Guide to evolving a dire pet

A Dire Pet is the ideal offensive companion. It will deal the most damage of all pet evolutions, but at the expense of having less Health Points.

There are two different ways to obtain a dire pet:
 * 1) Tame an un-evolved pet and have it kill monsters in order to gain experience and consequently evolutions
 * 2) Allow a wild pet to gain experience and evolutions by repeatedly killing your character in a method known as 'Death Leveling' before taming it at a dire evolution.

Standard Pet Leveling
To evolve a pet to dire, the pet must deal high damage while taking the least amount of damage possible. Essentially your character tanks damage while the pet kills foes. For this, having as secondary profession as a Monk is very useful. Enchantments such as Life Barrier used in conjunction with protective beast master skills can reduce the damage your pet takes greatly. However, you need a balanced build that will keep you alive, give the pet a high damage output, and protect the pet from taking damage. Listed below are some ranger skills that are recommended to keep your pet alive and help it deal damage.

Suggested Skills Pet Protection Damage Dealing
 * (elite)
 * (elite)
 * (elite)
 * (elite)
 * (elite)
 * (elite)

Now that you have a skill bar setup, you can choose a place to farm the experience for your pet. Find a place with level 10-15 monsters that primarily deal direct damage, and try to stay away from mobs with mesmers, necromancers, and/or monks. Mesmer and necromancer hexes can make your pet's job more difficult, and monks will likely be able to out-heal your pet. Below are some suggested areas and groups of mobs.

Suggested Areas
 * The Minotaurs outside the Ice Tooth Cave.
 * The Mergoyle Wavebreakers outside the Gates of Kryta.
 * The Minotaurs at the beginning of the Elona Reach mission.
 * The Trolls outside Droknar's Forge.
 * The Mountain Yetis outside Seitung Harbor.
 * The Insects outside Yohlon Haven.
 * The Doppleganger in hard mode Augury Rock.
 * The Snow Wurms outside Boreal Station in Hard Mode.

Killing Without Damage
Life stealing and health degeneration are not considered damage and will not affect your pet's evolution. It is possible to quickly level a pet to dire by using conditions to degen enemies to death, or by creating a touch ranger to quickly kill enemies with life stealing.

Pet Death Leveling
The basis of this concept is to level the animal before successfully charming it as your pet. To do this start charming the animal to make it aggressive, then cancel the charm. Allow the animal to kill you repeatedly, giving it experience. An often desired side effect of this process is that (since the potential pet is taking no damage while killing you) a Dire evolution can easily be achieved.

Speeding up Death Leveling

 * Un-equip all of your armor and held items that increase your health or armor level. Equipping items that decrease your health or armor (such as the Grim Cesta from the Cities of Ascalon quest or Vampiric weapons) may be beneficial.
 * Altenatively use very low level armor and several superior runes to lower your HP even further.
 * Draw the animal to a resurrection shrine so that it will start to kill you again as soon as you resurrect.
 * If you don't mind staying at your computer to make repetitive actions, it can be beneficial to use sacrifice skills or frenzy to help the pet kill you even faster.
 * Bring heroes to use Resurrect on you as soon as you die, speeding up the process; since Resurrect gives you only 25% health, at 60% Death Penalty the potential pet will be killing you in half a dozen hits at most. This also enables you to death level a pet away from a resurrection shrine.
 * Bringing 2 heroes with Paragon secondary, no points in Leadership and Signet of Return will allow the hero to bring you to life with only 10% health, greatly speeding up the process as the pet in training will kill you in 2-3 hits.

Notes for Death Leveling with Heroes

 * If using heroes be certain to set them to Avoid Combat so they don't kill the animal. Don't allow the heroes to heal you, but ensure they can heal themselves. For example, heroes can be given Mending, cast it on themselves and then have it disabled.
 * If you accumulate too much death penalty while using superior runes and a hero to resurrect you, you will die instantly you are resurrected. The pet will still gain experience as if it had killed you, but will not continue to move toward a Dire Evolution. In addition it may be impossible for you to be resurrected permanently in order to charm the animal; to avoid this equip your hero with a disabled Resurrection Signet or Vengeance and use it when you wish to remain alive long enough to swap out your armor.
 * Equip your heroes with Troll Unguent so they can heal themselves. That way they won't be able to accidentally heal you.

Method Summary
Bring two heroes, with Resurrect, Rebirth, or Signet of Return at 0 Leadership if you have Nightfall, along with Resurrection Signet, disable all healing skills and the Resurrection Signet and set them to 'Avoid' for the duration of the death leveling. Reduce your health through whatever means you have available. When the pet reaches level 20 - most likely Dire if you have not used superior runes for instant death, most likely Elder or 'no evolution' if you have - disable the reusable resurrection skill, enable Resurrection Signet, and enable the healing and they will keep you alive long enough to re-equip and charm the pet.

Using these techniques it is possible to aquire a Level 20 Dire pet in as little as half an hour, especially if you choose a pet that can be found easily without aggroing any enemies.

Non-Dire Evolutions
If you desire an Elder pet this can be achieved by charming at level 15 (with the Aggressive evolution) then gaining experience with your pet without assigning any points into Beast Mastery or equipping pet attacks. The pet should deal very little damage, consequently switching evolutions and becoming Elder or 'no evolution'.

Death levelling is not suitable for obtaining a Hearty pet.

Suitable Pets

 * Polar Bears spawn close to Boreal Station usually away from any enemies.
 * Mountain Eagles spawn around the Resurrection Shrine north of Eye of the North
 * Lions and Lionesses spawn not far from the portal from Command Post into Jahai Bluffs. They are hostile but charmable; all but one will need to be killed before the process is begun. They do however spawn at level 12, making this an even quicker way to gain a level 20 pet.
 * Lynxes spawn at a Resurrection Shrine close to Lion's Arch. To get there from Lion's Arch go west across the bridge and north to the shrine. Kill all of the weak enemies around the area first.
 * Tigers spawn right outside of Maatu Keep in Pongmei Valley usually away from enemies.
 * A Black Wolf or a White Wolf will spawn at the Great Wolf Shrine just inside the cave west of Sifhalla. There are two patrolling enemies that should be killed at the mouth of the cave before commencing Death Leveling.

Leveling by Junundu
Death level the pet for some time and tame it before an evolution is achieved. Then enter and use the Junundu to kill enemies in an area such as the Sulfurous Wastes. [Note: the pet dies but takes no "damage"] By this process, the pet is able to give very large amounts of damage but does not receive any damage at all.

Using this method to level the pet, it will become aggressive at level 11 and dire at level 15. If either of these evolutions do not occur, then the pet was not allowed to do enough damage prior to charming it. The actual leveling can be done in hard mode and will take much less time than leveling the pet by killing enemies alone. Whether this method is quicker than pure death leveling is uncertain.

If a pet can not be Death-leveled properly, because of a lack of resurrection shrines or too many patrols, the best thing to do is to take it to a training ground with a Dummy. There, the pet can rack up damage (albeit with no experience) without taking any. After about 30 minutes of this, the pet should have enough damage that using standard Junundu leveling will cause it to evolve into a Dire pet. Without access to Nightfall, attacking a dummy will still increase the pet's damage given/damage received ratio, making standard pet leveling more effective.

Related Articles

 * Animal Companions
 * Pet Evolution Statistics (sub-section)
 * Pet attack skills quick reference