Is there a good way for us traders to learn animal lore? Preferably something that I can do while on the trade route. Any tips are appreciated, thanks!

The best way for anyone (possibly except Rangers) to learn Animal Lore is via fishing. Get yourself a pole and bait (or find one of the locations that provide them), cast, wait three seconds, pull in -- rinse and repeat. Sometimes you'll catch fish, and when you do it trains your Foraging and Animal Lore. I trained Animal Lore to 70ish as a lore prime this way, and it worked pretty well. It's still not an easy skill to lock, but it's doable.

As a Trader, I believe you can sell your catches afterward for a small amount of Trading exp.

I know Aesry has free poles/bait by the central lake, and I think Crossing does too (in a premie-only area?), as do some of the boats to the islands. I believe Lang and Ratha both have bait shops. If you want to fish somewhere else you will need to stock up on bait, but if you do that then you can fish pretty much anywhere.

However, why are you trying to learn Animal Lore? You realize that in X3.0, Animal Lore will combine with Foraging to become Outdoorsmanship. Any "extra" skill you have will become "bonus bits" (likely in your survival pool), which will aid you in training survival skills over time, until they are used up. So unless you are really hankering for some survival pool bonus bits, it would be a lot easier to simply train Foraging.


-- Player of Eyuve

>>>Animal Lore: 51 50.54% clear (0/34)

>>>Feeding caravans only.

Seriously? I stopped learning animal lore for feeding my caravan at 19.xx ranks... weird.

<< Seriously? I stopped learning animal lore for feeding my caravan at 19.xx ranks... weird.

I sincerely doubt this. I suspect it may have seemed like you didn't learn much, but if you FEED your caravan and then check animal lore, you should see that it isn't clear. While an ill-timed pulse may have made it appear this way once if you typed EXP right after a pulse, feeding will still award you a bit each time. However, it never made sense for you to learn a lot from feeding a caravan, it was just a small bonus I threw in there because it made sense that you should learn some from the action. If you try it again and learn nothing, BUG it because that isn't how it is supposed to be functioning. I'll gladly test it on my end after you do the bug to see what may be happening.

Best Regards,
~GM Arnimas

"Wealth is not his that has it, but his who enjoys it."
-Benjamin Franklin

>>Maybe it's because I started using GIVE with my feedbag instead of FEED?

I use GIVE CARAVAN and I have 76 ranks of animal lore from contract trading alone. And I practically never trade contracts

I'm not real sure what the difference could be, although it's hardly worth worrying about with Animal Lore going away

Apu
_
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

I went ahead and tested again yesterday, and my Caravan is teaching me 0 animal lore. I've got the Mahogony POC pulled by Aurochs from the most recent HE. I also BUGged it in game yesterday.