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Party management is a big part ofElin, and eventually you’ll reach the point where you can’t handle everything as a solo operator. Companions are good, but pets have their own advantages. Managing them comes with a whole host of additional complexity that isn’t always intuitive. Thankfully, the one resource that Elin gives in abundance is time to learn and grow.
What starts with the relative simplicity of being gifted a pet grizzly bear will quickly evolve into a complex mess of breeding, genetic engineering, and diet planning. Here’s everything you need to know to get started and raise a pet able to conquer the Nefias alongside you.
How To Collect Pets
There are a few different methods for collecting pets. The first one most players will encounter isFiama, whogifts you a creature of your choiceas part of the tutorial questline.
Further along the homestead questline, you’llencounter the Steel Dragon, Corgon, who can also be recruited. Animal tamers will sell an assortment of pets.
Outside of quests and vendors, you have a couple of options for gaining new critters. Capturing is easier than raising them from an egg, buthatched pets have stronger stat growththan their wild counterparts.
Regarding capturing a creature, you’ll receive monster balls, small orbs you canthrow at nearly defeated enemies to capture them. Common balls can appear in regular stores and are available at the prize counter of the Fortune Bell Casino. High-level balls can be purchased from Miral and Garokk’s workshop.
They can be thrown the same as any item or potion, and thehover menu will tell you if an enemy is too powerfulto be captured by the ball you’re using. you may then pick up the ball containing your new pet and throw it again to release it.
The other option for gaining new pets is tohatch them from fertilized eggs. These are rare but can be gotten in a few ways:
Fertilized eggs can be placed in a bed or incubator and hatched into a tame creature. Placing it in a bed can take a few days, andbe careful that you don’t eat it by accident.
How To Raise Your Pet’s Affinity
Growing affinity with a pet gives a few different benefits. The primary benefit is faster growth for characters at high affinity. Additionally, ahigh affinity lets you retrieve equipment you’ve given themwithout upsetting them.
Benefits
Adventuring
Completing quests and killing enemies togetherwill grow it naturally, but they’ll lose some affinity if they die.
Headpat
Worshipers of Horome can use this abilityto raise affinity with any character. It shares a cooldown with chatting but has no chance of reducing affinity.
Love Potions
Love potions givean instant large boost to affinity. you may blend it with food or throw the potion directly at them.These appear quite rarely, so to get them in quantity you’ll need to invest heavily in a drug dealer and spend influence on restocking them.
While visiting the drug dealer, be on the lookout for acid-proof liquids. These can be applied to your equipment tomake it immune to stat-decreasing acid damage.
How To Keep Fragile Pets Safe
You lose lots of affinity when your pet dies, and you have to wait a week for them to respawn. A good way around this is tolet them ride you using the Symbiosis skill.
The Symbiosis skill works similar to the Ride skill, but in reverse: Your pet will ride on top of you andthe majority of attacks will target you instead.It still has access to its abilities and can act normally, with a minor penalty to speed and cast success rates depending on your skill level.
The greatest advantage of symbiosis is thatyour symbiote pet cannot be killedeven if an enemy successfully targets it. When reduced to 0HP, it’ll be rendered unconscious until it heals, but will remain attached to you.
What To Feed Your Pet
Pets follow broadly the same rules as other companions for how their stats grow. You’ll need togive them a diet that represents the stats you want them to gain.
The gourmet feats are very helpful for knowing all the traits that foods have, but they aren’t strictly necessary.
Before trying to assign your pet a role, you’ll want to check what you’re working with to begin with.The stethoscope item is sold by Talesinger Farrisand lets you view the character sheets of friendly NPCs.
Stethoscopes are consumed on useand cost a good deal of Oren, so you’ll want to take a screenshot or otherwise note down the info you get.
From this you’ll be able to seewhat attributes your pet has, its potential to grow, and any traits it has inherited. The silver bell for example has the following standouts on its sheet:
From here you’re able tocreate a plan for what to feed it. In this case, endurance-raising foods won’t help since this diet relies on damage immunities for survival. Foods that improve its attack power will be multiplied by that high speed.
Pets are able to use equipment the same as humanoid companions and will arm themselves with the best gear they’re able to find. This does mean the kitten riding on your head can take the guns from an unlocked firearms drawer. If you don’t want them to do this, you caninstruct them not to use shared equipment.
How To Train Your Pet
Combat skills are gained through use, but if there’s a large disparity, you don’t need to nurse your kitten through level one dungeons while you wait for it to grow. Instead, you can use the gallows given during the tutorial quest:
Don’t worry about people dying while used as a communal punching bag:Your pets and townsfolk will always stop short of lethal damage.Take a fishing break and tune out the sounds of violence.
How To Teach Your Pet New Skills
Unlike your character,pets can’t learn a new level one skill by throwing platinum coins at the right trainer. You’ll need touse gene editingto give them any abilities they don’t start with. you may get these in a few ways:
The tool for gene editing is sold by Nino at the Tinker’s Camp. It costs a small fortune in gold bars so you’ll be hamstringing the development of your homestead if you try and buy it early on. Unless you’ve already found a gene you want to use, it’s normally best to wait until the late game.
You’ll alsoneed electricity to power it, needing you to steal, build, or wish for a generator.
Thesimpler genes cost fewer feat points, making them a tempting option if your only goal is teaching a skill. Activated abilities, such as fire breath or taunt, are expensive but open up a lot of options.
Once a creature gains a skill from a gene,it becomes able to start raising it normally.This makes those simple genes with one or two points in a skill very useful for raising a pet into a specific role.
