How to Tame?

[MLmarcie]

I might not be looking thoroughly enough before making a new post, but I have no idea on how to tame. Can someone please just give me a quick run-down on how to tame animals.
Sorry if this question has already been answered/posted.

[Captain Geriatric]

Press "J" on your Keyboard to open up the Jobs Tab.

There should be a job called "Capture" - you can use this to order your NPC's to catch and tame animals but you need NPC's with the taming job active!

[Sleipnir]

Also, you need to capture animals in cages before you can use the capture job on them. The cage will capture the entity automatically when they walk over them. Just be sure to match the cage size to the animal size.

[MLmarcie]

Thank you, both of you because I've been trying to figure it out.
Thanks again

[xian]

I tried to catch like 10 cows and chickens and all of them escaped. Which skill is used for this and what should be the minimum level? Also, is there a way to see the needed skill ingame?

[MasterFunk73]

The capture command says 'invalid location', even though I'm using a shepherd NPC with the taming skill. Please help! Thanks

[carriedactyl]

Originally posted by xian:

I tried to catch like 10 cows and chickens and all of them escaped. Which skill is used for this and what should be the minimum level? Also, is there a way to see the needed skill ingame?

Animal capture uses the animal husbandry skill, which is on the far right side of the skill panel near the carrying skill. I think capture rate increases with skill, but I don't know the exact math (it's not all-or-nothing though, so you do have a chance to capture even at low levels). If you equip a tome of agriculture in each hand you can get +4 animal husbandry.

Also, I recommend putting your cages in a smallish fenced in area with gates (wild animals can go through unlocked gates), then locking the gate once your shepherd is inside to start taming. This way, if the taming fails, the animal can't leave the map and will have a good chance of walking back onto the cage so you can try and capture it again.

[xian]

Thanks! Will try that :D good to know books can be equipped!

[Kirona]

This is a bit late, but how do you get the animals to approach the cages? All the animals I see just spawn at the edge of the map and basically stay there. They'll wander 5~10 tiles maybe but then they just leave.

Do I have to like, build a ring of cages all the way around the map or something? Cuz that doesn't fit with the advice to put them in a small/enclosed area.

[Sleipnir]

Animals will approach cages on their own rarely, but if you put food they like inside it (with a stockpile), they will be attracted to them. As for their pathing and movement, they pick spots around the map (which they can reach) at random, so it's possible they could show up and just stick in one area, or they could zip across the map. It's best to litter the cages around the map to cover more area, but putting food inside the cage will help them move towards them.

[Furious Kaiser]

I had an underground store house on my map with a single narrow entrance. I would find wild animals running in all the time to steal my food stores. So I built some traps just inside the entrance and pretty soon I was up to my eyeballs in captured critters. Your people should walk through traps just fine.