Warden questions

I am an accidental bat. I'm still a fairly new PG player, and doing a war cache, I got bit by the bats in the dungeon. I had no idea that it would turn me into a bat if I didn't cure it. Boy was I surprised! I know now!

But, since I was changed anyhow, I thought I would start working up favor, etc. on the animal vendors before I changed back. Just as an aside, they are a hoot! I haven't laughed so much as I did talking with Spot.

Anyhow, I'm kind of digging being a bat, love the flying especially.

I just leveled up to friend with Norbert, and he gave me the first warden quest. I don't know much about warden, except that it is for animal forms only. So, my questions are:

1. Since I'm doing the warden quests as a bat, if I change to a different animal form, do I retain warden? Or is it only for the form you did it in?
2. I'm currently using the bat skills and Psychology. I was also leveling priest and swords. I know I can't use swords as an animal, but what's the best second skill to work up in conjunction with bat?
3. Is bat really the best animal form? Should I cure bat and work on a different animal form?
4. Will all of the favor, etc that I'm leveling up as a bat be retained if I switch to a different animal form?
5. If I change back to human form for a while, I will no longer be able to use warden skills, so will I lose those skills?
6. Can I use warden skills if I am in an animal druid form?

I guess I had more questions than I thought!

Any response will be appreciated!

1. The warden skill is it´s own skill and not bound to a specific form so as long as you are a animal you can use the warden skill
2. Personally i played bat with ment for the power regen and electricity bonus dmg but if you like psy you can stay with psy or use priest if you like that more. What skills you use is personal taste in the end
3. There is no best form since it always depends on the players preference but you can put other animal forms above bat form if you want to try them and keep beeing a bat. So for example you can use a pig juice to try pig and if you want to go back to bat form you only need to use a unpig juice.
4. Favor is bound to the char and not to the form so you keep all the favor, same as the favor you get in human form. Only the NPC in animal town don´t talk to you if you haven´t been in animal form for 3 hours real time in game (also no access to the storage in animal town)
5. To keep beeing able to use Warden you need to do the warden help quest (no idea how it´s called) once in i think 30 days. if you haven´t you won´t be able to use warden anymore until you do a help quest for the warden.
6. You only need to be in animal form to use warden, no matter how you got into it. So if you became a deer through the druid skill you can use warden the same as when you used a deer juice.

Hope that answers all your questions

Bat is probably the weakest animal form. The closest competition would be rabbit, but rabbit can at least compliment your second skill extremely well. Aside from deathscream, I don't remember getting any of the abilities to do more than 1500 or so and the aoe damage doesn't compete with real AOE builds. Maybe I missed a trauma build or something, but I built warden/bat and ended out using warden skills for 90% of my damage.

Warden skills with spring fairy gear aren't bat at all. My thought was to go bat/warden, load up on spring fairy gear, and go straight electricity/nature damage (conditioning shock, lethal force, and apprehend, the last of which requires a mod to do electricity). Bat skills just didn't compete.

Note on being an animal: You can't access animal town storage while in human form. So whenever you decide to switch back for a good chunk of time, make sure to have a ton of useless stuff that you want to keep within this storage. Further, warden storage is still accessible at the Kur bookshelf if you're a human.

The druid bird forms are illusions, so you cant use warden as a bird unless the form under that is a true animal, deer is only true animal form of the druid animal forms. You dont have to use bat skills while being a bat and you can still fly. I have a bat and use Bat/Mentalism, the Mentalism is good and helps me fly longer.
But some NPCs wont talk to any animals, some wont talk to scary animals like bat, wolf or spider. On the NPCs that dont talk to scary animal, you could become a cow, talk to them and switch back to bat again ( kill the cow boss to switch back or Harry the wolf has a quest to switch back ).

one word: as Animal you aren't forced to use this specific animal skill eg. you can be bat but use Warden/Mentalism skillset :)

Thanks all for the responses. I am not sure if I will stay a bat, although I am still fairly low, it just doesn't seem very powerful. However that could change once I get higher level. I decided to go for warden. If I decide I don't want to continue as an animal, I can just go back to my other skills from before I was an animal.
I did decide I would level an alt as a druid instead of my main. Again, thanks!

Most combat skills dont seem good until level 20 or 25.

Talk to someone like Gruffon or Chartok about being a Bat. Many people think bat is a weaker animal form, but these two manage to run through a lot of stuff solo and kill some tough stuff. Co-ordinated attack works extremely well with the bat doubles, for instance.

I mix Fox and Warden, and find it to be a very fun and versatile set of skills. Bat is on my list to try as well. Warden is just a great skill for any animal form and mixes well with many things.

Pig is best! I am biased though.

Leveling Warden will have you doing a lot of Warden quests to gain points to buy your skills so don't panic about that.