time was drastically different, the first time I was training a pet on the crazed mage, the second was a normal mount that got killed at a spawn.  Different tamer templates on different accounts.  The only similarity I could come up with was that both pets died while under the effect of the peacemaking bard songs from a character that did not own the pets. Ultimately both pets required GM intervention to resolve the issue. (Thanks to GM River who responded both times and could confirm the above).

Not sure if this is a new bug, but it was new to me.  No idea if the bard song could be relevant to pets going wild...

It would be nice to hear something from our team on this issue.

This is a bug thay happens from time to time. Take it to a fel guard zone, and you shoukd be able to rez it.

Norry said:

This is a bug thay happens from time to time. Take it to a fel guard zone, and you shoukd be able to rez it.

Why would a Felucca Guard zone make it possible to seccurrect the pet ?

What would be different about a Felucca Guard zone ?

2 Paroxy Swamp Dragons    1 vollem   1 albino squirrel from my old chicken fight club days           1 greater dragon (within the first week of a resub after buying bonding potion) Either do away with loyalty or allow the pet ball to store a backup copy of the pet and it's current stats make it character bound and build in restrictions to prevent pet duping but my 6 mo time is up in 2 days and my house is packed up and empty . Unless something is done im really having a hard time wasting my time if i dont at least get to keep what i spent my time aquiring. Guess unless i see something in a news letter about this issue being fixed im gonna go play wow classic eat some soup and get fat and sassy.  Why not host a tamers day on TC1 have everybody bring a pet and throw everything you have in your dev toolkit at them till the bug inevitably happens.

Ronin_Cross said:

To help single out the issue and be helpful; my garg tamer is 120 in all bard skills, 90 taming and lore with jewelry bumping them up to 120. I was standing against the door but the door was closed and had both peacemaking mastery songs active. The pet was without a doubt bonded though and had been bonded for a few days; I never take my taming/lore jewelry off with a pet out just in case. 

This is why your pet went wild. You were standing in a spot without line-of-sight to the pet (behind a closed door), in a non-safe logout area (a dungeon). Everytime the pet did a loyalty check, it did not have line-of-sight to you and lost loyalty.

It is unfortunate and I know you are a returning player, but this is working as intended, and not the cause of a bug.

You could look at a pet as your character's weapon. Archery/Throwing or even Melee weapons all need line of sight to hit targets, same with casting spells (e.g. You would not be able to hit things behind closed doors). Your pet, while still capable of fighting when it does not have light-of-sight to you, still needs to pass line-of-sight checks in order to stay happy. This system was most likely designed this way to prevent botting/afking while the pet kills things.

Those above that are saying bonded pets should never go wild, are asking for this change to be implemented, not that this is how it currently works.

Whether you are for or against pet loyalty and pets going wild, based on your description of the situation that happened to you, it was unfortunately not caused by a bug.

Norry said:

@ popps don't know why, but when you try to rez your pet and get the "lacks cohesion" message, taking it to a fel guardzone works.

I know there was a delay built in for npc rez, i just assume its tied to that.

This is not about Rezzing but about pets for some odd reason going wild.

I would vote for deactivate loyalty for bonded pets.

Khyro said:

Ronin_Cross said:

To help single out the issue and be helpful; my garg tamer is 120 in all bard skills, 90 taming and lore with jewelry bumping them up to 120. I was standing against the door but the door was closed and had both peacemaking mastery songs active. The pet was without a doubt bonded though and had been bonded for a few days; I never take my taming/lore jewelry off with a pet out just in case. 

This is why your pet went wild. You were standing in a spot without line-of-sight to the pet (behind a closed door), in a non-safe logout area (a dungeon). Everytime the pet did a loyalty check, it did not have line-of-sight to you and lost loyalty.

It is unfortunate and I know you are a returning player, but this is working as intended, and not the cause of a bug.

You could look at a pet as your character's weapon. Archery/Throwing or even Melee weapons all need line of sight to hit targets, same with casting spells (e.g. You would not be able to hit things behind closed doors). Your pet, while still capable of fighting when it does not have light-of-sight to you, still needs to pass line-of-sight checks in order to stay happy. This system was most likely designed this way to prevent botting/afking while the pet kills things.

Those above that are saying bonded pets should never go wild, are asking for this change to be implemented, not that this is how it currently works.

Whether you are for or against pet loyalty and pets going wild, based on your description of the situation that happened to you, it was unfortunately not caused by a bug.

This is why your pet went wild. You were standing in a spot without line-of-sight to the pet (behind a closed door), in a non-safe logout area (a dungeon). Everytime the pet did a loyalty check, it did not have line-of-sight to you and lost loyalty.

This system was most likely designed this way to prevent botting/afking while the pet kills things.

Those above that are saying bonded pets should never go wild, are asking for this change to be implemented, not that this is how it currently works.

@Khyro thank you, so bonded pets never go wild, UNLESS they don't have line of sight with you? I was behind the door but I was in a spot where I could still give it commands; I was telling it to move close to me and then fight to make sure my bard songs were on him. 

I'm confused by what bonding does now lol; I thought it simply meant the pet never goes wild under any circumstance. Is that a recent change? 

The worst part though was trying to save him for the 15 minutes he survived after going wild lol (garg problems). I wish the mechanic was explained better, it easily leads you to believe bonded pets are permanent unless you release them; especially given there's pet balls to recall them and you can scroll them now, they seem like a permanent investment. 

@Kalaniim_Viaxus, I'm sorry you lost that many bonded pets, I'm already sick over just one I can't imagine that many lost; maybe what Khyro mentioned will help. I'm still gonna take a break though, lost more than I can recover from.

Maybe they could make bonded pets die rather than go wild if they become too unhappy; you'd still lose the skills from rezzing them and if it's to stop bots then it'd essentially do the same function of taking the pet out of the fight. Lore wise we could say they are similar to Drizzt's panther (I feel like everyone will get that reference). Their strength could fade and then die, but remain bonded rather than going wild and defeating the purpose of bonding altogether. 

Ronin_Cross said:

@ Khyro thank you, so bonded pets never go wild, UNLESS they don't have line of sight with you? I was behind the door but I was in a spot where I could still give it commands; I was telling it to move close to me and then fight to make sure my bard songs were on him. 

I'm confused by what bonding does now lol; I thought it simply meant the pet never goes wild under any circumstance. Is that a recent change? 

The worst part though was trying to save him for the 15 minutes he survived after going wild lol (garg problems). I wish the mechanic was explained better, it easily leads you to believe bonded pets are permanent unless you release them; especially given there's pet balls to recall them and you can scroll them now, they seem like a permanent investment. 

I'm still gonna take a break though, lost more than I can recover from.

I thought bard masteries needed a line of sight?

Pre pet bonding if a pet died it poofed forever. Bonding means it simply sticks around so you can rez it after it dies.

Pets have always had loyalty which can lead to going wild if left in the negative. This has nothing to do with bonding.

That last part is nonsense. This isn't a race. You have all the time in the world to recover and develop even more. Take a deep breath, draw a new gameplan and hit it again.

Just like life, shh it happens.

Ronin_Cross said:

@ Khyro thank you, so bonded pets never go wild, UNLESS they don't have line of sight with you? I was behind the door but I was in a spot where I could still give it commands; I was telling it to move close to me and then fight to make sure my bard songs were on him. 

I'm confused by what bonding does now lol; I thought it simply meant the pet never goes wild under any circumstance. Is that a recent change? 

Bonded pets go wild just as easily as unbonded ones. The only thing bonding does is to allow you to rez your pet if it is killed... unless it went wild first.

Pets going wild from killing monsters if they can’t see their master sounds like anti-AFK coding. 

If this was a line of sight issue would we not see more pets unbonding at belfry we spam all follow out of sight until they jump up.....

@Sliss thank you; so you need to feed them and everything just like before they bonded? I just thought it worked differently BUT, the  last I played I was 12 so I had no idea what was going on lol. I was mostly worried about building back up because I thought it was a random bug; it sounds like it was because I was behind a door controlling him and not in the room with him. It's one thing when it's your fault compared to a bugs fault; it's looking like it was preventable cause I just didn't understand the bonding system. 

McDougle said:

If this was a line of sight issue would we not see more pets unbonding at belfry we spam all follow out of sight until they jump up.....

No need to spam all follow. Just say it once and run side to side til it jumps up.

Ronin_Cross said:

@ Sliss thank you; so you need to feed them and everything just like before they bonded? I just thought it worked differently BUT, the  last I played I was 12 so I had no idea what was going on lol. I was mostly worried about building back up because I thought it was a random bug; it sounds like it was because I was behind a door controlling him and not in the room with him. It's one thing when it's your fault compared to a bugs fault; it's looking like it was preventable cause I just didn't understand the bonding system. 

You need to keep feeding a bonded pet to keep the happiness level up. 

My Giant Beetle just went wild whole doing a Beacon. Little meany killed me and my other toons magery (not Magery Mastery) horse Then he res killed me twice.  I was doing nothing weird he a had just killed a water ele and I was shooting the last Orc.  He has all 120 scrolls would have been expensive to lose him.  Now have to re bond.

I had been using another pet.  I took the beetle out of stable about 30 min ago.  I fed him a stack of Sea serpent steaks sometime in between because there are so many in the stacks.

@Kyronix ; Can we stop Bonded pets going wild? PLEASE

Are all of you using bonding potions? How many lost a pet that was naturally bonded?

My old beetle was naturally bonded way-back-when beetles first came out (no pet bonding potion then). I've had it ever since... and it went wild and such in my castle just as I was dragging meat to feed it. Got it back, but omg the sense of bewilderment and panic I felt - the beetle is bonded to my crafter who has no taming.

Thankfully, owners can retame pets gone wild - is just so unnerving! Then have to rebond again (I don't use the potion). I feed that bug so much now is scary.

I'm scared to death to take my pre-patch WW out with my tamer.... even just to feed! 

I rarely feed my cus that are newer and naturally bonded which is why I was asking. But I'm also not fighting high end stuff either.

Ya I have never used the potion.  I would buy stable increase tokens instead.  This is my really old beetle that I used to collect the leather in Destard to make my leather empire.

He was an angry little bug.  I should re name him that for his Rebirth.

Kirthag said:

Thankfully, owners can retame pets gone wild - is just so unnerving! Then have to rebond again (I don't use the potion). I feed that bug so much now is scary.

Unfortunately, the ability to retame a pet gone wild, often is not enough......

In a fighting situation, infact, it often happens that the pet gone wild, that same pet on which the Tamer has spent countless time to train and countless gold to apply Legendary Powerscrolls on, gets killed by the spawn before the Tamer can tame it back....

At that point, all of that investment in time and in-game gold is gone for good....

As I said, it is inexplicable to me how, such an important issue to many players (it can be so much upsetting that players could stop althougether playing Ultyima Online over such a loss....), has been ongoing for many Years now, and not been fixed already.....

Add me to the list  ❤️

Pets should simply not go wild once bonded.  My suggestion is that they simply auto stable when their loyalty gets low enough to go wild or have it simply not obey commands at all  until it is fed and the loyalty brought back up and just stand doing nothing until loyalty is back up.  Either one would accomplish.  Sure the pet might die and you have to train the .1 skill loss back up but better than the number of folks that have lost some very expensive pets due to going wild in places where they can't retame and the p et gets whacked.

popps said:

Kirthag said:

Thankfully, owners can retame pets gone wild - is just so unnerving! Then have to rebond again (I don't use the potion). I feed that bug so much now is scary.

Unfortunately, the ability to retame a pet gone wild, often is not enough......

In a fighting situation, infact, it often happens that the pet gone wild, that same pet on which the Tamer has spent countless time to train and countless gold to apply Legendary Powerscrolls on, gets killed by the spawn before the Tamer can tame it back....

At that point, all of that investment in time and in-game gold is gone for good....

As I said, it is inexplicable to me how, such an important issue to many players (it can be so much upsetting that players could stop althougether playing Ultyima Online over such a loss....), has been ongoing for many Years now, and not been fixed already.....

And this is why I don't bring out my WW when I go hunting with my tamer. I take my 'mare or the unicorn - but leave Peppermint in the stable cos I don't want to lose him. I was utterly surprised when I was (barely) able to tame that WW ages ago - he's a pre-patch one - I don't think I could bear losing him.

I know how the pet gone wild bug happens, at least for the pets coming from statues ie: vollems , paroxysmus swampies etc..

If you log in UO and close the client immediatly or log out within 2 sec, it may cause the pet to stay inside UO world while your character is gone. This will result in eventually the pet going wild , and poof.

My guess is it might happen to any pets actually not only pets from statues .
Ive lost one paroxymus and 1 pre patch vollem , and I tried to reproduce and figure out what hapenned for days, and I eventually came to the conclusion it was a too quick  log-in / log-out , that caused the pet to stay connected, while my character logged out the world. @Kyronix

Just had a chance to observe the bu in action. I was in Abyss killing Clockwork scorpions with my bane. Checked pet health - Extremely happy. Fed it immediately, and rechecked health. About 1 min later it refuses an order. I check and it's Extremely happy again. Between the first time and the second time we hardly moved. We were on the flat surface away from fences and buildings, i.e. there was always LOS. 
There is definitely a bug.

My pets that disappeared were all paroxys that auto bonded.

its like dropping your 100m gold sword and cant pick it back up then you die, then its gone forever.

Its a bit deflating that this thread was completely ignored.

As a new tamer, I really would not want to lose pets this way. Its not like it was before where you can just re-tame them, now you have to tame / train / then add skills/ then trian more/ then add power scrolls.


Ok, well i dont personally have any expensive pets yet, but its scary to think such things can happen and that the staff seem to not care whatsoever 

MissE said:

They just shouldn't 'unbond' it shouldn't even be an option.  @ Kyronix

No reason for it.

With the time involved and the price of scrolls, I agree. It would piss me off and make me think twice. Solution could be that they just stand still, accept no commands.

It is perfectly understandable and acceptable that there could be bugs, noone complaints, at least to my understanding, about the fact that there is a bug which gets tamed pets to go wild.... what is much less acceptable, I think, is the fact that players, year after year after year, are left to have to face such a nasty bug without a fix to it or at least a temporary solution to help reduce the loss to players....

I can accept that this might be a hard bug to find and thus fix, it would explain why this has not been done in many Years now, but, then, in the meantime, WHY NOT put in something to help players who had the unluckiness to bump into it not to suffer from it permanently as it is now ?

UO code does see the stats of a pet while it is bonded, right ?

Make it so that, should this bug hit a player, players might be able to fully recover their pet from a Stable Master.... it could work (aheam....), moreless, like a Lighthouse works (or should I say should work....) for Ships...

Should a player have a pet go wild or one from a statuette (for example the Triton) and die or vanish, the player could then go to a Stable Master and retrieve it in both cases with their full stats as they were before the pet got killed or vanished.... It would not be the same pet but a "duplicated" pet which is exactly the same as the pet was "before" it vanished from going wild.....

A patched up solution before the bug gets finally found and fixed but at least, a temporary solution which would help players who spent a LOT of time and gold into that pet, not loose it for good thus wasting all of the time and gold they spent to obtain and train it.

@Kyronix , @Bleak , could you please consider something to ease tamers' pain on such a nasty bug ?

Thank you.

Ronin_Cross said:

I was training my bound Cu at the eternal gazers and it went wild then died; I'm a garg tamer and couldn't retame it, had a GM respond to me before it died telling me to just put it back in the stable lol. 

I haven't played in roughly 18 years but I recently resubbed; bound pets were around last time I was and from what I understand they don't go wild.

I had just spent roughly 100 million gold scrolling the Cu, so essentially every bit of gold I had since I'm a returning player. GM's refused to help recover the Cu or the scrolls lost on him; it was and still is linked to a pet ball and a copy of him was on the TC for figuring out his build.

Just be careful out there everyone, what worries me the most is the lack of support for losing a pet due solely to a bug of what should be a reliable game mechanic; I wasn't even mad just surprised it bugged and unbound from me. What has me in awe though is the complete lack of customer support; I canceled my sub because everything I had was invested in that Cu with the hopes of using him for the long term, if I rebuilt and the bug happened again what then? I'm just extremely surprised at the lack of support, and I heard from guildmates that its happened to others recently and led to them unsubbing also.

I wouldn't post about this, but I honestly just really love this game and hope they fix this or at least change their customer support practices. I started this game when I was around 10-12 years old and finally recovered my account a few months ago to get back into it while recovering from spinal surgery; I've been really enjoying the game, there's nothing like it and I hope it continues to get better well into the future. Things happen, that's life, but why not help the customers when a bug causes a significant loss like that? This is a extremely fun game, help your players out and value their time/effort. Thank you

I am not sure if that is a bug or not, but either way I wouldn't worry about it. You could get all that back with buying 2500 sovereigns and selling them to some one, please dont enable the 3rd party people. So u lost 28 dollars, I lost 1000 once at a bar hahah. Just gotta move on man, keep on trucking. I can tell you this, there is no other game like uo when it comes to taming. I have looked, and all of them suck compared to official ulitma online. 

Any ways sorry you lost your pet. Dont feel bad I got angry 6 months ago at one of the know RMT people that sell houses for gold, and deleted all my charges haha. I had a legendary crafter imbuer, tamer, house, British boat prolly like 200 mil worth of stuff, and some other things. 

I came back recently because thier new stance on trying to ban bots. 

Good luck hope u dont quit. 

You cannot "sell sovereigns"

You can sell the code for the sovereigns - but there is no guarantee for the buyer that the code is legit

For anyone buying anything that is bought with real cash - using the Origin Store by EA is the only avenue.