Editing The General and Generic Venomancer Guide (section)

== Petsmart! ==

Venomancers are separated from the other magic classes by their ability to tame and use pets in battle. You'll get the ability to tame a pet at level 7 after you complete the quests given by the Pet Skill Trainer Hu. To get over the question, "What is the best pet in the game?" early, buy battle pet packs until you get 9999 Source of Forces and 9999 Phoenix Feathers so you can start the game with a [[Baby Hercules|Hercules]] and a Phoenix, unarguably the best two pets in the game. If you're on a budget like the rest of us, you'll have to go through it the harder way. 

I would recommend you to start with the Scorpion as the starter pet because endgame, it'll have the highest attack rating outside of the Cash Shop pets. Even if you get the Phoenix later on, the Varicose Scorpion ('''level 2''') would still be pretty nice to have when you feel like PKing in Secret Passage where flying pets will be disabled. However, it's not an essential pet if you're not interested. In City of the Lost, you'll probably be seeing people selling Volcanic ('''level 18''')/Crystalline Magmites ('''level 17''') and Petite Sawflys ('''level 8'''). Until you get enough money for the Cash Shop pets, go ahead and purchase those so you can save yourself some time on traveling and effort to catch those pets if you are lazy. The Volcanic Magmite is .1m/s faster than the Crystalline Magmite and comes with better skills. The Crystalline Magmite will have marginally higher stats, so it's really just a matter of preference for deciding which one you want. Skills, although fairly expensive, can be purchased for pets, but stat points cannot. The main purpose of a pet is to tank for a veno, and a Magmite does this job quite well. If you can get your hands on a Shaudo Cub, it could work as a great tank in place of either Magmites.

The Sawfly is the budget Phoenix. You'll need it to do your air and even water quests, since it's possible to lure water mobs to the surface for a flying pet to attack it. The alternate is a Foxwing, which has lower attack ratings but higher defensive ratings. Investing in a Windwalking Piggy for its tanking capabilities isn't a bad option either. With the listed pets, you're pretty much set until level 80 when you finally get a decent water pet and the water quests start going too deep in the water for you to fish with your flying pet. The particular water pet is the Celestial Plumpfish, which is actually a very nice pet with pretty decent stats. If you really have the patience to consistently raise a low level water pet though, go for it. Otherwise, another alternative to complete your collection with a water pet is to catch a random water pet around your level to complete your water quests if you don't like fishing with an air pet.

Some venos also carry pets for specific purposes, such as a luring pet or a ranged pet, which includes the Cactopod and Eldergoth families. The trick is to make sure no skills are selected for the pet to use, so it'll resort to using ranged attacks. A luring pet would be any fast running pet used for the purpose of drawing out an individual target within a group of targets, which will be explained in detail later.

Most venomancers get their Cash Shop pets around level 60 or so. Go ahead and start saving up as soon as you start playing and no need to bother wasting money on equipment since you'll outgrow your stuff in a short amount of time anyways. Not to mention that since your pet will be tanking for you, you can potentially do well enough without wearing any armor at all. Most people choose to aim for a [[Baby Hercules|Hercules]] first since you can farm Twilight Temple materials that you can sell. It's a great plan, although how much money you make depends on the market. If you don't like relying on the in-game market and don't mind grinding endlessly for cash, go ahead and get the Phoenix first, since it'll improve your killing speed by 50% or something like that. Or you can save yourself 40 million coins altogether and just stick with the free pets.

If you don't care about top notch things and barely noticeable improvements, you can honestly do fine with any pet you want. Common pets, rare pets, whatever. On the subject matter, rare pets are pets that usually spawn once every 12 hours and are usually adorable, so everyone wants them. They're also terribly hard to catch because of this and they're fairly expensive if you want to just buy them. The rare pets are the following:


;Frogling (level 9) : Often considered the best magic tank in the game. It has a combination of decent attack, very high magic defense, decent physical defense, and good HP. Unfortunately, most mobs use a combination of magic and physical attacks, so the times when a Frogling will be more useful than a Magmite is very rare. Because of this, getting a magic tank of any sort is not essential. On the bright side, a Frogling is fairly cheap for a rare pet if you really want a magic tank.


;Snow Hare (level 20) : Just for looks. Unlike other rare pets, it spawns hourly, so it's also fairly cheap compared to other rare pets. It doesn't excel in any aspect other than cuteness.


;Tabby Plumdrop (level 20) : Fairly decent magic tank and a pretty fast pet so it can work as a good puller as well. More about pulling will be explained later. 


;Shaodu Cub (level 20) : Decent overall pet. Also one of the most expensive rare pets for some reason. It has good defense and magic defense so it can play as a primary ground tank.


;Windwalking Piggy (level 30) : Godly tank pet. Higher HP than a Magmite, very high defense and magic defense, it's a very good tanking pet. Unfortunately, it's not so good at attacking which means you'll steal aggro from it everyday. It's also the only rare flying pet, if it means anything.


;Cuddly Puppy (level 30) : Good puller due to its very high speed. Other than that, it's pretty much the same as a Tabby Plumdrop.


;Kowlin (level 60) : Pretty much the fastest puller in the game due to its top speed, which can outrun everything except for a maxed land mount. It also has a fairly good attack and magic defense. However, it has one of the lower defense and HP ratings, so it's not so good to leave it alone for too long. 


;Armored Bear (level 80) : The Armored Bear is basically a Shaodu Cub clone with marginally higher ratings in defenses and marginally lower ratings in offensive power. But hey, it's pretty much the coolest looking pet because it's a bear with armor. That aspect alone is reason enough for you to get one.


Don't forget to feed your pets every 5 minutes with pure or spring water. Don't bother with all the other stuff unless you have a Cash Shop pet. When you're running low on water, buy 200 pure water from the pet person and it should last you for another few weeks. If you're cheap and don't like spending 50k every so often, create a new venomancer, level it to level 3, do the pet quest and get the free 200 water then send it to your main through mail.

Save up some money and buy a tome. Those will prevent your pet from getting hungry. You'll still have to feed your pet when it dies and when you first hatch it to get it's loyalty up initially, but you won't have to feed it every 5 minutes. Don't bother with the Arcane Pet Book in the Boutique; it only lasts a week and doesn't give extra stats, which every other tome in the game does. If you're having trouble affording a tome, try looking for the Christmas Blessing, it's the cheapest one available.
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=== Pet Tricks ===

Unless you're PvPing or really hate your pets losing aggro, you should be able to get by without touching any of your pet skills. Pet skills can be bought and upgraded at Mrs. Zoologist, who happens to be at the southeast corner of Archosaur. Pet skills can be upgraded up to level 5, at one skill level per 20 actual levels. For completion's sake, here's a breakdown of the pet skills:

;Bash : Everyone's favorite aggro skill. A pet with high attack power with a maxed out Bash can do some pretty good spike damage in PvP, but everyone prefers Flesh Ream because it does more damage overall.

;Elemental Bashes : Fireball (fire), Icicle (water), Sandblow (earth), Toxic Mist (wood) and Thunderbolt (metal) are the exact same thing as Bash, except they're elemental. They actually count as magic attacks, so it's fairly decent in PvP against physical defense heavy classes.

;Threaten : Lowers target's physical attack by up to 36% for 15 seconds when maxed. Not only is it useful for giving you some extra time to nuke mobs instead of healing your pet, but it's actually a very nice debuff PvP-wise. 

;Tough : When maxed out, can reduce all damage taken by half for 15 seconds. If you've aggroed too many mobs but you're too lazy to get out of the situation, you could always use this. 

;Roar : Draws aggro from the targeted mob to the pet. It doesn't actually build up any threat from the pet, so in terms of true tanking, it's not a great skill. Best used as an emergency aggro drawer or something to that extent.

;Boost : Your pet self-heals a small amount of HP, only 12% when maxed. It has a fast cooldown, so it could possible compliment you when you're healing your pet against a tough boss. On the other hand, if you would have such a difficult time tanking something, you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

;Pierce : Drops the target's physical defense. Pretty obsolete, since your Ironwood Scarab won't stack with it and has a much better cooldown. 

;Howl : Drops the target's magic defense. Since the only other way a veno can cast this debuff is through a level 79 skill, it's not too bad of a way to rack up your numbers after casting Amplify Damage on your target. Unless you're foxforming anyways.

;Flesh Ream : Causes bleeding over 9 seconds, the damage is based on the pet's attack. Thanks to the fact that Flesh Ream doesn't suffer a 75% damage reduction in PvP, it is pretty much essential to put this on a PvP pet for the average veno.

;Slow : Decreases the target's running speed for 6 seconds with only a 10 second cooldown. Useful when luring fast mobs and kiting in PvE.

;Shriek : Interrupts channeling. It's not so great until maxed, which is when it'll have a 100% success rate. Then you can be cancel spells like a pro. The crappy part is that pet skills have a 1 second delay so make sure you time it right.


The following skills are rare skills that can only be found through the Dragon Temple event on Tuesdays:

;Pounce : Gives a fairly high chance of stunning the target (80% chance maxed) for 3 seconds and increasing your pet's attack speed at the same time. Not an essential skill, but everyone could always benefit from an extra stun. 

;Claw : Increases the pet's physical attacks by up to 30% for an hour. 

;Reflect : Returns all physical damage the pet has taken by up to 70% for an hour. 

;Blessing of the Pack : Increases the pet's maximum HP by up to 30% for an hour. 

;Strong : Increases the pet's physical defense by up to 150% for an hour. 

;Protect : Increases the pet's magical defense by up to 150% for an hour.

;Bloodthirst : Drains enemy HP up to 25% of pet's HP, and increases pet's HP.

;Bloodhunger : Drains enemy HP equal to 50% of pet's missing HP, and increases pet's HP.  REQUIRES a maxed Bloodthirst.

;Consume : Drains enemy MP up to 25% of pet's HP, and increases pet's HP.

;Devour : Drains enemy MP equal to 50% of pet's missing HP, and increases pet's HP.  REQUIRES a maxed Consume.

;Sacrifice : Pet loses 75% of current HP to do 400% of base physical damage.

;Penetrate : Does up to 800 damage, ignoring any defense.
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