Provocation[]
"How much would it take for a wolf to devour a sheep"
Using the Provocation skill, a player has a chance to make two creatures fight each other. Some on UOPhoenix consider it to be very powerful.
Be very careful, there is a chance when you fail provoking that the creature you're attempting on, will go straight for you.
Training[]
Before you start training Provocation its wise to stash away the instrument you got on character creation. The instrument is Blessed, and you might want to take it with you only for usage after you have died and lost all your other instruments. Training Provocation will eventually wear out the instrument used.
Another idea is to train Musicianship pas 80.0 or so making since in addition to influencing the level of success for the other Bardic skills. More success is more skill gains.
Note that provoking creatures onto yourself or other players does not work on UOPhoenix.
Try using a Boat or Fence to seperate the creatures so they can never hurt or kill eachother.
0 - 30 Visit a Bard NPC and have him train you in exchange for a few hundred gold coins.
30 - 40 Small farm and forest animals. Cows, Sheep, Hinds, Black Bears or head to Covetous level 1 and provoke two corpsers onto eachother. Or zombies and skeletons at the Graveyards
40 - ~75 Britannian Royal Zoo (Moonglow): Stand EXACTLY as pictured and record a macro to provoke one of the Frost Trolls onto the Giant Serpent. Some attempts will fail due to line of sight. This position minimizes that. After about 75 displayed skill gains will begin to fall off. Move onto the next location before you hit 89.
~75 - ~120 Britannian Royal Zoo (Moonglow): First, provoke the Giant Serpent onto the Rotting Corpse. Do not skip this step. Then, stand EXACTLY as pictured. This will require the use of the Teleport spell. This can be cast off a scroll with 0.0 Magery. Record a macro to provide the Rotting Corpse onto the Giant Serpent in the cell you are standing in. Depending on the stats of the monsters this could take you all the way to 120. Note: you will fail many more attempts here due to line of sight issues, however I have yet to get completely stuck at this location, or get agro from the Giant Serpent.
The Numbers[]
The base range of all bard abilities is 8 tiles, with each 15 points of skill in the ability being used increasing this range by one tile.
Barding Difficulty is a value that indicates the skill level that a Bard must have for a 50% chance of success versus the creature in question. If a bard's skill is 25 points below the Barding Difficulty value, the bard has no chance of success. If a bard's skill is 25 points above the Barding Difficulty value, the bard has 100% chance of success and cannot gain any skill points against that creature type.