Rend – Advanced Taming Guide
First, we’ll cover the basic tools you need to get started on taming: a Taming Crystal, a Bow, Spirit Arrows and a Siphon. The only rare resource you’ll need for this is Sunstone Topaz. Everything else you either already know how to get or you can ask a faction-mate.
1) The first thing you need to do is get some spirit residue together so let’s briefly cover that.
-To get spirit residue, you first need to get some spirits (the bar in the lower-left of your UI to the upper-left of your orange, energy bar) and then deposit them with the action key (default ‘f’) in the divinity stone (aka tree) at the center of your faction’s base.
-To get spirits to deposit, you can either hit spirits that appear in the form of bluish wisps at night-time or you can harvest plants with a chance to get what are called spirit flowers. You can then eat these flowers to add varying amounts of spirits to your bar depending on the tier of the plants the flowers came from.
2) Now that we have some Spirit Residue, we need to acquire some Sunstone Topaz.
-To get Sunstone Topaz, you can either harvest Topaz nodes which look like small crystalline rocks that are yellow or you can hit regular rocks with a chance to get Topaz geodes. From there you can right-click the geodes in your inventory and then click salvage to get one of the three types of Topaz: shards, regular topaz and sunstone with sunstone being very rare relative to the other two.
There are many gem types in Rend beyond Topaz such as Quartz and Chalcedony each with three types: shards, regular and a rare type such as Sunstone.
3) Once you have some Sunstone Topaz and Spirit Residue you can make your basic taming tools.
-A Taming Crystal is the first and most important tool you need and once crafted at the Spirit Stable can be placed onto your hotbar to banish a creature’s soul to the Spirit Realm. As mentioned in the overview, it has unlimited use so you can spam the hotkey in faction base to get the hang of how it works.
-The other mandatory part of basic taming is the spirit arrow which is also crafted at the Spirit Stable. Its more advanced versions can be unlocked by completing the requisite research in the Mystic research stone.
I’d recommend bringing around 30 Spirit Arrows for your early tames till you get a rough idea of how many you should bring for any tame depending on the creature.
-A Spirit Siphon can also come in handy if you have a faction-mate coming along to help you tame. You can make one of these or its more advanced versions (also) unlocked from Mystic research in the Spirit Stable. Give it to a faction-mate if they don’t have one and they can shoot the potential tame to amplify your progress on taming a creature. The Spirit Siphon must be equipped in a weapon slot in order to be used.
4) Now that you have all your basic taming tools, you just need to find a creature to tame.
-The first thing to do is to pick an appropriate pet rating. I’d aim in the 100-200 level if you can find it pretty easily and stick to a Grunter or even a Gruntling and after you have the hang of i you can move onto a wolf.
-Once you find a creature to tame, shoot it with the Taming Crystal, confirm it has a blue particle effect swirling around it and then proceed to kill it in the regular world.
-You’ll see the creature disappear instead of its body falling to the ground like normal if the Taming Crystal was used correctly.
5) Now that you have banished a creature’s spirit to the Spirit Realm, you just need to find a way into the Spirit Realm. There are currently several ways to do this.
-The most obvious method is you or a faction-mate opening a portal with the Shaman’s “Rend the Veil” spell. The portal lasts for 10 minutes from when it was opened.
There are also random portals that spawn around the world you can use to enter the Spirit Realm.
-It is very important to note that there are currently no visual indicators to indicate when a portal is closing so especially in the case of the random portals around the world you have to be careful about using them. The best safety net in either case would be a Potion of Crossing (see below).
-The next best thing is an item in the Spirit Stable crafting bench called the “Lesser Totem of the Otherside” which, once crafted and placed on the ground, opens a localized Spirit Realm for three minutes. That is, a radius approximately 100 meters from the totem is in the Spirit Realm but if you move further than that you go back to the regular world.
-Running back into the radius of the totem will put you back into the local Spirit Realm as long as the totem’s time hasn’t run out.
-You can destroy the totem to return to the regular world before the three minute duration ends if you right-click the totem with any standard tool until it breaks.
-You can place multiple totems to extend the radius of the localized Spirit Realm but you do need to keep track of the time you have remaining.
-Totems of the Otherside are NOT recommended for taming the few creatures that flee when attacked as they could run out of the range of your totems.
-Last, we have two potions that can send you into the Spirit Realm.
-Potion of the Otherside sends you to the Spirit Realm for one minute. Taking multiple potions stacks the duration (i.e. taking two in quick succession will give you a full two minutes in the Spirit Realm).
-Potion of Crossing is a one way ticket to or from the Spirit Realm. You can either use this potion as a really easy way to just jump in and out of the Spirit Realm or a safety net in the event you take a portal into the Spirit Realm and it closes before you can get back out.
6) Once you’re in the Spirit Realm and find the spirit of the creature you shot with your Taming Crystal, you need to be sure you’re the first person to shoot it with a Spirit Arrow to ensure that you are the owner of the pet when all is said and done. After your first successful hit you should see another bar appear below the creature’s health bar showing the taming progress (it will be bright blue in color). Just keep shooting every few seconds and once it fills a message will appear that the tame was successful.
-Be sure you have loaded Spirit Arrows in and aren’t using regular ammo. Regular ammo will still damage the creature’s spirit and make it more likely that you will kill the creature before filling the taming progress bar.
-Avoid critical hits on the creature as this will also increase the likelihood of killing the creature before the taming progress bar can fill.
-Around the time when you fire your first Spirit Arrow a faction-mate with a Spirit Siphon can start firing the Siphon at the creature to amplify your taming progress.
-Any additional allies can shoot Spirit Arrows at the creature as long as you were the first one to shoot it but it’s currently unconfirmed if this tames a creature faster.
7) Once you see the message that the tame was a success and you leave the spirit realm, you can go back to base, stand near the Spirit Stables and press ‘o’ to open the pet interface and press the big “Set Active” button to select your new tame and then press ‘z’ to summon it and ‘z’ again to mount and ride it when applicable (most pets can be ridden at this stage).
8) While your pet is summoned and you’re not riding it, you can hold ‘v’ to see a radial menu of commands to issue to your pet such as aggression level and whether or not it should auto-harvest. You can also hold ‘f’ on your new pet and select an option from the radial menu to dismiss it. Now go have fun with your new pet!
