Basics
Beastmasters are a nomad guild that tame animals to use as mounts in battle. The main benefit of a mount is increased tanking ability, but there are other special improvements that I will cover. Animals are pretty much any overworld animals you can see (with only a few exceptions), as well as some animals in certain areas.
The guild is 15 levels, but you need all 15 squire levels to join. You should also take some cavalier levels in order to train combat riding; the full power of being mounted really comes from having both guilds. As such, this guide will assume you have both guilds, even if you haven't maxed both.
Mounts
Riding is the foremost aspect of beastmasters. Once mounted, you will have an improvement to some combat skills, and your mount will also take hits for you; some mounts will have special attacks.
You should pick a combat mount with good hp and pr, though certain mounts even with no resistances will pretty much be unkillable (or you will die very, very long before the mount is in trouble anyway).
Riders are very effective in combat, as you also get a buff just from being mounted. If you're riding a high level mount and have some good skills, you can get great boosts to dodge, parry, throw weight and attack when mounted. A level 15 beastmaster is able to train combat sense to 100 in the cavalier guild. In this way, you might end up with a barb-bm-cav with surprisingly impressive def skills (100+ d/p, 100 cs).
Mounts will improve by use - a powerful mount may end up with very impressive damtype resistances. PR is predetermined by the value prior to taming, and is capped at 80 (ie. an animal that evaluates as 100pr will only get 80 after taming). As an example, Umbra, my chaos drake, has 80 pr, 100 all other resists, and adds +21-22 to skills.
You can also lead animals (your herd). Led mounts will not tank for you, though the enemy may target them for blasts. Led mounts can use their special attacks if they have some, but otherwise won't contribute to combat.
Special attacks are passives that are available with some animals, which will fire off randomly. These are quite powerful additions to your arsenal, though you can't control them. Sometimes you can stunlock and/or kill a mob with just specials firing off, or you might go through multiple fights without any of them firing once.
Mounts use some special eq:
Bridle - absolutely critical item, as you need these for leading. Joribund sells cheap rope ones, but you want to eventually buy a black leather bridle for your main mount.Saddle - for riding. Merch made, or you can buy a military saddle.Saddlebags - merch made, usually with a good rig material like bamboo. You can then store your loot on your mount. You can use handling with these, such as get noeq from mount (to prevent grabbing mount gear). You can't grab stuff during combat.Barding - protective gear. Ideally your main mount has pr and a tonne of hp anyway. I don't normally use any barding as these take damage; there's a magic barding from Fae Forest which I've had dested, and then merch bardings take stupid amounts of material.
Almost all mount eq except for Joribund's tether is going to be specifically tied to a race or a few races. You will get the refit mount gear skill (or ask a merch) should you need to resize your gear for a different race. Lots of dropped gear defaults to horse/donkey/etc. so you'll need a refit for most of them.
Skills
Like any other guild, you will need to determine what's useful for you. I will go over the main skills briefly.
Riding - determines what you can ride. Only beastmasters can max this. Always keep this at 100.Combat Riding - determines how often your mount tanks for you, and the bonus you get. Only cavaliers can max this. Get this to 100.
Heel - absolutely vital skill for bringing your mount with you. Use once at your mount per boot to get the alias for that animal, then you can call it to your side by using heel at that alias. Vital because mounts can't follow you through syntaxes. Heel can fail even at high levels so get to 100. Heel does not work in nosums, which is a dealbreaker/extremely anxiety inducing in certain areas. Otherwise, heel will summon your mount to you anywhere in the same continent.
Evaluate mount - gives you info about a mount including indoors capability, race, indicator of ridden bonus and flying status. Cheap, so get it to 100 when you can. Nomads are dumb, so my command for this skill is set to repeat 10 - you will eventually get an evaluate that gives you additional, useful info such as the mount's resists and ep.Tame mount - obviously vital. Overworld animals have a certain % of tame mount you need in order to tame them. This is expensive, so train as much as you might expect to be taming. For everyday taming purposes, 80-85 will be fine (you can buff the rest with some quests and eq). If you're looking to get capital letter mounts or tame a lot, then obviously get this high - I usually sit at about 102-105 total.
Herding - this is trained in the squire guild, and is for leading mounts. You need around 80 to be able to ride a mount AND lead another. This skill is counted per 10%. At 100 herding you can ride a mount while leading 6 others.
Guided strike - this is the beastmaster attack skill. Guided strike uses your animal's natural attack, which changes from mount to mount; the strike can be quite low damage, or it can be a gigantic hit for 500+ damage. The skill's low epcost and fast speed, and potential huge damage, are offset by the need to wield a whip, have a high cha (100-120+), and its famous, frequent inaccuracy. For this reason, most beastmasters will opt to use their regular weapons.
Feral attack - this is the version of guided strike for led (not ridden) animals. If you need it for something, you'll know. Otherwise, skip.
Ride Underground - most mounts do not like to go indoors (ie. anywhere you can't see the sky, ie. most areas) by default. This obviously is extremely limiting. Ride underground will allow them to ignore this and enter indoors for a period (30-75min depending on skill). In order to train this skill, you need to already have trained ride through flame, ride through frost, and ride through pain - skills that raise the mount's fire, cold and pr respectively. You can get a permanent success (aka perma rug) which renders that mount able to go indoors forever - this is the holy grail for beastmasters using powerful outdoors mounts, and is extremely rare and requires a hefty dose of luck for you.
A fail on this skill can make the animal aggro to you for a round or two - you should leave the room and come back if so.
Calm animal - this allows you to calm down an aggro animal. If you intend to do a lot of difficult taming, then get this to a decent level. To train this, you need to train butchering, so you can butcher corpses for skulls - bring these skulls to Joribund to enable access to train calm animal. The helpfile suggests you might not want to wield weapons, though I always still had a shield.
Make Mount Feed - this allows you to make feed to keep your mount satiated. A good skill level is convenient so you can make and carry ~5-10 feeds in a featherweighted feed bag with you (no more than this, due to the weight). A good feeding lasts a very long time, but I default to feeding once an hour anyway. For normal exp I often feed my carnivorous mounts fish from my ship's nets, but when deep in an area it's important to be able to feed quickly. You can also use this to make food for mounts you run into in the overworld that might be hungry (I carry a herb jar for this).
Assault/Battery/Charge/Decimate - these are the cavalier, mounted version of slash/pound/impale/cleave. You can't use the standard versions mounted, so train as needed for your build.Mastery of Mounted Combat - the mastery for above, like a combination of decapitate/mangle/etc.
On top of this, obviously max out your dodge/parry/cs/throw weight and so on, as usual. Cavalier gets decent combat ability,
General Handling
Mount handling is what puts off a lot of people. There are just a few rules to remember here.
Mounts should always be ridden or led. Make sure your commands and triggers incorporate these actions. You can 'release' led mounts.
Keep mounts fed at all times before they become too hungry to move. Have some herbs in a jar and maybe a feed bag with you to be able to keep emergency food supplies. I feed my mounts once an hour or less.
Ensure you have done heel as soon as a mount comes out of the stable. Heel is extremely important. Do not skip this. Heeling your mounts to you should be nice and easy, handled by commands and aliases. Heel doesn't work in nosum or ships (even tele rooms), so if you are riding and also leading mounts, you need to drop the gangway for them.
Make commands and triggers to ensure they're following you - Esiris dismounts you, ship rescue dismounts you, lots of room specials dismount you, even summoning your ship from dock will dismount you. Have lead triggers.
If you get knocked off your mount, have a trigger to report this, and to lead your mount - keep in mind if you're leading your max amount of animals already, and you get knocked off, you won't be able to lead your original ridden mount as well (nor can you start riding in combat). Even excellent riders can be dismounted by a lucky blow to the mount.
Non-flying mounts will balk at water and refuse to move - note if you are being led in a party, your party will continue without you. This can lead to nasty surprises for whoever was standing behind you! Floating or ww will work on those mounts if needed. Water mounts will balk at land, including frozen water squares - you won't get them onto land. Non-indoors mounts will balk at pretty much all areas as discussed, so use ride underground or switch to an indoors mount.
Make sure you chat to a knight and tip them adequately to cast Noble Mount for you - named mounts are obviously easier to handle, but also receive a boost in stats. Names can't be changed.
For safety, I strongly recommend you stable your precious mounts when not in use. A ridden or led mount will be saved through boot, but this is not foolproof in all situations. You might be linkdead and still 'riding', but a player interacting (even looking) at your mount will actually dismount you. I've rescued a few mounts for people when I noticed them riderless and leaderless, sitting around Esiris/cities moments before boot. These would otherwise disappear forever.
Your beastmaster squad tend to be a pretty friendly bunch, but there are going to be dickheads out there. As such, you may want to invest in the stay and mount lock skills if you have a habit of leaving your mount lying around while you're doing something else. I do have my mounts locked (preventing others from riding them), but I don't leave my mounts around so I can't really comment on this too much. Anyone can lead 1 animal, so take that information how you will.
Taming Strategy
Taming is a really fun and exhausting task, both in game and for you as a player. Taming chews through ep and can take a very long time, but it's extremely gratifying to see a success. I'll detail some serious strategy here.
Animals have a certain % of tame mount needed to tame them, with a few that are so difficult that not even most of the best beastmasters I know have been able to reach those (such as seamonsters). Difficulty does not necessarily translate to combat prowess; you can tame powerful griffons, ancient chimeras and drakes without pushing over 100 tame mount.
When taming, you can go it alone or with a buddy. I've tamed ancient drakes alone, sometimes getting it done quite quickly, or sometimes taking an hour - there's an element of luck involved. Remember to have a cha boost (clothing is an easy, vlw one, as are alch rings), +tame gear if you have any, and kata potions on hand. If the animal is aggro, make sure you can survive the 3rd for calm animal to go off, and be prepared to make many, many attempts.
For the most efficient taming, pair up with a good tamer. One should attempt to tame it repeatedly, while the other uses calm animal should it become aggro towards the tamer from an attempt. If the animal is aggro to start with, then both should try to calm it before proceeding as described - with one person taming and the other on calming duty. The question of payment for services rendered is between you two.
Capital letter animals such as D drakes and C chimera are obviously extremely difficult tames, and you should expect deaths and serious damage in your attempts. They are not for the faint of heart. Any other capital letter animal, apart from a W whale (which is quite common), is going to be an anomaly as well - exceedingly rare, powerful, and difficult.
Animals do not spawn their actual form until a player has gone into the square adjacent. This way, you might find that a W becomes a w when you get close, or a d becomes a D. You can tell if a player has been close to a specific animal in that boot if it shows as hungry - this will mean it's been sitting around for a while after appearing.
Mount choice
The big question for most people is going to be what mounts they ride and lead into combat. This really depends on your build and what you have access to. Many people will buy a mount, though with less beastmasters around, there are also less mounts for sale. Ideally you have a mount stabled somewhere, or available to you, before you reinc in for the first time. I will comment on the most popular ones.
Griffons - griffons can fly and have pretty good stats. The regular griffon (a ferocious griffon is hunting here) is the only griffon capable of going indoors, so it's the most party-ready mount out of all the griffons. Hoar frost and solar flare griffons are very powerful and have good specials. These are a really good all rounder mount, and can easily be found in hills (h and H).Chimera - chimeras are indoors capable but can't fly. They do not have a special, but are very beefy and the ancient three-headed chimera's guided strike can do 500+ damage. They are one of the types of animals that can 'devour' an enemy at low hp with a guided strike, which destroys the corpse and messes with your ripaction. Extremely powerful mounts. The lack of flight is quite annoying so it depends on how you play. Carry floating potions. You can find these in hills, ruins (#) and some other dangerous terrain (I think).Drakes - ancient drakes have specials depending on their element, and can fly. These are really tough customers but they can't go indoors, so make sure you are ready to use ride underground regularly. Very strong. Chaos drake specials will do high asphyx damage and stun the enemy. Fire drake and ice drakes will do their respective damage with specials. You can find drakes in quite a wide variety of locations (ruins, badlands, some others), but for ease I usually look for chaos in Furn swamps, fire in the Luce desert, and ice in the Roth tundra.Dreadnaut Scorpions - described by Shinarae in a newspost as being like a walking Tmaker. These do a really powerful guided strike. I only tested one for a short while in outerworld, so don't have much data to share. I prefer flying mounts anyway. Zerks has a really interesting news post about this in guilds.squire, search it up. If trying to spawn a dreadnaut, you might want to kill and note down coords of various scorpions in the Luce desert, then haunt the repops.Mind Owls - these owls are prized for their special, which can stun the enemy. This is obviously useful for everyone, but especially for barb-bms and other hitters. It's not uncommon to see an offtank bm leading around 5 or 6 owls. They can fly and go indoors, but are a terrible riding mount and have low hp - keep an eye on them, as they might flee to an adjoining room if they cop a blast from the enemy. These aren't too hard to find - I've captured a few in the forests around Rothikgen ferry.Monstrous Shadowbats - these cute bats have a bite special and can fly and go indoors. Elite griffons will bite harder but are obviously much harder to handle and require ride underground. You can find all bats easily on lakes - use the big ones on Roth or north of Crimson guild on Laenor. Do not kill any bats if you can help it.
Some final thoughts / random stuff
Guided strike is different for every animal, with varying levels of success. Caps generally denote the max damage vs single opponent, eg. Chimera CHOMPS down, ancient drake RIPS, etc.
- damtypes are involved for many. Chimeras have poison in some of their attacks, and drakes have their element (chaos = asphyx, fire = fire, ice = cold) in some, though most will be mixed with phys.
- some attacks can hit aoe (multiple), which I suspect is based on level of enemy. I've hit up to 10 low level enemies before, but usually this will be something like beating up 4 drawbridge guards at once, all 5 raven jail guards, and so on. This attack isn't the strongest type, but it's a great one
- devour (destroying corpse) can't be controlled and can be annoying. This happens with at least chimera and worgs (max standard wolf) that I've seen
- some animals can have really interesting mixes, eg. adult whale has a big guided strike but also a 'bash' incorporated into most of them
- accuracy can be extremely frustrating, literally failing so much that you drag out a fight by many, many extra rounds.
- a good guided strike with very high leadership, charisma, level, riding skills etc. can be hitting every 2rd. Whether this suits your build is up to you.
- Kharim, Ranger and Barb each have a mastery in their guilds that benefit guided strike and feral attack. Kharim's is to convert part of the strike to unholy dam, ranger's is to be able to use the skill with whip in offhand, and barb's is to increase overall accuracy. These are supremely expensive. As an example, I took the Kharim skill to 100 on troll (with skillmax 100) for 56m exp, but didn't see too much effect on chaos drake guided strike. Your mileage may vary.
- if you're going to use this, get a Moonrind whip, whip made of thorny vine. This adds +10 guided strike and has a beautiful special that heals you up to 70/70/70 on a crit. On certain builds, this means you might run simple exp without ever stopping for regen.
Stampede is an interesting skill that sends your herd at the enemy. This could be extremely strong if you have an extremely strong herd :)
Ranger-bms are the best taming build. Woodland stealth allows you to avoid aggro from aggro animals, so you can simply walk in and hope the skill kicks in - if it does, you can just calm an aggro giant animal at your leisure, from ugly magpie to ancient chimera. Interestingly, rangers also get location memory, allowing you to use the bm's overland flight skill to fly to locations, kind of like the go spell.
Most nomad guilds get appreciable plant lore to keep ingredients on hand for making remedies. However, you can make use of simple shops such as druid guild and Dortlewall's catfolk merchant; for instance, superb drake feed can be made easily by having enough skill % and using mistletoe and any fruit.
Rug attempts consume up to 2 feeds for that mount. Use the best possible and hope for a perma rug! I have achieved two; one after several hundred attempts, and another after a few dozen. Good luck to you.
Hair's excellent website is a resource for many things, including a listing of beastmaster quests. He accurately lists the quests that give bonuses - I have seen no obvious bonuses from the majority of the 65. You can get away with just doing the ones he's listed bonuses for, and only if you want them.