Pets

Pets are an essential part of the game that serve many different functions, from getting the enemy's attention and taking damage for you to a minor attacking/healing or buffing role, or hardheartedly to be used as bait to evade attention from some of the fierce monsters you may encounter. In most circumstances, pets play a role in acquiring many of the abilities that you would normally not have as any of the classes. However may be the case, they are still a part of you and can serve in the most unsuited environments.

Pets can also have little or the same value in terms of skills, especially for repetitive species (spiders, fliffies, etc). These pets are exclusively for collectors that like to gather a lot of pets. Other kinds of pets are restricted towards events, or were limited to certain players.

General Pet Gameplay

When calling out your pet, a whole tab dedicated to showing the health, status, name and skills of the pet are shown. You can manually make the pet use it's skills on it's own by double-clicking one of the skills in it's tab, but you have to direct them to the target or area that they will be using the skill towards. Some skills are independent towards only the pet, or with only you, typically buffs.

There are two statuses that you should familiarize yourself with, such as Active and Passive. Active means that the pet will chase after the monster you are attacking and use skills on it's own, regardless of any command you have told it to do previously (following you, staying in one spot). It will obey your command if you tell it to, but it's priority is to attack the same target as you if you're going after it. Passive means that it will only hear you from what commands you give it, or by using one of their skills manually. It will not attack for itself.

There are certain rules that players think of pets that other players will warn you about, ideally because you don't want them to cause problems in the group. A lower level pet in a dungeon can infamously pull an entire patrol of monsters that get in range or a boss, endangering the rest of your group. Also, you don't want a pet to fulfill the duties of a perfectly good tank or healer, or let alone a damage dealer (because they are not as effective as a player). For training purposes, it is best to have a pet around the level range for that dungeon, and leave it under passive status and Pet: 'Stay Here'. It is also alright to have a higher level pet out, as long as it will not interfere with the run.

Pet Collar

With the addition of the Pet Collar, a special item that is only given out for participating in the Secret Santa events, players can use this item to immediately bring out their chosen pet when logging into the game or respawning after being knocked out (if the pet is also knocked out, it will be automatically revived).

The chosen pet also receives a 25% experience bonus while the Pet Collar is still in the player's inventory after using it. The collar can be used indefinitely, but only for one pet at a time.

Skills & Characteristics

When acquiring your first pet, you begin with Call Pet and Revive Pet. Calling your pet out gives the rest of the pet skills, such as Pet: 'Follow Me', Pet: 'Stay Here' and Pet: 'Attack'. These are all command skills in your General page used in issuing orders to your pet.

When obtaining pets, certain ones will default to a specific level when you try calling it. But for the most part, many pets will start at level 1.

Over time, your pet learns new abilities over leveling up, typically once every 5 levels. There are some pets that do not learn skills early on and only until later, or learn skills early but stop getting them at higher levels. Most of these go toward levelling one or more of your current skills, making them slightly stronger. In the same sense, not all pets learn their skills every 5 levels, and learn at the next interval, such as getting one skill at level 10, but then learn the next at level 19.

Each pet is suited differently towards a specific set of skills, usually leaning toward magic spells, healing and/or physical skills. Because of this, pets that focus on physical skills will usually have a higher set health pool than the rest. The health pool is not as dynamic, and usually comes between three fixed amounts of health varying per level.

There are no customization options towards these skills and are chosen randomly and then set (i.e. your baby bluebell will learn the same set of skills as another player's baby bluebell), having similar skills to their monster counterpart. One exception to pets is their ability to automatically inherit skills based on their species (ex. a fliffy pet will always have Blessing of Speed). You can click on the lighted dot below each of their skills to prevent them from using individual skills while in active status.

Acquiring Pets

Pets can be found through various and obsecure means, as not many of them can be found with just quests alone. During actual event periods, ranging from Valentines to Easter to Halloween and finally Christmas are all times where you can find event exclusive items that allow you to obtain a pet. There are some that are unlocked as a result of dungeons, doing trophies and rare monsters that give you the pet (or item needed to capture and get the pet).

Here are several ways that you can get a pet:

Quests
Boss drop from dungeons (e.g. Defeating Frigus for a lizard pet, tiny forest sprite pet from Nyranthix on Hard Mode, drone pet from scaled Space Station within Moonlight Monastery)
Boss drop from trials (e.g. Bee pet from Stix, Frost Sprite pet from Ichas)
Purchase from a special shop for gold (e.g. NPC shop in the Southern Seas, Exotic pet trader near Blackwood Blast Mine)
Profession, Event and Dungeon Trophies
Very low chance as a zone drop from dungeons (e.g. lizard hatchling from Crystal Crypt)
Finding rare monsters such as Cotton in the west side of Saliko, Nightshade Spider in B2 of Everchange Caverns, Noxious Orchid in Blackwood Depths and Silverscale Lizard in Treasure Caves
Participate in events and receive tokens to purchase event items from shop
Participating in events such as secret santa & decorating your own tree
Event Quests (e.g. from Rose the witch in Saliko, Tamara Ryme at North Cap)

You can also find more information about how to obtain pets via this thread.

Commands

See Pet Commands.

Notes

You can only have one pet out at a time. But the benefit is, there is no limit to how many pets you can actually possess until you obtain all that are possible in the game or hit a wall and cannot obtain a certain one.

A pet cannot die, as they are only knocked out. When they are knocked out, you cannot call them out. Use certain revive skills to bring your pet back to life (the revive pet skill will revive all knocked out pets in your possession to 50 health).

Only your currently summoned pet can receive experience. They receive twice the amount of experience as you, and whatever they gain is not affected by your current level (they can still gain experience at level 10 by you killing a level 15 monster, despite not getting the experience yourself at level 35). Only between their level and the monsters level will decide if they can gain experience or not.
- Pets do not steal experience from you. If you get 30 experience (this is just a base value, it does not mean 30%!) from a monster, your pet receives it's own experience based on your amount, therefore 60 experience.

Pets cannot evolve into their adult forms, such as a Lesser Water Spirit to a Greater Water Spirit, with the exception of only one pet: the tiny forest sprite found from Nyranthix on hard mode (at the Moonlight Monastery. This special pet can evolve into a variety of other pets via special stones from Roc's shop (can only be accessed if you have a tiny forest sprite). You cannot possess more than one of this pet, but you can collect one each of it's various forms.
- The Crystalspike Lizard pets have multiple colors, and can be overriden with each other. For instance, a silver lizard (by using a silver gel) can be turned into gold (by using a gold gel). This is not recommended for collectors, as they will repurchase the original blue lizard to turn them into that specific color each. Any color that is not blue will have the fire version of their skills, and access to Fire Hail.

Pets cannot wear any equipment or accessories. If you are looking for a pet with a special accessory on it (they are unique pets on their own!), they are acquired with a actual event item (such as the easter shop) or during an event period (ex. using a Huge Carrot on a event fliffy named Champagne).
- There is a bat pet that has recently been added that allows you to give it a special accessory hat to it, similar to using a maw item. Reusing it again will take away the accessory, or if it has been overridden with a different one.

Pets will scale levels with their owner. If your current level is 1 and the actual level of your pet is 6, your pet is still scaled to level 1. If you are scaled to level 25 due to a dungeon, so will your pet. This also applies to locking out skills that they may have had at higher levels. They also share the same level cap with their owner too.

Pets can still use their skills and attacks as normal while your character is frozen, stunned, terrified or sleeping. This has been debated, ultimately leading to the conclusion of allowing the actions of pets to be done without their owner to be available to command them. In such cases, a pet with Dispel Magic can unfreeze their owner or wake up their owner with Cure Poison.

Pets do not count as another member of the group when calculating a boss's pool of health. This has been greatly misinterpreted, and causes a fear of bringing high level pets to aid in boss fights.

Using certain buff skills such as Arcane Might and Inspiration can dramatically improve the healing and damage output (from magic spells) of pets. This gives them a edge in supporting you from the rear.

Hunters learn a variety of additional pet skills as part of their class if you add points into it. Some of these consist of healing the pet, reviving it instantly and strengthening it's defensive/offensive capabilities. They can even learn another status for their pet, which acts as an active status, but increases the hate generated by them.