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 them at a resurrection shrine, where they will be resurrected and then killed numerous times, it is possible for a character to level-up one or more foes. Companions may leave the resurrection shrine causing this method to be useless, With the release of Nightfall hero's set to Avoid Combat will keep the pet busy until you are resurrected.

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.
 * Some pets in Eye of the North are considered NPC's and will not attack you, even when being charmed, making them immune to death-leveling.
 * No pet can presently be death-leveled up to 4 more levels than it's master. This is important because the amount of damage the pet deals will be different with its level. For more information, see Charm animal

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.

The key point here is that if character X has 1 hp and then dies, then resurrecting X with a skill that gives less than 50% health will immediately kill X again. Some examples of such skills are restore life (with low healing prayers attribute) and resurrect.

Getting 1 hp on a character is easy, simply die (using a sacrifice skill such as Blood is Power) several times while wearing armor with many superior runes.

In order to expedite things, use 2 mesmer heroes with high fast casting (reduces the resurrection skill cast time by ~50%) and Healer's Boon (another 50% reduction in cast time for restore life). The third hero can be a Blood is Power necro to feed energy into the resurrectors. If at the end of the process you wish to be resurrected and not die immediately then at least one hero should have a resurrection skill that gives more than 50% health to use at that time (should be disabled until then).

The entire tactic is as follows: get to the pet you want. station heroes and yourself there. Wear low hp armor and kill yourself using a sacrifice skill several times until you are killed immediately upon being resurrected. When the pet is level 20, capture it. Leveling a pet from level 5 to 15 should take ~ 10 minutes and from level 5 to level 20 should take ~ 20 minutes.

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.

Another way is to bring with you Tahlkora and Dunkoro, with no healing spells and only Healers Boon and Res chant. Set them to avoid combat, and flag Dunkoro far away. Take all your armor off and aggro the pet. She will res you as soon as you die, and once you get to negative 60, it should be pretty quick. The pet would chase after her when you die, but she should run away. and the pet will go for you. Once the pet is a considably high level, (10-15) it should kill you pretty fast, and *might* not give Tahlkora's res time to recharge, so just in case this happens, let Dunkoro in the scene and allow him to res you. It is perfectly safe to be afk, for as long as you want.