You give a pet or hireling an order by saying its name, followed by the command. For example, “Fido come” or “Brutus attack.” Pets and hirelings may refuse to attack creatures much more powerful than they. Some pets are also harder to control than others. Your success at giving them orders will depend on your animal taming skill.
Also, NPCs of relatively law-abiding professions may refuse to attack PCs or NPCs unless provoked first. Pets and hirelings respond to the following commands:
Come: Summons the pet or hireling to your location.
Drop: Drops everything it’s carrying to the ground.
Fetch, get, bring: A targeting cursor will appear. The pet/hireling will bring you an object you click on.
Follow: A targeting cursor will appear. You can click on yourself or someone else. The pet/hireling will follow the person or creature indicated. If you give the command “follow me” the pet or hireling will do so with no specific targeting necessary.
Friend: A targeting cursor will appear. Click on the character you wish to mark as a friend. This character can then freely approach any object or area the pet/hireling is guarding, just as you could. Furthermore, the pet/hireling will follow all the friend’s orders just as it would one of yours.
Guard: A targeting cursor will appear, allowing you to click on the thing, place or person to be guarded. If you give the command “guard me,” the pet or hireling will do so with no specific targeting necessary. The pet/hireling will stay near its indicated assignment, warn off anybody who approaches, and attack anything or anybody that attacks or tries to use the guarded object.
Kill, attack: A targeting cursor will appear allowing you to indicate the creature to be attacked. Depending on the creature’s toughness and the pet/hireling’s loyalty, it may refuse to attack.
Patrol: If you have ordered a pet or hireling to guard two or more things, you can command it to “Patrol” between the places or objects. If one or more of the objects being guarded is mobile, it may be dropped out of the Patrol rotation if it moves too far from the others.
Report: Obviously, this command applies only to hirelings. Hirelings will report how they feel about their job, whether they are following someone, and who, and a list of anything they may be guarding at the moment. (A successful use of the Animal Lore skill can give you an idea of a pet’s happiness and loyalty level.)
Ranging from mutinous to faithful, the responses to the report command and indications given by the animal lore skill are as follows:
• "confused"
• "extremely unhappy"
• "rather unhappy"
• "unhappy"
• "content, I suppose"
• "content"
• "happy"
• "rather happy"
• "very happy"
• "extremely happy"
• "wonderfully happy"
Stop: Cancels any current orders to guard or follow.
