I don't think I'd've brought up the goat problem, as that just tends to muddy the waters here. A simpler "paradox" is the one where after a coin comes up heads 99 times, there's still a 50/50 chance of the next time coming up heads. That's the real issue here: whether the beast's rolls for its crits are affecting your rolls for your crits. (Unless there's a bug in the RNG, they can't be.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy

Edit: What this means is that, whatever crit your beast gets (or doesn't get), your own chance to crit is unaffected.

What Zarquan is worried about is seed in RNGs that give rise to streaks - where you get a streak of high (or low) numbers generated that gives you, say, 10 wscs in a row. If you have a beast, this means that the beast attack will get wsc'd instead of your normal attack. This translates to LESS overall damage over the same number of attacks (2 beast + 8 normal hits that are all wsc'd will be less than 10 normal hits that are all wsc'd.)

However, in the long run, as long as a bash to demi for example, the way probability works is that it will be roughly equal crit-rate for all hits that you make, beast or normal. So, having an extra beast hit on top of your normals is going to translate to MORE overall damage over the same time period.

Therefore, it is to your advantage to have a beast hitting if you're a long-term kinda guy, and it is to your disadvantage if you're a short-term kinda guy.

That said, I like both heal health and beast attack in my beast. I heal health when my health is <70%, and attack at other times. This means I won't heal health when I have, say, 95% health and my beast can heal 10% on top of my potion/sparkle balance. Maximising bashing effectiveness. I'm illithoid, though, so I don't influence and thus have no need for influence buffs, explaining the extra trains I have available.

I've been -trying- (and failing) to keep a Nature Totem Stag fed and trained and such. If I ever get it to progress to get it off of the ground, what should I do to make it useful for hunting? It's starter abilities are healhealth and Treetoss (which is not useful for hunting). I was thinking of making it a mount. I'm a Hartstone Druid. I've been feeding it oats, but I think it'll need spirit or mental trains for smoething. I don't do much influencing, but I will once I have the lessons.

Well, that's a bit of a necro, but I've seen worse. In regards to making it a bashing beast, ideally, you'll want to give it Bodyguard, Battle and Aggressive. All of these are body trains, so you need to feed it oat/meatfeed and administer bodoru accordingly. Aggressive and Battle are pretty low in Beastmastery, so you should be able to get those easily enough, but Bodyguard is a bit of a ways in, but definitely worth it if you want a good bashing beast.

If you're planning on utilizing the innate heal health, I suppose you should teach it to Regenerate Ego since I believe that beast healing takes beast ego to do. Feed it fruit/eggfeed and administer suporus accordingly.

Mind, if you're looking to bash more effectively overall, you'll want to work on your guild skills first before dabbling in Beastmastery. Otherwise, good luck.

Decided to go with a pure bashing beast since I hardly ever influence anymore. How's this setup, missing anything?

Nightmare: Has Mount, Battle, Flying

Bodyguard 150 body
Aggressive 120 body
Galloping 30 body
Armour 120 body
Regeneration (health) 40 spirit
Chameleon 70 mind
Trotting 30 body

Instead of armor and chameleon, you may want to consider some heal health. For regeneration, you'l want regenerate ego.

Lose the health regeneration, too.

Can I ask why? Especially confused on the regenerate ego, what will the beast use that for? Also, I read to not use healing because it is on the same balance as the attacking :| Not questioning your setups, merely wondering.

Beasts use ego to do heals.

The extra healing ability may help you more than the extra damage from the beast since you're non Demi. Of course, you will want aggressive just to break shields.

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but:

What exactly happens if I administer wackodoru? Do I have to refeed then readminister bodoru, suporu, mindoru? Or do I just zero out used trains?

Aymee:

Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but:

What exactly happens if I administer wackodoru? Do I have to refeed then readminister bodoru, suporu, mindoru? Or do I just zero out used trains?

Sets trains to 0/0 for all, so have to readminister reagents. Don't think you have to refeed from the start though, unless you didn't give enough the first time round.

Raeri:


Sets trains to 0/0 for all, so have to readminister reagents. Don't think you have to refeed from the start though, unless you didn't give enough the first time round.

If I don't have to feed, and can just readminister, that would make me happy. Thank you!

Edit: Yes it worked, whew. I wasn't sure I was going to bother to retrain my turtle if I had to refeed too...

http://wiki.lusternia.com/Beastmastery#Healing

Is this just an error in the wiki, or do beasts use mana and not ego to heal after all? So confused >_<

That's an error in the wiki. Beasts use ego for healing.

Ok, so further tinkering with the build I want got me this:

Nightmare: has Mount, Battle, Flying

Bodyguard 150 body
Aggressive 120 body
regeneration (ego) 40 spirit
healing (health) 100 spirit
Galloping 30 body
trotting 30 body
chameleon 70 mind

540 / 600 total trains used

Wondering if the remaining trains should be body, for more health, or if I'll be needing more ego, to support healing me.

Also, will my beast be able to walk over water if I have waterwalking or should I get swimming for it? I like to take shortcuts over rivers <_<

waterwalking works.

If its strictly for bashing, a good use of the rest of those trains is to just put them in spirit so it has more ego for curing, even with ego regen they tend to run dry. Otherwise, if you plan to let it dabble in pk some with the beast, gust is well worth it at 60 trains as you already have wings on the mount.

I'm not sure galloping or chameleon are really that important though. Putting those trains to healing ego instead would let you use the beast in debates - while also increasing your beast's ego pool for healing health.

Galloping is there to get from bashing spot A to bashing spot B faster. Chameleon I picked so that if I pass by an enemy, who'll not see me nor my demon, my beast isn't a dead give away that someone did just walk by.

Think I'll put the rest of the trains into ego, since gust doesn't really appeal right now. I may redo the beast at Demi when I (hopefully) aren't so damn squishy anymore. But I need to hunt me some credits before that point, unless I suddenly magically get rich (I wish!).

If this turns out to be too little ego, I may drop chameleon and / or galloping, but as I won't be using my ego during bashing, I suppose I could always just empath that onto my beast too.

That brings me to a new question though, is it possible to calculate beforehand how much health/mana/ego your beast will have? So I can maybe see if I'll have enough ego in theory?

Total stat = (500*level)+(15*trains)

My level 12 pony has 390 spirit trains, so she has 11850 ego. Zero mind trains, so just 6000 mana.

How does Influencing in Beastmastery affect influencing? I'm not really sure, I tried and it's still the same number of infattacks. I think it's ego consumption. What do you guys think? I'm not really sure.