When is it good time to try to charm greater claw bugs in the current version?

[mewmew]

I'm playing a bard now and I feel like I need somebody powerful to help me to clear the Pyramid (I'm lvl 16 already), but since the wiki suggests that taming greater claw bugs was nerfed, I'm not sure at what level I should even try and on what the result would depend. I think that somebody undoubtedly tamed those bugs in p20, so please suggest me when I should go there.

[Deathwind]

I thought the change was to make them totally immune to being charmed.

[JellySlayer]

Creator said "I have increased the risk of trying this". I haven't tested so I can't say for sure what it means. If you've got an emergency teleport, you can probably safely make the attempt, at least.

[Carter]

I thought the change was to make them totally immune to being charmed.

even when you do charm them they consistantly resist and are not useful as a companion. Tried with lvl25 bard. Not sure if it changes later.

[mewmew]

Ty. I tried at lvl 16 with a blessed tambourine. I managed to make one of them friendly but it quickly turned hostile too. I had acid breath corruption so I quickly dispatched those who refused to be tamed. Eventually I cleared the Pyramid with 2 stone giant lords from scrolls of familiar summoning, it was kind of overkill, ratling fencers who disarmed me twice were nasty anyway though.

It's a kind of disappointment, not to be able to use one of the most fun companions at all. I thought balance changes were supposed to make the game more fun and not vice versa/

[sylph]

Agreed! What a shame! Sure, it was abusable, but I would have rather seen a final score penalty than just removing the tactic.

[_Ln_]

I was able to do it at level 1 once or twice but it is near impossible.

By the way, as far as my experience goes, taming penalty either works in the Bugwil or on bugs generated in Bugwil. I had zero problems with taming a whole tension room of GCBs from DH:1 (well, apart from getting almost killed by one in the process), and had an army of ~12 bugs chilling out in the animated forest. They are roughly comparable to banshee in the prime, but lose efficiency when you get separated from them.

If anyone is up to test this, they might try getting a bug to "doesn't care about" you status, leaving Bugwil with it and trying to tame it outside to see if the penalty is actually on the bugwil itself.