Hands and skills?

[Tagamogi]

I'm looking for information on which abilities become disabled in animal form. I've been playing around with spider form and what I can do doesn't quite match the animal form limitations I thought existed:

I can still do carpentry as a spider. This surprised me. The example I've always heard is that "cows can't hold a hammer to do carpentry", so I assumed that limitation applied to all animal forms. Is it just cows that can't do carpentry, or is that information completely out of date? I haven't tried blacksmithing or toolcrafting which seem to me like they'd also require hands.

I cannot gather wood, either with a handsaw or with the blade necklace. I thought the necklace was supposed to allow animals to gather wood, but it's been a long time since I heard that, so I'm probably just out of date again.

Other than that, the only other trade skill limitation seems to be that I can't milk cows. This part is what I expected.

I think I also finally figured out how the equipped main and off hand items work: If you are an animal you can "equip" an item which will give you its associated gear bonuses, but you cannot "wield" an item to get its associated combat skill unlock, like sword, shield, druid or lute.

[Crissa]

Yeah, if turning into an animal took away gear bonuses, turning into an animal would kill players pretty instantly.

It wouldn't be fun if you got turned into a cow and then had to get 'cow gear' to re-equip to fight her again! It would become super-unwieldy at higher levels, and it's bad enough already how gimped you are if you can't fall back on some of your skills.

We do want to encourage funny stuff happening to your character, right?

[Hoxard]

As far as I know, the only limitations are

-No chopping wood. You can still acquire wood from other means(mob drops, other players, etc.) and use it for carpentry, toolcrafting, etc. You just can't right click logs on the ground.

-No milking cows. If you are a cow, you can milk yourself. Other animals have no way to get milk aside from buying it from other players.

-No armor patching. You can still use first aid, and animals get their own, better version of armor patching that's only usable in beast form, but armor patching itself is humanoid only.

-No using weapons. You can equip them and get all the bonuses from them, but they won't enable weapon skills(except unarmed). Animal necromancers need their necromancy gem in armor or jewelry. Necro enabling weapons will not work.

-No sigil scripting. Kind of a slap in the face since you need the skill to attune malachite, which is used for all animal skills except lycan, which is the only one that could reasonably be expected to have sigil scripting.

I can't think of anything else that being an animal prevents you from doing.

[Eachna]

-No armor patching. You can still use first aid, and animals get their own, better version of armor patching that's only usable in beast form, but armor patching itself is humanoid only.

Animals get their own first aid that uses healing bombs. I've read somewhere that first aid won't always work for beast form, that it working now is a bug.

[ShieldBreaker]

Animals get their own first aid that uses healing bombs. I've read somewhere that first aid won't always work for beast form, that it working now is a bug.


A correction: I'd forgotten that we decided animals CAN use first aid kits (but not armor repair kits); that is intended behavior and not a bug.
http://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?23-Questions-I-ve-been-meaning-to-ask-for-awhile-now&p=648&viewfull=1#post648

[Eachna]

http://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?23-Questions-I-ve-been-meaning-to-ask-for-awhile-now&p=648&viewfull=1#post648

Thanks for the correction. That begs the question...what use are the first aid bombs? Do they AoE?

[ShieldBreaker]

The FA bombs AoE is 15.

[Eachna]

Okay, thanks, back to the discussion about pet hands :D.

[Crissa]

The bigger problem I have with the animal armor-patching and first-aid is that it's nowhere near where people get turned into animals. You have to be level what to get to the village and favor what to learn it? Bleah.

[Tagamogi]

-No sigil scripting. Kind of a slap in the face since you need the skill to attune malachite, which is used for all animal skills except lycan, which is the only one that could reasonably be expected to have sigil scripting.

This one seems weird to me. I finally got around to trying calligraphy as an animal which seems like it should be a highly related skill to sigil scripting and calligraphy works just fine.

Anyway - a belated thank you for your long list and everyone else who added information! Animals are far less restricted than I originally thought...

[rastaah]

I just wish Marna would talk to me 'naaaa'. :P

[lilibat]

Bats have hands. Maybe they would chop wood slower but a bat of a certain size could still hold an ax.

[Delfofthebla]

Sorry for thread necro, but does anyone have any info on this Armor Patching for animals? I had an old character from pre-alpha that used to be able to use Yetiskin, but that no longer works on my spider.

Where do I get an armor patching skill for animals?

[alleryn]

Where do I get an armor patching skill for animals?
http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Survival_Instincts

[Delfofthebla]

http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Survival_Instincts

Awesome, thanks.

[Celler]

I think one of the things that changed animals greatly was when the multi storage points were added.
At least now you can access most of the Npc Storages with the Npc's that dislike animals.

[Delfofthebla]

I think one of the things that changed animals greatly was when the multi storage points were added.
At least now you can access most of the Npc Storages with the Npc's that dislike animals.

Yeah that has helped a lot.