Runes of Magic US / AU

a firend of mind wrote this a while ago on a guild set and i felt like passing on the knowledge
you have any questions - post, I will try to answer. Sorry so long - slow day at work! I will clean up the post later - going home soon.

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A great article - read it if you never used a pet at all (gives you pictures so you can be familiar with pet screens)
us.runesofmagic.com/us/articles,id112,1,pet_system.html
NOTE: This is 4 pages - do not forget to look at next page at bottom 1,2,3,4


So you have questions about leveling a Pet? I seem to be getting a lot of questions here - so I will do my best to put them to paper so people can get some answers to some common questions.

1) What does a pet do for you?

Two things really. First it gives you "buffs" to some of you statistics. Secondly each pet has different skills - both natural skill as well as learned skill that can aid you. Some of these buffs / skills can end up being rather signifigant if you have a good pet which has been leveled well.

How much are these "buffs". As an example my level 34 fire pet gives me a buff of 650 Int, 500+ Wisdom and 400+ stam. (it buffs Str, dex as well - not not much). We are taking about buffing 1550+ on my 3 main stats.

2) What pet should I use - element discussion

First I suggest a holy pet. If you are going to spend any time / money on this activity you best get a pet you will want to keep long term. This is a very pricy activity. There are several things you would want to consider when picking a pet. Main thing is the element type. Each element has a primary (x6), 2ndary (x5) and third (x5) buff skill.

Fire pet as example is Intellect (x6), Wisdom (x5) and Stam (x4). As you can see with Intellect being its primary buff stat, this is the best pet for a Mage.

Other pets include:
Water - Primary Wisdom (good for healers)
Dark - Primary Dex (scout and rogue)
Light - Primary stam (often tanks prefer this one)
Earth - Primary Str (I believe - warrior? Not sure about this one)
Wind - Primary Dex. Bit of an oddball because of Wisdom mixed in (Dark does not have Wis) - not quite certain which class would prefer this (scout with a priest 2nd as example I have seen on forums?)
Neutral - This is your "rune pets". They have no element at all - do not use this for a pet. They are meant only to be fed to other pets to level them.

3) What pet should I use - animal type

So there are a LOT of different elements. So in addition to checking out the fact that you have a holy pet - and the proper element, you also need to be aware that different animals have different "natural" skills. Some heal you, some buff your magic attack (or physical attack), some reduce agro - there are a lot of different skills. There are in all classes a few "best of" animal types - but they are extremely hard to find. The stars basically have to align to get the perfect pet and if you find that one in AH it will go for millions of gold.

Example - "best" mage pet would be a Holy fire Parrot
Example2 - "best" scout pet would be a Holy Dark Executionor Puppet

www.theromwiki.com/Magic_Pets

A full listing of pets are available on the wiki - before you buy your pet look at what the default buffs you get. No good having a mage with a pet that does a physical damage buff - we never melee !

4) So what if I cannot find this magical "best" pet.

So yes as you can see having the "best" pet match is a near impossibility. But - there is good news. Concentrate on getting the Holy (best egg) and element (best for your class) - the acutal animal type can actually be changed later on. Yes, I myself have done it. I had a Holy fire pet - which was a Frog at first. Buffs were not that great (reduced AOE damage - Meh). But about once a month (or so) there are Pet items that go on sale in the Diamond item shop. There are items that can be used to change you pet type. In my case - Parrot was one of those options. Now, not all classes may have their favorite pet available (I do not believe Executionor puppet is a choice) but at very least you Can change the pet type after (it is eaten like pet food).

Oh - and no you do not loose anything in changing it. Any levels, training, experience are all retained.

5) Leveling your pet

Leveling your pet is a very very time consuming and lengthy process. In general here are the ways you can level your pet...

- Best way is to fed your pet 3 eggs a day. Try to make them the exact same level (if you have a level 5 fire pet - feed it level 5 fire or Rune eggs).
Same level = 1000 xp
Same level -1 = 500 xp
Same level -2 = 333 xp
Same level -3 = 250 xp
And so on. You cannot feed your pet a higher level egg - must be equal or lower.
- Second method is to feed it "golden eggs". These eggs are farmable in the Pet Miller's farm (go to any pet trap seller - it is an option to go to farm). Slow to farm - you get 1 egg average in a 5-10 min game.
Feed your pet the Golden Egg. Your pet will receive 100 experience points and 50 training points.
NOTE: At current market prices eggs are about 10-15K each now. (crackdown on egg bots). So yes 1000xp will run you 100-150K gold *ouch*.

6) What is Egg Aptitude.

Egg Aptitude is basically an indicator as to how well your pet learns. Higher the aptitude - the higher the stats buffs you will get. 100 is the max apptitude your pet can have. When you first get a pet often your aptitude is between 70-84 points.

7) Leveling the Aptitude

A few methods.
- If you have low aptitude on a pet (lets say 70). Then try to feed it some wild / natural / Amazing pet eggs (see cheap) that have higher aptitude than 70. Often you can find basic element eggs with aptitudes of 80. Really you should just use this method to level up to 80 in conjuction to leveling your pet egg. (No rush - See point 11 below)
- Once you get your Egg apptitude in the 80 range, the next best method is the feed it a Blue Rune egg (a special high aptitude egg). These can be purchased in AH - very pricy - or with any luck you are farming your own eggs by now and have gotten 1 or 2 yourself which you can use. These Blue Rune eggs will have an aptitude of 81 to 99. Ya 81s will not help much (you probably almost there using first leveling method) but some nice 90+ apptitude eggs will help.
- Again "hopefully" you have managed to feed your pet 2 and hopefully more of these apptitude eggs. Try to get your aptitude to 90+ if you can - after that this method starts giving lower returns. At this point you need to use golden eggs and Training points to level the last of your aptitude - See Point 12 below

Farming eggs

Hopefully you have not started out with Too low of a starting pet. Leveling a pet from level 1 is a LOOONG processes. Myself I got a starting egg at level 30 - which IMO is a better plan (I explain in point 11). Regardless if you can find cheap (8-15K) leveling eggs for your element in the AH - great snap them up. Otherwise you might want to invest in a stack of pet traps and go out hunting for your own caveys. Yes this is a long process - but necessary unless you are going to throw gold at Golden eggs. In AH level 1-10 eggs are abundant (I find) and that would be a cheap/quick method to level. After level 10 I find the eggs starting becoming harder to find...after all you are trying to find an Eq level egg with proper element. (OK and Rune eggs but they run 20-50K even at low levels)

So, learn how to farm your own cavies. And I mean all cavies - not just the golden ones. Try to find a friend who has a different element pet and do some egg trades. You also need to look into creating an "alt" to store you leveling / selling eggs. Really I store all eggs that are higher level than my pet - to keep for when I get to that level - and I auction the rest. And yes I do make decent money at this. Rune eggs expecially I see and make good $$ on them.

9) Where to find the level eggs I need.

At low levels, no problem almost any zone will do. However - Darlanis and up (north/South J and Limo) they eggs are gimped. Not sure if this is intentional or accidental but often any cavies I have caught there are level 1-10 (maybe 15?) at most. Do not farm these higher level zones for eggs if you need to level a pet above 10 or 15. This is why there is so few 10+ eggs in the AH - the server population is mature and they are not farming other zones for eggs - and at lower level characters many do not farm cavies - they are more concerned with leveling their characters.

In general each zone has a egg cap. Looks like this cap goes up/down in inciments of 5. So while beginning zones might have a 1-10 egg level cap - later zones can have 1-35 (Savage lands) and 1-40 (Volcano). Again a reason you see few level 35+ eggs in AH - who is mad enough to farm for cavies in Volcano off elite mobs? Ya I am that crazy - only way to get the higher level eggs.

10) Searching AH for eggs

Advance auction house
Wild Pet
Natural Pet
Amazing Pet
Magical Pet (very few of these - they are rare elite drop off golden cavy)
Rune Pet
Holy Pet

The first 3 - wild, natural, amazing you want to filter on the element type you are looking for (ie fire) and likely also on level of the pet. Since I look for level 34 eggs I do $egglvl34 (as example) in my filter
Rune pets again if you are desparate - just do not filter on element (they are neutral). Also this the place to find aptitude pets with a $aptlvl85 (usually what I use) filter. Most of these apt pets are 200K plus but sometimes you find very very cheap ones because the seller does not realize the value (ie a 99 apt pet for 30K - Insta buy - these are normal 500k+ or more)

11) The Arguement - start with a low level pet or high level pet.

OK Lots of discussion on the forums about this - to keep it short - pet level does not matter for your Stats at the end for your pet. Therefore to keep costs / time down I would in fact recommend a higher level pet when you start your pet leveling.

Here is one of the threads I have read - you can check it out,
forum.us.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=44326

The arguement: Some say that it is better to start with a lower level pet and max the aptitude ASAP and in the end you will have better bonus values = giving you higher buffs. However, I looked at the data and they take a level 1 pet and max the apt to 100 (and level it to lv29) - but the level 29 pet they compare to they have kept at 72 aptitude. Ya of course they are different - you did not put the level 29 pet to 100 aptitude as well. So a bad test.

Also (if you looked into this). Any pet you "use" in fact starts with somewhat random stats (better random stats if better pet - but still random). If you look at 2 level 30 pets (fire) one might start with a Int value of 50 while the other might have 54. Yes so trying to compare apples to applies in leveling a 1st level egg to 29 vs starting with a level 29 is difficult to evulate. And in fact - as you feed your leveling pet eggs you will in fact notice some of your stats do go up. Often they are the non-value bonus stats (ie Str and Dex on a fire pet). Reason being is you have a level 30 pet with 0 bonus on Str/Dex. But if you feed that pet a level 30 Rune which has 2/3 bonus across the board you can can a higher start Str/Dex which will add some bonus to your Holy fire pet bonus.

So long story short - maybe there is a difference (be it small) in starting with a lower level holy pet and leveling it. However, the 100s of eggs and months time time/money it would take to start from level 1 is very signifigant. I would suggest for your own Sanity to start with a pet lvl 10+ hell even 30 if you can find it. I would not recommend starting super high (like the max of 40) because you do in fact want to get some bonuses from feeding them eggs - and starting at level 40 would pretty much eliminate this bonus.

12) What can Golden eggs do for you.

So I have explained you can get 50 training and 100 xp per golden eggs, but these are not necessarily the best used of the eggs at first. Here are other things you can do. #1 is not really useful - but 2 and 3 are

Hand over the eggs to the Pet Hunter Pykesile.
1. Hand over one egg to Pykesile to complete another pet hunting training tutorial to receive another pet egg. This pet egg will not be bound.
2. If you give Pykesile two Golden Eggs, you receive a potion that allows you to convert 500 of your pet’s training points into 100 talent points.
3. For three eggs you can get a magic potion that converts 1000 training points into one aptitude point.

13) Max level of a egg / pet.

So I have mentioned prior that you can get an egg (via cavy) that can be a max of level 40. This currently can only be caught in The Volcano zone. Good luck they are hard to find
NOTE: 5 elements+1 rune = 6 types. Level 1-40. Assuming equal chances you have about a 1 in 120 chance of getting an element/rune egg that is level 40. Ouch - expecially since you need probably about 20-25 of them to level to 41 (not sure how much xp level 40 is - just guessing based on lvl 34 being 13K xp).

So although max level of an egg is 40 - you can in fact level your pet to 50. My suggestion would be to use all the eggs you can when you get higher levels...hopefully have caught quite a few. Likely you will not have caught enough for each level. In the end you are likely to start using golden eggs to finish a level (when short of a leveling egg between 30-40) - but certainly the only way to level a pet from 40-50 is to start using golden eggs. So yes getting level 50 pet is a huge cost.

NOTE: There is no limit to how many golden eggs you can eat a day. If you have enough gold + eggs in the auction house you could go from level 1-50 just feeding golden eggs in 1 sitting.

14) How to Train my pet

So each Egg you eat gives 50 training points. However, these need to be changed into "Talent" points. As you can see in #12 above one of the uses of golden eggs is to convert 500 pet training points into 100 talent points. With 500 talent points you can learn a new skill (+1% to luck drop, +2% to magical attack, etc).

Let me do the math for you...to get 500 talent points you need to use 2500 training points. At 50 training an egg - that is 50 eggs ! If you are only eating 3 eggs a day (which is the daily max) that means every 17 days you can train a new pet skill. But in saying that - don't forget to save some training points to max you aptitude. You will likely need 10-20K training points to max to 100 aptitude as well ! Yes that is a lot of eggs.

15) How to beat the system - getting more training points faster.

So this is rather complicated. If you are still awake from reading the other sections - bear with me. This is VERY important.

You can feed EACH of your pets 3 eggs a day. EACH (important). Any fed egg retains the training points from any feedings. (see example this will make sense).

Example: I have a level 30 fire pet. After a big day of cavy farming I scored 10 fire eggs that were below level 30 - but useless for giving good xp to my pet. Do not sell these eggs - merge them (indirectly) into your pet to get 10x50 = 500 training points in 1 shot. Here is how
Fire pet eggs = level 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 (as example). Order them in lowest to highest in your backpack
Put level 1 and 2 egg into a blank egg slot. Merge the lower (1) into the Higher (2). The level 2 pet gets 50 training points (and 500xp - but the xp not important)
Put the level 3 egg into a blank egg slot. Merge the lower (2) into the higher (3). The level 3 pet gets 100 training points - see it was not 50 - you kept the points from the first merger
repeat - 3 into 4 into 5 into 5.....into 10. That 10th merge will give you a level 10 pet with 450 training points.

Now take that level 10 pet and merge it into my Main 30 holy pet - bingo 500 training in 1 go. So yes - if I had 50 fire eggs just sitting around (or in AH) I can with a short exercise get 2500 training points rather quickly.

NOTE: If you don't want to waist one of your daily xp merges - take that level 10 egg you just used and put it into a lv30 egg. That way you can merge a level 30 egg (1000xp) and get all the extra training points as well.

16) Neutralize bar

OK some of you may have seen this neutralize bar either on the Pet hunter or in the diamond show (they take SW badges via pet hunter - be warned you may not want to get one with badges)

I have not in fact used on yet - but I have read up on them. I think most people are just making educated guesses as to what they are good for. Same here - I can see the value - but might be a unless item, I am not certain. Basically a neutralize bar can be fed to any pet and it does just as it states - it removes the element. Why would you want to do this - well so you can fed it to another pet. Only 2 reasons I can see you doing this..

A) You leveled up a pet of the wrong element. IE a scout (dex main) took a fire pet (int Main) by accident. If you had a slew of training points (up to 10K can be stored) you could get a holy dark egg, which is the correct element for a scout and neutralize your old fire pet. This way you could merge them and get back all that training points - which could be a signifigant investment. (and you could get aptitude bonus, stat value bonus, etc as well).
This more theoritical - I will probably try this myself someday. It has been suggested this is a good way to train up other value stats. My level 34 fire pet is Int(6), Wis(5) and Stam(4). However, what if I found a level 34 holy light pet? I could of course sell it - or I could use it - and then neutralize it feeding it back to my fire pet. Even though this is a neutral pet, it did not start out with 2 (or 3) multiplier bonuses. A light pet would have a 6 stam multiplier. It is almost garenteed that a level 34 light pet would have higher stam value than my 34 fire pet.
Throw 1 more curve ball at this - I could also level the aptitude of this level 34 light pet to 100 (giving higher default values) and get even more bonus.

Anyhow you see where I am going there - it would be quite expensive, but I could make a "super" pet but reverse feeding holy pets. Techncially if one were lucky in a slew of holy pets at high level (40 would be best) you could in fact "simulate" having x6 multiplier values on all your stats. Now the multiplier would still be the same on your fire egg - but your values could all be somewhat equal. (80 values across the board instead of 20, 20, 50, 65, 80 - as example)

Anyhow this is just a guess for the advanced egg pet leveler - very time consuming - very lucky on gettting the correct eggs - but it makes sense in theory.

17) Best way to find cavies?

Well in general the more monsters you kill, the better luck. If you can find a place you can easily AOE monsters, it will make your life easier.

However, you can increase your odds depending on level...found this on a forum.
The frequency with which a Cavy appears depends both on the level your character is and the level of your adversary:
If your adversary’s level is more than 10 levels below that of your character’s, there is a very low chance a Cavy will appear.
If your adversary’s level is exactly 10 levels below that of your character’s, the chance a Cavy will appear increases by 10 percent.
If your adversary’s level is more than 5, but less than 10 levels below that of your character’s, the chance a Cavy will appear increases by an additional 5 percent.
Additionally, there is a 5 percent chance the Cavy is a Golden Magic Cavy that yields eggs of a higher quality. (chance of a holy pet)

1 How much aptitude increase do I get from merging a higher apt pet

For every 4 points of aptitude your are feeding your pet, you get 1 additional aptitude (fractions count)

My holy pet has 80 aptitude - I feed it an 84 aptitude fire pet, in addition to training and xp points - I also get exactly 1.00 points of aptitude - making my pet 81 aptitude
My holy pet now has 81 aptitude - I feed it another 84 apt pet. I get 0.75 aptitude - leaving me with a 81.75 aptitude pet in the end.

NOTE: Stat values (Str, Dex, Int, Wis, Stam) work in a simular fashion. If the pet you are merging is higher - you get some extra points. I am not positive if the ratio (4 to 1) is the same? I would have to look this up on the forums

19) What can I do at Miller's farm

- Turn in for golden Egg rewards (must be in farm to use the 1, 2, 3 egg turn in rewards)
- First game: Milk the cows. Most rewards are food (good for feeding pet - quick game). Also a small (very small) chance of getting a piece of food that increases Loyalty. Many +10, 20, 30 nourishment food rewards.
- Second game: Eggs from chickens. This always gives a crapy +5 nourishment food - milk cows if you looking for nourishment food. However, during the 10 eggs you pickup during the game there is a small chance (5-10 percent?) of getting a golden egg. So slow process - but you can farm eggs this way.

20) What is nourishment and Loyalty.

When you first get a pet your loyalty and nourishment is at 50. You want both at 100 to use your pet (preferably). For a first shot this is pricy. Takes 6000 gold to get a +1 loyal food (6Kx50 = 300K) and then I think it is about 6K per 5 nourishment - but you do the match I often just play a few games of milk the cow.

Basically loyalty will never go down once it is at 100 - unless you die with your pet out. When that happens loyal goes down 3 points (so yes a 18K feeding to recover the 3 loyal)
Nourishment goes down constantly (and on death as well) over time as you have it out. Not too bad I am guessing 10K a hour maintenance? (guess). Just do not leave it out when you are AFK *lol* Keeping your pet out while you are at the library or AFK in your house would be rather expensive.

NOTE: Assist buffs (to your stats) reduce as your nourishment decreases. Keep nourishment above 80 percent to get 100 percent buffs. Once you drop below 80, the buff will be 80 percent (again so on at 60, 40, 20, 0)


21) Pets in Seige Wars (SW)

So used to be that pets would reduce on loyalty and nourishment when you had them out and died in SW - which of course happens all the time. No longer, they fixed that. Your pet will no longer encure a penalty when you die in SW.

However, it has been said there is a an issue (bug?) if you start Seige wars with your pet out. Apparently you may not be able to resummon when you die. So suggest only summoning your pet After you have begun battle - and yes it is a pain - but if you die you will have to resummon him again. Painful when you die a lot remember to do this.