Britannia is a land where it always pays to have a few friends at your side. If no friends are available when you need them, however, you can always buy some.
Pets and hirelings can perform a wide variety of tasks, but they’re most useful as guards. They can guard houses, ships or belongings you have to leave exposed. They can guard your possessions while you’re dead and seeking resurrection. And they can fight by your side in battle.
Hirelings
NPCs of the following types will sometimes consent to work for PCs: peasant, pirate, sailor, thief, bard, beggar, gambler, brigand, warrior, mercenary, Magincian servant, fighter, paladin and ranger. To offer an NPC employment, use the words “hire,” “mercenary,” “servant” or “work” in conversation.
Hirelings charge 10 to 80 gold pieces per day for their services, depending on how specialized their skills are. Peasants and beggars come cheap; paladins and rangers don’t. Pay hirelings by dragging gold over them. The further in advance you pay your hirelings, the more loyal they will be (and the longer they’ll stick to their posts in your absence).
Pets
Horses, dogs and cats (and sometimes more exotic beasts) can be purchased. Many wild animals can be caught and trained. Most natural animals and even a few monsters can be trained, but some are much harder to train than others. Creatures can also be summoned. Summoned creatures assume the Karma and Fame of the caster.
Naming Pets
If you are the owner of an animal, you can give the animal a name. Just click on it and then drag off of it to open up its Character Window, and enter the name you choose in the appropriate field. An animal must be given a name before it can obey commands.
Feeding Pets
Animals remain loyal if they’re kept well fed, and they also increase in loyalty each time you successfully command them to do something. Feed a pet by dragging food onto it.
The best way to tell if your pet is well fed and happy is by using the animal lore skill. Your pet’s loyalty is set to maximum every time you feed it. Feeding it lots at one time is not as beneficial as feeding it periodically over a long period of time. Also, to feed your horse you must be dismounted.
Stabling
To stable a pet, find an animal trainer. If you say the word “stable” to the trainer, he will offer to keep the animal indefinitely in exchange for a small fee withdrawn directly from your bank account. You can only stable animals and other creatures, not hirelings, of course!
A targeting cursor will come up and you will be able to target the pet. Once you target it, the fee will be withdrawn from your bank account. If you don’t have enough money, the pet will not be stabled. You can hit q to cancel the targeting cursor.
When a pet is successfully stabled, it is kept safely offscreen, and fed the entire time that it is there, so it will not go wild.
Stables can become so full that they will take no further pets.
To retrieve stabled pets, find the animal trainer that you left your animal with. Then say “claim” to him. He will release all the pets that you have left with him back into your custody.
