Pets - Pros and Cons

[saint]

Which pets are good on this shard?

Are they good for fighting? Meat shield? Pack Mule? Etc.

What are the Pros/Cons of each pet suggested? Difficulty to tame? Difficulty to find? Suggested price?

Any other useful information?

I have already checked out the wiki : http://www.uoex.net/wiki/Animal_Taming

Thanks

[BlaZe]

I've been sporting 4 nobles for a while, and they are definitely worth their price tag, but after so many sticky situations I finally realize that these aren't really the horsies for me.

At the moment I'm working on breeding mules, and while they don't have the speed that nobles have, they can still cast spells, are immune to poison, have backpacks and can get hella more strength/dex than nobles.

If you want my opinion, mules are the way to go, but if you're on a low budget you can start with frenzied ostards or scorpions and work on up.

[Kaervas]

This list is by no means exhaustive and doesn't include prices, but I'll do what I can.
I will not cover Bio pets or Imprisoned creatures since their prices can range in the many millions to bring to a combat ready state.

First off, the breeding/maxing stats system that is used here means for the most part, pets can reach the same levels of strength. The only main distinction is between pack and non pack-instincted creatures.
Pack is capped at 250 strength (among other things), while non-pack is capped at 1000 strength.
This compensates for the pack instinct damage bonus, which is very significant.
Hit points and resists and armor can still be capped to the same levels regardless of pack/non-pack.

There are also a few Easter Egg pet stats that are good to know. By this I mean special abilities, like Fire Breath, Poison, immunities, whether a pet uses magic or not (this is generally not a great thing - the caster AI in this game is very bad), extra damage modifiers, and so on.
Now, a short pet list with the reasoning behind them (all pets are assumed maxed out):


5 Noble Steeds (1 slot each) [Pack instinct - demon type]
They have Energy Breath, which is strong and has a far reach, though they don't use it with great regularity.
They are fast. Greased lightning fast. They are one of very few pets that can keep up with you on follow mode when you go all out riding on a mount. Note they don't make you any faster than normal when ridden.
One problem is they do 40%physical/59%energy damage in melee (their Energy Breath is, surprisingly, Fire damage) which limits them in some arenas. See the Hell hound entry for the reason why.
[Edit 1: Had to correct an error here, brain slipped from loring the wrong pet I suppose.]
[Edit 2: After some testing it appears their breath damage is Fire even though the graphic is different from fire breath, so I've corrected this. It gets a damage increase from Corpse Skin.]

1 Cu Sidhe (3 slots) [Pack instinct - none]
2 Noble Steeds [Pack instinct - demon type]
The Cu Sidhe weighs in heavy on the control slots, but is a solid hitter. Despite no pack instinct, it has a special bonus to its damage... it deals 100% physical, 50% cold, and 50% energy. Yes, that adds up to 200% damage. A strike from a Cu on a target that is not particularly resistant will hit for more than the Energy Breath of a Noble Steed! However it takes up the space of three steeds, so overall it does less DPS.
The Cu also has a pack, which is handy for those who have yet to get resource keys, and are loathe to send gold to the bank constantly with a Bag of Sending.
If you ride the Cu, you need not worry about it slowing you down. If you ride one of the Nobles, the Cu WILL lag behind and you need to wait for it.

5 Hell Hounds (1 slot each) [Pack instinct - canine]
These creatures are similar to nobles in that they are pack instinct single-slot creatures with a breath, in this case Fire Breath.
However they have two flaws, and one large perk.
The flaws:
1. You cannot ride them, enjoy footslogging everywhere unless you shrink one and call up a ridable.
2. They're slow, so if you use 4 Hell Hounds and some other 1 slot mount creature (not recommended) you still need to wait for them when traveling.
The large perk:
Corpse Skin, the necromancy spell, lowers fire/poison resist while raising physical and cold. The hell hounds not only breathe fire, but they bite for 20% physical+80% fire damage too! This means you can substantially improve the damage of hell hounds, unlike nobles (which Corpse Skin affects negatively - reducing their melee hits and doing squat for their breath attacks).
I almost never see maxed hounds for sale, though, despite the fact that they are *absurdly common and easy to locate and tame* compared to Nobles and even Cu Sidhes (which aren't really hard to find either).

5 Mules (1 slot each) [Pack instinct - none]
Mules are ridable single slot pack (as in backpack) animals, with spell casting ability. The fact that you have five pack animals is potent indeed for the pack rat who lacks a bag of holding (and even for the pack rat who DOES have one, since bags of holding have slot limitations).
They are non pack-instinct animals, meaning they can reach 1000 strength, but don't get the doubled up damage of having 5 pack-instincted nobles or hounds. This means that the higher strength really isn't that much of a difference, though one perk is that the mules perform better when fighting in a loose formation - pack instinct only applies when all targets are attacking one creature, otherwise you get reduced pack bonuses (25%/50%/75%/100% increased damage for 2, 3, 4, and 5 creatures on the same target).
Poison immunity as Blaze mentioned is a nice perk, but you are healing pets 90% of the time with Cleric spells, which bypass Poison and Mortal Strike, and the actual damage of the poison is generally not a big deal next to the physical hits, spells and special abilities of the creatures you are fighting. Still, it is less damage taken.


Personally, I'm using 5 Nobles, and switch to a Cu Sidhe and 2 nobles if the situation calls for it (which is not often). I actually want five maxed hell hounds, but I'll only really consider that when I have six pet slots, so I can ride on an Ethereal for convenience. The difference is visible but not stellar so I am not fussed to do it right now.

Blaze's recommendation to start with frenzied ostards or scorpions is a sound one - as I mentioned earlier, the leveling system means in terms of pure slab-of-meat stats of the beast in question, every maxed pack animal reaches the same stat caps, and every maxed non-pack animal reaches the same stat caps.
When you are surveying your options from the top of this stat-cap plateau, what makes or breaks the pets is the other special properties, which are also largely influenced by personal preference and play style.

[Kaervas]

Oh, and to answer these questions:

Are they good for fighting? Meat shield? Pack Mule? Etc.

Pets are undoubtedly good for fighting. You'll rely on them almost fully if you want to do anything of note, until your gear reaches crazy levels.

As meat shields they work due to their ability to be trained to maxed resists and armor and 1000 hit points (far above the HP a player can ever reach). Again, at absurd levels of gear a player can make good use of the no skill cap to effectively "drain tank" anything that won't one shot them. That is to say, with enough life leech and fast, hard-hitting attacks, you can keep yourself healed purely through Hit Life Leech and Curse Weapon/Vampiric Embrace properties. In this case the pets are added DPS to your repertoire (and high DPS at that).
Bio engineered clones are even more 'tanky' because they can reach up to 3000 hit points if maxed out, and have some useful abilities to keep their health up, but for the most part they are only required for a few encounters (and are quite difficult to obtain). Note that when I say required, they are not 100% required, they just make life easier and let you do the encounter in a straightforward head-to-head manner without anything that could be construed as 'creative use of game mechanics'.

Regarding pack mule type pets, I don't have many inventory problems thanks to resource keys and bags of sending, but with pet leashes readily available, it's not a problem to switch one of your current pets out for a pack animal should you badly need extra inventory room. As mentioned above though, there are two very viable pet combinations where you will not be at a want for a pack animal.
Bear in mind you cannot shrink a pack-animal pet with anything in its pack!

[saint]

Thanks to both of you. This information is very helpful.

[Kaimelar]

Awesome guide Kaervas! Way to go

[Striker]

good answers kaervas... when you going to wiki that ?

[Highroller]

A couple things in the cus favor that weren't mentioned were their bleed attack and the fact they are far better than any 1 slot pet pack in circumstances where what they fight use life leech. As an example the champ boss for the champ on the island where Unicorns spawn. Its a 1 hit kill for a player and if you use a pet pack it just drains them so much you can't wear it down. However 1 cu can keep it busy if 2 or 3 people heal it and they can at same time turn it into a pincushion and kill it with bow and arrows.