Tamer guide

Tamer Guide

Hello all you newbie tamers out there, I will begin editing this post into a semblance of a guide when I get home, and I will start cataloguing pet stats, as well as skills, once I hit level 35. (There's a size limit, will post more later.)

Getting Started

When you first enter talisman online, if you have previous experience with Diablo 2, Guild Wars, or other point and click action RPGs, you can rely heavily on those skills, if not, you may want to heed some of the following advice:

You will notice that there is a numbered skillbar at the bottom of the screen, with actions in it, some of these actions are very common, others you really won't need most of the time.

If you hit the escape key, and go to the tab that says "keys" you can change the key configuration, but this is also useful just to look at, so you see some of the commands that exist in the game, for example: X is the default key to sit down and rest, while Alt+1 is the default key for a tamer to send their pet in to attack.

I also suggest that you check out: http://www.talismanonline.com/basicop.aspx if you have any further questions.

Once you're comfortable with the way your keyboard layout is set up, and have your mouse in a comfortable position for a lot of clicking and navigating, you may want to click the S key, or hunt down the button that opens the skills menu.

I would advise clicking the little arrows next to the skill bar to change the "hotkey page" to 2, 3, or 4, or whatever, and leaving the default page 1 in tact. I do recommend a user put either their most commonly used attack skill in slot number one, or the skill they use to start every fight. For a tamer, it is almost always a good idea to start fights with Heavy Crack, as it reduces defense of your target for a few seconds, which means that if you sent your pet in while casting, your pet deals more damage, and keeps the monster off of you, while you charge up your next attack or two, and those do more damage as well.

Whether you agree with me or not about what skill should be used to open a fight with, you should always change your skill bar to a way that is comfortable for you to play.

An example of a fighting for me goes: [Tab] which targets the nearest enemy so I don't have to hurt my wrist by moving my mouse and clicking the mouse buttons, then I hit [1] which begins to cast heavy crack, then [Alt+1] while heavy crack is firing, then [3] for shadow crack, then I hold down [2] because that lets me continually cast rapid crack in my setup, usually the creature is dead by the second rapid crack, unless I'm hunting things much higher than myself.

You might be asking yourself "I'm a tamer, why can't I tame a pet, where's my taming skill, how do I get a pet?" Relax, by approximately level five, you will be given an item to tame monsters with, and an "Assist Talisman" called a pet bell. This is equivalent to a shield slot item in other games, but in this game, shield and weapon slot items contain your skills.

Before you jump the gun and try to kill monsters to get all the way to level five, let me advise you about one of the main features in this game: Quests.

Questing

Questing is one of the most advantageous things to do, there are item, monetary, and energy rewards, we'll cover energy soon, but for now let's cover the quest journal shall we?

The quest journal can be brought up with the [T] key, unless you changed it while browsing key configuration earlier. There are some words "currently suitable quests" they don't appear to be a tab, but they are, click on the words "currently suitable quests" and it will populate the right side of your quest journal with any quests you can do at your level, and a name, followed by a /location of the individual (/location is a command in games to figure out the X and Y coordinates of a point in a plane, which leads to the best 2d positioning system to date, X, Y, and Z coordinates together will allow for full 3d game programming, but few games take very much/any advantage of the Z axis.) Don't worry, you don't have to learn algebra to find your quest giver, just click on the underlined name, and your map screen will pop up. A star will be placed at the location of the quest giver. You can do this up to twice, before the map will start replacing stars with new names that you click on.

After accepting quests, often if you're having trouble finding out where to go for a quest, if you look in your quest journal default [T] and click on the quest name there will be detailed information in the right hand side of the journal, and you should be able to click on a monster's name, to have a star appear on the map that points out a general area that those monsters can be found at in the world. HOWEVER! anything marked scenario, and some quests that the developers forgot to mark as scenario, require you to delve into an instanced cave dungeon, and slaughter a boss, or a large number of monsters in that cave, these generally require groups.

When I get back on vacation, I will devote some time to covering quests which unlock other quests, as well as their rewards.

Taming

So you've gotten your pet bell assist talisman, and tamed a little parrot, but suddenly the parrot disappeared when you received your quest reward? Have no fear, you can now tame any animal your level or lower, as long as you don't already have a pet, and as long as you don't die while attempting to tame.

I didn't bother taming a pet till I got to the horses in sand village, and boy are they great for the level you can get them at!

In the future, I will do my best to get: pet level information, experience required for pets to level, stats of individual pets, so far I know that Horses and Tigers have the same basic stats when tamed, and are melee fighters, (very good tanks) Venom spitting snakes, mosquitoes, and ghosts generally don't make as good of tanks, but increase your damage output, in case you often find yourself grouping with monks, or other tamers who have tigers and horses. Note, I haven't tried the bunny rabbit, the wolf, the macaque, the tree demon, etcetera etcetera, I will have concrete data later. (Or if someone else is collecting data, please submit it to me in a private message, and I will attempt to categorize it.)

Pet Usage

I will detail ways in which pets can tank, deal damage, or just look cool.

In the low levels, once you are able to cast Wild Pet on your pet, you can have it aggro and tank anything for you, so long as your pet has good health, and you remember to heal it. This even works on multiple mobs at one time. If you are profficient at targeting(This game's targeting system really needs some work done on it, but the [Tab] Functionality works fine for what it says it does) you can hit [Tab] [Alt+1] Wait for your pet to swing at that monster once or twice(it has to actually hit and deal damage) then click on another monster, and hit [Alt+1], and so on and so forth, in this manner, when there are bosses with guards, you can have your pet tank all of the guards, or even the boss and the guards, so that any fairy in your party, or yourself, whomever is healing your pet, will not have to take damage, or be interrupted by guards attacking them. If any monks read this guide: The pet tanks more often than you until you get the Buddha Bone, this is the way it is supposed to be, monsters can't believe that a lowly pet is so ferociously attacking them, so their main instinct is to attack that creature first. However, a monk wielding a scary ritualistic buff is another matter entirely(even if it is called "Mercy").

Skills
For the Tamer, the skills available on the web page: http://www.talismanonline.com/talisskill.aspx are summed up nicely enough
I'll show you the skills I use.

Heavy Crack
perfuse mana on the arrows, crack down target's armor, cause x points damage, with extra x points target defense decrease, lasting 10 seconds
Rapid Crack
attack target with arrows, cause target x points damage

Shadow Crack
attack target with shadow arrow, cause x points damage, also decrease target attack x points

Heal Pet
curing pet with nature's power, pet recover x health points
Revive Pet
revive pet and recover it's health points x
Wild Pet Very important skill, "enemy value" is the same as aggro points in other games.
increaae pet's enemy value x points
Poison of Weakness For Boss killing when your pet has to be the tank.
daub poison on weapons, 20% rate to decrease target attack x points, lasting 10 seconds, could be successfully used for 30 times
Poison of Attack For normal hunting, it increases your dps by 20% of the value X where X is the value of damage that the buff adds, for 10 seconds at a time. Not a large number, at most this is increasing your DPS by 1-2, but it's still something.
daub poison on weapons, 20% rate to increase damage x points, lasting 10 seconds, could be successfully used for 30 times
Stone Skin
increase pet's physical defense x points, lasting 30 minutes
Brutal Fight
increase pet's physical attack x points, lasting 30 minutes

You may be saying "Wait, I don't see those skills, where do I get them?" or "You can't use poison, pet heal, and stone skin all at the same time, wtf?" Relax, as you level up, you'll get more talismans, and even though you can only have two equipment talismans at the same time, the idea is to wear the one with the better skills/skills you'll probably cast more often, or more useful bonus. I personally wear my nature tablet and pet bell, and just use my Jade Vessel when I want to put poison on, like once every 30 minutes.

Additional Taming Tips
If you're stuck on the quest, and don't understand how to tame, here are some useful tips: You can only tame animals, the taming process after targeting and right clicking/using the pet capture bell(A reusable item you get during the level five quest with the parrot) requires ~5 seconds, depending on how many times you get hit and interrupted. A good thing to do is to drag the pet capture bell into an open slot on your skill hotkey bar, on the first page, with other skills that you only use once in a while. Otherwise you can activate the bell from your inventory by right clicking on it, the same as every other usable item. Remember, most(all?) Guards for bosses, all bosses, most(all?) elite mobs, anything in a scenario, and various human creatures are untamable.

Also of note: If you have died recently, and you can't summon your pet, your pet may have died, this requires that you revive your pet with the Pet Bell skill: "Revive Pet". The opposite is also true, if you have died, your pet isn't necessarily dead, so if you don't see your pet, and can't tame another, click the little skill button just above your hotkey bar that says "summon pet" or go to a warehouse, and put your pet into it, then take him or her back out.

If you're trying to tame a pet, and think you don't have one, but nothing is working for you, you may simply have a dead pet, or you may have forgotten to use the summon pet skill.

Energy
Ah yes, Energy, after killing a creature, you'll get experience(which goes towards leveling up) and energy(and hopefully some copper too, since spending energy costs money.) To spend energy, you'll have to use that button "enhance talisman" found on your default skill page that I told you not to replace. You have to unequip your weapon talisman, or assist talisman, and then place it into the enhancement window. Click start, and you will begin spending energy, after which point, you will eventually level up your talisman (unless you run out of energy, or money, or your talisman is the same level as you already.) Levelling up a talisman has the following benefits: Increasing "hit" increasing Damage(Weapon talisman only) increasing skill damage/heal amounts, and often increasing the mana cost of skills. Also, it can unlock new skills that are currently grayed out for that Talisman(Weapons only)

Eventually when I'm high enough posting status(My maximum post is only 10000 characters long allowed right now), I'll combine this all into one post, with an index, as it is somewhat ridiculous to try to read through replies to a guide to find the rest of the guide.

Also with your permission I will include your Crossbow information, and inherence's information, with credit to you, rather than writing up basically a copy of that.