[Zoo]

I didn't know there was something to get O_O.

Anyway, I'm glad you guys are sane about finding things out. Looking for info about raising pets different ways, since I have untrained pets on some of my heroes and other characters, found a topic that said basically "I spent all this time training my pet and it only does 5 damage!!1!!! Pets are a waste!!!" Yeah.

I dunno about items being needed. But yeah, it is possible to raise a pet to level 20 without making it evolve. It can be done if you just let it rack up experience without taking much damage or dealing much damage. And from what I've seen and read, they dont grow that way.

From what I've read completely unevolved pets are pretty rare. Elder pets aren't quite as much, but they don't get a name prefix at level 20 (15, actually). Looking at the stats in the wiki though, an unevolved pet and an elder pet seem to be the same thing. They're at +0 health and +0 damage, where hearty has -damage and +health, and dire has +damage and -health.


I'm starting to think I should avoid other forums >_<

Hearty just sucks. A hearty pet is the sign of a lazy and degenerate person who just runs B/P 24/7.

Hearty is completely useless. There are only ever 3 reasons you take a pet.
Your a Beastmaster and the pet is there to do damage, Dire wins. It'll prob be Enraged Lunge, so you'll have Call of Prot. Lower health means the enemies are less likely to keep running past it.

Evidence please? And why do I have to use enraged lunge again?

[Aaron]

It would make sense to have a Hearty pet for tanking because of the extra health, but a Dire pet's lower health usually makes it the first target for an enemy (assuming you have no other party members with health lower than the pet). However, a Hearty pet is not "useless" if you are using pet attack skills. The attack skills essentially make all pet types deal nearly the same damage. Dire comes in useful damage-wise if you only plan on bringing Charm Animal and Comfort Animal (as I often do).

I myself used to have a Hearty Black Spider, but I didn't really like her damage output and wanted an aggro-holding friend. I tamed a Mountain Eagle and death leveled it to Dire. I've yet to test the difference between the two, but I'll post my observations.

[Zoo]

Not sure if you took it this way Aaron , I didn't mean to say I think one is better than another ('specially since I can't, having only had two hearty pets ), I just want people to explain why they think one is better, rather than basing their argument on insults and/or assumptions about how other people play. (And the rest of that thread was actually sane. . . those guys got the advice I would have given, as set out in this paragraph.)

Pretty much comes down to the thing that holds true for most things in this game , what's best depends on how you play. I'll have to check, I don't think Lea has a pet, that would probably be a good way to compare without giving up Kitty... though that means someone else is going to have to store things for a while >_<.

[Goto]

I really should find out how to train a dire pet... I think it had something to do with your pet doing more damage than you in battle? That's gonna suck, I always run damage-based builds.

And yeah, I don't see one evolution or another being inherently superior. I've only used pets a little, both on my necro and ranger. Both pets were hearty, which worked great on my necro (was getting it to tank and using mark of pain on its target, so damage wasn't as crucial and health was) and didn't work so well on my Ranger. I think I'd prefer a dire pet on my Dervish though, since I can survive pretty well already and will be sacrificing some damage to take a pet along.

[Lynn]

Fairly certain dire evolves by it dealing more dmg than it takes. Hence the common death lvling method of procuring one. there's guides on the wiki, of course :-p

[Aaron]

Death leveling is the easiest way to get a Dire pet. I set my heroes to avoid combat, disabled all their skills but Resurrect, let the bird attack me, and went to bed. When I woke up I had a Level 20 Dire Mountain Eagle and something like 1800 deaths .

I have noticed a small difference in damage output between a Hearty and Dire pet. However, it really is minimal. I kind of am displeased that Aquila dies more often than Arachne did, but he seems to bring it upon himself. He needs to learn not to take on a mob of White Mantle Justiciars by himself .

[Zoo]

There's also this:Guide to evolving a dire pet, probably along with many others.

[Rylkan]

Personally, I don't mind having a hearty pet. Besides, it is much more annoying to evolve a dire pet, especially if you play in harder areas, you would have to go back to weaker areas if you can't death level a pet into dire.

[Goto]

Death levelling rainbow phoenixes is a physical impossibility, as far as I can see.

[Aaron]

Yeah, that's unfortunate. It'd be a pain to level one of those to Dire. You'd have to do it the hard way!

[Goto]

I gave it a bit of a try last night, made it all the way to... level 6! If I only managed one level before getting sick of it, maybe I should give up and just go for a hearty or elder. It probably wouldn't make a tremendous amount of difference to me, so it's probably not worth the effort.

So if there's both Elder pets and pets that don't evolve (and so don't grow), how do you go about training towards one or the other? Is the no-evolution only likely to happen if it's not taking part in battle?

[Zoo]

Apparently to get an elder pet, you train the pet like you would either a dire or hearty pet until its first evolution (usually at 11) and then switch to the opposite approach.

[Rylkan]

An elder pet should grow, as far as I know. They only don't grow if they just stay a normal pet. Which is possible. Unlikely, but possible.

And it would be interesting to see, the Big Mean Balthazar, with a colorful Phoenix next to him.