Is the Beast Collection the same as taming?

Beast Collection IS triggered by taming — verified hook is EventSink.TameCreature. When you successfully tame one of the 30 catalog creatures (or 5 rares / 2 secrets), the system records a SNAPSHOT (type, body, hue, name, location, date) tied to your account. The unique twist: the snapshot survives the creature dying, being released, or going to the stable. You don't have to keep 30 live pets — your bond record is durable even if the live animal isn't. Animal Taming skill is required; encountering a creature in the world without taming it doesn't register.

What does 'time-gated' mean for entries?

Only rare beasts (5 of the 37) carry constraints. The common 30 base beasts have no time, region, or facet gates — tame any matching creature anywhere on any facet at any hour and it counts. The 5 rares each have specific MinHour/MaxHour/FacetFlags/RegionHints constraints baked into BeastCatalog.cs that must be met when the tame fires. The 2 secret beasts are fully unconstrained but otherwise hidden.

Who is Rhoswen Greencoat?

Rhoswen Greencoat — Keeper of Bonds — is the questline's curator NPC. She issues the catalog, accepts your bond records, sells items priced in Marks of Trust, and oversees the Hall of Bonded Masters where serious Beastbinders are publicly listed. Find her at Rhoswen's Sanctuary to engage with the system.

Beast Collection: Bonding, Marks of Trust, and the Beastbinder Path

The Beast Collection is Immortal Realm's beast-bonding archive — a catalog of specific creatures the realm asks you to encounter under the right conditions, paying a parallel currency (Marks of Trust) and culminating in the Beastbinder title and a public listing in the Hall of Bonded Masters. It's the collection arc for players whose interest sits in nature, taming, and the world's living edges rather than in cities or institutions.

This page covers what the catalog is, how regional and time-of-day gating works, what Marks of Trust buy, and the full path from first encounter to Beastbinder.

What the System Is

Beast Collection is a per-character taming-triggered collection arc with these verified mechanics:

30 base catalog creatures + 5 rare + 2 secret = 37 total (BeastConfig.TotalBaseBeasts = 30, TotalWithRares = 37).
Trigger is EventSink.TameCreature — successfully taming one of the catalog creatures records the bond. Standard UO taming mechanics apply; Animal Taming skill is required.
Each successful tame stores a snapshot (creature type, body, hue, name, location, date) on the player's account. The snapshot is durable — the bond stays recorded even if the actual creature dies, is released, or goes to the stable.
Successful tames pay Marks of Trust (account tag MarksOfTrust): 1 Mark for common beasts, 3 Marks for rares, 10 Marks for secrets.
Rhoswen Greencoat (Keeper of Bonds) is the curator NPC who issues the catalog and runs the questline.
Marks of Trust spend at Rhoswen's Sanctuary on beast-themed cosmetics, decorations, and the Beastbond items.
The shop opens at 3 bonds (VendorUnlockThreshold = 3) — much earlier than the Frog Collection's 10-frog threshold.
Completing the 30 base entries unlocks the Beastbinder title and a public listing in the Hall of Bonded Masters.

The system rewards patient taming, not generic exploration. The unique mechanical twist is the snapshot persistence: you don't have to keep 30 live pets to retain catalog credit.

The Catalog

Each beast in the catalog has:

A flavor name — "Roan", "Grey Brother", "Shadestep" — given to the bonded snapshot, distinct from the creature type's standard name.
A creature type — the actual UO mob class the system requires you to tame (Horse, GreatHart, GreyWolf, BrownBear, Panther, etc.).
A family — Plains / Forest / Pack / Predator / Desert / Reptile / Spirit / GreatBeast (8 families per the BeastFamily enum).
A tier — Novice / Apprentice / Seasoned / Master / Legendary / Rare / Secret (7 tiers per the BeastTier enum).
A Mark value (1 / 3 / 10).
Notes — flavor text describing the bond and its place in the catalog.
For rares only: optional MinHour, MaxHour, FacetFlags, and RegionHints constraints. The 30 common base beasts have no time/region/facet constraints — tame the matching type anywhere, any time, any facet and it counts. The 2 secrets are similarly unconstrained but hidden.

The constraints on rares make those 5 a patient hunt: a Felucca-late-night-specific-region rare genuinely requires you to be in the right place at the right time. The 30 base beasts and 2 secrets don't have that gating.

Marks of Trust

Marks of Trust are the parallel currency. Verified payouts from BeastCatalog.cs:

Common beast (Tier Novice through Legendary): 1 Mark per first-time tame.
Rare beast (Tier Rare): 3 Marks per first-time tame, with the rare's specific time/region/facet constraints met.
Secret beast (Tier Secret): 10 Marks per first-time tame.

Currency mechanics:

Account-bound counter (MarksOfTrust account tag) — not tradeable.
Spent only at Rhoswen's Sanctuary; doesn't cross over with River Marks (Fish Collection) despite both being "Mark"-themed currencies.
Total Marks available from a complete 37-entry archive: roughly 30 (common) + 15 (rares × 3) + 20 (secrets × 10) = 65 Marks.

Earlier audits confirmed Marks of Trust live in their own wallet and won't spend at the Old Angler (Fish Collection) or vice versa.

The Rhoswen's Sanctuary Shop

Marks spend at the Rhoswen's Sanctuary Shop:

Beastmaster's Cloak, Ranger's Traveling Hat — cosmetic gear with theming.
Sacred Reins, Sanctuary Stone, Carved Wolf/Stag Statues — decoration and symbolic items.
Blessed Grooming Brush, Totem of Trust — interaction items that do specific things tied to bonded beasts.
Family Pennant Banner — a guild/house item for serious Beastbinders.
Beastbinder Title Deed — the title path entry.
Beastbond Charm and Beastbond Expansion items — extend or modify the Beastbond bonded-pet system.

The shop opens at 3 bonds (VendorUnlockThreshold = 3), so you can start buying very early — a notably lower threshold than Frogsworth's 10-frog gate. You don't need to wait until full completion to engage with Rhoswen's commerce.

Beastbond and Called Beasts

Beyond the catalog itself, the system supports Beastbond — a bonded-creature mechanic distinct from standard UO taming:

Use a Beastbond Charm with a beast you've successfully bonded to, and a Called Beast companion follower becomes available.
The Beastbond Expansion item increases what's possible with bonded creatures.
The Beastbond Gump shows your active bonds and lets you summon called beasts.
The Beast Rename Gump lets you personalize bonded beasts.

This layer is separate from the catalog completion but synergistic with it. Bondable creatures often appear in the catalog as well; engaging with one path tends to lead naturally into the other.

Hall of Bonded Masters

Serious Beastbinders earn a place in the Hall of Bonded Masters:

A physical location with a Bonded Masters Roll — a public listing of named characters who have completed the questline.
A Hall of Bonded Masters Plaque — placeable decoration available to Hall members.
The Beastbinder title — public-facing through the Register of Honors.
A Grove Offering Stone — interaction point at the Hall for advanced rituals.

The Hall is one of the shard's most explicit public recognition spaces. Walking in and reading the Roll is how new players learn who has actually completed the catalog. Like the Cat Whisperer title at King Whiskers, the Beastbinder title is a public indicator that a character has put in long-arc work in a non-combat-driven path.

How the Beast Collection Compares

The shard's collection arcs each have different shapes:

Frog Collection — 60 frogs (catch-driven), Frog Coins, easy travel pacing.
King Whiskers Cat Collection — 60 cats (pet-driven), bells, light tone.
Beast Collection — 30 base beasts (taming-driven, snapshot-persistent), Marks of Trust, the Beastbond layer, the Hall of Bonded Masters. Smaller catalog than Frog/Cat but a higher per-entry skill floor.
Fish Collection — fish catalog with regional and time-of-day requirements; tonally similar.
Lost Recoveries — treasure-and-recovery archive.
Living Herbarium — botanical archive, gardening-driven.

Beast Collection is the most skill-gated of the bunch — Animal Taming is required to register any catalog entry, where Frog/Cat/Fish/Recoveries don't gate on a specific UO skill. Where Frog Collection rewards casual travel and Living Herbarium rewards gardening, Beast Collection rewards a tamer character putting their core skill to use against the catalog's specific creature types. The 5 rares add region/time/facet constraints on top; the 30 base entries are pure tame-and-record.

To check your catalog progress, type [beast, [beasts, or [beaststatus in-game — three aliases all registered as AccessLevel.Player.

Pace and Total Time

Casually engaged: months of incidental tames as you naturally encounter creature types. A character who does mid-tier taming work picks up base catalog entries during normal play.

Focused completion: realistic time-to-30 depends on Animal Taming skill — a character at 70+ Taming can clear most of the catalog in dedicated sessions; a fresh tamer climbing from 0 has the taming grind to do alongside the catalog. The 5 rare entries with their time/region/facet constraints spread that subset across multiple real-world days regardless of how much in-game time you log.

Rare entries and the Hall of Bonded Masters listing: the long tail. Some rare entries are genuinely obscure; getting your name on the Roll signals you stuck with it.

Why the System Exists

The shard's design instinct: a tamer's core skill should produce a public catalog, not just a controlled pet. Two failure modes Beast Collection is built against:

Taming as a private skill. Stock UO Animal Taming is fundamentally private — you tame a pet, fight with it, eventually release or stable it. Beast Collection makes taming visible: each successful tame of a catalog creature produces a permanent public-facing record on the Hall of Bonded Masters Roll.
Live-pet hoarding. A naïve "collect 30 pets" mechanic would force tamers to maintain 30 active stable slots. The snapshot-persistence design solves this: you tame the creature once, the bond is recorded, you can release or lose the live pet without losing catalog credit.

The Hall of Bonded Masters is the public-recognition layer that makes the slow grind worthwhile. Beastbinders are publicly named; the title travels with you; the Hall is a real place other players can visit. Patient nature-driven play has a public expression instead of being a private hobby.

How to Engage

If you want to start the Beast Collection:

Have Animal Taming skill — the system triggers on EventSink.TameCreature. Without taming, you can't register catalog entries. 60+ Taming covers the early-tier creature types; the higher-tier predators and great beasts demand higher skill.
Find Rhoswen Greencoat at Rhoswen's Sanctuary. She runs the questline; the catalog is hers to issue.
Tame your way through the 30 base creatures. Each successful tame of a catalog creature type registers the bond automatically. The 30 base entries have no time/region/facet gates — tame the matching type anywhere on any facet.
For the 5 rares, read their specific constraints. Min/Max hour, FacetFlags, and RegionHints all need to align when the tame fires.
Spend Marks early — the shop opens at just 3 bonds. A few Beastbond Charms unlock the Called Beast follower layer alongside catalog progress.
Visit the Hall of Bonded Masters. Reading the Roll and seeing the active Beastbinders gives you a sense of what completion looks like in the public-recognition layer.

For solo nature-focused tamers: Beast Collection is one of the strongest long-arc goals available without ever entering Felucca PvP or running with a guild.

Where to Read Next

For the closest tonal comparison, King Whiskers and Frog Collection.
For another time-gated catalog with similar constraints, Fish Collection.
For the title system that records the Beastbinder title, Register of Honors.
For the broader system map, Immortal Realm Custom Systems.
The download page is the on-ramp when you're ready.

Visual reference

Click to enlarge.