Two Further Pet Questions

I've read through the comprehensive (and rather astounding) Pet Guide from Epinephrine and Jenosavel, but I have two questions they did not address that I'm wondering if people know the answers to...

1) Do scrolls affect pets? (useful to know when power-leveling a lvl 3 pet to 20)

2) Does evolution affect appearance? (ie, is a hearty pet larger than a dire?)

1) Thats a good question. Since you cant moniter their exp you'd just have to go with "it should take this long to lvl, but its taking half the time" guessing.
2) I know leveling makes them larger, but I don't think them turning out one way as opposed to another will make much difference. I'm not the gospel though.

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Well, it seems the answer to #1 wouldn't be too hard to figure out. I grabbed a Moa on my monk and started power leveling it last night on solo Hydra runs. Since there's only one type of monster there and they always give the same amount of XP, I could just grab a lvl 3 pet, kill some absolute number of hydras without a scroll and see how far the pet levelled, then dismiss the pet and do it again under an adventurers scroll.

(Interesting side note: I was aiming for Hearty, but got Elder - or rather, nothing. It just says "Lvl 15 Pet - Moa Bird" which, if I understand Epi's guide correctly, means it's Elder. The pet did not do a single thing damage-wise, it would just get brutally smashed by the first Hydra out there and then gain the rest of its xp dead. However, because Hydra's provide so much XP in such a short amount of time, my pet has reached lvl 15 and only died twice - so maybe it's just never had a chance to determine whether it's hearty or not.)

Regarding size, it seems the thing to do there is not to compare pets against humans, but against other pets. And I think it would be far easier with the larger pets than the smaller, since the differences are probably more noticeable. So we need to find two people with, say, a hearty Moa and a dire Moa (or bear, or wolf, or stalker) and see if they'll pace near each other enough to agree on if one is larger than the other. With screenshots!

I have a dire spider, but they're so small and...leggy that I think size differences would be hard to judge.

I'll go do the scroll test this morning. Shouldn't take long.

Yes, that is the fastest way to get an unevolved pet. Let it die, solo without it. It limits both the damage taken by your pet and the damage your pet deals, so not surprisingly it can't progress to either Hearty or Dire. If you want a Hearty you just do the same thing, but rez it each time it dies, so that it dies MANY times per level. That's generally enough.

Dire is harder to get. Elder is pointless, since you can get it through the speed levelling as an "unevolved" pet.

As for pet size, if the Elder wolf in PvP is a different size than an Elder wolf in PvE then we have a dilemma - if it were simply level or health or evolution that mattered they should be the same size, but it could be more than that. I've heard that that's the case, but not tested it, so I could quickly grab an elder wolf from Spearhead, train it up to 20 fast and compare in TA with a pre-made elder wolf. If you want to meet up online Beqxter I am probably on tonight, I saw you around yesterday but was helping people with RoF.

OK, I can say that scrolls do NOT affect pets. Sadly.

I dismissed my moa of yesterday and grabbed a new one, lvl 3, from Fort Ranik. I then proceeded to solo 25 Hydras outside Augury, with tweety bird disappearing in a puff of feathers at the first fireball. Solo Hydras provide 136 xp per kill, so 25 * 136 = 3400xp, after which my pet was lvl 6.

I went back and got a new Moa, and did it all over again, this time under an adventurers scroll. Now Hydras were giving me 204xp each, and after 25 of them I'd earned 5100xp, and my bird was....lvl 6.

Now it occurs to me I may not have gone far enough. That 1700xp is not enough to bring a pet from lvl 6 to lvl 7. I actually don't know. Does anyone? Maybe I should do it again with more Hydras, I just don't have that much time this morning.

Regarding size, it occurred to me while grabbing my second Moa that it looked bigger than when I got my first - but I could be wrong. I suppose it's possible that pets just spawn at different sizes, and maintain those differences as they grow, and that evolution may or may not have anything to do with it. That makes testing it even tougher.

Epi, I will not be around tonight unfortunately (work stuff), but I'll probably be around the rest of the week, and would love to try and nail this down. Don't know why, I just have a hankering to get a big bird.

Well, first off, the pet gains experience based on its level, not yours; you can show this by levelling a pet against foes that you gain 0 XP from; your pet still gains. So it was gaining far more than that.
For a Moa at level 3 the hydras should be worth 392XP each (plus/minus any modified experience factor), at level 4 they ought to be worth 376XP, at level 5 they are 360XP and at level 6 they'd be 344XP.
It takes 3200 XP to level from 3 to 4;
3800 from 4 to 5
4400 from 5 to 6
5000 from 6 to 7.

You killed 25 of these, so you generate at MOST 9800 XP according to the estimated value, this would be enough to get you to midway through level 5 if you started at base XP for level 3; it may be that they start out partway through the level however. You obviously (if they progress like us, the current theory on the boards) generated less that 16,400XP or it would have levelled to 7. I am planning on doing some very in-depth work on pet experience in the next while anyway, so it's nice to have your figures; I had been seeing a faster than normal levelling for pets in my early tests, so it is entirely possible that there is a multiplier already in place for pets, though it would seem that if one exists it is less than I had thought.

I have a bunch of work ahead of me but I'd be happy to hook up even just to chat about stuff. I have a level 20 unevolved Moa (named Talon Scout, little pun there) on my Ranger toon, and I love it. So intimidating

Ok, I'll try it again later and be more thorough, doing an entire hydra run (~75 hydra, I think) with and without the scroll. Or, if you'd like to collaborate on the testing, I'd be happy to help you do that as well - I'd love to be a part of unravelling one of the lesser-explored areas of the game (and I'm partial to pets).

That said, I took my lvl 6 moa out again one more time, this time without a scroll, and after 30 or 35 hydras (I wasn't really counting, but I progressed further than when I was limiting it to 25) it was lvl 10, so it seems if the scroll HAD affected it, it would have levelled further with the scroll than without it.

Sure - I was planning on testing vs lower level creatures - the gain is slower, so you can more easily resolve the experience levels, but I suppose it doesn't matter too much. My plan was to kill until the Moa JUST levels (to ensure that they are within one creature's experience of the start of a level), then begin the count of kills at each level from say 4 to 11 vs level 10 opponents. Since this should require quite a few kills per level it should give a pretty good idea of the experience needed to level, then I'd try it on another creature of a different level, doing the same thing, to establish whether the ratio of kills needed/experience is the same. It won't be possible to determine absolutely both the actual experience gained by a creature and the experience a creature gains per level but it should be possible to solve it with a parameter.

Is it really "unevolved"? I thought I've run into a glitch before where the title wouldn't change until I reset the name. Did you guys try that?

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OK:

It's official, pets gain experience by a method UNLIKE players. I'll have to edit or add something to the guide, but since it was brought up here I'll report it here.

Level 20 using a pet level 3 moa; 12 beastmastery (I was Me/R), raised using aggressive training tactics. It is possible that I may have miscounted by one during some stages (*), I can't guarantee that I didn't miss one minotaur during a pile-on.

Levelling was against the minotaurs outside of Ice Tooth Cave (level 10 melee foes); allowed pet to deal all the damage, tanked using distortion, spirit of failure and ether feast; dealt damage using feral Lunge, Predator's pounce and defended with call of protection; comfort animal and Charm animal were on skillbar, comfort was used maybe 3 times when a group was just too big.

I began tracking as soon as the Moa leveled to 4, as we don't know how much experience the Moa has to start with; upon levelling to 4 it took:
9 kills to hit 5
12 kills to hit 6
15 kills to hit 7
18 kills to hit 8
23 kills to hit 9(*)
26 kills to hit 10(*)

This is completely unlike player levelling. If the Moa were a player it would gain :
200 experience per kill at level 4 (going for 5)
184 experience per kill at level 5 (going for 4)
168 experience per kill at level 6 (going for 7)
152 experience per kill at level 7 (going for 8)
136 experience per kill at level 8 (going for 9)
120 experience per kill at level 9 (going for 10)

For a total of
1800 (instead of 3800) experience to level from 4 to 5
2208 (instead of 4400) experience to level from 5 to 6
2520 (instead of 5000) experience to level from 6 to 7
2736 (instead of 5600) experience to level from 7 to 8
3128 (instead of 6200) experience to level from 8 to 9
3120 (instead of 6800) experience to level from 9 to 10

This looks like a factor of 2 roughly at first glance, but I want to test more before I make any major assumption about it. It looks earily similar to the numbers of kills needed versus a level 13 opponent as well, from what I remember of my early testing, though the 60 experience difference per kill would affect it one would think, but I don't have those numbers around anymore. Once we know more I'll add this into the main thread, but speculation can stay here. In fact, it looks somewhat similar even to deolmstead's numbers. Can't wait to hear from you

It might be interesting to test if the pet's faster exp gain rate also applies when it's dead.

Ie, perhaps when it's alive it gains 2x exp, but when it is dead only 1x.

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Curiouser and curiouser...

OK, I don't know what to make of this, but here's what I learned this morning. I didn't have time to take the Moa all the way to 10, but got it just to 9, and can take it a few levels higher this afternoon.

Experiment: Took a level 3 Moa Hydra farming. Hydras are level 22. My BM was left at 0. Obviously I can't keep a pet alive against foes like that, much less let it kill them, so I would let it die at the beginning of each battle, and res it once the hydras were dead, bringing it along so I could keep an eye on it for the level-up animation. I wanted to see how many deaths it took to level.

And was pretty surprised at what I found...

From 4 to 5: 7 deaths
From 5 to 6: 8 deaths
From 6 to 7: 9 deaths
From 7 to 8: 9 deaths
From 8 to 9: 9 deaths

Disclaimer: given the nature of hydra farming, they all tend to die at once and it can be difficult to tell exactly which death caused the leveling. I aggroed the smallest mobs possible and tried my best to note exactly when the pet leveled, but I could easily have made a mistake. I'll need to do this a few times to be sure. That said, I'm fairly confident these numbers are accurate, or at least very close.

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Whether or not the pet participated being a factor did occur to me afterwards, and while the pet did have the chance to take damage at nearly every battle, there was at least one instance when a patrol came in while the pet was dead, and I had to deal with them without any participation on the pet's part. That may have done something to skew the numbers (although after 25 deaths the pet was level 6, which confirmed my earlier scroll experiments).

I really doubt it matters if the pet is alive, I leveled at least 7 pets to level 20 during the writing of the guide and for some I speed leveld them dead, others I leveled normally, and it took the same number of runs roughly to do either - I didn't notice any difference in XP gain, but since I can easily re-level a pet I'll do the minotaurs again with a dead pet, to see if the numbers vary. Provided the numbers don't change with the pet dead I can then easily test rates against a variety of levels of foes.

ok, this afternoon I had an opportunity to get that first moa to 11 and then take another one out to verify my numbers - and they were, in fact, different.

First Moa:
From 9 to 10: 12 kills
From 10 to 11: 12 kills

Second Moa (get this):
From 4 to 5: 7 kills
From 5 to 6: 8 kills
From 6 to 7: 9 kills
From 7 to 8: 10 kills
From 8 to 9: 11 kills
From 9 to 10: 12 kills
From 10 to 11: 13 kills
From 11 to 12: 15 kills

Or, in your terms:

392 experience per kill at level 4 (going for 5)
376 experience per kill at level 5 (going for 4)
360 experience per kill at level 6 (going for 7)
344 experience per kill at level 7 (going for 8)
328 experience per kill at level 8 (going for 9)
312 experience per kill at level 9 (going for 10)
296 experience per kill at level 10 (going for 11)
280 experience per kill at level 11 (going for 12)

For a total of
2744 (instead of 3800) experience to level from 4 to 5
3008 (instead of 4400) experience to level from 5 to 6
3240 (instead of 5000) experience to level from 6 to 7
3440 (instead of 5600) experience to level from 7 to 8
3608 (instead of 6200) experience to level from 8 to 9
3744 (instead of 6800) experience to level from 9 to 10
3848 (instead of 7400) experience to level from 10 to 11
4200 (instead of 8000) experience to level from 11 to 12

I'm not making this up. In fact, I'm inclined to go with the second set of numbers because a) I wasn't rushed like I was this morning, and b) it makes sense to ramp up the xp requirements from level to level.

Math was never my strong suit. But knowing the pet's level, the hydra's level, and the rate at which the pet gains levels (which appears to be fairly constant), is there a way to reverse-engineer an xp pet chart?

I still haven't managed to make one of these birds hearty, either. Even with killing them at every battle, I guess I'm leveling them too quickly.

Reverse Engineer: Well, you'd think one could, but it would help to know what things it keys off of - it's obvioulsy not simply a multiple, we have different multiples showing up - so it may scale. We'd need to test vs many different levels of enemy to get a real picture of it. I get the feeling that it is quite different from our experience though. My ratio was essentially 2:1 with level 10 opponents, yours is apporaching 2:1 by the upper levels; I get the feeling that maybe extreme level differences aren't rewarded as well? It may well be a sliding scale for the experience multiplier. It isn't easy because of the number of variables to figure out what's going on, but it clearly isn't what we experience as PCs.

OK, well we know now that evolution DOES affect pet size, at least as far as Elder and Hearty are concerned. Epinephrine and I took two wolves, one Hearty and one Elder, into Team Arena for a quick match. I spent more time trying to get a screenshot than I did in trying to win the match, so we didn't do very well - but that wasn't the point.

I'm also not totally happy with the screenies I DID get, either, but you can clearly see in these that the wolves are of differing sizes.


Now we just need to find a dire wolf...

During the hp testing portion of the pet guide, I was able to get some pretty good ground work laid for pet sizes. However, a lack of time at the end to polish that information meant it didn't go into the guide. Here is what I found, but didn't get a chance to verify with screen shots:

Smallest size:
Unevolved
Aggressive

Intermediate size (barely noticably so, but larger than the previous one):
Playful
Elder

Large:
Dire
Hearty

As I said, we didn't have time to verify that with screen shots, but if someone would like to do so, this should give you a good idea of what to expect. Also, the size difference between the first two categories is so minute that it most likely will not be obvious with a screen of the two pets side-by-side. You will most likely need to go stand is some water (or poison, that works quite well ), take the painstaking amount of time to stand the pets side-by-side (so as to ensure they're at the same depth), and then take the screen shot.

The size difference is most noticable in the Warthog, as that one has the greatest difference in size between the unevolved and the Hearty. I believe a Moa would work well also. The cats and Dune Lizard are the worst ones to test this with, as they grow very little comparatively.

Wow, thanks Jeno. I'd been thinking I needed a hearty Moa to get my really big bird, but (like you) I'd prefer to have a dire - and if it doesn't matter...minotaurs, here I come.

I must agree with Jeno. I have had a hearty bear, it was about 3 x the size of my current elder bear, both were and are level 20.

I've never really had a dire pet, except a spider.

Ash.