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How do pets work?

Sieges111Sieges111 Member Posts: 120

I am a level 10 hunter and am getting ready to tame a pet. I have a few basic questions about them first:

  1. Do combat pets need to eat even if they are not summoned?
  2. Can you ever permanently lose your pet?
  3. Can it be revived if killed?
  4. What happens if you just don't fee it anymore, does it run away?
  5. If I tame a level 10 Owl, will it gain experience and have the potential to become higher level?
  6. Do non-combat pets ever gain levels?
  7. Do non-combat pets need to eat?
  8. Can non-combat pets be killed?

Thanks!

Comments

  • HexxeityHexxeity Member Posts: 848

    1. No

    2. Yes, if you don't feed it.  You can also choose to abandon it.

    3. Yes

    4. It becomes unhappy and doesn't fight as well, then it  runs away.

    5. Yes, but you will have to learn higher level skills from other animals and teach them to your primary pet

    6. No.  Non-combat pets have nothing to do with the Hunter class.

    7. No

    8. No

     

    Please visit a site such as http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/ for more information.

  • KroggKrogg Member Posts: 480

    5b. Specialized pet skills must be learned from specific creatures (through taming) and can then be trained to the other pets that suit the criteria.  A list of these special skills should be available on the link he posted above.

  • Pappy13Pappy13 Member Posts: 2,138

     

    Originally posted by Sieges


    I am a level 10 hunter and am getting ready to tame a pet. I have a few basic questions about them first:

    Do combat pets need to eat even if they are not summoned?
    Can you ever permanently lose your pet?
    Can it be revived if killed?
    What happens if you just don't fee it anymore, does it run away?
    If I tame a level 10 Owl, will it gain experience and have the potential to become higher level?
    Do non-combat pets ever gain levels?
    Do non-combat pets need to eat?
    Can non-combat pets be killed?

    Thanks!



    A little additional info:

     

    1)  There are 3 phases of pet happiness, happy, content and unhappy.  Your pet will not change a phase while not summoned, only while summoned.  If your pet is happy he will do 125% of their normal damage and gain loyalty over time.  If you pet is content he will do normal damage and will gain loyalty over time.  If you pet is unhappy he will only do 75% of normal damage and will lose loyalty over time.  There are several things which effect your pets happiness including feeding your pet, your pet taking damage and your pet getting killed.

    2)  If your pet is in unhappy he will lose loyalty over time to you and yes eventually the pet can run away or even turn on you and attack you.

    3) Yes.  Hunters can revive their pets and pets can also be ressurrected by other classes.

    4)  When you feed your pet you pet gains happiness.  Higher levels of food will increase their happiness more than lower level foods and cooked foods also increase their happiness faster.  If you don't feed the pet it will become unhappy and start to lose loyalty to you.  If you lose enough loyalty the pet will either run away or attack it's owner.

    5)  Pets gain experience fairly quickly, however pets can never be a higher level than the hunter and therefore will not gain experience when it's the same level as the hunter.  So if the hunter is level 10 and trains a level 10 pet, the pet will not begin to gain experience until the hunter gets to be level 11 and then the pet will quickly gain experience up to level 11. 

    6, 7, 8)  Non combat pets are for show only.

    Also be aware that although pets will gain levels with the hunter, all pets have certain inate skills that they can learn and that they can teach the hunter when tamed.  For example a level 10 beast may have a level 1 bite skill.  Once you tame it and it uses that skill, the hunter will learn that skill as well and will be able to teach it to other pets capable of using the skill.  This gets a little confusing so let me give you an example.

    Let's say you tame a lvl 10 beast and he has the inate level 1 bite skill.  When your pet uses that ability the hunter will have "learned" that skill.  If the hunter were to abandon that pet and get another pet which is capable of learning the bite skill, the hunter can "teach" him the level 1 bite skill.  Now lets say you tame a level 15 beast that has the inate level 2 bite skill.  When the pet uses that ability the hunter will have "learned" the level 2 bite skill.  The hunter could then train a level 10 beast with the level 2 bite skill even though that beast may only have the inate level 1 bite skill.  Clear as mud?

    Well let me state it another way, to get the most out of your pets, you want to train them in the highest skill levels possible for you and the pet.  To be able to do that, you must be willing to tame multiple beasts.  You can't simply tame a level 10 beast, never tame any other beasts and have him be your pet up to level 70 and expect him to be very effective because he'll still be using a level 1 skills.  What you need to do is find beasts that have higher level inate skills than what you have already learned and tame them.  Once you have learned the higher level skill, you don't necessarily need to keep that pet, you could actually dismiss it and then teach your pet the higher level skill.  This is why pets can be "stored" at the stables.  If you wish to keep your current pet but would like to tame another beast to learn that beasts skills, put your current pet in the stables, tame the other beast and use that pet until you learn the skills he's able to teach you.  This only takes a few minutes.  Then dismiss that pet and get your old pet out of the stables and teach your pet the new skills you have learned.  Understand?

    So how do you find out what skills a beast has anyway?  Glad you asked, well the answer is the hunter skill called beast lore.  When you target a beast and cast beast lore on it, it will tell you what skills that beast has to offer.  In this way you can tame different beasts and learn their skills and teach them to your pets, just be aware that certain types of pets can only learn certain types of skills.

    I went thru this because this is the most difficult thing to learn for Hunters in my opinion.  The whole notion of taming various beasts to learn their skills and then teach those skills to their pets is not well understood by many when they are first learning how to use a Hunter.  I know I didn't really understand it untill I was a level 60 hunter and then had to go tame some beasts with the proper skill levels to train my pet.

    One last comment about learning skills and that is that you don't have to learn every skill level for a skill.  For instance if you learn level 9 bite, there's really no reason to learn level 8 bite unless your pet is not a high enough level to use level 9 bite but he is high enough to use level 8.

    Also there are some skills that the hunter can learn only by talking with a beast trainer.  Don't confuse this with the hunter trainer, they are 2 seperate NPC's although usually there will be a beast trainer located close to a hunter trainer.  Talk to them whenever you talk to the hunter trainer and see if there are any additional beast skills that you can learn.

    Allocating your beasts skill points is a whole other discussion in itself.  Hunters are one of the more complex classes to use, but don't let that put you off because once you learn the intracies of the hunter class, they are one of the most versatile classes in the game and also one of the fastest leveling classes in the game.

    image

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798

    the UI Hunters Helper was updated for patch 2.4

    fizzwidget.com/huntershelper/

    it lists beasts in the local area and what abilities you can learn

  • Sieges111Sieges111 Member Posts: 120

    Originally posted by Pappy13


     
    Originally posted by Sieges


    I am a level 10 hunter and am getting ready to tame a pet. I have a few basic questions about them first:

    Do combat pets need to eat even if they are not summoned?
    Can you ever permanently lose your pet?
    Can it be revived if killed?
    What happens if you just don't fee it anymore, does it run away?
    If I tame a level 10 Owl, will it gain experience and have the potential to become higher level?
    Do non-combat pets ever gain levels?
    Do non-combat pets need to eat?
    Can non-combat pets be killed?

    Thanks!



    A little additional info:

     

    1)  There are 3 phases of pet happiness, happy, content and unhappy.  Your pet will not change a phase while not summoned, only while summoned.  If your pet is happy he will do 125% of their normal damage and gain loyalty over time.  If you pet is content he will do normal damage and will gain loyalty over time.  If you pet is unhappy he will only do 75% of normal damage and will lose loyalty over time.  There are several things which effect your pets happiness including feeding your pet, your pet taking damage and your pet getting killed.

    2)  If your pet is in unhappy he will lose loyalty over time to you and yes eventually the pet can run away or even turn on you and attack you.

    3) Yes.  Hunters can revive their pets and pets can also be ressurrected by other classes.

    4)  When you feed your pet you pet gains happiness.  Higher levels of food will increase their happiness more than lower level foods and cooked foods also increase their happiness faster.  If you don't feed the pet it will become unhappy and start to lose loyalty to you.  If you lose enough loyalty the pet will either run away or attack it's owner.

    5)  Pets gain experience fairly quickly, however pets can never be a higher level than the hunter and therefore will not gain experience when it's the same level as the hunter.  So if the hunter is level 10 and trains a level 10 pet, the pet will not begin to gain experience until the hunter gets to be level 11 and then the pet will quickly gain experience up to level 11. 

    6, 7, 8)  Non combat pets are for show only.

    Also be aware that although pets will gain levels with the hunter, all pets have certain inate skills that they can learn and that they can teach the hunter when tamed.  For example a level 10 beast may have a level 1 bite skill.  Once you tame it and it uses that skill, the hunter will learn that skill as well and will be able to teach it to other pets capable of using the skill.  This gets a little confusing so let me give you an example.

    Let's say you tame a lvl 10 beast and he has the inate level 1 bite skill.  When your pet uses that ability the hunter will have "learned" that skill.  If the hunter were to abandon that pet and get another pet which is capable of learning the bite skill, the hunter can "teach" him the level 1 bite skill.  Now lets say you tame a level 15 beast that has the inate level 2 bite skill.  When the pet uses that ability the hunter will have "learned" the level 2 bite skill.  The hunter could then train a level 10 beast with the level 2 bite skill even though that beast may only have the inate level 1 bite skill.  Clear as mud?

    Well let me state it another way, to get the most out of your pets, you want to train them in the highest skill levels possible for you and the pet.  To be able to do that, you must be willing to tame multiple beasts.  You can't simply tame a level 10 beast, never tame any other beasts and have him be your pet up to level 70 and expect him to be very effective because he'll still be using a level 1 skills.  What you need to do is find beasts that have higher level inate skills than what you have already learned and tame them.  Once you have learned the higher level skill, you don't necessarily need to keep that pet, you could actually dismiss it and then teach your pet the higher level skill.  This is why pets can be "stored" at the stables.  If you wish to keep your current pet but would like to tame another beast to learn that beasts skills, put your current pet in the stables, tame the other beast and use that pet until you learn the skills he's able to teach you.  This only takes a few minutes.  Then dismiss that pet and get your old pet out of the stables and teach your pet the new skills you have learned.  Understand?

    So how do you find out what skills a beast has anyway?  Glad you asked, well the answer is the hunter skill called beast lore.  When you target a beast and cast beast lore on it, it will tell you what skills that beast has to offer.  In this way you can tame different beasts and learn their skills and teach them to your pets, just be aware that certain types of pets can only learn certain types of skills.

    I went thru this because this is the most difficult thing to learn for Hunters in my opinion.  The whole notion of taming various beasts to learn their skills and then teach those skills to their pets is not well understood by many when they are first learning how to use a Hunter.  I know I didn't really understand it untill I was a level 60 hunter and then had to go tame some beasts with the proper skill levels to train my pet.

    One last comment about learning skills and that is that you don't have to learn every skill level for a skill.  For instance if you learn level 9 bite, there's really no reason to learn level 8 bite unless your pet is not a high enough level to use level 9 bite but he is high enough to use level 8.

    Also there are some skills that the hunter can learn only by talking with a beast trainer.  Don't confuse this with the hunter trainer, they are 2 seperate NPC's although usually there will be a beast trainer located close to a hunter trainer.  Talk to them whenever you talk to the hunter trainer and see if there are any additional beast skills that you can learn.

    Allocating your beasts skill points is a whole other discussion in itself.  Hunters are one of the more complex classes to use, but don't let that put you off because once you learn the intracies of the hunter class, they are one of the most versatile classes in the game and also one of the fastest leveling classes in the game.

    Thanks Pappy!

    I still feel very n00b about pets though. Tonight I tamed an Owl and later dismissed it. After I did that I whistled to re-summon it, but the system said I had no pet.

    How do some people have upwards of 20-30 pets? I thought after I dismissed it, I would get an icon in my inventory indicating that I still had a pet that I could later summon.

    Do you pretty much have to have your pet out all the time in WoW? Is the only place you can "store" your pet a stable? I think the stable has a pretty small amount of storage though.

  • Pappy13Pappy13 Member Posts: 2,138

     

    Originally posted by Sieges


     Thanks Pappy!
     I still feel very n00b about pets though. Tonight I tamed an Owl and later dismissed it. After I did that I whistled to re-summon it, but the system said I had no pet.
    How do some people have upwards of 20-30 pets? I thought after I dismissed it, I would get an icon in my inventory indicating that I still had a pet that I could later summon.
    Do you pretty much have to have your pet out all the time in WoW? Is the only place you can "store" your pet a stable? I think the stable has a pretty small amount of storage though.

     

    No, people don't have 20 pets, the most I think you can have at anytime is 3; 2 in the stables and 1 with you.  They may have tamed 20-30, but you can only keep 3 at a time.

    Did you dismiss the pet or abandon it?  When you dismiss a pet, it will come back when you blow the whistle, but if you abandon the pet, it's gone for good.  Abandon pet I think is an option when you click on the pet itself,  to dismiss a pet you have to use the dismiss pet skill which should be in your skills list.  There really isn't much need to dismiss a pet anymore though.  Sometimes in an instance it's good to dismiss a pet if you are going to jump down from someplace because the pet will try to find a path down to you and it may take him thru mobs and aggro them, so dismiss the pet, jump down and then call him back.  Other than that, I can't think of much reason to dismiss a pet.  Pets are automatically dismissed if you mount up or if you get too far away from them and this can actually be used to your advantage.  If you are being chased by mobs and don't want to fight them, you can tell your pet to fight and keep on running.  When you get out of range of your pet, he'll be automatically dismissed and you can just call him to you, just be careful he doesn't get killed in the process.

    And there's really no reason to have that many pets.  Most pets fall into 1 of like 3 categories, either offensive, defensive or all around.  Cats and birds tend to be more offensive, Bears and Turtles are more defensive, but really it's a very small distinction, it just means some have a bit more armor and a do a bit less damage and vice versa.  Basically you can pretty much look at all animals as essentially the same.  The only thing that really sets them apart is the skills they use and how you distribute their talent points.  There are a few pets that do have pretty unique skills that some people like to use, for instance I have a pet that has a skill that lets him teleport to the target called warp.  I like it because it's very fast getting to the target and I don't have to wait for it, but you can only get that skill on like 2 different beasts and they are above level 60 I believe, so it's not something you'll have to worry about for a while.

    image

  • Sieges111Sieges111 Member Posts: 120

    Originally posted by Pappy13
    No, people don't have 20 pets, the most I think you can have at anytime is 3; 2 in the stables and 1 with you.  They may have tamed 20-30, but you can only keep 3 at a time.
    Did you dismiss the pet or abandon it?  When you dismiss a pet, it will come back when you blow the whistle, but if you abandon the pet, it's gone for good.  Abandon pet I think is an option when you click on the pet itself,  to dismiss a pet you have to use the dismiss pet skill which should be in your skills list.  There really isn't much need to dismiss a pet anymore though.  Sometimes in an instance it's good to dismiss a pet if you are going to jump down from someplace because the pet will try to find a path down to you and it may take him thru mobs and aggro them, so dismiss the pet, jump down and then call him back.  Other than that, I can't think of much reason to dismiss a pet.  Pets are automatically dismissed if you mount up or if you get too far away from them and this can actually be used to your advantage.  If you are being chased by mobs and don't want to fight them, you can tell your pet to fight and keep on running.  When you get out of range of your pet, he'll be automatically dismissed and you can just call him to you, just be careful he doesn't get killed in the process.
    And there's really no reason to have that many pets.  Most pets fall into 1 of like 3 categories, either offensive, defensive or all around.  Cats and birds tend to be more offensive, Bears and Turtles are more defensive, but really it's a very small distinction, it just means some have a bit more armor and a do a bit less damage and vice versa.  Basically you can pretty much look at all animals as essentially the same.  The only thing that really sets them apart is the skills they use and how you distribute their talent points.  There are a few pets that do have pretty unique skills that some people like to use, for instance I have a pet that has a skill that lets him teleport to the target called warp.  I like it because it's very fast getting to the target and I don't have to wait for it, but you can only get that skill on like 2 different beasts and they are above level 60 I believe, so it's not something you'll have to worry about for a while.
    Thanks again!

    Will I have a visual indicator somewhere that I still have a pet after I Dismiss it? I know I dismissed it yesterday (not Abandoned), so I don't know where he went.

    Also, can pets be traded with other players at all?

  • pavs6453pavs6453 Member Posts: 15

    To the OP:

    I have a level 24-25 hunter, and my pet right now is a cat. One of the enemies that can be found in darnassus. If i may make a suggestion, get one of those as pet. Their health at higher levels is really good, it has decent defense, and can dish out a good amount of damage. An Owl, although i have not played with that pet, has been told to me by a friend to be bad in combat. If you get the chance, try getting a cat as a pet. you won't be disappointed.

    P.S.--for your talent build, go the beast mastery way. It turns your pet into a tank basically, but also the talent in survival that allows you to hit at a farther range. Money is also pointless, so spend our money on new skills whenever you can (from a trainer--if you can't find one, then track one in a major town.)

    Hope this helps.

  • Pappy13Pappy13 Member Posts: 2,138

     

    Originally posted by Sieges


     


    Thanks again!
     
    Will I have a visual indicator somewhere that I still have a pet after I Dismiss it? I know I dismissed it yesterday (not Abandoned), so I don't know where he went.
    Also, can pets be traded with other players at all?



    No there's no visual indicator, but you won't need one because there's no way to lose a pet while it's dismissed.  It will always come back.

     

    There is one exception I believe and this may have been what happened to your pet.  Was this one of the pets that you tamed as part of the quest chain to learn how to tame pets?  If so, then I believe those pets are timed and they will abandon you after a short time because you have not learned how to feed a pet yet.  The last quest in the chain sends you to a pet trainer to learn how to feed your pet I believe.  After you have finished that part of the quest, then a pet will stay with you while dismissed.  The only way to lose a pet without abandoning it is if it loses enough loyalty. 

    No, no trading of pets.  Pets can only be tamed.

    image

  • Hoobley_deletedHoobley_deleted Member Posts: 677

    petopia.brashendeavors.net/

     

    Follow that link, it's got everything you need to know and maybe even a little bit more!

     

    Enjoy.

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