Runes of Magic US / AU

I would appreciate the comments and criticism (constructive, please) on this guide. If there is a topic that is not covered that you feel should be covered, let me know. Also, if there are any questions, I can add a FAQ section

Table of Contents

Chapter 0 - Preface

Chapter I - What are pets and how can I get them?

Topic I.1 - Pet System
Topic I.2 - Egg quality
Topic I.3 - Choosing right egg for the job.

Chapter II - What do pets do?

Topic II.1 Passive attribute bonuses.
Topic II.2 Passive skills
Topic II.3 Active skills
Topic II.4 Gathering

Chapter III - Pet attributes and pet development

Topic III.1 Level
Topic III.2 Experience
Topic III.3 Talent Points
Topic III.4 Loyalty
Topic III.5 Nourishment
Topic III.6 Training Points
Topic III.7 Aptitude
Topic III.8 Pet Events

Chapter IV – Merging

Topic IV.1 Basics
Topic IV.2 The gain from merging
Topic IV.3 Rune Eggs
Topic IV.4 Merging Goals
Topic IV.5 Chain Merging

Chapter V - Conclusion

Topic V.1 Recommendations
Topic V.2 Thanks for reading

Preface

Pets are one of the more complicated subsystems of ROM and can be confusing at first. When researching the topic, I found only limited amount of info that was helpful to new pet owner. This guide attempts to fill in the gap.

Bulk of text in this guide is work done by Avtimo, and he gets 90% of the credit for writing this. He doesn’t seem to be around anymore, so I took his text, cleaned it up a bit, reorganized, fixed errors and hopefully did not introduce too many of my own. Here is his original guide:

http://forum.us.runesofmagic.com/showpos…07&postcount=54

This guide assumes that you have undergone basic pet training at Miller’s ranch. If not, I recommend this “complete newbie” guide, written by our European counterparts, covering the subject in great deal of detail:

https://forum.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=243862

If you are interested in numerical calculations and some more extensive details of pet raising, the current pet guide is a good resource. It is just not newbie friendly

http://forum.us.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=44260


Chapter I - What are pets and how can I get them?


Topic I.1 - Pet System

The pet system in RoM allows every character to raise pets. Since the implementation in Chapter 3, these are not only for cosmetic purposes like the ones from the item shop. Please note that the pets obtained from item shop and from eggs bought in Logar are not "real" pets. They are only useful for decorative purposes and have no gameplay related purpose

Pets are usually creatures from the bestiary that follow their master and add different bonuses and skills while summoned. They are also efficient gatherers of materials. The pet system overall can get quite complex, yet pets can hugely advance and support your game play with their passive and active skills and attribute bonuses, if you know how to use them.

To obtain a pet you have to get hold of a pet egg. These can be had by purchasing "huntsman traps" at the Sorrun family pet hunters in the cities. Only "newbie" zones have pet hunters - Logar, Varanas, Elven Island, Silvefall and Obsidian stronghold. There is also a pet hunter in Heffner camp in Coast of Opportunity.

Traps can then be used to catch magic cavies that spawn randomly from killed monsters. Once cavy is caught in a trap, you can get an egg from it. A huntsman trap might appear quite expensive at 8K gold each, but it pays off in the long run. Not only do you gain eggs that will grow your pet, but most of the eggs you can’t use can be sold for at least 8K in Auction House.

Alternatively, you can just buy an egg at Auction House. Good eggs are expensive, but since pets take a fair deal of money to raise and long time to mature, it doesn't pay to go with a substandard egg. By the time your pet is high level, initial pet cost will be relatively minor part of total cost. If you scrimp on the egg, you will sink lots of money into a substandard helper.

Catching a magic cavy requires a little skill. Once a cavy spawns you have to set up a trap by right-clicking it in your inventory. Then you need to make the cavy walk into the trap so that you can take an egg from it. To do so, you need to get behind the cavy in a way that cavy is between you and the trap. Cavy will run away from you, toward the trap, hopefully getting caught in it.

The sensor that makes it run from you seems to tick every few seconds so when walking around it to make it walk towards the trap stay far enough away from it so it won't go off in an unwanted direction. Once it gets close enough to the trap it will get caught.

You have one minute to complete the process before the trap expires and each cavy lasts 5 minutes. That means you often can use other people’s cavies if they are relatively fresh and people are not interested.

Sometimes on rare occasions cavy will run through trap and not get caught. If that happens, try to get on the other side of it and guide it back to the trap.

Cavies come in two varieties - "Magic Cavy" and "Golden Magic Cavy". The latter is very rare but tends to give you higher grade pet eggs.

Once you have the pet egg in your inventory simply right click it and the pet menu will come up. Drag the egg into a free vacant breeding slot at the top left of the window. You will now see the pet and its attributes in the menu.

You should have three of those vacant slots – two at start of the game, one more from a breeding ticket you get when you complete your initial training at Miller’s ranch. Additional breeding tickets are sold in item shop to allow you to have up to 6 breeding slots and therefore, 5 active pets. The last breeding slot would need to remain free to allow you to merge pets.

Note that once pet is hatched, you cannot convert it back into an egg. If you want to make a breeding slot available again you have to set your pet free (4th button below your pet picture), which will basically dump it for good, or merge it with your main pet.

Topic I.2 - Egg quality

Before you settle on your main pet, you need to figure out which egg to use. There are several elements to the egg that you can see before you hatch your pet. Here is what you should be looking for.

Egg Rarity

Eggs come in 5 different rarities. The higher the rarity, the better the egg is in long run (and of course, more expensive, if you buy it)

1) Wild Pet Egg - Rarity White - Growth 2, 1, 1
2) Natural Pet Egg - Rarity Green - Growth 3, 2, 1
3) Amazing Pet Egg - Rarity Blue - Growth 4, 3, 2
4) Magical Pet Egg - Rarity Purple - Growth 5, 4, 3
5) Holy Pet Egg - Rarity Brown - Growth 6, 5, 4

What these numbers mean is the bonus that they give to pet attributes. A pet hatched from holy pet egg, for example, will give 6 points per level to its best attribute, 5 to second best and 4 to third best.

Egg Element

Each egg comes in a particular element. Element determines what pet specializes in. You want a pet that has specialization that matches yours, so that his help adds to attributes which you need. The elements are:

Earth) Str, Sta, Dex
Water) Wis, Int, Sta
Fire) Int, Wis, Sta
Wind) Dex, Sta, Wis
Light) Sta, Str, Wis
Dark) Dex, Str, Sta
None) No specializations

This is the order in which pet elements boost attributes. So, a Wind (Dex, Sta, Wis) Amazing egg (4,3,2) will grow 4 Dex per level, 3 Sta and 2 Wis.

As a general rule, Earth pets are good for Warriors, Water is best for Priests, Fire for Mages. Knights tend to pick Light pets and Rogue and Scouts go for Dark (although Wind is not bad either).

Egg Aptitude

This will be covered in detail later, in topic III.7, but you want it to be as high as you can get. Aptitude in 60s is low, in 70s is OK, in 80s is high.

Egg Species

Species is only important if you want to use active skills on a pet. Those are double edge sword, so don't focus on this too much. Check topic II.3 for more details on that.

Egg Level

There are plusses and minuses to high level. This will be covered in more details in topic III.1, but the summary is that low level eggs are more work and money, but end up better pets. High level eggs are less work, but end up being not as good as their custom-raised counterparts.

Here is how rarity and element work together:

Let's say we have Magical Fire egg. Fire picks Int first, and the best growth in Magical is 5. So, Int growth = 5. Next fire picks Wis, and next higher growth is 4. So Wis Growth = 4. Finally, Fire picks Sta and next highest growth is 3. Sta Growth = 3. This egg will have growth values of:

Str = 0
Dex = 0
Sta = 3
Wis = 4
Int = 5.

Who is this good for? Mages. Reason is that mages need Int the most. Wisdom helps them too, just less. Stamina is good for everyone. Strength and Dexterity are just about useless to a mage. Thus this egg is best for a mage.

Topic I.3 - Choosing right egg for the job.

Here are the factors you need to decide when choosing your main pet (meaning the one you will grow to high level and one that will assist your attributes, not just gather mats).

1) Rarity. Very important since it controls growth rates. If you can afford it, get Holy.
2) Element. Depending on your class, different elements will be right for you.
3) Level. High or low, depending on what you can afford. Low level pets will require more money to raise, but make better pets.
4) Aptitude. High aptitude (high 70s to low 80s) would be better, but those eggs command a large premium on AH

Here are the factors when choosing a merge egg. Obviously, this means Auction House, since you don't choose those things from pets you get from cavies.

1) Element. You can't merge your pets with any element other than their own or "none".
2) Level. Pick same level if you want to grow your pet, or pick Level 1 or 2 if you want him to remain low level.
3) Rarity. Very rarely important. Chances are that your pet is better than the pet you are using for merge in every single respect. After all, your pet came from a good egg and the merge pet came from a cheap one. In those cases, your pet will gain nothing from merge except XP and training points. If so, cheapest wild egg would give you same gain as an amazing egg of the same level, but it would likely cost quite a bit less.

You will learn more about merging in Chapter IV.

Chapter II - What do pets do?

As mentioned, pets add quite a few elements to your gameplay. I'll try to sum them up in this section.



Topic II.1 Passive attribute bonuses.

Every pet will give its master bonuses to their main attributes (Str, Dex, Sta, Int, Wis) while summoned. Pet helps the master in whatever it is good at. The amount is dependent on the current value of pet’s own attributes, as well as its nourishment and loyalty. As you might guess, a loyal well-fed pet wants to help more.

In this example the pet is level 14, element dark. He has base attribute growth of 3 Str, 4 Dex and 2 Sta is shown in Growth column. Its own attributes are shown in Value column. The attributes it adds to owner are in Assist column. Those are the important ones – bonuses that are added to your own attributes while the pet is summoned.

Topic II.2 Passive skills

Pet’s passive skills are similar to the passive skills you get for your character. You have to use pet's talent points (not your own) to make them usable, usually 500 TP per level of a passive. Here is a list of available passive skills. To my knowledge every pet has the same set of upgradeable passive skills.

Improved Attack Speed - Attack and spellcasting speed enhanced by 1% (+1% per skill-level)
Improved Health - the master's health points are raise by 2% (+2% per skill-level)
Improved Defense - physical and magical defense is raised by 2% (+2% per skill-level)
Improved Healing - all healing effects are enhanced by 2% (+2% per skill-level)
Critical Enigma - magical and physical crit-rate is raised by 2% (+2% per skill-level)
Tenacity - HP and MP recovery rate is enhanced by 20 (+20 per skill-level)
Attack Secrets - physical and magical attack power is raised by 1% (+1% per skill-level)
Lucky Escort - drop-rate bonus of 1% (+1% per skill level)

You can only raise the passive skills every 15 levels of the pet and talent points aren't that abundant, so you don’t get huge bonuses from those passive skills. Still, these bonuses seem to be completely independent from any other bonuses or stats, so you will even get this bonus even if you keep your pet at the verge of starvation with 0 loyalty whatsoever.

To make them usable go to the second tab on the upper right of the pet window. If your pet has enough Talent Points and the necessary pet level you can now upgrade them as you wish. By default the window will only show the skills that can be learned at the moment. If you also want to look at all the skills you can eventually get, check the little red orb over the skill window where it says "Index".



Topic II.3 Active skills

Dependent on the species of your pet (e.g. wolf-cub, red-pincer cave crab, etc) your pet has a set amount of 2-3 active skills that it will use randomly in battle. The list of active skills for each pet species is available at (http://www.theromwiki.com/Magic_Pets)

One thing they all have in common is one attack skill, either physical or magical based on the species. Additionally they usually come with one or two buffs/debuffs. Since they are randomly cast they are nothing to rely on in battle, though. Also, the frequency of your pet using them is highly relying on the pet's loyalty. Don't expect your pet to use any active skills when its loyalty is at rock bottom.

Also note, that your pet might also decide to randomly attack a mob even if you haven't focused it yourself. That causes problems as you engage too many mobs at same time. Thus usability of pets’ active skills in end-game is limited. You have to go with either low loyalty pets just for the passives or for boss-battles where you don't have to worry about accidentally aggroing mobs. In most instance runs other players will ask you to put away your high-loyalty pet. Keep that in mind when raising loyalty. Check loyalty Topic III.4 for more info.

You can find your pet's active skills to the right of your skill window.



Topic II.4 Gathering

One of the major benefits of pets for a crafter is ability of pet to gather materials for you! Sounds straight forward enough, but is not as self-explanatory as it seems. To get to the gathering tab just click on the 3rd tab at upper right of your pet window (the one that has a symbol that looks like a whip)

First off: a pet CANNOT gather while it is summoned. It will happily gather in the comfort of its breeding slot, but not when adventuring. That also means that it is completely independent of what you are doing while it is gathering, and doesn't really care where you are. A pet can gather Moon Orchid while you are in Logar, even though you can't, since there is no such herb there.

All you need for it to gather are the gathering tools you can buy at every pet hunter for 100 gold a piece. For every tool you get one shot at gathering a material. You will either get a regular mat, a special rare mat (cyanide e.g.) or a "mysterious item", which has no other use than being sold to an NPC for 107 gold.

What you can gather depends on the pet's gathering level which will increase by gathering. The gathering levels are linked to the level requirements for materials on the world map, so to gather silver ore you'll need to have your pet's Ore gathering level at 31. e.g.

Once you got your production tools from the pet hunter you can drag them into the small slot to the left of the dropdown menu. Then you select the material you want to gather from the dropdown menu, which will offer all materials that require the same or a lower gathering level than the one your pet has. Once you did that click on the green check-mark at the bottom to have your pet start gathering.

There are add-ons to manage pet production better. I use Pet Auto Craft and am happy with it. YMMV.

Note: A lot of people think that 100 gold for every material is very expensive and not worth messing with. Usually, that is not really true. First, take into account that a gathering pet will allow you to farm materials while you are questing, raiding, AFK, etc. so you have a lot more time to do the things that are fun. Second - if you farm for money you will usually be able to sell the materials for close to what it cost to make them, sometimes losing a little cash, sometimes making a little.

Additionally, guild buildings and levels requite a huge amount of materials, and many guilds frown on having non-contributing members. Pet gathering will let you contribute to your guild while not spending time farming yourself.

And, of course, this is a godsend for crafters. While mats are unrefined and can’t be used in your recipes till you refine them, this lets you skip a very boring part of gaining in your chosen craft.

Keep in mind that you cannot use a gathering pet in combat, so either make separate pet or decide when to use your pet for combat assist and when for gathering. Since gathering doesn’t seem to be affected by any pet properties, so you might want to consider a cheap low-attribute pet for your gathering purposes.



Chapter III - Pet attributes and pet development

As you can see in this screenshot, pets have following attributes:
1) Level (shown in upper left corner of the pet window), next to pet element.
2) Experience
3) Talent Points
4) Loyalty
5) Nourishment
6) Training
7) Aptitude



Each of those is important and needs to be raised.

Topic III.1 Level

Each time the pet gets enough experience, he gains a level. Increased level raises pet’s own attributes (in Value) column, which raises the assist values you get from the pet. In screenshot, the level is 14, shown in upper left corner.

The pet attribute values gained from level increase are dependent on growth rates and on aptitude. That is where the expense of higher quality pet eggs becomes justified, since high quality egg gives you better growth rate.

And, that is why you might want a low end pet, so that you may raise its aptitude before you raise its level. If your pet starts at level 20 and aptitude 80 that means he already went through 20 levels worth of increases with that aptitude 80 and got 20 levels worth of bonuses corresponding to 80.

On the other hand if you start with level 1 and aptitude 80, then by the time he reaches level 20, he likely had a chance to increase that aptitude to 91 or 92. Not only did he go through several levels already with higher aptitude, but for each of the subsequent levels he will do so as well.

In addition to gaining values and assist, the level also changes who the pet can merge with, as well as gaining access to new passive or active skills that are unlocked at particular pet levels.

Topic III.2 Experience

This one is kind of self-explanatory. Gain experience to level up your pet. What is rather confusing and not very intuitive is how to gain experience.

First of all, unlike yourself, you cannot level your pet by fighting with it! Instead, there are two main ways to raise your pet's experience – merging and experience-food.

To feed your pet you click on the 3rd button below your pet picture and hover your mouse over the slot that appears, and then just pick any of the list of available foods in your inventory to feed your pet.

Food – Golden Egg.

The best food for experience is golden egg. It adds +50 Training and +100 experience. Golden Eggs are randomly obtained while doing the "An easy lay!" quest in Miller's Farm. As you gather eggs for that quest, sometimes the chicken will lay a golden egg instead of the regular white ones. Depending on your luck you might need a while to get one. Golden eggs are also sold in auction houses, generally at about 9-10K each.

There are other uses for golden eggs, which will be covered in related sections.
Food – Miller’s Special Cake

Miller's Special Cake adds +1 Training, +5 Nourishment and +10 Experience. You get those from doing the "An easy lay!" quest at Miller's Farm as a quest reward or you can buy it at the pet hunters for 3.5K gold. It is completely overpriced at 3.5K, and the only reason to use it is because you got it already from doing "An easy lay" quest to get golden eggs.

Here is the experience charts (credit goes to Dopple32 for discovering formula and creating table)




Food – Powerful Per Growth Potion

This adds +1000 Exp and +500 Training. Potion is sold in item shop.

Merging – Merging your pet with other pet

This is actually a bigger topic and deserves its own chapter. Details on XP gain from merging will be covered in chapter IV

Topic III.3 Talent Points

Talent Points are used to level your passive skills. When you get enough, you can exchange them for a raised passive skill, same as you do as a character.

There are two ways to obtain them.

Level your pet. You gain Talent Points by leveling up your pet. The amount gained from that is quite low, though.

Exchange training points for talent points.

One of the items you get from pet merchant in Miller’s Ranch is Enhancement potion. It costs 2 golden eggs and it allows you to exchange 500 Training Points for 100 Talent Points. You can also buy that potion in item shop, but it makes little sense financially to do so.

Topic III.4 Loyalty

Loyalty defines the amount of active skills your pet will use in battle. Below 60 Loyalty points your pet will not actively engage in battle. At 60 that happens rarely. At about 70+, it starts showing up. Loyalty decreases by 3 if you die while your pet is summoned. Loyalty also affects the pet assist. Loyal pets give you more assist per each point of their own attributes.

With higher assist to your attributes and more frequent attacks, it sounds like high loyalty is a good thing. However, it has significant drawbacks.

Problem is that pets who attack do not always tend to attack who you want them to attack. If you pet aggroes mobs that you are not ready to face, you can find yourself swamped. In addition, pets who are engaged in combat become vulnerable to attacks. That means you are risking the passive assist that you get from pets, for what is really a marginal benefit. Due to pet's behaviour, most groups will ask members to put away their high-loyalty pets during instance runs when you need them most.

So, you have two ways to go

a) Recommended method is to keep it low, at around 60. The pet will only give you passive assist and passive skills, but the assist will be lower.

b) Keep it high and deal with the consequences. The pet will attack, and give you better assist, but then you need to deal with what happens to pet during combat

See the more detailed description of this mechanic in GnatB's message below. While exact mechanics are beyond the scope of this newbie guid, overall recommendation is to keep the loyalty low, especially since it is easy to raise and hard to lower.

There are two ways that one can raise loyalty:

Food - Desert of Happiness
This raises loyalty by 1 and can be bought from any pet hunter for 6K

Favorite Meal.
This raises loyalty by 10. Favorite meal can be obtained at item shop.

Supposedly, Favorite Meal is also a random quest reward of the "Sweet Milk" quest at Miller's Ranch. It is very rare, so don’t do the quest just for it, but since “Sweet Milk” is a good source of Nourishment, this gives you an extra incentive to rely on that quest for your pet’s food.

Topic III.5 Nourishment

Nourishment defines the percent-value at which the assist-attributes are added to your character attributes while your pet is summoned. At 80-100 Nourishment you get the full 100% added assist. 60-80 still give you 80% and so on. I would say this is one of the most important ones to keep at max, even though it is the easiest one to lose, since your pet will lose nourishment over time while being summoned. It also decreases by 40 if you die while your pet is summoned.

There is only one way to raise it - feeding your pet. To do so, your pet must not be summoned, then just click on the 3rd button below your pet's image and hover your mouse over the slot to pick any food available in your inventory.

There are multiple ways to acquire pet food:

Miller’s Special Cake or Nutritious Cheese
Special cake is (as mentioned above) +1 Training, +5 Nourishment and +10 Experience. The Nutritious Cheese is +10 Nourishment

While you can buy either from the pet hunters, it is a waste of money to do it that way.

Reward for quests.

The best way to get food for Nourishment is "Sweet Milk" quest. You get one of those foods:
Nutritious Cheese - +10 Nourishment
Low-Fat Goat's Milk - +20 Nourishment
Beef Skewer - +30 Nourishment

Also, as mentioned above you can earn "Miller's Special Cake" as a quest reward from the "An easy lay!" quest, although +5 Nourishment is really not much and only a nice side effect of farming golden eggs. If it is about Nourishment food, do the "Sweet Milk" quest.

Topic III.6 Training Points

Training Points are a resource that is useless by itself. However, it can be exchanged for two very valuable pet resources.

Talent Points

You can exchange 2 golden eggs at Miller's farm for Enhancement potion. This potion will convert 500 training points to 100 talent points. Talent points are useful for raising your pet’s passive skills.

Aptitude

You can exchange 3 golden eggs at Miller's farm for Awakening Potion. This potion will convert 1000 Training Points to 1 Aptitude Point.

There are several ways to gain training points.

1) Merging your pet with another one is one of the main ways of doing this. Please refer to the pet merging section IV for details on this process.
2) Powerful Growth Potion that can be acquired at item shop gives +1000 XP and +500 training
3) Golden Egg from "An easy lay" quest gives +100 XP and +50 training
4) Miller's Special Cake. Nearly useless for the purpose, since it gives you only 1 training point and you need hundreds or thousands.

Topic III.7 Aptitude

Aptitude is one of the few parameters that you know before breeding an egg. So what does it mean?

Aptitude functions as a bonus factor when calculating the amount of assist you gain from leveling your pet. Each time your pet levels, the growth rates (from rarity of egg) and Aptitude will set how much you gain in assist. This means you really need high aptitude as you level your pet from a low level one.

As a part of the pet that is hard to increase, the eggs with high aptitude will command premium prices. It is very expensive to raise it, which means you need to start with high aptitude pet or merge it with those high aptitude pets that can boost its aptitude.

There are two ways to raise your pet's aptitude, and considering it defines the amount of growth your pet will go through while leveling this might be one of the first things to consider.

1) You can raise it by merging it with a pet egg that has a higher aptitude than the main pet.
2) You can raise it by 1 by exchanging 3 golden eggs for an Awakening Potion at the hunter at Miller's Farm, and then using that potion to exchange 1000 Training Points for 1 Aptitude Point.

Both methods are viable at different times. When your pet is low aptitude, finding higher-aptitude pets is not too hard or expensive, and you can gain by merging. Once you reach high aptitude (about 90), the eggs that will give you aptitude a boost are prohibitively expensive, so golden eggs and potions are a way to go.

Topic III.8 Pet Events

In addition to the methods described above, there is a random chance to increase the attribute or gain a pet related item via pet event. Pet event happen once you have the pet out of the breeding slot and have been adventuring with his for a while. The even consists of pet asking you a question. Depending on your answer, you get increases in pet statistics or item.

Here is description in detail (credit GnatB)

While your pet is out, exactly 1 hour after the last "pet summoning successful" message (or the last pet event), you start having a chance of a pet event exactly every 10 minutes until you finally get one. (or you do something that triggers another "pet summoning successful" message, such as recall, unsummon/resummon the pet, change zones, etc.) There is a thread on the boards somewhere that lists all the possible events, as well as the reward from each option. Pet events can lead to items only otherwise available via siege badges or from the CS, or even permanent stat increases to your pet.

One list of pet events is available on the last part of this page (http://www.theromwiki.com/Magic_Pets). Whether this list is up to date or not, it should cover most or all questions and assist you in selecting the reward you want.

Chapter IV – Merging

Topic IV.1 Basics

Merging Pets is probably the most rewarding way to control your pet's attribute gain and also the best way to earn Training Points and experience.
You can reach the pet merging window by choosing the 4th tab on the upper right of your pet window.

Essentially, what merging does is that it "feeds" one pet to another. The main pet remains alive, with the improved attributes. The second pet disappears.

Merging two pets requires you to set an "Agent" and a "Reagent". The Agent is the pet you want to advance using this process, the Reagent is a pet egg that you want to use up to improve the main pet. In the screenshot, the Agent’s left slot in the breeding window and Reagent is the right one.

Let's start with the basics. To be able to merge with an Agent, the Reagent has to fulfill the following:

- The Reagent egg needs to be of the same or lower level than the Agent egg
- The Reagent egg needs to be the same element as the Agent egg, or a neutral element (rune pet eggs).

Note: Always double check which pet you use for which slot, especially if your main pet came from rarity of eggs that you use for merging. What shows up in the slot is the icon for original egg, so for example, if your Agent came from Amazing Egg and so did your Reagent, you can become confused and accidentally put them in other order. If you lose your main pet, there is no way to get it back.

Once you've placed the eggs make sure you look at the preview and click the blue orb in between them to merge them. Do not click "Pair Merging"

Topic IV.2 The gain from merging

The Agent will get new attributes as a result of merging. Those attributes are averaged values for your Agent and Reagent. There is a formula for how much the pet will gain... it is beyond scope of this guide.

However, the values will never go down. So, if your Agent pet has Strength of 25 and Reagent has 21, your pet will not go down to 23. You never lose values from merging, only gain. Thus, you can use even white, low quality wild eggs to merge and still improve your pet

The two exceptions to this are training and experience. They always go up during merge.

Training goes up by +50 for element-matched pets, up by +100 for Rune pets. As was mentioned in topic III.7, merging is one of the main ways to gain training points.

Experience goes up by 1000 divided by (Agent level – Reagent level + 1). The closer the level of two pets, the more XP the merge gets. For same level, you get 1000 XP, for one level difference, 500, for two level difference 333 and so on

This gives you control over pet growth. If you want to keep your pet low level but get him high aptitude, pick low level merge eggs. That will keep pet from leveling up, while still giving him training points tradeable for aptitude. If you want to raise pet level, merge it with another pet of same level

Topic IV.3 Rune Eggs

Most pets have an element. However, pets which come from Rune Pet Eggs do not, and are thus very useful. The only thing you can do with pet eggs of the element other than your own is sell it (technically, there is a way to remove element from a pet, but since it is expensive, there is rarely a reason to do so).

But, you can merge any element pet with rune one. There is no element conflict since Rune Egg pets have none. Because of that, Rune Eggs are more expensive

There are other advantages to Rune Eggs. One is that on average, they seem to have higher aptitude than non-Rune eggs. Such Rune Eggs can be used to increase your aptitude. And two is that Rune Eggs have universal growth rates (all attributes are 2 or 3). Your pet is a specialist and has zero growth in two attributes. Rune is a generalist, and has some in all.

Because of that, attributes that your pet doesn’t focus on, the Rune pet does, which means your main pet will gain in those attributes. While those attributes are of secondary use to you, they are still better than not getting anything at all.

While you can use Rune Pet Egg as your main pet, it is not recommended. For one, those pets are not specialists in whatever you need, and for two, you can only use other Rune Eggs for merges.

Topic IV.4 Merging Goals

a XP

In general, as described in topic IV.2, the closer the Reagent's level is to the Agent's level the more experience Agent will gain from the merge. If you are trying to level your pet you should look for a Reagent that is the same level or at least not more than two levels below it. Using Advanced Auction House addon, one can easily searching AH for pets of the right element and level

b Training Points

No matter what level the Reagent is (as long as it is not higher than the Agent's), merging same element egg will get you +50 Training Points per merge. If using Rune Pet Eggs, you get +100 training points. Since training points are tradeable for aptitude or talent points, this is a good way to obtain them.

c Attributes

This rarely works well, since, besides Rune Egg pets, the pets you are merging with are generally not as good as your main pet. If Reagent has lower attributes, you have no gain. Still, sometimes you get a few points.

d Raising aptitude

While you can aim for Training Points to raise aptitude (via Awakening Potion), it is much better to do so directly. If you can find an egg with higher aptitude and lower level, the merge will gain you some aptitude. In my experience, high-apt eggs tend to be Rune Eggs, and they are rare and expensive, since everyone wants them. Still, you can get a lot in one merge.

If you find high aptitude egg that is higher level than you can use at the moment, run the calculations to see if, by the time you can use it, you expect your aptitude to be below aptitude of that egg. In other words, if my L14 pet has apt of 73 and I have L25 rune egg with apt of 74, I should sell it. By the time I get that 11 XP levels in my pet and can use that Rune Egg, my aptitude will most likely be higher than 74 and I will get no raise from it. But, if that aptitude was 98, then I should hold onto it.

Topic IV.5 Chain Merging

One of the more advanced techniques in raising your pet is called chain merging. The goal of the technique is to increase aptitude of the pet without having it gain level. Remember, the levels benefit from high aptitude, so the higher you get the aptitude before you level, the more you will get from leveling.

The way chain merging is done is stacking training points onto your main pet without leveling him. Normally, that is hard to do. Merges give you only 50 training points, and they give you XP, which unfortunately levels you. So, you can't accumulate the training points that way.

Here is how you can accumulate them:

Let's say your main pet is fire and it is in slot 1. What you do is this:

1) Get level 1 fire pet into slot 2. Lets call him pet A
2) Get level 1 fire pet into slot 3. He is pet B.
3) Merge pet B into pet A. Now your pet A has 50 training points it originally had plus 50 more from pet B. Total is 100. But he is still level 1, because merge did not give him enough experience to level
4) Get another level 1 fire pet into slot 3. This is your pet C.
5) Merge pet A into pet C. Since your Pet A had 100 training points and your pet C had 50, now pet C has 150 training points. But he is still level 1.
6) Get another level 1 fire pet into slot 2. He is pet D
7) Merge pet C into pet D. Now your pet D has 50 training points it originally had plus 150 more from C, for total of 200. Still level 1, though.
Rinse and Repeat...

As you can see, the process above creates "throwaway pets". During their life, they get born, "eat" some other pet once, and then get "eaten" on the next merge. In the process they accumulate training points.

At the end of this, merge your final throwaway pet into your main pet. All the training points you were collecting are now on your main pet. Make sure you don't exceed 10000 training points, since that is the training point limit.

Now, your main pet has all the training points you were accumulating. Now, collect golden eggs, trade them for Awakening potions and feed them to your main pet. That will convert your accumulated training points into aptitude points, all without gaining any levels.

In practical terms, that is hard to do because you will need huge number of level 1 eggs. What many people do is make it in multiple runs. Get couple thousands training points on L1 throwaway pet, then put them on main pet. Meanwhile, buy or save level 2 eggs. Then do the same chain merge of L2 throwaway pets and feed that to the main pet.

While that is not 100% optimal, in that you gain more XP than you would with a straight L1 chain giving you all the training point you need, it is still good enough. Your main pet will couple levels before hitting aptitude cap, but it will take you much less time.

Chapter V Conclusion

Topic V.1 Recommendations

Here are some recommendations to the new pet owner to get your pet ownership started on right note.

1) Use holy egg only. Yes, they are expensive, but so are all pets.

2) Make sure you use the right element for your class.

3) Consider the species of the pet but don't limit yourself if you cant find one you are looking for. If you really want a particular pet, then pet transformation potions (from item shop) can transform your pet into some of the better species, like executioner puppet or parrot

4) The best way to develop a pet is to get a low level (optimal 4 or 5) holy egg with high aptitude. Then you should use chain merging in the other two slots to get a "food" pet with high number of training points. Then you merge that pet into your main pet, and convert the training points into aptitude. Optimally, you will not level even once and get 100 aptitude on the original level. In practice that would take a very long time to achieve so a little leveling is OK.

Then, the low level high aptitude pet should be leveled with whatever means you can - merges, food, golden eggs, etc... By the time your pet is high level, he will add a considerable power to your character.

5) Dont rely on pet events. They are rare and unreliable. Grow your pet by your own efforts

Topic V.2 Thanks for reading

Hope this guide helped you at least a little, and I would appreciate some comments. In particular...

- I am a newb pet owner and your guide confused the heck out of me.
- I am a newb pet owner and I love your guide. Can I have your children?
- I am an experienced pet owner and you got this completely wrong
- This is very misleading. Fail. Re-write!
- Why did you replace the term "skin" with term "species" when it comes to the animal type inside your egg?
- Why do you call them attributes when everyone else calls Str, Dex, Sta, Int and Wis "stats"?
- You suck in general and so does your guide
- Have you ever heard of Flesch-Kinkaid?
- I think I go and read War and Peace instead.

Thanks... I would say pet event belong here and I added them. Pair merging is probably too advanced.

I am also not quite sure my take on high loyalty is correct. I've read that loyal pets are frowned upon in instances because of potential unintended aggro, but also that it is not actually an aggro that is initiated by pet. The "high loyalty pets can work for boss fights" strategy is a lot less definite. I do get better assist from highly loyal pet, and a have seen some casual mention of it... but nothing that I would consider authoritative sources.

Thank you, Kalvan, for sticky.

I added topic IV.5 on chain merging and incorporated the suggestions that made sense to me. Hope the new (and old) stuff is clear enough.

Thanks for comments and feedback. Added table of content and recommendation section.