*Updated* Ultimate Pet Guide

First, there appears to be absolutely no difference between a Strider and a Moa Bird. When you level a Strider to level 3, its default names changes to Moa Bird.

While I don't know the range on dead pets getting experience (though to be safe, I'd keep comfort animal along and let it catch up to you periodically), I'm pretty certain that they only gain experience from combat. Thus, they won't gain experience from mission/quest completions.

Have they changed pet growth? When I had my Necro/Ranger with her Stalker, it grew whenever it levelled. I've now got a lvl 20 Ele/Ranger having changed profession and grabbed a Dune Lizard. At level 15 lizard I went back to the dunes and it was no bigger. I then got rid of that and grabbed a Moa, and it doesn't appear to be getting larger.

I've also tried to get it Playful. I want a big pet. At level 11 (farming experience by soloing outisde Ventari's Refuge) with 0 Beast Mastery skill and nothing but the occassional ressurrection it was just a Moa with no Playful prefix. I typed in /petname to reset that just in case and it became an Aggressive Moa!

Is there any spell or something that increses your attack or strenght (primary Ranger) when your animal companion dies ? One friend told me that there is .... ?
so ... what's that?

"I Will Avenge You!" is a Warrior shout that gives you a hefty chunk of regen, +33% attack speed, and 10 seconds duration per dead ally nearby (which includes dead pets). I'm sure your friend was referring to this spell.

nope ... he told me about ranger skill ... he said that he heard it from one guy who is in OnLY-Ranger guild ...
but maybe we heard it all wrong
10X anyway

and what does that IWAY means ?

for god's sake man, look two posts above you >.<

I wouldn't trust a guy who spells "thanks" with two numbers and a letter to actually read...
Dammit, I wish there was some way to keep a pet attacking while you stay away without attacking.

very small thing (it bothers me) you dont sell your pet to Jarrel- you give it to him-if he did buy them though it would be a new way to farm (pointless unless its over 150g)

If it's "exotic" you get some money for your pet.

What does he consider exotic, and how much money does he give you?

From my experiences, I got 100 gold any time I gave him a level 20 pet, and no gold for anything with fewer levels than that. ...which means it is very not worth it from a farming perspective.

I see.
Ill, go make some checks try to get a pet from about averywhere see what he gives me

yeah srry about that... the only times i've ever given up a pet was when it was already lvl 20 so i just assumed...

i'll edit the original post...

Nice tip for rangers that want to use a pet:
If you're still in Pre-Searing and if you want a high lvl pet early on, let yourself be followed by several Wolfs and walk to a nearby respawn spot, eventually they'll lvl, if they're the desired lvl, charm them, and you have a nice high lvl pet early on, very handy for Rangers!

Help! I've been levelling my wolf in the desert, nothing but pet skills in the bar(except Essence Bond), yet it's still Aggressive (at L20) rather than Dire :/

In a nutshell, you are screwed. Go level to 15 outsides Gates of Kryta (the area is called Scoundrel's Rise) killing Mergoyles with the same approach (beast mastery 12, your other weapon attribute at 0). If you see Zombies outsides Gates of Kryta, go turn in the letter before you work with your pet. Do not fight Bog Scales.

Well based on reading how to make my pet Elder status, I failed.
I did what was noted, lvl'ed him up to lvl 11 by putting my BM at 12, bringing lots of BM skills and let him kill all the minotaurs outside ice tooth cave. He became aggressive. Then, I set BM at 0 and only brought charm animal. I went and farmed hydras all day till lvl 15. Why is my pet dire??

[I know this is really hard to believe, but I tried to be brief.]

This post is the result of a couple of weeks of me exclusively working with bears (yay bears), and the method has been tried and tested with four different primary professions for a total of 7 characters that I definitely know of. So if you want an elder pet, this is the way to do it in one run:

(1) If you have a pet, go to post-searing Ascalon City. Equip the spell Charm Animal and leave the city for Old Ascalon. Type "/petname" in Guild Wars chat and hit return. A message confirming the reset of your petname will be displayed in the chat window. Meet Jarrel the Tamer on the right side and turn in your pet.

(2) Go and charm the pet of your desire. Click here for a list of available pets and details on where to find them. Please do not give it a name yet, and return to the guild hall immediately after charming the pet. The pet should not have any combat exposure at this point. Ideally, go without henchmen.

(3) In the guild hall, remove the spell Charm Animal from your skill bar. Go and visit the town Thirsty River in the desert.

(4) Leave Thirsty River for The Scar and kill Dune Burrowers until you have five Dune Burrower jaws.

(5) Visit Sir Pohl Sanbert (please refer to this post) and exchange the five Dune Burrower jaws for the Ascalon bow that he offers. Return to Ascalon City and visit the weaponsmith Sedgwick. Customize your Ascalon bow for 10 gold.

Regardless of whether Ranger is your primary or secondary profession, you will need the following spells:

Minimum requirements:
Beast Mastery - Feral Lunge, Call of Protection
Marksmanship - Hunter Shot

Ideally available spells:
Beast Mastery - Feral Lunge, Call of Protection, Call of Haste, Ferocious Strike (elite)
Marksmanship - Hunter Shot, Penetrating Attack, Power Shot, Precision Shot, Barrage (elite)

Before you run of buying spells, be smart about it. A warrior will only be able to use the minimum requirements because of the low energy and low energy regeneration. Classes with more energy can have more spells available, but will be fine with the specified minimum. In case of doubt, ask.

(6) Go acquire the spells that you need. To that end, first check your quest log for quests that give the spells for free. If that is not an option, you may always buy all spells in Ember Light Camp.

(7) Travel to the outpost Gates of Kryta north of Lion's Arch. Equip the Acalon bow that you obtained from Sir Pohl Sanbert. Assign the following attributes to your character: 12 beast mastery, 3 marksmanship. It is essential that you do not alter these values. Equip Charm Animal, only your beast mastery spells (no marksmanship spells), and if you need Troll Unguent (assign any remaining attribute points to Wilderness Survival in that case).

(8) Leave Gates of Kryta for Scoundrel's Rise.

Please note: All pet training is done alone and without henchmen.

When you look for enemies in Scoundrel's Rise, you see groups of Mergoyle Wavebreakers.

NOTE: If you see anything else, especially Zombies, return to Gates of Kryta, remove Charm Animal from your skillbar, take henchies, and venture through Scoundrel's Rise to deliver a letter. If you need more details, ask me.

During this first stage of your pet evolution, your pet is doing most of the damage. You are doing some minor damage with your bow. Keep call of protection running at all times. It lasts about 2 minutes each, just remember to recast once it runs out. Press C-Space to target and attack the closest enemy, then at least keep casting Feral Lunge as often as possible. If you have other beast mastery spells, cast those whenever your energy allows you to do that after casting the two spells from the minor requirements detailed above. C-Space a new target after killing a target, and rest up in between groups if possible.

You want to avoid your pet dieing. If a situation occurs that it gets tricky, hit G and press the Guild Hall button to leave the area. Return and continue as described.

You progress along a narrow walkway, killing 3 or 4 groups of Mergoyles in the process.

Once the walkway opens up into the beach, you may fight 2 or 3 more groups of Mergoyles.

Avoid Bog Scales at all cost. In case of doubt, map-travel back to Gates of Kryta and start again.

As you fight these groups of Mergoyles with the beast mastery spells, your pet will gain levels (check your party window).

(9) When your pet hits level 11, return to Gates of Kryta by means of map travel. Leave Gates of Kryta for Scoundrel's Rise. The name of your pet in the party window will read "Aggressive XXX" (with XXX being the type of pet you chose).

This completes stage 1 of your pet training.

If this is not the case, we need to talk and correct something you did.

(10) The second stage: Return to Gates of Kryta by means of map travel. Assign the attributes 0 beast mastery and 12 marksmanship. Remove all beast mastery spells except Charm Animal from your skill bar. Place your marksmanship spells in your skill bar.

(11) Leave Gates of Kryta for Scoundrel's Rise. Attack the Mergoyles with your bow and cast the marksmanship spell Hunter Shot as often as possible. Cast any other Marksmanship spells detailed above as often as possible after that.

Again, do not fight Bog Scales. Rather leave to the guild hall or map-travel back to Gates of Kryta.

As you fight the Mergoyles, your pet will gain levels.

(12) When your pet hits level 15, return to Gates of Kryta by means of map travel. Leave Gates of Kryta for Scoundrel's Rise. The name of your pet in the party window will read "Elder XXX" (with XXX being the type of pet you chose). Congratulations.

(13) Third stage: Map-travel to Camp Rankor, take a group of henchies, and go kill enemies north until your pet reaches level 20. Once your pet has become a level 15 elder, it cannot evolve into any other type. As such, you may use any weapons/attribute combinations that you like.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask. I am more than happy to share my experience.

Last but not least ... my bears ...



Credits: My results would not have been possible without studying numerous beast mastery threads with hundreds and hundreds of replies. While I can't name every single contributor, this is really a group achievement.

First of all,Thx for posting this clearly and for all the work that was put into this.
Ok, I just have some things that I need to share from reading your post...
I'm trying get an Elder bear ("yay bears" ) with my warrior. I see in many of step you require for one to travel to the guild hall.
Are you saying to gvg with it or just dont't bring hench while taming one?
Well, my warrior has all quests complete other than the new ones( FA, Defend x Outpost) so I shouldn't encounter a problem there.

Btw, getting those required skills with the required attributes, training in Scoundrel's Rise with wavebreakers, getting the collector's long bow, does this sequence trigger the pet's evolution stages? Just curious.

I'm gonna test this out tomorrow. Bears ftw!

This comment does not relate to GvG or the henchmen. First of all, all charming/training should be done alone and without henchmen. When I say go back to the guild hall, what I really mean is this: Returning to the guild hall is the quickest way to leave a given situation. All you do is press G, hit the Guild Hall button, and you are out. It's faster than map travel. The reason for me saying that is that you are looking to control the environment your bear faces when training. In so many words, you want to make sure whom your bear fights while training, how much damage he takes, and you want to keep him from dieing. So throughout the entire training, if his health gets too low, rather than letting him die, and rather than healing him with Comfort Animal, you return to the guild hall (if possible, don't get excited if he dies once, this has not actually affected the outcome - no guarantees with 100 deaths though ). This is also why you don't take henchmen, you don't want them fighting or killing your bear during charming.

There are a couple questions in there. First of all, you need some marksmanship skills and some beast mastery skills. I recommended the low energy ones because they work fine regardless of your character's energy level.

The attributes are essential. If you read about training pets, you are aware of the sliding scale concept. Your pet either moves in the direction of extra damage/lower health or in the direction of extra health/lower damage. Elder pets obviously sit in the center of that scale.

A lot of discussion has focused on doing a 50%/50% development, assuming that you have to move "the slide" back to the center. I don't believe that. I actually think that reaching elder status requires a pet to taste both sides, so rather than just getting back to the center, you have to exceed the second stage of the training to obtain your elder pet. This is why the attribute ratios for stage 1 and stage 2 differ.

Limiting your training field to wavebreakers has two advantages. (1) You face only one type of enemy in single (or funky aggros of two) groups of three. (2) Mergoyles have such a level that your pet can easily kill the three Mergoyles without dieing and without needing healing. This is also true for your character in Droknar armor.

The collector bow is recommended for two reasons. (1) Its damage output is reasonably close to your pet. I hope you don't mind if I get into all the specifics, but as the entire formula used for deriving the attribute ratios depends on the damage output ratio of the pet (fixed) and the bow, changing the bow affects the outcome of the training. I'm sorry to say that I haven't tested the range of valid bow parameters that create a successful outcome, so that is why I recommend the bow.

Additional food for thought on the bow: The discussion threads on beast mastery have always assumed that the received damage / deaths of your pet during training affect its evolution. Personally, I think this is an unfounded analysis, but if it were to turn out a vital aspect, it certainly helps to keep as many variables constant as possible.

I hope this provides some answers rather than create more confusion ... ... good questions though, just keep them coming.

I think I'm set for now, I was just curious on getting that exact bow for the build and the exact skills for the evolution stages to occur properly. I could get the collector's shortbow for faster dmg thou...
Thx for all your help.
Let me get started on this right now

Be careful about that shortbow idea. Of course it may work. However, remember that a longbow has a rate of fire that is 20% slower than a shortbow. As such, increasing your rate of fire may affect the outcome of your pet training in a manner that you might not like.

I think there is a certain fixation on Scoundrels Rise.


Why always Scoundrel's Rise. Only use it if you want to get an aggressive/dire pet.

If you want to level up for Elder or - in my case - Hearty, try farming the Gates of Kryta mission. TOink as tank and level your pet at the large undead spawn there (Barrage and Judge's Insight work very well there)


Heal your pet with BM set to 8-10 a few times in the beginning - this counts as "healing".

Then use Oink, go down the path where tons of undead spawn.

Barrage-Spam them to dead. Use a Scroll of Hunter's Insight - you will get more than 300, so it pays off.

Then finish all the undead... You will level even faster than with Mergoyles and you can even get lower runes and some mediocre drops or if you are lucky a max damage dead bow.


Your pet will level up like crazy. 2x levelup in a single run, if you only do the very first part of the farming spot in the Gates of Kryta mission.

The thing is, I got hearty pets with 10 Beast Mastery.

I just used Comfort Animal a lot BEFORE fighting and simply let it die. So you can make sure that your pet got

- a lot of healing (it counts, even if it was already at 100% health)
- did next to no damage compared to you (Barrage the Undead with Judge's and you see what real damage is, hehe)


Zero BM has the right thought behind it, the pet does little damage. But they do anyways, while having high BM actually enables you to HEAL your pet a lot. Then outdamage it by far, voila -> playful, hearty path.

Getting an aggressive/dire pet is tricker: Then you must stand back and let your pet fight and dish out more damage than you.

If it gets a lot of healing is NOT so important as the fact that it must do the bulk of the damage.

I trained a pet in Elona (Minotaurs) once, and had a monk protect and heal the poor Level 10 Stalker, and guess what, in spite of getting tons of healing, it did more damage than either of us and went aggressive.

i did some testing with pet damage and it seems whoever said elder has +3 damage is lying, dire does more damage then elder

What about spiders? I have seen ss of people with large spiders, i myself just aquired a "hearty-blackwidow", i have heard different stories about the uw spiders, such as only 1 person can get a spider per run no matter how many quests are done, or if you finishe all the quests from each grenth there's a spider at each one, and each one is different.

My spider right now when i captured it was already a lvl 20, i had just changed to a ranger secondary, and bought no skills.

Anything on this?Just wondering if the spiders get larger or not, cause it's already a lvl 20.

:::End Transmission:::

Not really. As you said yourself, the spider in the underworld spawns at level 20, so there is no actual need for training your pet. It arbitrarily spawns as dire/elder/hearty, and it's basically a take-it-or-leave-it pet. If you don't like the type that spawned, you have to try for another spawn.

As you restore the individual monuments, each ghost gives you a quest (e.g. defend the good villagers, ice king etc.). A box spawns upon completion of the respective quest, and a spider pops out upon opening each of those boxes. For obvious reasons, most spider groups only aim for the village.

ahh ok gotcha..makes sence.Thanks.

:::End Transmission:::

Question: If u changed your pet name and you reset it can u see which type of spider pet you got? For istance, i dont remember which was mine

Yes.
This post is too short.

when is post searing? well actually...what is searing?is it a mission or something?can someone tell me because i want to find a lizard and i can only find one post-searing.

I have a lvl16 Hearty Stalker now, it became a playful at lvl 10 without using skills and points in BM. Then I started using skills and putting points in BM. It then became Hearty at lvl 15. If I understood the guide right, it won't evolve when it reaches lvl20, so there's no chance that I can make it a Elder?

Considering the amount of time you have spent in the game so far, I recommend playing the game until your character reaches approximately level 15. At that point, many of your questions will have answered themselves.

That is correct, there is no chance your pet will turn from a hearty into an elder pet.

Well then...no more spending points in BM

Chin up, DurinVIII, I spent approx. 65 hours in the game just training numerous bears into hearty/dire bears until I managed to get my first elder bear.

Again...... I ....failed
Hmmm...what could have I done wrong...
BM at 12 and marks at 3 = aggressive bear
BM at 0 and marks at 12 = dire bear

He didn't die once. I did most of the dmg in the 2nd stage. The only things that I think I might have altered is my warr runes with 1 in str, 1 in tactics. Also, I used the leftover pts to add 12 in wilderness for troll unguent in both stages. Oh, how bout the bog scales, you said to avoid them, why? Did you state that because it can kill my pet easily or can that be something that alters the result?

If your pet never died during either stage, that is most likely your problem. If I'm not mistaken, you should expect the pet to take heavy damage and thus possibly die in the second stage. This can become a problem for warriors, as rushing in first (as comes naturally when wielding a melee weapon) will usually cause enemies to target you instead of your pet. The pet needs to take a beating during the second stage or you won't be able to swing it back across the center. Try equipping a bow and using it to send your pet in ahead of you. Then switch to your weapon of choice and clean up while your pet gets thrashed.

Also, during the second stage if the pet dies don't be afraid to let it gain experience while dead. There can be quite a bit of distance between you and your dead pet and it will still gain experience; however, I do believe there is a limit on it. What that might be, I haven't yet taken the time to test.

From my experiences, the bog scales are best avoided because they create variables which aren't easily controlled. The indirect damage from their hexes can cause havoc with the first stage, where you want to limit the amount of damage your pet is taking.

So am i to assume that there are spiders of a larger size deeper into the uw quests?

For some reason i could have sworn i seen someone with a spider that looked similar to thoses armored ones in fow, but it could have been a photochop, or i could be just confused.

My current spider is kind neat tho, if i catch someone from behind he jumps on their back and bite their neck lol.

Also, and i only ask this because sooo many people say different things, and i donot know what to believe, tho i know my hearty black widow doesn't, yet i have seen a few things that make me wonder; Do spiders use poison? I have yet to see my pet acctually poison anything, but i have seen a few times a sort of poisonious gas circle around him for a quick second, and yes im sure it wasn't a spell or skill from an enemy, believe me i looked close lol. Then again maybe my want for a large poisonious spider is over powering my visual perception lol.

:::End Transmission:::

I strongly believe range doesn't matter as in my first run to get an elder bear, i farmed hydras outside Augury Rock and he wasn't in range most of the time. However, in order for the pet to receive full experience after you leave its range, just return to the range. My bear was at lvl 14, killed hydras near The Scar, went back to its range, lvl 16 instant lvl up while dead