Death-leveling animal companions



For already high level players, taming a new animal companion can begin a long, tedious, slow, and painful process of leveling that pet up to 20 for the maximum potency of Beast Mastery. Death-leveling is a fabulous technique used primarily in pre-searing to obtain the Defender of Ascalon title, but is certainly valid elsewhere.

The Technique
By limiting health and armor values and allowing enemies to continuously kill him at a resurrection shrine where he will resurrect and be killed numerous times, it is possible for a character to level-up one or more foes.

If an untamed pet is aggroed to the resurrection shrine and kills that player repeatedly, it can be leveled efficiently to level 20 before being charmed. This can save the character acres of time lost where the low level pet is insufficient for beast mastery builds and can be successfully done while AFK, so long as one respects the limits of the ungodly error 59.

Limitations

 * Some tamable animals are not likely to spawn close enough to an existing resurrection shrine to be death-leveled efficiently.
 * Also, some pets will run away from the shrine, depending on spawn locations, while you are resurrecting, limiting the reality of death-leveling while AFK.
 * Solo-builds in high level areas (even with a dead pet) can yield greater efficiency if the player has the access, the skill, or the time.

A new look at death leveling
With Nightfall released, there is a new way to do this. It is done by taking two or three heroes (one if you're not going to be AFK at all). You should have armor with the lowest protection possible, with runes to reduce your health to roughly 50-100 health (after 60 DP), the same for your heroes. They need a res, preferably Flesh of My Flesh with 12 ranks in Restoration Magic and Gaze from Beyond. You need Charm Animal, and Whirling Defense (if you're a ranger secondary, bring some other evasive moves that extend out to 10 seconds).

Find the pet you want, and make sure that any patrols in the area have been eliminated. Then find a place to trap one of your heroes. This can be hard to do but is required or else your hero will run around, taking an extremely long time to die. Once you've trapped one, set both heroes to avoid combat. Force the hero flagged into a corner to use Gaze from Beyond on the pet. Once the pet starts attacking the hero stand behind the pet so it will be forced to attack you once the first hero dies. Set up the second hero within casting range of both you and the first hero. If done right you can safely leave your computer, and the pet should never kill both you and your first hero at the same time, and should never attack the second hero.

Don't expect this to work perfectly the first time.

Other Uses
This method can be used not only by characters higher level than their pets, but also for characters in pre-searing. Characters in pre-searing can quite easily death-level Striders to 6 levels their elder (up to a maximum, of course, of 20). Indeed, this is a valid way to amplify your potency in pre-searing by a great factor.