Revisit unicorns

[Sheffie 1,120]

Unicorns require a significant effort in animal taming to be usable. However, their speed doesn't make them worth riding at present, compared to ordinary horses.

 

I can see a few possible ways to balance this.

1. Make unicorns significantly easier to tame, perhaps allowing people who are "pure" to ride them or tame them easily (purity could be decided based on alignment, or even a stat such as creatures killed).
2. Make unicorns faster than a horse, although not as fast as a hell horse. Hell horses are so annoying that they deserve to be fastest.
3. Make unicorns slightly faster carrying two riders than a horse carrying one. This leaves unicorns with a decent purpose, even if it's just a niche role.
4. Make unicorns significantly tougher in combat, even while tamed, and have them attack the rider's target if possible.

 

 

 

[Griffy 82]

As a hellie breeder, I would absolutely love this. I could see a future change in my sales pitch based on if you prefer good or hellie...err evil.

[Arno 298]

You may want to look at champion unicorns.

They hit speeds comparable to hell horses, maybe even slightly faster.

Like a hell horse they have their traits on fairly consistently, so they don't swing as much as a horse.

The main drawback is that they can't carry as much as a hell horse before they start slowing down.

You also can't ride them untamed unlike (passive) hell horses.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Arno

[Synjor 466]

Their biggest issue is their requirement to be tamed to ride. Any mob that would normally target you instead targets your mount, and unicorns can get dunked quick; and no option for barding really sucks.

 

Should just make it so bred unicorns don't have to be tamed to be ridden. And let them wear bardings?

[Arno 298]

9 minutes ago, Synjor said:

Their biggest issue is their requirement to be tamed to ride. Any mob that would normally target you instead targets your mount, and unicorns can get dunked quick; and no option for barding really sucks.

 

Should just make it so bred unicorns don't have to be tamed to be ridden. And let them wear bardings?

Bardings would be great.
There is always oakshell, it even slows them down like a barding does.

I feel if they don't have to be tamed their speeds would have to be reduced.

They would become the default, making horses and hell horses overall worse options.
The skill requirement for taming a champion unicorn is part of the reward of the taming skill and animal husbandry skill which has taming related traits.

 

Some in between where you do use taming skill, but they don't get attacked like a tamed pet would, while still losing loyalty as normal would be good.

Edited January 11, 2023 by Arno

[harrycative 11]

 

- same taming skill ..... bonus just for bright lighters"

- faster then horse  / CANNOT BE HITCHED to vehicle /   

-having conditional 1h+- cd boost for speed on a unicorn "much higher outcome them hh 

*conditional- when kept on 3x3 enchanted grass with atleast 1 enchanted tree  

"have them attack the riders target = unclear

unicorn are not hell horses to fight....  they have endurace and + ability "example : charm creatures on cd 18h

[Lethyria 161]

I get the flavor of white light vs black light but it'd have to be a non pvp thing, and given how few libs there are makes your choice of faith even more skewed.

[Synjor 466]

16 minutes ago, Arno said:

Bardings would be great.
There is always oakshell, it even slows them down like a barding does.

I feel if they don't have to be tamed their speeds would have to be reduced.

They would become the default, making horses and hell horses overall worse options.
The skill requirement for taming a champion unicorn is part of the reward of the taming skill and animal husbandry skill which has taming related traits.

 

Some in between where you do use taming skill, but they don't get attacked like a tamed pet would, while still losing loyalty as normal would be good.

Ideal solution in my eyes would be to just make it so pets aren't instantly targeted by mobs at all, but that's been asked for who knows how many times and hasn't been touched. Would maintain the requirement for taming, which is a good point when it comes to champs. Would be way too strong to not have to tame them to ride.

 

Unicorns should be adjusted to work as a middle ground between horses and hellies

[FallenKnight 114]

MAKE WURM ONLINE EASY GAME ? 

 

NOPE -1 

[Etherdrifter 2,516]

The need to tame them to ride is the biggest issue for me, otherwise I'd use them for my main method of travel.

 

Remove the requirement to tame them to ride once they are geared, and remove the 2nd rider speed penalty entirely to make them a lighter alternative to HHs.

[Finnn 3,301]

Where's the balance in that?

 

You'll directly kill the reason to ever use a donkey/mule/horse with speed traits, as riding on horse back mount.

 

On top of that you're asking to get a boost in combat and have extra pair or hooves kicking your enemy?

 

What other mount does that, and on top with requirements like zero ability(/spell) or skill, everybody have high or 100 alignment(we do not talk about discarded alts with odd alignment)

 

[Madnath 3,113]

Hot take:

Keep unicorn taming difficulty where it is

Keep unicorns needing to be tamed to be ridden

But via some weird code workaround make it so they're targetted significantly less.

 

It'd drive people to get some taming skill if they've not wanted it, but gives a benefit to you grinding it directly by giving you an alternative to a horse that goes vroom

[Finnn 3,301]

55 minutes ago, Madnath said:

Hot take:

Keep unicorn taming difficulty where it is

Keep unicorns needing to be tamed to be ridden

But via some weird code workaround make it so they're targetted significantly less.

 

It'd drive people to get some taming skill if they've not wanted it, but gives a benefit to you grinding it directly by giving you an alternative to a horse that goes vroom

Nah...

 

Completely remove the targeting of tamed mount(ridden or hitched) if it's x loyalty ranks over the minimal, or just completely kill that feature if it's done by 50-70 animal-taming skilled player; here charming/dominating and charm-by-rune gets things fuzzy, but devs can think of w/e balance, I'll be wasting letters suggesting stuff anyway. High possibility for bad outcome either completely kills the utility of such possible feature or just limits it to be almost useless code, who really uses branded mounts and for how long, how much nerves does one lose while using such, how much meta gaming and extra addition effort does one have to do to use such in comparison to using a normal mount... Very good ignored questions. 

 

I only one used wild unicorn as a mount, saw a troll 50 tiles from me.. thought I'd go kill it.. well I did.. but it first clapped the unicorn once and that crippled the mount, bandaging the wound left it crippled(wth does that mean, moving at 2-4kmh), at that point I should turn on climb, laugh, do rain dance, +variety of other nonsense insane actions and still move faster to where I was headed), what I did was speed run the experience of wurm online unicorns as tamed mounts and killed the damn thing, and teleported home, saved a lot of time and probably repeatable scenarios if I had to wait an hour for the mount to heal.

 

If that is the intended behavior and intended gameplay, 10/10 would not recommend using unicorns, it's a "######" mount, I'm not sure what other word could be used for something useless only meant to be used behind fences;

I haven't used hh but pretty much same experience goes for them.. AH and AT need a fair tiny bit of utility besides breeding action and math checks, both skills are pretty poor with no salt to spice to get speed temporary boost, target traits when breeding, etc.. there's just lack of any kind of side actions from the two skills - on top ATaming is pretty poor again... compared to what dominate spell can do.. some creatures should be possible to tame at high skill; either skill or both should have some kind of small temporary boost for speed, being that good with creatures and be as good as a magnificent brand new noob created account just sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

 

Adding HUD with creature icon and HP bar and making it flash red or w/e.. and update HP if it's hurt could help players notice easier when their mount is being attacked, this applies for any mount type any-normal/'corn/hh since this is a feature for all of them.. being at a rift or not. 

[Pheonixluvsfire 21]

I think you could just leave everything the way it is, but once saddled allow leading and riding without being tamed. To balance it just do a tame check against taming skill just like taming whenever the animal is lead, if failed the unicorn goes aggressive like a failed tame. That way you are still rewarding players who grind up taming without changing tame mechanics and still provide a QoL benefit to players. It also would prevent people with high taming from taming and gearing a unicorn and providing it to players who didn't have the required skill. Minimal impact on gameplay besides just making unicorns more functional mounts.

[Oblivionnreaver 5,174]

unicorns are already faster than hellhorses (only horses/hellhorses actually check for trait uptime every other mob in the game has 100% trait uptime, hellhorses have ~94% and horses have ~50%) and have 30% DR compared to horses/hellhorses 0% but horses/hellhorses have special code when tamed so that the vast majority of mobs don't target them, only mobs they target first and the mob fights back, but you can get around that by ordering your hellie to target something and not kill it and it won't deaggro that mob until you disembark and have no problem with mobs attacking.

 

If they get the mobs don't target thing that horses do than the only reason to use a hellie over them is easier reimping of horsegear, which already takes very minimal damage at 0.16 dmg per hour of riding. they're already very easy to tame and their tame level barely drops, hellhorses lose 16 tame per hour so even a 100 taming account only tames them for 1-3 hours vast majority of the time, whereas unicorns can stay tamed for literal irl weeks due to being passive mobs.

 

If unicorns are going to be made more accessible the rest of their stats needs to be toned down so they're in-between horses and hellhorses, not all around better than hellhorses.

[Pheonixluvsfire 21]

My same idea would also work with hellhorses. Gearing them makes them passive but requires a tame check to lead them, failing the check turns them aggressive like a failed tame. It's up to the player at that point if having a mount not getting targeted or targeting other mobs is worth the extra chance of your mount becoming aggressive whenever leading vs. a one time tame. To further balance it you could have it that they stay aggressive to you until you successfully tame them again but only while you are in a specific range.

[Ecrir 887]

For the taming part, I think it would be great if born unicorns could gain a "domesticated" trait so they no longer need to be tamed. If speed is an issue then that trait could also come with a speed penalty (and whatever other penalties are felt necessary) downside so that such unicorns are for example as fast as ebony black horses. This way if you want a fast unicorn and don't mind having to tame it then you could use one without that trait, and if you don't want to tame it then you could use one with that trait.

 

[Gawain 622]

Bring back rainbow colors too on the unicorns 😠

[Shmeric 581]

All rewamping aside, I think unicorns in wild should have their spawn decreased. More of them around than horses, makes no sense.

It was massively increased for personal goals, years ago. No need for it anymore, so please make them rare again.

[Finnn 3,301]

56 minutes ago, Shmeric said:

All rewamping aside, I think unicorns in wild should have their spawn decreased. More of them around than horses, makes no sense.

It was massively increased for personal goals, years ago. No need for it anymore, so please make them rare again.

makes sense.. it's hard to find wild horse.. donkeys are now less common but seem to exist.. compared to nearly never seeing a wild horse offdeed.. forces sanbox play into a must to interact with another player to buy/trade/get gifted a regular horse to start playing around the mounts, seems silly 

[rangerklypf 140]

On 1/11/2023 at 11:16 AM, Sheffie said:

Make unicorns faster than a horse, although not as fast as a hell horse. Hell horses are so annoying that they deserve to be fastest.

 

 

I think they'd have to be made equal in damage resistance, speed, Body Control required and Animal Taming recommended, although I appreciate little differences like hell horses dealing more damage in combat/dealing exclusively Rotten Touch wounds vs unicorns... having hooves enchanted with Life Transfer lol just spit-balling here. I really like the idea of White/Black Lighters having exclusive benefits.

 

With an overhaul I wanna say unicorns/hell horses should be tuned to fit White/Black lighters respectively. Maybe what Light your kingdom belongs to determines which mount is faster/better. This way, there would be some epic team fights where all those purple fungus-lovers are riding fiery hell beasts and the tree-hugging WL'ers are on pure, horned stallions.

 

 

Edited January 29, 2023 by rangerklypf
changed paragraph order lol