Misadventures in Elephant Training

[Karna5]

Alternate title: Don't use mount reset on a miniature elephant

One of my favorite mounts in BDO is the miniature elephant, particularly if it has Quick Run (sprint) because it carries as much as a good wagon and is faster and more maneuverable (particularly if it has Rampage [Rear] to turn 180 degrees on a dime).

I finally bred and trained up enough good T8 or better mounts for my sixteen characters, and I noticed my miniature elephant had only five out of eight skills.

Had: Quick turn, quick run, quick halt, quick start, rampage
Missing: Fore chop, Side steps, Joy ride [instant acceleration]

I also had two mount reset tokens (USD$13 value each), and I'm still in vision healing mode (for another three weeks to go, apparently), so I decided to use a mount reset on my elephant.

I'm artisan 10 training and used Trainers CLothes (Costume) and a full set of life jewelry and clothing to get the best chance I could for skill gain. Elephants don't have costumes, so that's not an available option for them. And I didn't want to use a branding stone (at first) because I don't use the elephant enough anymore now that my main life character is tagged and can't do trading.

The first eleven levels she learned no skills. By level 15 she had only 4 skills, less than I originally had.

So I caved in and went all out and used another mount reset and this time bought a mount brand (USD$5) to have as much chance as I could to learn skills.

By level 15 she had learned a total of 5 skills, bringing me back to how I started but mwith fore chop instead of quick turn.

USD$31 in pearl items later I was back where I started but slightly worse off.

Mount reset is a terrible idea on miniature elephants because they only get fifteen levels, and their chance to learn skills tiny. And they cannot benefit from costumes, and they don't get horse shoes, so unless you have quick run they move very slowly and take forever to level up.

What I should have done, instead of wasting mount resets, is acquire another miniature elephant for 40 million silver. It's a repeatable quest.

I learned my lesson the hard way, but I'm sharing this in case anyone else thinks about using a mount reset on a miniature elephant :)

p.s. I later used a mount skill change to replace fore chop with side step since fore chop on elephant is useless. And quick turn isn't very quick *laughs*

p.p.s. In my first reset one of the four skills my elephant got was joyride (instant acceleration). That skill does not recognize the settings option to disable camera zoom when accelerating, so the camera constantly zooms in and out like a paddle ball making a very dizzying effect. I love the idea of instant acceleration, but it's extremely unpleasant the way it's implemented on the elephant