Guide to evolving a dire pet

Introduction
A dire Animal companion is an ideal offensive weapon, it deals 15% more damage than a 'normal' pet, but on the other side it has 60 Health Points less. To evolve a pet to dire, it must learn to deal damage, 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 Agressive. 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.

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

For an alternative ranger build, see R/any Tank Master