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.

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.

A faster method
An alternative method is to take 3 heroes (be sure to un-equip any skills and weapons they have) with you and give them all Flesh of My Flesh. If you have them, take Norgu and Gwen and raise their Fast Casting to as high as it will go. Other good heroes to bring are Olias, Master of Whispers, Livia, Razah and Xandra. The idea is to lower your heroes' health to around 50-150 hp. The cheapest method to do this is to have them oversacrifice and give them some Death Penalty. Blood is Power is ideal for this, though do not forget to disable it on the heroes after you no longer need it. For the mesmer heroes, Spirit Light can be used, although it's slower. The other way is to put lots of Superior Runes on their armor. You will definitely want to do this with Norgu and Gwen if you take them, as they will be doing most of the resurrecting.

Next find a zone outside an outpost in the area where the pet of your choice is found, that is free of spawns and wandering patrols. Use flags to place your heroes apart in a roughly triangular fashion and make sure they are all set to Avoid. Make sure you don't flag your heroes too close to anything the pet can chase them into and body block them, as it will go after one of your heroes for the brief period you're dead. Take off your armor and you are ready to aggro the pet. It may be difficult at first to get the pet to attack you, but as long as you stick close to it, in the end your lack of armor will make you a more interesting target than your low health heroes. As soon as it starts to attack you, stand still and wait, or help it along by doing some sacrificing yourself. The moment it kills you, a mesmer hero will do a lightning fast resurrect and bring you back but with only very little health.

This method forgoes the need to wear low level armor with superior runes, while achieving the same effect. Also there is no need to trap one of your heroes on something as described in the method above. The alternating of the pet between killing you and your hero actually slows down the leveling, because heroes only give experience the first time they are killed (I spent ages trying to get the pet to level by killing only my heroes, yet it never leveled above level 5, despite it having killed all my heroes several times). The other benefit is that after the first few kills, you will be at a suitably low health that you can safely walk away from the computer, should you so desire, although for the fastest result it is advised that you regulate your heroes' health by taking off runes if their health gets too low and as the pet gets stronger. Using this method you can death level a pet from level 5 to level 15 in around 35 minutes.

An even faster method
Using one hero, you can accomplish death leveling faster than the previous methods. Using a single mesmer henchman (either Norgu or Gwen work), you can death level by 'exploiting' the aggro radius of the creature you wish to level. There are only two skills required for the mesmer henchman: Flesh of My Flesh, and Generous Was Tsungrai. You need to put the mesmer's attributes at 12 restoration and 12 fastcasting, making sure that he has no superior or major runes of any sort. The player needs to have two low armor pieces, both with superior runes on them. These pieces should preferably be on the arms, the legs, or on the head. Also optional: a vampiric weapon with no health bonus or armor.

Reach a point where you can access the creature you wish to tame, and have a large area around it in which there are no patrols. If you need to clear patrols, just bring more heroes or henchmen, as you will not be resurrecting from a shrine. Once you have the area secured, kill yourself and the mesmer hero until both of you have 60 Death Penalty. At this point, you should have 42 health, the mesmer should have roughly 190. Next, aggro the creature you wish to tame and run until the creature can't run anymore. You should be roughly a minimap away from where the creature originally started. Find the 'line' that the creature won't cross, and stand on it so that the creature can still hit you. Position the mesmer hero so that he is behind the line; this way the creature will not attack him.

And there you have it. The creature should kill you in several hits in the beginning of the leveling, and as it gets higher should kill in roughly two hits (a vampiric weapon ensures 2 hit kills). If you're having problems with your mesmer hero dieing for some inexplicable reason, bring a second one. He is DPed out so that he can manage his health using Generous Was Tsungrai, but if he fails to do so, having backup is not a bad idea. This method takes a little under 1 hour to level a creature from lvl 5 to lvl 20 in Hard Mode, and a little under 20 minutes for lvl 5 to lvl 15 in Hard Mode. This is, of course, counting out the time it takes to clear a spot to deathlevel in.

Fastest method
This method involves three heroes, and one tamer (you). Two mesmer heroes should be present with ritualist secondaries using Flesh of My Flesh and Generous Was Tsungrai. They should be at 12 fast casting and 12 restoration, 16 FC if you're going to be doing this a lot. The other hero should be a monk, with Word of Healing and Signet of Rejuvenation. Max his divine favor and healing, runes aren't necessary. Set all three of these heroes to peaceful. You should bring three armor pieces with superiors, or two armor pieces and a -50 cesta. Skills don't matter, as long as you have Charm Animal.

Find the creature you wish to tame, clear an area so that patrols will not interfere, and aggro it. Let yourself get to 60 death penalty, so that when you are ressurected by the mesmers, you die immediately. If you're using a cesta, you will also need a vampiric weapon as you will have 1 health. Every time you die, the creature gains experience, but because it isn't killing you for levels, and thus not dealing much damage, it will likely evolve to Elder.

This method evolves pets to Elder, but is quite probably the fastest method yet. Leveling a creature from lvl 5 to lvl 20 takes under ten minutes, leveling from lvl 5 to lvl 20 takes less than 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.