Power leveling a pet

I know that to lvl a pet to Dire, it has to do a lot more damage than its master..but if its master doesn't have a weapon and the other Heroes and Henchies do, does this still count ?
Trying to level a lvl 5 pet with no assistance is SLOW, so will it gain experience from the Hero/Henchie kills and still stay on the path to Dire ?

The way I leveled my dire tiger was to clear out an area so that there were no hostile enemies. Then I sent all of my heroes except a healer a good long distance away. Now at this point I took off all my armor and aggroed the tiger and allowed it to kill me. I set up my healer so that the only skill he used was rebirth so when the tiger killed me he would rez me back up to die again. Basically at this point I just went AFK for a couple of hours and when I came back...a dire pet was there for me to charm That was my method anyway.

...and what skill did you use to stay alive long enough to put your AR on and tame it ?

the skill called "re-enable monk hero's skills". you can die a few times while putting on the armor. and a 55 set is even better than 0 armor.

keep rezoning till your pet is near a rez shrine....attack it once, take all armor and wep off, and let it kill you, come back 8 hours later, and its a lvl 20

Not true. Your pet needs to gain experience without taking excessive damage.

If you have access to heroes, it's easy to level a pet to Dire evolution. I leveled a whole flock of flamingoes to dire by using two monk heroes. One prot monk hero should bond you and your pet, the other monk hero should use Mending and Watchful Spirit on you and your pet. Heal Party or Light of Deliverance can help sometimes. Arm yourself with Call of Protection and Symbiotic Bond to help protect your pet.


Go somewhere like Ice Tooth Cave and have your heroes cast the enchantments. Flag the monks so they can't get within aggro range - the enchants are effective for quite some distance. Now just start killing the minotaurs. After level 10 you can go to the minotaurs in Elona's Reach mission or the foes outside Senji's Corner. Just make sure there are no enemies with enchant removal of lifesteal.

This probably isn't the quickest way to go about it, but it has had a 100% success rate for me.

This the way I chose, except that I was in control of Dunkoro, and I could get the tiger off Dunkoro once he rezed me..took a little over 2 hrs.
Pitfalls to watch out for.
I got 1 tiger to lvl 9 and hit the wrong tab and all the hero/henchies came rushing over to my aid..argh..I also had Koss coming a couple of times during the second attempt but was quick enough to send him back...also keep 1/4" gap between agro circles of yourself and the henchies..the tiger took off at least 6 times in that direction and he moves like he's on steroids !

Why all you folks sending your heroes away? After clearing the area of hostiles I just took away the heroes' weapons and set them to "passive". I disabled all their skills except rebirth (which nicely brings you back with low health...especially after DP). I took off all my armor and equipped a vampiric bow, aggroed my future pet and let it clobber me. While waiting for rez, my heroes maintained aggro. When I came back (with 55hp at 60% DP) the little bugger took very few hits to knock me back down. Had a level 20 Dire pet in the time it took me to watch Pirates of the Carribean.

FLAW IN 55hp METHOD: Using all superior runes in beginning armor will cause insta-death upon ressurrection and your future pet will get the XP for it...levelling goes ultra fast this way, however, you cannot unequip your armor in the split-second before you die at rez. If you want to quickly level a pet for a heroes this way, though, it goes VERY fast...a Dire pet for your hero in about 30 minutes or less.

I charmed my pets before leveling them rather than afk death level them.