"To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason,
and to forgive it, of a great mind."

- Tillotson

Provocation is the best money making skill currently available in game. Next to taming, it is also one of the hardest to master. It takes hours of dedication, but in the end, it is quite rewarding. Provocation allows you to force various creatures to battle each other to death, leaving you with the simple task of looting their corpses. In order to provoke, you will be required to master another skill: Musicianship. Everytime you attempt using provoke, your Musicianship skills will be checked first. If the music check fails, you will not be able to provoke the creatures. I therefore strongly suggest you GM music before you start training provocation. There are 2 other skills that can also aid you as a bard, but that are not compulsory: peacemaking and discordance. Peacemaking will stop monsters from fighting as they will lose their target. Discordance will decrease the skills and stats of the target by up to 20%, also making it easier to provoke. As there is a delay between each use of the skill, magery or hiding are highly recommended otherwise when you fail, you may not live long enough to make a second attempt

Since Publish 16, Provocation is no longer target based. It is difficulty base. So you can now provoke the same 2 creatures over and over again until your skill exceeds their difficulty level.

Training Tips

Since bulls are highly coveted by tamers, training in Delucia, Trinsic Gate or Jhelom Farm will not make you very popular. Since you can continuously gain off the same two bulls, ask a tamer friend to tame you 2 bulls and take them to an isolated location where you can provoke in peace without someone killing your bulls.

To make your creatures last indefinitely, place them so they cannot touch each other. The best way is using one or more boats. In the example below, I used only one boat but you could use 2 side by side and place 1 pet per boat. Because of the Exploit rules, for all non-spellcasting creatures, you must be on the same boat with at least one of the creatures so that, in case you failed provoke, the creature would be able to attack you if it so pleased. However, to protect yourself from harm, always start by provoking the creature on the other boat (the one that cannot reach you - "A") onto the one sharing your boat ("B"). Once you have succesfully provoked A onto B, then you can cross-provoke them at your leisure. Since B has initiated the attack, even if you were to fail a provoke B, it will not would not attack you because it would still be under the effect of the provoke of A.

You can GM off wyverns. Once again, you don't want them touching each other so you can provoke them over and over again. Since you can't tame wyverns, your best bet is Wyvern's Pointe in T2A (see picture below). You could also go to Wyvern's Island but it is nearly impossible to set the wyverns in a way that they can't touch each other there. In the present case, even though the wyverns cannot touch me, I am still respecting the non-exploit rules because I am in a "dangerous" environment. Should any of the wyverns die, one could potentially spawn near or on the boat. There are 2 imps and 2 scorpions that also spawn in this small peninsula and that could kill you (especially the imps) at any given time.

For drakes, dragons, ie. spellcasting creatures, use the 3 boat setup so it's less likely someone will try to steal or kill your creatures, so the pets will not wander off after some blue player/creature, so they don't kill each other and more importantly, so they don't kill you when you fail. Remember that the pets must be released, you cannot provoke tamed creature. They are simply too loyal to their masters for that. Once released, drakes and dragons are both firebreathers and will damage each other, on top of spellcasting ability for the dragons. You therefore want to increase the distance between the 2 pet boats to limit/control the damage. Normally, with 8 tiles between the 2 boats, the pets shouldn't be able to cast on each other. At 80, I had 1 drake and 1 beetle on each boat and would cross-provoke them. You cannot use this setup for non-spellcasting creatures or you will be performing an exploit.

Provocation is extremely slow and boring to train. UO Assist is your best friend here.

Using customized houses to trap pets and keep you completely safe from harm is considered an exploit. Whenever training provoke, at least one of creatures you are attempting to provoke must be able to reach you should it choose to do you harm after a failure, either through melee, or magery, or both. So using the pets in the Jhelom's bullpen while standing on the other side of the fence is also considered an exploit. Have at least one of the provoked pets on the same side you are to work around the exploit. Provoking in any hunting grounds (even though you find a safe spot that will keep you from harm) is not considered an exploit as you find yourself in an area that is by definition dangerous. So provoking skeletons from the safe side of the cemetarie's fence is legal.

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