Ever since recent patches have made the Doom Gauntlet playable for tamers, more and more people have been asking questions on how to prepare and handle various aspects of the Gauntlet. This essay should help tamers new to the Gauntlet understand how to handle themselves there.

 - Socko and Elyssar

Doom Tamer Skills:

Taming: Taming is needed of course to control your pet at the Gauntlet. It is strongly recommended you have skill points (and not jewelry) devoted to taming so that if you die and your corpse is far from your newly resurrected avatar, you will be able to call your pets to your side. 99% control is recommended...anything else will mean your pet will disobey you at the least opportune time.

Animal Lore: Lore factors into your control as well as the number of hit points healed with veterinary. The higher your lore, the better. Remember, 110 animal lore also has the added bonus that you can lore your foes at the Gauntlet and see just how much of their life is left. Also gives you the chance to stare in awe at some of their uber skills.

Veterinary: Tamers without vet need not apply to Doom. Veterinary will be your pet's best friend here and keep them in this mortal coil. The more vet skill you have, the better. Skill of at least GM is best, but the closer to 120 vet, the better. (And don't forget those wonderful bonus stable slots you can get.)

Magery: This is one of those "save your butt" skills as well as an offensive skill. Greater heal, cure, and invisibility will no doubt be some of your greatest hits at the Gauntlet. You can also cast summoned earth elementals and energy vortices against some of the bosses (we'll go into greater detail below on which bosses these work against.)

Hiding: This can be an optional skill but let it be known, it is a highly recommended skill for the aspiring tamer looking to vacation at Doom for extended periods of time. In combat situations, GM hiding can hide you as long as you're 7 tiles away from your aggressor. Hiding also is an excellent skill for logging out at Doom. **Disclaimer: Dark Fathers can reveal! It is not recommended to log out when the dark fathers are loose, or in a place where people are prone to lure them (the exit gate for example.) Camping can also log you out safely, but is generally not as useful as hiding overall.

Supplementary skills: These are skills you can use to compliment the other skills in your tamer template. Some good choices are meditation, focus, evaluating intelligence, wrestling (or other weapon skill), resisting spells, tailoring (to fix tailored items), healing, anatomy, spirit speak (note: using SS around fallen boss corpses will alienate you against the other Doom hunters so use at your own risk), musicianship, peacemaking, provocation, and chivalry (good for remove curse.)

Pets:

Nightmare: This is, I believe, the best choice for Doom (especially if you intend to have an extended vacation there.) They have good resistances and hit points, plus the added ability to cure themselves with magery (extremely handy against some of the nasty poisoners that Doom has.) Added ability to mount for easy getaways in pressing sitautions.

White wyrm: These seem to be the favorites of many Doom tamers. Their major drawback is you need a skull each time you intend to take your wyrm to Doom. They have good overall resistances and do nice damage but they can be taken down quite easily by some of the bosses (especially the abyssal horrors.) In addition, if someone lures monsters to you, there is a good chance the wyrm will die. Many people love to lure onto wyrms for some reason.

Dragons: Their resistances pale in comparison to wyrms though they are not too bad. Dragons do 100% physical damage so are not the best choice for the majority of Doom bosses (compared to wyrms 50% cold and the mare's 40% phys/20% fire/20% energy damage).

Fire steeds: Inability to cure themselves coupled with low hitpoints and negligible resistances mean these can be roadkill quickly. Their fire damage is great against most of the bosses but it's not worth their mortality rate.

Ki-rin/unicorn: Their magery is handy for curing and fighting, but their low hitpoints leave them lacking.

Equipment:

First let's look at armor. You have two choices, mainly based on your skills. If you have the meditation skill, you will need to have leather armor or mage armor in order to meditate. Keep in mind this armor will still give a minor med penalty. If you have focus, then any armor will work for you. If you have no meditation and little or no focus, then you will definitely want to look into mana regeneration armor, preferably a suit that gives you 7 or more. You will also want to consider a lower reagent cost suit. The fewer regs you carry, the more bandaids you can carry instead (and you will need those bandaids!) Get as much LRC as possible, especially if you're a mage/tamer who plans on casting in conjunction with your pet fighting. You won't need to be too concerned with fast casting or faster cast recovery unless you are a mage/tamer (tamer with evaluating intelligence.) An enhanced spell channeling shield with no fast cast penalty and a spell channeling, no FC penalty weapon with some resistances can do a lot to boost your suit of armor. If you have a mage/LRC suit your resistances will most likely be pretty low.

Aside from armor, you will need bandages for your pet. I reccomend taking 1000-1500 when you set off for Doom. (You can pick up gold from doom monsters to buy more from Nix.) Take as few reagents as you can since you can buy from Nix as well (and remember the above advice on taking a suit with some LRC on it.)

The Gauntlet Bosses:

Rating scale:
1=Easy
2=Mediocre
3=Moderate
4=Hard
5=Very hard
6=Run away!

Darknight Creepers

This is the first room (off of the main floor) that you will encounter. Darknight Creepers are undead uglies who love to deadly poison and use hard-hitting magery. Stay close to your pet and try not to be targetted...these guys love spell combos and can easily take a tamer out with their combos. If more than one of these (or any doom boss) is on your pet, mount (if its a rideable) and run offscreen very quickly. You may be retargetted, so you may need to hide or invis to shake them as well. These will dispel summons pretty easily, but not at skin touch.

Difficulty: 4

Flesh Renderers

Watch out for these cockroaches on speed. Their specialties are speedhacking and dismounting. Aside from their speed though, their melee is not as fearsome as most of the other gauntlet denizens. Your pet should be able to stand against one with vet without much trouble. Even two fleshies are doable, but can be a little more hairy. Just watch out for their paralyzation move. Fleshrenderers dispel at skin touch so summons are not reccommended against them.

Difficulty: 4

Impalers

Most warriors avoid tanking these, so expect for them to want you to take the hits on these. Impalers can use mortal strike, poison, and bleed on their targets to make life incredibly difficult. However, bleed and poison can be good since they totally nullify mortal strike and allow you to vet your pet. Energy vortices work on these so you may want to toss a few in if you're using just a nightmare. The most annoying part of this room is when Impalers chase archers or mages and your pet chases them and takes damage. It can be handy to have an all stop macro ready for that.

Difficulty: 5

Shadow Knights

By far this can be the most annoying room. Shadow Knights don't have the highest hit points, but they can be hard for melee to hit and they have a habit of teleporting and stealthing while hidden. In combat, these can also hit hard and they have excellent magery that packs a punch. Best tactic to find the hidden Knights is to tell your pet to follow them. This will allow your pet to follow them even when hidden and stealthing. A mage/tamer will be able to cast Wis Quas--Reveal to find them. While one is hidden, you can also have your pet attack one that is engaged in combat on the floor, and when it tele-hides your pet will follow its original target and allow you to find it, so long as you don't issue a follow me command. These can also use the special move crushing blow, so keep an eye out for that.

Difficulty: 4

Abyssmal Horrors

These land-bound squids can hurt. Their magery is legendary and they also enjoy using mortal strike and whirlwind at the least opportune times. Do not let more than one of these attack your pet at a time! If you do, you will 99% of the time have a dead pet unless you break the target somehow. (This is when having a mare is great...just mount up and run offscreen.) If these target you and you have low resists and/or little to no magic resist, run and hide/invis. A spell combo from these can do 100+ damage easily. (Flamestrikes to white wyrms do a terrifying amount of damage.) Stay aware of what's going on around you at all times in this room.

Difficulty: 5/6 (depending on the circumstances)

The Dark Fathers

These spawn in the very center chamber of the Gauntlet. Dark Fathers have magery, strong melee, and a wicked whirlwind attack that can lead to a quick death if you're not careful. The best place for a tamer (and 99% of everyone else) to attack these is at the exit gate. Using the gate will reduce the Dark Father's spawn's ability to hit you, your pet, and everyone else working on the father. Be careful where you place your pet at the gate. You need to stand directly behind (or at a diagnol) to your pet to vet it and to stay out of the radius of the whirlwind attack. The image below shows the best places for you and your pet to stand at the gate while attacking the father.

Sometimes people will ruin things and keep you from being able to use the gate. In these instances, attack the Father with great caution. It's reccommended for mage/tamers to use summoned earth eles to attack the Dark Father. Remember, you can vet earthies so no need to worry about them dying! You can also send in your pet, but watch for spawn that will attack you and your pet. Try to not cast spells on the Father as this will cause him to warp to you.

Difficulty: 5/6

Additional things to consider at Doom

You may wish to invest in the Sacrifice Virtue. This ability can let you resurrect quickly with your items intact (unless looted by a monster such as lich lord). Do NOT run around without a heal after rezzing...traps can kill you easily this way.

In addition, you may want to have the Compassion Virtue, as this will increase the hitpoints that people you resurrect will return to life with (and many people will be thankful for this.)