Pets and Useless Stats

Talents:

It’s taken a long time for some things about pets to sink in with me.  I finally realized some pets have the possibility for many “useless” stats and some pets arrive with no such possibility.  And once I played around with it for a while I realized I’m not going to bother even starting training any more pets with many useless talent possibilities.  Nor will I ever buy a pet like that again.

Those useless talents actually can add some big boosts to key stats and they not only boost your pet’s abilities but also boost your stats like damage or critical, etc.  Some knowledgeable wizards make a point of getting certain of those talents and some have pets they’ve carefully hatched to have ONLY those talents.  They want the stat boosts.

I generally want my five slots to have other things, so I don’t favor them, but since they added the pet jewels, I most often add a jewel with “useless” stats like adding 25 to intellect and 25 to power.  Once you’ve maxed those traits, the jewel starts adding to stats and, for instance, I’ve noticed the pets with those enhancements cast heals more often.  I’ve written more about this here.

The picture above shows a pet (Seraph) with three “useless” possibilities — all you have to do is look for the smiling pig faces and you can see at a glance if you’re looking at a pet you want.  In this case the Seraph arrived in a pack and manifested all three useless talents).

I’m posting about this today because there’s a sale on Earthwalker pets right now and I want you to save your moneys unless you just want the stat boosts from useless/selfish talents.  I didn’t understand enough about all this to realize it when I wasted a lot of crowns to get one and didn’t know enough to look up the stats (do a search on Wizard101 and the pet name; the page with the stats pretty much always comes out on top of the search list).

Here’s Earthwalker:

Post-Update Talents:

See all the pig faces up there (five of them)?  Those are all the largely useless talents.  I’ve explained more about those talents in another post.  While they add small boosts to some stats and may give you a boost to, say, your damage stats and, if your pet ALSO manifests Pain Giver (or, in this case, Life Giver), can boost the percentage, they’re really not the pet talents most of us looking for.

When you see lots of pig faces, it’s a pretty sure sign that your pet is going to have at least one or two useless pet talents.  And to add insult to injury you often get a few of those selfish talents and then none of the talents that would be boosted by them.

I wasted time getting the Earthwalker to Epic and this is what I had to show for it:

Crappy Earthwalker

That’s a 10,000 crown pet — even on a half price sale the potential for this pet is so negligible it’s really disturbing that they charge for it. He’s more like a pet to put in a pack.

Now some people spend eons working on hatching those pets with better pets but I’ve found the easiest way to get a pet with good talents is to start with one who doesn’t have any possibility of a selfish talent. [Bear in mind, I LOATHE pet games so it may take me years to get any pets who are multiple generations down the line]

Morgan D., my level 76 Death wizard, has a pet Fierce Hound, Sugar, who came with an Epic Bundle.  She has one of those talent lists with no selfish talents AND the good news that they ALWAYS get Spritely:

Note: 1st Generation Fierce Hounds will always get Spritely at teen.

Talents:

I would prefer Death Giver and Death Trap to Feinting Spell (just gives a card) and Death Proof ad something other than Mana Gift, but I hatched with some other pets to improve the talent pool and then managed to move some of those talents to a few other pets who wound up with a satisfactory set of talents.

Sugar at Mega

The school pets you get at certain higher levels can be okay (they’re also the pets that can get you hybrids through hatching).  Rylee W’s Forest Lord turned out okay though I’ve created better pets so I don’t use it.  As you can see this pet arrives with no selfish talents possible:

Talents:

Sir Oscar came out quite well:

Mega Forest Lord

Again, I would prefer the abilities to cast Life Giver, Life Shot and Life Trap over the Life Shield, Health and Mana Gift, but compared to the pets I’ve spent ages training only to get a bunch of completely useless stuff this is pretty good given that pretty much no first gen pet arrives with a talent pool containing 5 talents you’d want.

Most of the pets that come in packs have two or more useless talent possibilities and I haven’t had much luck with getting anything worthwhile from training them.  A big exception was a pet Smith who showed up in the only pack of Purreau’s Plentiful Pet Provisions I ever bought and quickly manifested the ability to cast Fortify along with a couple of other good talents.  I’ve also not gotten dropped pets before level 50 who had much to recommend them.

The big point with which I’m hoping I may save some of you some time and money is to check the stats on any pet you’re considering buying or training (maybe one you got in a drop or a pack).  Sometimes when a pet is first introduced it takes a few weeks for the stats page to be filled in but generally you can run a search and see what you’d be getting.  If the pet has lots of possibilities of talents you don’t want, don’t waste your money or take the time to train it beyond adult (when you can then start hatching it with pets who do have the right talents.

If you’re on a tight budget and your only pets are from lower level drops or from packs, your best shot at getting a better pet is probably to find someone who has a great mega or ultra pet with whom to hatch.  If you have a friend who is willing to keep hatching through several generations you can wind up with a good pet.  This method only costs gold so I’d recommend it as the budget-minded way to get a talented pet.

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