Venomancer Pets

A Venomancer's pet is her major asset. Companion, weapon, shield, distraction and killer.

Herin lies a short discussion of pets.

Not a Venomancer?

The bad news: You can't have a fighting pet. You can have an 'all class' pet, which will follow you around and look pretty. Only Venomancers can catch the components needed though, so you'll have to trade for it.

Mounts (See: Ground) are pets, using up a slot in the pet bag.

Acquiring a Pet

TODO: Skull icons, link to taming guide. Your first quest. Pet bag quest. TODO: Link to 'tame pet' skill.

Land, Air and Sea

Land pets can fight on the land, and if you bring the monster to them can attack air and sea monsters too. However, if you enter the air or sea then your land pet will unsummon.

Air pets can, obviously, fight in the air. They will also fight on land - although they aren't smart enough to fly over bumps and often get stuck with their nose in the ground. They can fight sea monsters if they are pulled to the surface, but like land pets will unsummon if you enter the sea yourself.

Water pets can pretty much only fight in the water, though they can fight land and air mobs pulled close enough. They unsummon if you leave the water.

This means that you will need to use at least three different pets at some point in your career.

Improving your pet

There are three basic ways to make a pet better:

1. You can put it away and choose a new pet.
2. You can level it up.
3. You can change its skills.

You'll probably use a mixture of these at different points in the game.

Choosing a new Pet

The first thing to mention is that you can (and should) have multiple pets. As a venomancer, you have more slots open than other classes, via quests.

You can also buy cages to expand the pet bag further.

However, if you want another pet and have run out of slots then you can always go to the pet manager and un-hatch an existing pet. It will keep all of its stats and levels and such, ready for you to hatch out again later. you can keep it in your bank, or hand it down to a younger venomancer.

When choosing a new pet you need to consider two things:

1. Its skills.
2. Its stats.

You can see both after you've tamed it (whilst its still an egg, using the tool-tip)

As a general rule though: Pets in the same 'family' - that is, pets with the same icon (for example, all the different cactopods are one family, but there are several wolf families) will have the same kinds of skill. The lower level family members will have the fewest, and lowest level skills, the highest will have the most. However - if brought up to the same level, those initially lower-levelled pets will have better stats. A higher attack and defence. Though the runspeed tends to lag behind.

Some pets in a family often have skills which you couldn't teach them yet - the snakevalley wolves, for example, have flesh-ream 4 but you could only teach level 2 to another pet of that level.

Rare pets also come with skills which are very hard to get any other way.

TODO: Link to external pet-skill guide (and mention it has errors)

Levelling Up

Each pet has a 'growth chart' which shows you what stats it will gain from levelling up.

As a general rule, it will get better at what it is good at, gaining a little attack, defence and hitpoints. It will never get weaker - though the new monsters you use it against might get even stronger.

In order to level up your pet, you just need to kill monsters. Your pet will gain XP from each and every monster kill either you or it makes. (Don't worry, it doesn't steal your experience)

The amount of xp your pet gains depends on only two things:

1. The loyalty of your pet. (Feed your pet up to 500+ loyalty, for the 150% xp bonus)
2. The level of the monster compared to the pets level.

It doesn't matter what level you are. If the monster is the pets level or greater, then your pet will gain the maximum of 10xp. (15 if you've got the 150% bonus.)

For each level below your pet the monster was, the pet gains one less xp - eventually (on a monster 10 levels lower) gaining nothing at all.

Your pet cannot out-level you. It will stop once it is your level and has a full xp bar, waiting for you to gain a level.

I should mention two things:

1. If you are in a party then you need to get the credit - your pet usually won't gain XP if the other party members do the majority of the work.
2. Mounts do not gain XP from kills (since you cannot fight whilst mounted) - instead they gain XP over time; until they get to level 11 and have their full runspeed boost and then they stop.

Buying Skills

TODO: Mention both Mrs *and* Mr zoologist. TODO: Mention upgrade, and forget, scrolls. TODO: Mention level limits, and how some captured pets beat that. TODO: Mention rare pet-skills, and the dungeon. TODO: Mention skills cheap in AH.

Most Popular Pets

TODO: That list of 'top pets by type' from ecta? TODO: Personal choice of pets by role. TODO: And yes, mention the legendary pets.