Guide to evolving a dire pet

A dire Animal companion is an ideal offensive companion- it will deals 15% more damage than a 'normal' pet, at the expense of having 60 less Health Points. To evolve a pet to dire, the pet must do a fair share of damage-dealing, but it must not get used to taking damage. So the main idea is that the Pet-Master takes all the damage while the pet kills foes.

The object of this guide is to Power level your pet as fast as possible.



Equipment
Use a Totem Axe or any single handed weapon Of Enchanting and a Protective Icon, possibly with +12 Energy and some Health, but no Armor bonus. Use only a Tamer's Mask of Superior Beast Mastery rune and some Gloves or Boots of Minor Expertise. Any armor on these two pieces is fine, even AL 70 (so you don't need to buy low-AL armor). All other armor should be removed. You will now have only 2 Pips Energy regeneration, but that's enough.

If you want to spend money, you can buy a full set of armor from an Armor Crafter in the Shing Jea Monastery. This grants you more comfort in terms of energy as well its regeneration.

If you like it more challenging, you can even go in with only the mask, the Totem Axe and no icon. This way, most errors will be lethal.

Getting to Level 15

 * 1) Enter the Elona Reach mission.
 * 2) Cast Balthazar's Spirit on yourself.
 * 3) Talk to the priest to get the Crystal Shard and drop it immediately.
 * 4) Select yourself by pressing 'F'.
 * 5) Do NOT aggro the two Minotaurs, else they may sneak up from behind and attack your pet
 * 6) Run down the slope to the 'pitch', right in the group of minotaurs. DO NOT GO BACK, else the pet will be attacked. If the pet is attacked, zone out immediately.
 * 7) Shortly before you attack, activate Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond. From now on, do not move, as your pet may be attacked
 * 8) Use all your pet attacks, as often as possible
 * 9) Keep up both enchantments and Call of Haste
 * 10) When there are only a few minotaurs left, you may start running low on energy. Do not use any pet attacks except Ferocious Strike, otherwise you will not have enough Energy to keep up your enchantments.
 * 11) When all minotaurs are dead, zone out and restart the mission.

At Level 11, the pet should do its first evolution, to Aggressive. At Level 15, the second evolution should take place, to Dire.

Variants
Any Pet Attacks can be inserted in these Slots, but these mentioned above do probably the most damage.

Level 15 and On
Once your pet has evolved a second time it doesn't matter how you continue to level it up to retain its evolution. So to minimize the amount of time you spend killing minotuars to level your pet further you can use this build. With this build, retribution deals damage to not one but all of the Minotuars attacking you, which makes for a quicker battle. You will have no energy regen, but you will be constantly fed energy by being hit anyway. Just proceed as normal and once you have the aggro of all the Minotuars use your spirit of Extinction. However, make sure to throw Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond on you before you put down Edge of Extinction because Spirit Bond doesn't last long and Edge of Extinction takes a few seconds to use. Eventually the Minotuars will start falling and cause a chain reaction of deaths due to Edge of Extinction giving you a lot of experience all at once.

To minimize the amount of time even further, go killing Mountain Trolls outside Droknar's Forge. Run to the cave, and then aggro all the trolls. It does not matter if your pet gets slain by Trolls or Avicaris outside the cave. You need to cast Edge of Extinction before you aggro any Trolls because these beasts have Disrupting Chop.

To get easier and faster to the cave, try Run as One.

Attributes and Skills
See Mo/any Spirit Bonder for further information.

Follow the instructions above.

Optimal Locations
Try some variation of the R/any Tank Master, you want probably some Energy Management, Healing or Armor Bonus.

Another Pet Attack and some Protection or armor boost from the primary class should do well

Gates of Kryta
Enter the mission, you will encounter some Mergoyle Wavebreakers.

Alternatively, you may also exit Gates of Kryta (Location) to Scoundrel's Rise. Make sure you do not have the quest To Kryta: Journey's End active in your quest log as this will spawn additional grasping ghouls and zombie necromancers that pose a problem for pet leveling. Avoid all enemies other than Mergoyle Wavebreakers. When the narrow path opens into the beach area, you should not fight more than three additional groups of Mergoyle Wavebreakers in order to avoid other enemies.


 * Please note that the pet evolution in your party window will be updated upon the next departure from an outpost.

Attributes and Skills
These are the minimum attribute loadings that you should consider. Spread any remaining attribute points across Beast Mastery for pet damage output, Wilderness Survival for self healing and Expertise in that order. Major or superior runes are not really necessary, excepting a rune of Superior Vigor.

Equipment
Full Druid's Armor for energy management along with a Tamer's Mask. Any Staff with +10 or more attributes. Health or additional energy Staff upgrades would be most useful. Ghial's Staff +15 Energy works very well.

Usage
This location provides the traditional pet levelling challenge. Here you face Level 10 Mountain Minotaurs but will need to avoid any other type of creature present on the map. You can successfully level up a new pet from level 5 to level 15 so long as you minimise damage to the pet and avoid pet deaths. If your pet is receiving damage warp out of the map and reenter.

The process is fairly repetitive and will take approximately 6hrs of playing. An estimate of the number of Minotaurs slain in order to level a pet from level 5 to level 15 would be in the region of 250+.

The principal technique is to maximise the damage that Enraged Lunge inflicts by constantly having 4 other Beast Mastery skills recharging when casting it. This really speeds up levelling of the pet and minimises exposure to damage by dispatching the foes more quickly. Cast Troll Unguent whenever you health begins to drop and use Throw Dirt when mobbed by three or more beasts. this gives you a brief respite to cast self healing or indeed to warp out of the map if things are getting tough. Order of casting of the Beast Mastery Skills initially should be left to right, but adjustments in game will be necessary to maintain the four skills constantly recharging. This is where a staff is a necessity.

Crucial to success is trying to aggro no more than 4 Mountain Minotaurs at a time. 5 beasts will present you with two problems: character health management and avoiding the pet taking damage. Should you wish to tackle larger numbers, then consider dropping one of the pet damage skills and replace it with a defensive stance skill like Dodge or Whirling Defense. if your secondary is Elementalist throw some points into Earth Magic and take Ward Against Melee in place of one of the pet damage skills.

Equip your staff and enter the explorable area, keeping to the right hand rock face. Look on your radar and from the top right you should see a group of Minotaurs moving from right to left. Move towards this mob but do not worry if you can not catch them before they enter the ravine, apparently joining a larger mob. If you did catch the running mob move forwards towards the mob and stop. If the mob does not enter your aggro move a few steps forwards and stop again. The idea is to keep your pet behind you. Once aggroed the mob will move towards you and likely be spaced at intervals around you. The bigger the mob, the more you will be surrounded unless you try and use the terrain to narrow the mobs approach. If you like you can target a beast and attack with your staff, the damage unless you have any attribute points against that type of staff will be minimal, allowing your pet to inflict the most damage and hence get the experience points. You will need to target a beast to use Throw Dirt. All the Beast Mastery attacks do not require you to target a beast, the pet's AI does the job for you. Cast the Beast attacks, rinsing and repeating the casting as per the above, not forgetting to use Troll Unguent earlier rather than later. If your pet begins to take damage DO NOT RUN!!! Warp back to Ice Tooth Cave and start again. After defeating a mob, regen before tackling another.

Using A Resurrection Shrine
The concept is to level the animal before successfully charming it, as your pet. Start charming an animal, but cancel the action once the animal gets aggressive. Run to a Resurrection Shrine and let the animal repeatly kill you, until achieving level 15. At level 15 the animal is dire, charm it for your dire pet.

This method was temporarily removed from the game, but is currently available again.

Alternate Method of Training a Charmable Level 5 Animal to Dire
Using heroes to resurrect you will decrease the amount of required time for reaching level 15. The following method can take approximately 75 minutes and 125 deaths, depending on which pet you are charming, and which area you are in.

Before proceeding, take any current pet to a tamer - you will be starting with a new wild animal for this.

A minimal party requires at least a Ranger or Ranger secondary, with Charm Animal, plus one hero monk or secondary monk with Resurrect. Using an additonal monk or healer can come in handy for when the time comes to charm the beast. If you are planning a charming run into an area that needs to be cleared of mobs, fill out the party as needed with additional heroes and henchies.

Go to the area with the charmable animal of your choice, carefully clearing out all the foes in the area and any patrols without killing your animal of choice in the fray, pulling mobs away from the animal if necessary.

When all red dots are eliminated (check for pop-ups around the radar as well), use your group flag to set the henchies far away, just out of or on the edge of radar range.

Use your #1 flag to set your hero near the target animal. Set your hero to avoid combat with only Resurrect active; disable all other skills (shift-click).

Remove all your armor, and any hold items that give + Health (or if you happen to be a 55 monk or necro, use your 55 armor set). If one of your professions is Necromancer, you can sacrifice your health with a skill bar similar to the following:

Target and wand (or hit) the animal one time, and stop attacking immediately (press "S" or click the ground).

Allow the animal to kill you. The first time will take the longest as you are at full health. When your hero resurrects you, double-click your hero's name in the party window to follow him and get between him and the beast to get its attention again. If you are at a higher health level than your hero you may have to wand or attack the beast again to draw it away - be careful - only hit it once. It will not regain any health during this entire session and you do not want to kill it.

By the time you have died 4-5 times, you should not have to ever attack the animal again - you should be low enough on health that you can get its attention simply by stepping near it. Often it will spot you as soon as you rez with no effort required on your part at all.

Die, wait for resurrect, get the animal to attack you again (move/follow hero if needed to get between them), die, wait for rez, and repeat this cycle until the target animal reaches level 15.

No pet evolution will be displayed on the bar even when he levels to 15. At this point, it's time to start enabling your Hero's healing spells, and putting your clothes back on. You might die another time or two before you accomplish all this - don't panic. You could keep dying for another hour and it wouldn't make any difference.

Just allow your hero to heal you by enabling his healing spells (do NOT cancel the flags - the other henchies might kill your beastie) and get your armor up enough that you can then use Charm Animal.

After the Charm is successful, the Dire evolution will be displayed.

With the new patches, you can go afk and the animal will still level up.The monk companion will kite the animal. If you stand nearby the flag, the animal will eventually realize that you're not kiting and will attack you (killing you in one hit). Be sure that your monk companion carries self-healing (and that you have -hp gear so that you'll die in one hit and can't get healed). I used two monks with Glimmer of Light and Resurrection Chant, and my pet went from 5 to 15/dire in about two hours (I'm level 15).

As a Warrior with Two Superior Axe Runes on 50 Armor Gloves and Boots, my crocodile went from level 5-15 in under an hour. Dunkoro used the Resurrect Skill as well as Healing TOuch (for himself) Highly recommend this method.

Dire Pets for Heroes
Heroes can charm their own animals. As of December 2, 2006, heroes are unable to turn in their pets at a tamer. Accordingly, each hero is stuck with the first charmed animal. For that reason, it is particularly important to consider the matter of evolution prior to charming.

If a hero charms an animal that has not evolved yet, it will most likely turn into a hearty pet because the player is unable to clearly control the evolution.

If a hero has not charmed an animal yet, the following method will always result in a dire pet for the hero - regardless of the unevolved type of animal:


 * 1) Equip Charm Animal on the skillbar of Hero 1 that will charm the animal and deactivate the skill by holding Shift and clicking the skill.
 * 2) Add a Hero 2 of your choice that has equipped Resurrect. Hero 2 ideally carries no other spells (except perhaps Healing Signet, which will help keep the hero alive as the animal evolves) and has all attributes reduced to zero. (The less health and energy restored to you by Resurrect, the quicker the leveling process will be.)
 * 3) Add another hero and henchmen to your party as you see fit.
 * 4) Approach the area of the animal the hero will charm and clear it of enemies.
 * 5) After clearing the area, set Hero 1 and Hero 2 to Avoid Combat.
 * 6) Move your entire party by means of the "Order henchmen and your heroes" flag to the edge of your radar.
 * 7) Use the flag for Hero 1 to return the hero to your position. Click Charm Animal in  the skillbar of Hero 1. IMPORTANT: Hero 1 must not complete that skill. In order to prevent it, use the flag for Hero 1 to order the hero into a different position as soon as the animal label turned from green to red. (Note: as of the 1/11 update, it appears you may sometimes be able to turn an animal aggressive by targeting it and attacking with a wand or staff. You may wish to try this first, as it is easier than interrupting a hero's Charm Animal skill. Alternately, you could take Charm Animal yourself and disrupt the skill after you begin casting. This reduces the possibility of error.)
 * 8) Order Hero 1 to the edge of your radar and position yourself in such a manner that the animal starts attacking you.
 * 9) Take off your armor (required) and equip a vampiric weapon (optional). As the animal attacks you, order Hero 2 by means of the respective flag into your aggro circle (Resurrect range).
 * 10) Every time you die, the animal will start attacking Hero 2. Hero 2 will resurrect you and run from the animal at all times.
 * 11) After the animal has reached level 15, order Hero 1 by means of the respective flag into your aggro circle and click Charm Animal in the skillbar of Hero 1.
 * 12) Hero 1 charms the animal and it is added to your party list as "Dire ..."

Notice: The animal does not display the evolution throughout the progress to level 15, but will continue to appear as "Aggressive ..." until added to the party. That is entirely normal. The progress to level 15 takes approximately one hour. When the animal reaches approx. level 18 and has not been charmed yet, it becomes increasingly able to kill both the player and Hero 2. That is not a major problem as Hero 1 can still be directed to approach by means of the respective flag and complete the charm.

This method works as well for all leveling purposes - both for hero pets and for player pets - and you can be AFK for the earlier part of the process.

Related Articles

 * Animal Companion


 * Pet Evolution Statistics


 * Additional builds with other class combinations, see Guide to evolving a Dire Pet/Builds.


 * Alternative ranger build, see R/any Tank Master