Cougar self-tamed, what should I do with it?

[latin]

[8beater]

MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT THE THE TO MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT MEAT

[PolecatEZ]

Even with a good handler, its still going to take years to train it up.

I had a level 16 handler (probably got that way trying to train this thing) and tried to get it to do something useful for more than a year. Finally just gave up and sold it for a good amount.

[ABrokenPieceoftheSun]

Cougar hat?

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Originally posted by PolecatEZ:

Even with a good handler, its still going to take years to train it up.

I had a level 16 handler (probably got that way trying to train this thing) and tried to get it to do something useful for more than a year. Finally just gave up and sold it for a good amount.

idk, with a level 11 handler i was able to train 2 in under a season.

http://i.imgur.com/W38LJtS.png

[Flirtyfrog]

I suggest keep the cougar and training it to fight. I've got a cougar attached to one of my fighters and they always chase down one or two fleeing raiders. The extra corpses feeds the cougar and the weapons gets melted down or sold.

[D-Ice<3]

Decent fighter or if you need the money sell it. And this handling thing is pretty RNG. My level 20 handler cant even tame a bear but my other level 10 handler did it on the first attempt

[ministrog]

1v1 the cougar will wreck most raiders (vanilla, of course).

[Dire]

You could sell it. But I would train it no matter how long it takes, it's worth it.

[Ele]

I have a self-tamed grizzly bear--he is very useful and wasn't that hard to train. He eats alot though.

[Bozobub]

My current (A15) colony is a stoner art colony that raises bears for defense and sale. It's NOT terribly difficult to tame/train any animal (besides thrumboes), if you have one or more colonists with sufficient skill.

If you want this to be easier, any colonist that has any animal handling skill should have it enabled. Any given trainer has a significant cooldown before they will train again, and multiple trainers let you keep rolling those dice, instead of waiting after every failure.

Be warned, however, that training animals inevitably causes trainers to bond with them, which will result in pretty strong mood debuffs if/when the animal(s) is/are killed in combat; this can, in extreme cases, cause a DF-like "tantrum cascade"! On the other hand, colonists get a mood buff for being the master of a bonded animal, so *shrug*. The carrying capacity of most larger animals is also not to be sneezed at.

If you plan on using animals for actual combat, it's often best to have them UNtrained/bonded, confined to an area that raiders must pass through. Additionally, the best combat animals, so far, are squirrels (yes, really, due to their small size and high speed), bears and muffalo for combat power and "tankiness" (muffalo also give milk and wool), and cougars for raw speed.