Section IV: Pets

Next to your Bow/Rifle the primary aspect of a Hunter is his pets. Your pet is your best friend. He's the one that keeps you out of harms way and as such it'll do you good to know everything there is to know when it comes to your pet.


The first and foremost thing you should know is that no pets are better than eachother! This is EXTREMELY important to know, because the forums and general chats constantly get swamped with this question. No pet is better than another. Some pet's have slightly more armor. Others have slightly more damage to deal, others have little special abilities that they have which can "proc" but, all in all, pet's are pretty much the same. The ONLY REAL DIFFERENCE is how they look. That's it. Pick a pet which suits your taste or roleplaying aspect of your character and stick with it.


I'm not going to hit on taming because if, after doing your pet quests, you still don't know how to tame... you need to switch classes. Right now. Don't wait. Get another class; something that doesn't require a lot of brainpower. Like a Warrior or something. However, if you paid attention and know how taming works, then please read on.


Pets


Let's get this right out of the way because they're the two most commonly asked questions I see. 1.) In order to name your pet you right click it's icon, which is located at the top left hand corner of the screen, right under yours. Then select "name". This is a one time deal. Once you name it, that' it, your done. You can't rename him. 2.) You do the same thing in order to "abandon" your pet as well. Right click his icon and click "abandon". Be warned, this is also a one time deal. When you abandon your pet, that's it, he's gone forever. You'll be doing alot of this to learn your pet skills, which will be described below.


Now, the most important thing to know about your pet is it's Loyalty and Happines level. Loyalty has six different levels that I know of. The longer your pet stays happy the faster his loyalty will grow. Level six takes the longest to attain. Keep your pet happy and his loyalty will grow. Now the effects of loyalty is a bit ambiguous at this point. No one really knows what the actual value of loyalty is. All we do know is that if your pet's loyalty is at it's lowest and it's happiness is at it's lowest your pet will leave you. I'm not too sure if, as your pet gains levels in loyalty, it can actually loose those levels. I've never let his happiness stay so low to actually find out but I would imagine that this is how it works. There might be something to do with damage and armor when it comes to loyalty as well but of this I'm not too sure either. And, of course, that with each successive level of loyalty that you gain with your pet he gains skill points.


Now happiness is a bit more defined. There are three levels of happiness. Unhappy, Content, and Happy. If his happiness level is at Unhappy your pet will only do 75% of possible damage. It will do 100% at content and 125% at happy. So of course you want to keep your pet "happy" at all times. In order to increase happiness you have to feed your pet. Now in order to find out what kind of food your pet eats you have to go into your character screen. Hit the small button which looks like your characters head. This is usually located in the bottom center of your screen. Once there click on the Pet tab. You'll see a picture of your pet as well as his experience bar and his statistics. Now in the upper left hand corner you'll see a little smiley face (or sad face). This is the gauge of his happiness. Hover your cursor over this guage and it will tell you what your pets diet is. That's to say what he needs to eat.


You can find this gauge also next to your pets HP bar on the main screen in the upper left hand corner but only in his statistics window will it tell you what its diet is.


It's always important to know what it is that your pet requires to eat because you'll be picking up meats and what not off of the creatures which you hunt. Such as boar meat off of boars. If your pet eats meat, simply drop the boar meat right on top of your pet and he will feed. If you have a stack of food don't worry, he'll only eat one item at a time; not the whole stack. It's important to know that the higher your pet get's in level the higher "level" food it will take to make him happy. So if you have a stack of boar meat in your pack which you looted off of level 14 boars you're going to notice that it takes alot more of that food to make your pet happy when it's level 20. This is why Cooking is an awesome thing to have as a Hunter. Cooked food is better for your pet then uncooked raw food. ! And will keep your pet happier longer. The higher level cooked food you have the longer your pet will stay happy.


It's a good thing to know that everytime your pet dies he will default to "Content". If he dies while Content he will default to "Unhappy". So it's a good thing to keep your pet happy at all times. Because of this you'll find yourself hunting beasts more often than you'll find yourself hunting humanoid monsters. Beasts drop meat and what not while humanoids will only drop cooked food occasionally (some more often than others). And it's better to get free food then it is to pay for it at an inn. Of course, if you hunt humanoids, you'll be getting money whereas beasts don't usually drop money and that money you can put towards buying food. Yes, it's a chore keeping your pet happy but as you level up you'll notice that it's really not that bad.


After feeding your pet, the next important thing to know is how to train him. This is where it get's a little tricky. The first thing you should do when you get your pet is save up 5 silver and head straight to a Stablemaster. You can find these guys in almost every town and city. Once you find a stable master buy yourself a slot in the stable and put your pet in that stable so you can go tame yourself other pets. The reasoning behind this is because the only way to train your pet in other abilities is to learn them from other creatures. For instance, most coyote's and wolfs have either Bite 1 or Bite 2. In order for you to teach either of these abilities to your pet you must first learn them yourself. And the only way to learn them is to tame a creature (in this case a coyote or wolf) and go hunting for a little bit with him. After a few kills you'll get a message saying that you have learned "Bite 1". Once you learn this you can abandon the coyote/wolf and go retrieve your pet and teach it to him.


In order to teach your pet you have to click on the train icon in your spell book. It's not hard to find so go ahead and get to it. To find out what skills a creature which you have tamed has, go to the pet tab which I described earlier. You'll be referring to this screen alot when you're taming creatures trying to find different abilities to teach your pet. So remember how to find it. Only some creatures can learn some abilities. For instance, a Strigid Screecher (owl in NE lands) can't learn Bite but it can learn Claw and a wolf can't learn Claw but it can learn Bite so on and so forth. The most important of all abilities which you can teach your pet is Growl. This ability basically keeps aggro on your pet and off of you. You automatically know Growl I but to learn subsequent Growls (i.e. II III IV and so on) you visit a pet trainer which can be found in every major city and some towns. You won't be able to learn your next growl until level 20 so I wouldn't sweat! it until then. But make sure your pet learns Growl I as soon as possible because it's the single most important ability you can teach your pet.


In order for your pet to learn new skills he must have skill points. You gain these as your pet increases in level and in loyalty. You can see his current skill point total in the pet statistics screen that I described earlier.


It is important to know that you can only tame Beasts. You can't tame Humanoids and you can't tame Critters, dissapointing I know. I always wanted me a high level rabbit.


Another important thing to know about your pet is how to get him off of a creature. Sometimes you'll send your pet attacking the wrong creature at the wrong time and you want him to return before he starts attacking or perhaps just to pull him off of a creature that someone else hit first etc. etc. In order to do this all you have to hit is the button that looks like a white baby seal. This is the "passive" button. When you hit this your pet will come running back to you right away and will not attack anything, not even if being attacked. Next to the passive button are two other stance buttons: Aggressive and Defensive. Aggresive means that he will attack anything that moves. Defensive means he will only attack what you tell him to attack or he'll attack whatever hits you or he'll attack whatever hits him. The attack button overrides all of the stances however. If you have him set to defensive or passive or even aggressive he'll attack only what you tell him to most of the time. So you don't need to worry about him switching targets midway in battle. Your pet is pretty obedient and intelligent.
http://www.marsgamer.com/freeguides/hunter_guide.html

The first and foremost thing you should know is that no pets are better than eachother! This is EXTREMELY important to know, because the forums and general chats constantly get swamped with this question. No pet is better than another. Some pet's have slightly more armor.