Definitive Guide to the Beastmaster + All Animal Skills | Wartales

Wartales Harag update has revamped the beastmaster subclass and added tons of new animals and new animal skills.
We're going to look at the strongest build for the beastmaster, the best animals to recruit, how to find them, and the best equipment for working with your animals.
We've also got some great tips and tricks for getting the most out of your beastmaster and animals.
Latest Dev AMA with thoughts on mounted units: / 1453788370
Timestamps:
0:00 - Bears are Insane
8:10 - Battle Pigs
13:50 - Cardinal Mosquitoes
17:05 - Pony Power
21:40 - Wolf Pack Build
26:59 - Rat Catcher Build
33:40 - Best Beastmaster Archer Build
37:58 - Tracker Equipment
40:06 - Animal Tips and Tricks

[@TeddyNinja]

Who's better, bear tanks, wolf pack, or something else?

[@cidicious8353]

Bear hands down the best animal tank.

[@jilima3725]

You’d better equip them with the bacon bound collar, or they’ll consume all your valour points.

[@TeddyNinja]

@@jilima3725 That's the valor point generation on kill, and you're putting it on the bears? I'm curious how much you've played with that verses the infused collar, because I'm loving the healing tank build.

[@Kanjejou]

if you go hard on them rats can reach dangerous level of bonuses throught strength in number but you need to go full retard in rats (8 was a good number) and take the bonus to defence on the wartable to make them last a bit longer or surronded bonuse

[@lololrifkomg]

Need more info about ghost animals. Can we even have them as companions? :>

[@dirtybird99]

The joy I felt at seeing you name the Cardinal Mosquito "Politician", knows no bounds. A most excellent name and you have earned a subscription!

[@Cyrantel]

Agreed and subscribed. "Diplomate" would have triggered me, too. :)

[@Cervando]

Not sure when it changed but Alpha Wolves do get the bonus 50% crit chance bonus from pack. I have 3 Alphas, no regular wolves, and all get it.

[@cutekittie9764]

Nice guide! About work ponies: I was able to stack 5 ponies with Tireless skill and several meals that reduce fatigue increase rate, and my party could travel for weeks without needing any rest. The downside of being able to rest once a month is that you run out of valor points and have to start battles with 0. Unless you allow your companions to sleep... at least once a week :P

[@TeddyNinja]

That's incredible :)

[@MrBrianofarrell]

great to see you back, hope you were just having some time off. Good guide as usual

[@mariobalotello6675]

My man give the name "politician" to a mosquitoe, what a genius.

[@jtudela1]

My favorite build so far is War Pony gives Inspire to the Strategist Rogue with an upgraded Instinctive Throw (movement is reset after every skill use). Set up the first attack to gain the 3 Rage from that dagger you mentioned. Now have them run around the entire battle map sniping everyone with thrown knives. Any oils you have on the dagger will have a chance to be applied, so burning/poison dots can be stacked/applied from the knives. If you have an opportunity attack bear build ally, make sure you off-hand a repelling bomb and use a smoke screen to trigger those attacks. Give the rogue the rank of lieutenant or captain and their free valor skills gives you yet another knife to throw. Finally, add in Run and/or First Aid. You're just throwing knives everywhere/poisoning everyone/gaining valor on kills/causing other allies to murder everyone all on the 1 character's turn. I always make my Strategist go last in a round, have everyone else set up for the knife barrage/opportunity attacks, and can easily clear a non-elite/boss battle on the first round through a rout or full enemy slaughter fest.

[@clear4155]

Nice video. Lots of good info. Inspire (AOE movement buff) is the main reason to have a war pony. I found it really good. Especially when a battle kinda spreads out, it can mean effectively getting 2 mercs having a turn attacking rather than just moving, can get AOE specced mercs into a better position, or allow a merc to late first turn reach an enemy archer before they get off the first shot after they and their group has moved, as you can position far away and at the same time be in range to engage the archer with inspiration buff. The rest is pretty weak, though he's alright for finishing low health enemies or getting them in health range to be finished off by mercs who get valor on kill. Some mercs can effectively finish off multiple engaged people if their movement is long enough, such as the ranger. On average, I'd say I found it to have higher value than an additional merc would have, though perhaps not sufficient value to alone justify building my archer for beast mastery. It really opens up a lot of extra opportunities to how to plan both your opener and to shift units from one front to another with no "dead movement-only turn". I find personally that the biggest downside to running with beastmaster and multiple beasts is the lack of armor that protects against debuffs, as even bears with their massive health pools will take % damage from bleed and poison. It's manageable, but definitely puts some additional constraints on combat planning.

[@LetsPlayCrazy]

One warpony is a must in my opinion. Inspire is a free doubling of movementspeed of up to 5 companion. Doubling! That is about 40 movement for free each round. And with the armor it can be used as a meatshield after it has served its purpose. You don't need more than one... but I feel like one is a must, especially when there are so many spread out enemies!

[@Brigand231]

I've been enjoying a tankbear with my archer (infantryman, not beastmaster, but with the beastmaster skill). The tankbear sits as bait inside the archer's opportunity attack zone when it's not hunting down ranged units. Relentless seems to be broken on my bear, as it very rarely procs. I tried wolves in my previous game, but found it challenging to keep them fed.

[@Warmth1]

Just a thought about boars happiness vs carry weight. Happiness is so simple to keep maxed out I rarely have anyone on campfires unless someone specific happened to lower it. I might use extra carry weight on smaller parties but I don't feel like I've ever been short of campfire sitters unless I was breaking someone out of Drunkard trait.

[@jasonfennell141]

The bear location was a game changer for me. As I was level 3 and 4 when I went in and they where level 7 x3 bears. Made it out with 2 of them.

[@sesaline4255]

Weirdly enough I found my bear in the Tiltren prison. Seeing a bear in there while turning in some prisoners was a wild surprise lol. It was in the cage with the other inmates, and the game says something along the lines of "I wonder why it's in here..." when you inspect it. Recruited it immediately for [some amount of krowns I can't remember] and he's still with me today. Downside is that my bear eats 18 every rest. I toss carcasses in the drying rack to turn 2 meat into 10 every night tho which helps cut down *some* of the food hustle.

[@TeddyNinja]

haha that's awesome. I remember seeing a pony in jail once so I obviously paid his bail.

[@vitbucc]

Nice,thx.

[@Mrvl1234]

I've tamed 4 level 9 bears and have them killing bosses for me. I don't even have to do anything.

[@RichardMacapek]

I wanted to ask if the ability (Truffle boar) of the wild boar is stacked. do you know or have you verified that (Truffle boar) doesn't pile up? If it makes sense to put more than 1 pig or if I put it on more it's a wasted skill?

[@coltonmatthew6955]

Is this considered still up to date? trying to find info on the best animal companions to take

[@pmckeever21]

Just now watching this video and playing on Xbox but great guide even though it’s a tad dated now My favorite passive to get from allied animals is the pack one from the wolves. Randomly getting a +50% crit hit for archers is literally battle changing Currently rocking 2 alphas and 1 reg wolf

[@Zoey--]

Personally I just discovered the mosquitos and genuinely find them interesting. If you had 2 beastmasters, 6 mosquitos and 2 bears I reckon you could beat any challenge. The perma healing and having 4 mosquitos all use opportunity attacks as they surround a target is pretty strong although it is a shame the opportunity attacks don't ignore armour the same way.

[@SquaulDuNeant]

Does the boar passives tho isn't able to proc on ANY animals compagnions death ? Instead of only board ? Cause this passive + the swarm rats could huge for themself or the hunter eventually kinda annoying that it doesn't stack tho (at least fro the fury boar of course cause 90% vs 50 % is pretty obvious and also they are better than regular board anyway right ?)

[@jirkavjas9888]

nice, thanks man, i started played this game and wont to try it, only 1 think i dont find how to do equipment for animal, only pony possible, is some place where can learn it?

[@SquaulDuNeant]

And to finish i love your so calee "theater of mind" technique ! 10/10 tbh i would like to not do that but the game say otherwise so i guess i need work on that i wonder if you made a guide on prisoners tho surprisingly theres trait for that too ! ( kinda disapointed that one of member got it tho cause i didn't wanted to necessarly play with prisoners lmao now im locked with it otherwise ti's a waste!)

[@rwulf]

The pack passive seems to work with Alphas now.

[@jirikunc1956]

in my current playthrough i had a bear in like my first visit of tiltrem prison so i imidietly bought him. and yeah they are insane. if you manage to put him somewhere out of DOTs reach ( dots killing him extra fast) he can tank like 5 eneimes at once no problem. Im not playing beastmaster so my bear is pure AI, and sometimes it is pure pain to keep him alive, because he loves to run into lightnings, rockslides, fires, or poison fields. Its month 3 and still got that starting bear. At one point i captured second one but that one sadly died few days after capture, obviously to the lightning. But two beaers easily tank all the waves of the rat broodmother, while i easily clear all the nests with rest of my party.

[@wyomingsioux]

Great guide but a tad out of date at this point, especially after the last 2 patches. All boars now start with the ability to perform a charging attack, for one valor point, which disengages them and moves them in a straight line past the enemy. It also allows them to counter being locked down by a pikeman’s spear wall ability. Wolves now gain Deflection (-70% damage from next hit) after being hit once, to represent how evasive they are. So they are now a little less squishy. Even the Constitution stat works differently than depicted in this video. It is no longer equal to hit points. Your Con score is now half the HP value. And bears get 4 x Con for HP. A level 9 bear may have around 250 Con and 1000 HP. Sadly, this is to be expected for Early Access content. But the full release is just 10 days away. Another notable change is that damage values for weapons, across the board, have been reduced.

[@MishaXG]

Imagine being able to mount any animal: bear, wolf, boar, poney... that would be fucking awesome honnestly!

[@Cyrantel]

Beware of falling in love with enemies' attributes on the battlefield. You'll play on expert difficulty for sure and therefor all enemies have a higher attribute-scaling when combatting them (*1,2 if I remember correctly). But when you have captured and want to utilize them, they fall back to a normal attribute-scaling of *1,0. This applies to all enemies, so bears and wolves, too. I'm quite fond of bears and their lvl-12-ability (+50 capacity) could substitute any ponies (and therefor shine in food ratio). If, alas, working ponies hadn't their passive and stacking ability of decreasing fatique while travelling ...

[@Kanjejou]

Nice guide, something you seem to have forgotten to tell is that mole rat take as much space as a normal soldier only eat 2 piece and not wider like wolf boar and bears...so they make very decent cheap mini pakc mule pakc mule. also having most of wolves with guard allow to easily spreead protection to eveything that is engaged in melee add support and you easily reduce damages on you frontline by 60%("supported" 30%+30% for "protected"+10% if you take wartable buff to "supported")

[@TeddyNinja]

Hang on, I thought latest update took animal companion carry weight down to 0, is that not true for the rats?

[@Kanjejou]

@@TeddyNinja yeah but you can put the saddlebag on them which give 10 which is = to 2 human for 2 food instead of 3. one question are mole rat limited in number or is it possibel to find more in tombs and other place after cleaning them?

[@TeddyNinja]

@@Kanjejou yeah you can get more but it's tricky. If you fight rogue trackers through bounties in harag they summon random animals and you can capture stuff there. If you're looking for something specific you can get the battle to a stable place in your favor and pass turns to get lots of random enemy summons.

[@marcinczupryna7288]

there is no matter that you have wolvs or alfa, skill works

[@pix00l]

Naming the mosquito politician is priceless

[@TheHumanOnEarth]

Looks like they removed Beastmaster tooltip "fury" buff in description as of 12/26/2022

[@georgeblair3894]

When you rename the animal you just captured, I like to imagine that the Wolf / Bear / X had cubs. So we let mama and papa {FORMER COMPANION} retire (NOT "on a farm"), and continue adventuring with their offspring. Hopefully the Devs fix the stat disproportionality.

[@DrenchedbyRain]

Is the taming arrow bug fixed?

[@danielplata3938]

Dudeee I love the final part of the video: "rename and forget about your old companion". is there any viable build for a warrior sentinel? I've always wanted to use them but they dps was too low I'd rather take tank swordsman or the hammer guys as a tank

[@TeddyNinja]

Glad you liked the video. I mean you could play sentinel with the animal support items from the tracker. Getting riposte on some of your bears would be huge, but overall I think it's both weak out of the other warrior classes, and weak compared to the other tank classes. My designated warrior guide covers the subclass if you want to see it in action and the one thing I would add now is that you probably take the new battle cry ability at level 8 to pair with it.

[@danielplata3938]

@@TeddyNinja yeah, I was thinking about that combo after seeing this video, sentinel more than a tank is like a heavy support, He fits pretty well I think in a setup around buffs and companions engaging into combat.

[@danielplata3938]

@@TeddyNinja What would think about this: protector-beastmaster-bear-herald-sentinel-fighter-fighter-archer/rogue? with the two fighters having high guard and armour values, you can (after first round assuming they are engaged in combat) execute 3 riposte like this: disengage-riposte-kick-disengage-riposte-melee-disengage-riposte.

[@TeddyNinja]

@@danielplata3938 I think the disengage/riposte shenanigans are quite fun to pull off. You'll want to add taunt to get an additional trigger and wrath for potentially yet another. (you can buy basic skill books from companion camps). Looking at the rest of the squad you certainly want the ranger over the second archer. They can take smoke bomb to trigger more enemy disengages, and round out your ability to use looted weapons. If you're going to invest in a beast master I would add at least one more animal even if you don't want to feed a second bear a crocswine can be nice with the bleed effect. Overall it would be a fun squad to run if you can stay on top of valor point generation.

[@Acanis87]

Do you know some stuff about the scaling?

[@MrEltacobueno]

Not sure if this has been updated or you were just wrong, but Alphas now count for the wolf count towards pack

[@TeddyNinja]

Oh good, I'm glad they changed that.

[@SquaulDuNeant]

The ideas are good but too much of the restrictive and weak side need more choice and stronger choices and at minima coherent choice because for exempel where you seem to depises moskitos i see great potential.

[@SquaulDuNeant]

See i didn't know for the "basic" skills so actually the battle poney can be a good support it's necessary to make it a warrior that's amazing ! But for th other its more mitigated but honestly the game should make more classes and trees for everyones ! Cause it's lack this little bit of awesomeness and replayability !

[@quickpawmaud]

Does the boar get slaughtered and then eat itself somehow?

[@lThellRockl]

i feel like Brown bear is stronger than white bear but in terms of raw output gps its stronger but imo, survivability white bear is slightly outrank it

[@SolusBatty]

How do I stop the Warpony from joining the fight? I don't want him in the fights but I chose the warpony ability.

[@LeveledRogue]

I know this is like a year late but put it in reserves

[@migeko]

Going to the bears at level 3 didn't work out well. Each one, there are 3, has almost 700 hp.

[@sabnock31]

My mercenary team is mad zookeepers. I just love how you can have all those beautiful animals. I have only 4 people, the initial deserters team, and everyone else is animals. 8 mole-rats grabbed in Vertruse (on the market there is crawlspace with a lot of them), 6 rats, 4 mosquitos, 3 wolves and 3 alphas, 2 crockboars and a bear. I love all of them and everyone is named so I redo every battle if at least one mole-rat is dead. They are my babies. Love them. Funny thing is my first wolf I got in prison with club-footed trait and Waddler is still with me after 120 hours of game time.

[@sabnock31]

Battles are though tho. With so much companions you have to fight a lot more of enemies.

[@lukehart1525]

Would like to see a solo character beastmaster iron man run.

[@Vertutame]

the biggest problem with beast master build is that you need a lot of companion to do other stuffs like mining etc etc and that increases the number of enemies in the map and well... I don't want to fight 10 people, that takes a long time.

[@TeddyNinja]

Yeah the game scaling up the battle for the larger party can just get tiresome. I wonder if they could make a change where you can choose to not bring your full team and then there would be less enemies to fight.

[@Vertutame]

@@TeddyNinja you should use 6 main members and get 4 prisoners to do other jobs which is 10 in total, mining and axe should be the main member.

[@adailham2809]

Panthom swarm can be allies ?

[@TeddyNinja]

No, right now you can only capture them through part of a story mission.

[@hogofogo5296]

you can catch ponies, just attack merchant caravans with high level.

[@TeddyNinja]

Oh really, merchants now run war ponies?

[@vincentranquet7517]

@@TeddyNinja pretty sure that they doesn't have war ponies but unskilled ponies that you can skill however you want

[@Dzexel]

Btw i found a white bear in Tildren(whatever its called) prison and hired it skills look the same.

[@TeddyNinja]

fascinating.

[@vampiric172]

As far as I know only difference is the forest buff is replaced by while in snow

[@SquaulDuNeant]

Tbh i would love an animal rework or at least buff r at least more freedom of choice . Also i don't agree you still can make a perks that is useful for pnj and trhilling battle and for the player so it's a big L and waste to not do that while btw other beast apart fro mthe boars literally has that you can also do that by changing and making different perks for "tamed and wild " animals it's that simple.

[@SquaulDuNeant]

Same for the rats need a real buff jeez what a waste also the food perks could that only one generate food but at least other reduced food consumption i think it would be nice middle ground otherwise that suck xd .

[@tls5669]

Lizards, polar bears, or ghost bears

[@xPerfects]

Honestly, Hunter is way more worth than beastmaster since if u have the legendary bow you can deal a minimum of 150 Damage with it so u can literally one shot units

[@TeddyNinja]

Yeah I think all the different archer builds are pretty fun. The beastmaster strength depends heavily on the animals you recruit, but if you recruit bears then they can one shot things too.

[@SquaulDuNeant]

Also btw obviously need animals equipments ... only one or two slot is ridiculous and the effectiveness of these is laughable.