Overview
This was guide written with the intent to cover all aspects of taming and pet care as they function in the game. This guide can and will be updated with changes/refinements to the taming system. Please send me a message if the guide hasn’t been updated after two weeks of a change to the taming/pet system.
Step 1: Obtaining Your New Best Friend
Perks
Before even beginning the selection progress, you need:
Animal Friend Rank 3[vignette.wikia.nocookie.net]
And optionally to pacify creatures:
Wasteland Whisperer Rank 1 (minimum)[vignette.wikia.nocookie.net]
Animals are affected by the Animal Friend perk, while Creatures are affected by the Wasteland Whisperer perk. To tame, you only need Animal Friend at max rank, but to pacify creatures, you need Wasteland Whisperer.
To figure out if your tameable is a creature or animal, refer to the table in the “Selecting Which tameable to Hunt for” section.
Choosing Your Environment
ou want your pet to live a long and happy life, right? Choosing where you want to place your C.A.M.P will also choose how long your tameable will survive and their likelihood of being killed while in combat.
Because C.A.M.P. attackers scale to the region (Forest, Ash Heap, Toxic Valley, Savage Divide, Mire, Cranberry Bog) it’s incredibly important to figure out which region you want to put your C.A.M.P. at when thinking about what type of pet you want.
All of the tameables that have a very high chance of getting killed by attackers should be located at a C.A.M.P. location in the Forest, greatly increasing the longevity of the tameable.
All of the tameables that have a medium chance of being killed by attackers can be kept at a C.A.M.P. located in the Ash Heap, Forest, Toxic Valley and Savage Divide.
All of the tameables with a low chance of being killed by attackers can be kept at all locations apart from the Cranberry Bog and certain locations in the Mire.
You may be asking, “Why can’t I keep a pet in the Cranberry Bog or certain locations in the Mire”. It’s quite simple really:
Scorchbeasts
It doesn’t matter what your pet can handle, unless it’s a particular type of tameable that will be discussed in a special subsection in the next section, having your pet near scorchbeasts and high level enemies is a surefire way of getting it killed or transformed into scorched versions that never stop rampaging around your C.A.M.P (they don’t do any damage to anything you’ve built though).
You will note that the table in the next section lists the likelihood of the tameable to be killed by C.A.M.P attackers. This likelihood is based on attackers from the Forest region so expect the survivability of tameables to decrease when going to more dangerous areas.
Selecting Which Tameable to Hunt for
Remember, you can only have one pet at your C.A.M.P. at a time, so choose wisely. Here is a table of all the confirmed tameables in the game with their advantages and disadvantages:
Step 2: Taming Your Buddy
Tameables can be found as gold stars on this map but I frequent Cranberry Glade[vignette.wikia.nocookie.net] as the random encounter hotspot is right near the fast-travel spawn. Once you spawn and turn your view to the right, you will be greeted by a parking lot which serves as the scene to a random encounter that will almost always spawn, insult bot as an example. Remember that tameable spawn locations (TSLs) are leveled so you’re more likely to find higher leveled pets in the Cranberry Bog TSLs than at TSLs in the Forest.
Here are two major things you need to keep in mind:
1.Server hop until you get a random encounter with a tameable that you want. This will take a while in most cases, so be sure to weigh your options and see if the tameable you’re trying for is worth the hops and time you spend.
2.Tameables only spawn as single spawns in random encounter hotspots. If they spawn in a group, they will very likely not be tameable.
3. Legendary tameables are possible spawns, true legendary pets have the prefix “Legendary” and at least one star after their name. Tameables with just stars after their name are not conventional legendary enemies and will not drop legendary items if left untamed and killed.
Once You Meet Your Tameable:
After equipping both perks, run up to a tameable animal. For sloths you will have to get up close to do this. You will then be given a button prompt to either tame or pacify. You need to be at minimum, the same level as the tameable you’re taming. They do not take up any C.A.M.P. budget and once you tame them, you can take off the perks without losing them and without having them turn hostile.
Do not hit the button for pacify first, there is a chance that you will not be able to tame the animal/creature after it has been pacified.
Hit “Tame” and you should now have a pet. It will say “Owner: Your username” next to the name of the animal when hovering over it with your crosshair. Your next job is to escort it to your C.A.M.P. which can be tricky as high level enemies may spawn.
If you don’t want to escort it to your C.A.M.P:
A risky shortcut is to simply server hop until you hop to a world where your C.A.M.P. cannot be placed down. Accept that it cannot be placed down and fast travel somewhere to really ensure the shortcut works. Once you do, server hop to another server where your C.A.M.P. can be placed down and fast travel there. If your pet is still not there, either you took too long after it was tamed and it was killed along the way, or you may have to just wait some in-real-life time for your pet to arrive.
This shortcut is risky because while the shortcut may work, your pet may not make it to your C.A.M.P. if it is too vulnerable. There’s also a chance this may not work if you’ve tamed your animal/creature too recently.
Escorting isn’t the best way to ensure your pet arrives at your camp as enemies often spawn along the way. Do not plan to tame creatures unless you are willing to risk it dying during escort if escort is your only option.
If you can’t escort it, don’t want to risk the shortcut or don’t want to escort it, another shortcut is to fast travel to your camp and wait for it to arrive. This has around a 10% failure rate so keep this in mind, but it is guaranteed to arrive faster than server hopping.
As a side note, pets load with your C.A.M.P., so long as your C.A.M.P. is not loaded into a world, nothing will happen with your pet. You may resume any part of this process if you join a world but there’s a good chance the pet will have changed position in regard to how far it was away from your C.A.M.P. before you left the server due to the way the game works.
Step 3: Caring for Your Pet
Different types of pets require different type of supervision. All easily killed pets need constant supervision and no, your $5 collectron doesn’t count as a Ms. Nanny. Normal Dogs and Cats are affected by radiation and therefore need to be placed in an area without standing or running water.
You can move your C.A.M.P module to alter your pet’s patrol routine as they will circle around it and occasionally go toward it.
Remember: as of patch 9 or 13, pets do not have respawns. This means that at any point, if your pet disappears or gets killed, you will have to search for yet another one.
You can turn on passive mode to ensure that other players do 0 direct damage to your pets, this does not protect your pets against indirect damage like radiation. Neither you nor your turrets do damage to your pets
Conclusion
You should be all set to tame your first animal/creature. Remember all the risks this process entails and be prepared to do a lot of server hopping to get the exact pet you want. Good hunting!