Do pets still 'evolve'...?

I was just wondering... If pets still 'evolve' (the name-changes) like they used to, since my new Black Bear is now a lvl 17 Aggressive Bear... Should've been Dire, right?

Looking for a FAQ on pets, I found a really in-dept one. I was told that pets don't evolve for the second time anymore?

Aggressive is the step before Dire.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Pet

Well, I know that... But I've been training my pet the same way I've been training it before, which means that it should've gone Dire at lvl 15...

It's now lvl 17, by the way.

The text on pets on Wikipedia also says that if a pet levels up while it's dead, getting to the next step in evolution might take longer... But mine has never leveled up while dead, so... I just don't really understand...

I checked Epinephrine's "Pet Evolution" guide http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...88&postcount=3 to see if it was recently updated to indicate pets no longer evolve to dire or hearty, and it was not.

It does say, however, that pets don't always evolve to dire or hearty, sometimes they don't go through the second evolution and stay at the first evolution, aggressive/elder/playful, all the way to stage 20. There are also cases where the pet stays unevolved altogether.

Once, when I was leveling up a pet and the evolution name wasn't changing, I tried rebooting the game to get it to change, and that worked. The pet guide also says crossing a map portal will trigger a name change as well.

You're mistaken. Elder is a second stage evolution. When you first get your pet, pick which route to go.

Normal ---(defensive leveling)--> Playful(lvl11) ---(defensive leveling)--> Hearty(lvl20)

Normal ---(offensive leveling)--> Aggressive(lvl11) ---(offencive leveling)--> Dire(lvl20)

Normal ---(defensive leveling)--> Playful(lvl11) ---(offencive leveling)--> Elder(lvl20)

Normal ---(offensive leveling)--> Aggressive(lvl11)l ---(defensive leveling)--> Elder(lvl20)

Read up more on Guildwiki if you need more info. http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Pet

Hi Relnor...

Thanks so much for posting the url to the wiki pet page.The wiki is a great resource isn't it? I like it for a lot of things, and it was the first place I went when I first started looking for information on pets. Their pet page has a very good overview.

However, soon after I found the wiki page, I found "A guide to pets, by Jenosavel and Epinephrine," a section (Pet Evolution) of which I linked to in my previous post, and I can say with total confidence that this impressive collaboration is without a doubt the most comprehensive GW pet guide in existence.

If you like the wiki page on pets, I think you'll love this one. They've done an amazing amount of research (far more quantitative than qualitative) and provide an abundance of quantitative data such as the pet health chart below. If you lose this thread and link to their wonderful work, just remember that it's in the Community Works (Tools and Resources) section of The Inner Circle.