Elona+: Pet Guide by Kai

(Note: this guide is outdated as of Elona+ 2.01)

Pet Guide by Kai

Table of Contents
[1] Introduction
[2] Useful Items for Pet Owners
[3] What is Considered a Good Pet
[4] How To Get Pets
[5] How Many Pets
[6] Managing Your pets
[7] Adding Skills to Pets
[8] Leveling Pets
[9] Increasing Pet Skill Levels
[10] Increasing Pet Attributes
[11] Pet Equipment
[12] Special Actions and Traits for Pets
[13] Elona Custom's Improved AI
[14] Evochat, Sleep Sharing, Breakfast, Crafting
[15] Customizing Your Pet

Introduction [1]

This guide will hopefully answer commonly asked questions in regards to pets. Even though I say pets, pets in Elona doesn't necessarily need to be a cuddly animal. It could very well be a horse, an Elea/Elf, or even some tentacle monstrosity. Lets start by listing off some pros for having a pet and some unique features of pets. Then we'll discuss the finer details of pets and raising them.

Pros:
-Can help you in killing monsters
-Can take damage that otherwise was meant for you
-Can prepare breakfast for you which increases the party's attribute potentials
-Can craft you armor pieces while you sleep and don't use up materials or need crafting tools
-Can collect materials for you that you can use to craft things
-Necessary in taking advantage of group related special attacks and special actions that lead to better outcomes
-Can warm your bed
-Can maybe give you Valentine chocolate

Unique things pets have compared to players:
-Never gets Ether Corruption
-Doesn't get bad mutations because they can't get mutations
-Doesn't suffer from bad dreams that can cause cursed gear, mutations, loss of gold, or losing resistance from food
-Doesn't use stock to cast spells
-Can have a better attribute growth curve than the player
-Can have a better AP to reward ratio, when compared to the player, for certain things from Leold

Useful Items for Pet Owners [2]

All pet owners should be familiar with these items and should at the very least take advantage of a stethoscope, leash, gene machine and blankets. Unless otherwise noted, these items can be found on general vendors or on dungeon floors from any dungeon. The puppy cave can be a good place to get some of these items. Unless otherwise noted, these items can be used multiple times and aren't consumed on use.

Stethoscope: The Stethoscope allows the player to see the HP bar and gauge bar for gauge attacks for pets. The HP bar comes in two colors. Blue or pink. When the bar is pink the pet is full but if the bar is blue it means your pet is hungry.

Leash: Using this item on a pet will allow you to keep your pet from wandering off too far away for too long by teleporting them back to your side. Useful in keeping your pet on screen so you can keep an eye on them.

Gene Machine: Gained through the Ambitious Scientist quest.

http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Ambitious_Scientist

This item can be used to add missing skills to pets. It also can be used to add limbs to pets.

Tamer's whip: Can be used to prevent your pet from picking up gold, ores, and food from the floor. You can also tell your pet to ignore things at their feet through interacting with them and picking the "be patient with items at your feet" option. Do note that in Elona+ this may not be translated and will most likely be one of the repeated designate as precious ally options. Elona Custom should have it translated. While you can tell your pet to ignore stuff at their feet they might sometimes disobey your orders unless you solidify your master role relationship with them. The easiest way to do this is by throwing love potions at them. So the tamer's whip is the easiest way to get your pet to stop picking up things if you don't want to mess with the master servant relationship mechanic.

Command Flag: Can be used to toggle AI behavior. Specifically whether the pet should go into attack, defense, or intercept mode. Also useful for toggling special ammo your pets may have.

Insight Lens: This item can be used to view the character sheet of your pets anywhere at anytime. Useful if you don't want to wait for information. Alternatively, you can visit the the informer NPC in town to see your pet's character sheet. Consumed when used.

Taktstock: This item should be hot keyed and if you hold down the button you'll raise the gauge bar of all your pets quickly. Useful for getting your pets to perform gauge attacks.

First Aid Kit: Crafted through a pot for fusion and sometimes found on dungeon floors, fully restores health and removes status effects from an adjacent target. Useful for healing your pets if you don't have access to magic. Otherwise healing rain is probably going to be your most used way of healing your pets. Alternatively, you can mount your pet and cast cure of Jua. Consumed when used.

Elements Eyes: Bought with 35 small medals from Miral and Garok's workshop. This item is useful if you have a caster pet that knows variable storm. By using this item you can set the element type of his or her AOE spell. Also useful for any pet special action that relies on resists. Normally the highest resist dictates the element of these special attacks but using Elements Eyes allows you to circumvent that and just choose the element you want your pet to use.

Dresser: Used to toggle on or off optional pieces of clothing. Useful if you're using a custom PCC for a pet.

Sleep Sheep: A pillow that your pet can use to initiate the sleep sharing event themselves if they have it in their inventory. Note that them using the sleep sheep pillow is random. More on this in another section.

Fire Blanket/Cold Blanket: Blankets are used to protect gear that isn't fireproof or coldproof from being destroyed by spells or attacks of those elements.

Evolution/God/King/Another/Machine/Magic Heart: Used for pet evolutions. Depending on the pet, a certain heart is required for evolution as well as having a relationship of fellow or better with them. These hearts are often rare drops from enemies. Evolution Hearts are sometimes carried by souvenir vendors such as the one in Larna however they are very expensive. Another Hearts can be made through the pot for fusion. More info on pet evolution can be found here:

http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Pet_Evolution#Heart_Items

Pleasant Sleep Blanket: Give it to a pet that you don't want to cook in the morning or craft things over night.

What is Considered a Good Pet? [3]

The four things you need to pay attention to is the pet's INI score, life attribute, mana attribute, and any special actions or bitflags it brings to the table. An ideal pet will have a low INI score, high life and mana attribute, and perhaps special actions or bitflags to excel at whatever role it has in the party. Of the things you need to pay particular attention to the INI score deserves special consideration. The INI score determines how easy it is to get AP. AP is a resource that you can exchange with an NPC called Leold that can put your pet on the fast track of becoming strong. More on this in the coming sections. Just know that the lower the INI score(both numbers) the easier it is to get AP over the lifetime of that pet. INI also plays a special role for pets insofar that it can affect trainer fees. More on that in a coming section.

So the question then is what kind of INI score should a pet have? An INI score that  most of the default player race/class combinations should be a nice sweet spot. That means a number around 336/80. A little bit higher like for god reward pets, 384/116, is fine too. Now you may be wondering, "Well I can get a pet with lower INI than 336/80. That's good right?" Well lets consider how the INI score is generated. According to the Elona wiki, INI is calculated from the sum of your attributes including speed. The number never changes once it's calculated at player or NPC generation. So low INI pets tend to have very low attributes and are slow. They also incidentally tend to not have a lot of special actions/bitflags. Overall they are weak pets.The struggle then is balancing having a low enough INI pet so that they can gain AP reasonably well without too much struggle yet not having too low of INI that the pet might be horribly hard to train because they die to almost anything. So this author suggests a pet with an INI score between 336/80 to 384/116. It's ok to be a bit lower than 336/80 or a bit higher than 384/116 but try not to stray too far from those numbers if you're new to pets or are not that far in the game. Once you have a firm understanding of what it takes to raise a pet it can be a fun challenge to raise pets with really high INI or very low INI scores so that may be something to look forward to later.

At the time of this writing the INI score you find on the various monsters or inhabitants of Elona that can become pets is fixed at generation. However there will be a new feature introduced into the game that allows the player to reduce their INI score by sacrificing attribute levels and skill levels. If you encounter a very strong creature that you want as a pet but has a very high INI score you may want to lower its INI score through this feature.

Examples of good pets for beginners:

*This list is by no means complete. Just some suggestions.

Little Girl (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Little_girl): One of the pet choices you get when entering Vernis, she has a melee AI so she's best treated as a warrior like character. Her Evolution paths give her access to cheer which is a useful party buff that increases strength, dexterity, and speed. The Valkyrie evolution focuses on her being a melee warrior and adds more strength, life, and speed so she can do warrior things better. The Littler Girl to Witch Evolution turns the little girl into a warrior/wizard hybrid. She will move to engage enemies in melee and will every now and then cast crystal spear, cheer, and rain of sanity if the player has sanity points.

Fire Dragon Child (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Fire_dragon_child): With 220 life the fire dragon child will end up with a ton of HP as it levels up. An excellent tank. Fire Dragon Child also has a number of evolutions making it stronger by giving it the ability to float, boost(increases strength and speed), and Megid Flame which removes enemy buffs and slaps elemental scar on it.

Exile (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Exile): God reward pet from Itzpalt. A really good wizard pet. Comes with the ability to cast dart spells multiple times in one action. Exile spells are magic dart, nether arrow, and dark eye. Evolved they gain more constitution, speed, and magic along with the AOE darkness spell Eclipse.

Golden Knight (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Golden_knight): A good warrior pet that can function as a tank.She's a god reward from Opatos. Her evolution gives her more strength, constitution, and speed. She also learns Super Armor which is a special action that can significantly reduce damage.

Defender (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Defender): God reward pet from Jure. A warmage that can fight and casts healing spells to heal itself or the rest of the party. Their special action Lay on Hands is unique in that if your character should take mortal damage Lay on Hands will heal you immediately before the game registers you as dead. The ability can only be used once before needing to be recharged through sleeping.

Black Angel (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Angel): God reward pet from Lulwy. An archer that naturally floats due to her wings and comes with good dex and speed. They can also buff their speed even more through their abilities and can reduce enemy combat abilities through insults that cause dim.

Android (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Android): God reward pet from Mani. A range pet that focuses on firearms. For some the android loves getting in melee range so you might want to equip her with a shotgun of some sort. Even though they get in melee range they're quite durable because of their armor bitflag. Due to this bitflag they take reduced damage from physical attacks.

Some of the pets from the slave trader in Derphy can work too. For instance, Elea warrior, Elea wizard, Juere Infantry, and Jure Swordsman are pets that are relatively easy to raise. Any of the sisters(Little sisters, younger sisters, older sisters, younger cats sister, older dog sister) can work too. The fox brother is an interesting spell casting pet (http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Fox_brother) however it can be a challenge keeping him alive due to his low life score. Since he has a low life score he will be lacking in HP. You will need to keep track of his HP and possibly equip him with some ruby equipment(raises life attribute) to keep him alive.

Avoid Bells until you're far into the game. They are initially strong because of their immense speed and will kill everything in a dungeon for you but they come with the crippling weakness that they only have 1 life meaning their HP is absolutely horrible and will stay bad. Spells, bleed, and poison can wreck a bell as well as any creature that also has a lot of speed themselves. The unfortunate problem with playing with bells is that they end up hogging all kills because of their speed. This robs your character and possibly other pets of much needed exp to get stronger themselves. So when bells finally start to meet enemies that can deal with them and kill them you and the rest of your party are pretty much screwed since you're under leveled and under skilled to deal with monsters. Unless you have the means to equip him with a full set of ruby equipment, possibly give him/her barrier, or raise life through hero cheese avoid using them. When you have the means to deal with their life problem they can become very powerful pets but before that time they're a beginner trap.

How To Get Pets [4]

Pets can be gained through different methods. One way to get pets is through beating a monster until it has a sliver of HP and throwing a monster ball of sufficient level to capture it. A monster ball equal or higher to the monster level. The special action knockout for the player, gained through the feat with the name, is very useful for players that may be much stronger than the monster they're trying to capture. This special action will do damage to the monster but will make sure you don't kill it.

Early on, monster balls can be found in random dungeons on the floor and you can make them through a pot for fusion. Later on when you have beaten the first portion of the game and have access to South Tyris you can purchase them from an NPC called <Lend> the Taker located in Melkawn. A word of warning, do not use the monster balls from the Ambitious Scientist quest in Port Kapul to get a pet for your permanent use. You will want to turn in that quest for the gene machine ASAP since that machine is very important to the development of your pet. More on that in the coming sections. Also note that you cannot monster ball certain creatures. Specifically creatures with <> and {} in their names, dungeon bosses, panic or challenge quest monsters, void monsters, and some NPCs that you can engage in conversation with.

Another method to get pets is through domination. Either through the spell or using a rod of domination. The spell domination can be picked up by finding spellbooks of it and the rod can be found in random dungeons on the floor, harvested from magic seeds, random quest rewards, and can be bought from Miral and Garok's workshop for 20 small medals. The exact formula for succeeding with domination isn't well understood but for the spell domination it is said spell level plays a large part in your success however there is some RNG involved. For rods your magic device skill will be used and again some RNG is involved in your success. For both spell dominate and rod dominate the monster heart, the quest reward from Mia the cat freak for doing the quest Mia's Dream, can help increase your successes at dominating. Like the monster ball, you cannot dominate certain creatures.

For creatures that cannot be dominated or caught using a monster ball there's the astral light pen. This item makes a copy of the creature it is used on and joins your team. In order for the astral light pen to work the NPC/monster's level must be less than twice your own level and have Soul Mate relationship with you. Love potions, friendship tokens, and giving gifts to said creature helps there. Magic ink material is also consumed on use. Do note that bosses and certain unique NPCs have special multipliers to them that make them tough. These multipliers, such as multipliers to HP, are loss on recruitment of said NPC/monster. Also if the creature copied is of the god race a god recruitment penalty is applied. Normally these god creatures have their levels halved and attributes higher than 50 are reduced to 1/6 of their initial value or are set at 50. All skills are reduced to half of their original value. Some very powerful or unique NPCs may lose some of their special actions or they will be nerfed. I know this is a lot to take in but in general as long as you're not copying some extremely strong being then you need not fear any penalties and you'll get an exact copy of the creature you're using an astral light pen on. The astral light pen can be gained through wishing, as a rare drop from Seraphs, Dominions, and Arkhais, and through doing the main quest.

The easiest way to get pets though is through the slave trader in Derphy in which you buy them through gold, gaining them through god rewards, or through recruiting certain named creatures that are willing to join your party once you best them. Examples of such creatures are are Goda, Pascal, Lityou, Murder Knight, etc. Finally there are certain books and scrolls you can read that will give you certain pets. For instance reading the book called a girl's diary can make a young lady join your team while reading a scroll of ally will give you a random creature as a pet that is around your level or lower.

How Many Pets [5]

Pets take up a lot of resources. They will need gold to visit their trainers, armor with resists and immunities to keep them alive, possibly a good weapon, and they will need enemies to grind off of to level up and keep their skills up so they stay valuable as an adventuring partner. More on this in the coming sections.Keeping your own character well equipped and gaining level exp and skill exp can be a challenge starting out and a pet(s) can make this even more difficult because they more or less need the same things. Due to this, if you're starting out I would not recommend running with a lot of pets. Ideally, it's this author's opinion that the player just focuses on just one pet to start off with and when one is further along in the game with easier access to resources then and only then should one consider adding more pets to their party.

I also recommend that you only have one pet out if you're going out to skill or level grind. The more pets you have out the more competition there is for level exp and skill exp. Many things can go wrong too such as one pet that is stronger than the rest hogging all the exp and keeping the weaker pets from leveling and increasing their skill. Also starting out it may be a headache keeping tack of all your pets and keeping everyone alive. So until you get the hang of things, keep it simple and just focus on one pet to start out and branch out from there later. Once your first pet is well trained then you can swap out that pet for a second pet to train up and repeat the process for as long as you like.

As your character and resources grow you can add more pets to your roster and if you run out of space for pets on call you can store them at the dojo/doujou or later on a discarded ranch. While I definitely recommend only training with one pet at a time, if you're not training and are just farming to get loot, advance the story, or trying to bring down a very challenging boss or dungeon, then calling out your whole team can definitely help you out or speed things up.

Managing Your Pets [6]

It is very important to be aware of your current pet's attribute and skill levels along with their potential levels and resists.The simplest way to check is to bring up the pet's character sheet. The pet's character sheet is very similar to the player's character sheet and can be looked at if you pay the informer NPC and select the investigate ally option. It will cost 1000 gold though. Another way to view your pet's character sheet is by using an Insight Lens.

Pets can be given things to use and equip. To do this press the i key on your keyboard to interact with your pet. Choose where your pet is standing and select inventory. You will then be presented a list of things in your inventory that you can give your pet. If you press tab you will see what is in your pet's inventory and be able to take stuff from them if you need to. At the very bottom you can also see the equipment slots they have. They will light up if you have something equipped in that slot.

Adding Skills to Pets [7]

Most likely, the pet that is adventuring with you doesn't have all the skills in the game. In order to add skills that are missing to your pet your character needs the gene engineering skill and a gene machine which is gained from the ambitious scientist quest. You then need captured, bought, or dominated creatures to join your group which you will fuse to the pet you want to inherit new skills. Skills added to your pet depends on the creature you're using to fuse to them. The creature you fuse to your pet is always consumed in the process and is permanently gone. To make sure you don't accidentally lose your pet make sure you interact with your pet by pressing i on your keyboard, select talk, then designate your pet as a precious ally.The easiest way to get creatures to fuse to your pet, and also to train gene engineering, is through the slave master in Derphy assuming you have enough gold. By fusing creatures from the slave master to your pet you should be able to get a lot of missing skills out of the way but mostly likely not all of them. I personally just go through the entire slave master inventory and gene engineer every single creature they have into my pet. Any skill that is still missing after that I either get through dominating monsters in dungeons or giving them a gain attribute scroll. However, if you're in a rush to get specific skills then you might find other people's experiences with fusions of help. A word of warning though. There is a bit of RNG when it comes to monsters giving certain skills. Like for one pet I was able to actually get cooking from a Public Performer while another pet couldn't get it through a public performer but got it through a Rogue Wizard.

A community member named WitchLyfe has posted a list of skills that certain monsters seem to give pets when used for gene engineering. What WitchLyfe has documented is as follows:

Weight Lifting: Little Girl

Lock Picking: Robber, Public Performer, Thief, Various

Dual Wield: Robber, Public Performer, Thief, Various

Pickpocket: Robber, Public Performer, Thief, Various

Tailoring: Mercenary Archer, Farmer

Control Magic: Fallen Soldier, Mercenary Wizard, Mercenary Archer

Performer: Public Performer, Various

Detection: Yerles machine infantry, Rogue Archer (You need to get Marksman first)

Disarm Trap: Yerles machine infantry, Rogue Archer (You need to get Marksman and Detection first)

Marksman: Yerles machine infantry, Rogue Archer, Various

Literacy, Memorization, Alchemy: Wizard of Elea

Anatomy: Mercenary Archer, Sheep, Chicken, Spider, Various

Cooking: Rogue Wizard, Farmer

Gene Engineer: Nurse

Magic Capacity: Mercenary Wizard (You might need to wait till Merc Wizard before it's inheritable, even though lower level mobs have it. My Little Girl won't inherit it from anything till Merc Wizard. This happens occasionally.)

Traveling: Little Girl

Riding: Mercenary Archer, Rabbit

Negotiation: Gangster, Public Performer, Thief, Various

Jeweler: Wizard of Elea, Rogue Wizard

Investing: Little Girl

Mining: Goblin (Probably won't pass on until you have Eye of Mind first)

Eye of Mind: Goblin

Carpentry: Ents, Giants

Greater Evasion: Bats

Gardening: Farmers (From Yowyn - Note: In my game at least, they don't seem to respawn, and you may need multiples to get all of their skills. It might be a good idea to set it as a breeder on a ranch for this reason, as there are only a handful in Yowyn. This is probably the hardest skill to acquire since to my knowledge, you won't find other gardening mobs till Vopal Bunny at level 65. You also get to save on monster balls since you can interact with ranch mobs and ask them to join you instead of capturing them again. They do have a low breed power though.) *Author note (Gardening can be found on Ents as well)

Fishing: Flying Frog, Goblin, Zombie,Swimming: Flying Frog (You should be able to get Fishing and Swimming at the same time on Flying Frog, so it's recommended. If you plan on raising multiple pets, and have space and the spare income, putting Flying Frogs on a ranch even temporarily can be helpful since Swimming and Fishing are both pretty high priority skills. They have a high breed power.)

Sense Quality: Hermit Crab

Another good resource for gene engineering is the gene engineer page on the

Elona wiki: http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Gene_Engineer

It should be noted that gene engineering certain creatures can give your pets limbs. You will know if it does because the gene engineering menu will tell you what limb they will give your pet. You can add missing limbs or get additional heads, hands, etc. However, be warned that going over the default of 13 slots will result in a complicated body. A complicated body yields a 5% loss of speed for each slot over 13 capping at 50% speed loss.If you don't want said limb because you're trying to keep your pet humanoid looking or trying not to go over 13 slots you will need to cancel your gene engineering attempt. Always be mindful of what is being added to your pet.

Of the skills you should prioritize your pet learning: Cooking, pickpocketing, detection, gardening, fishing, gene engineering, tailoring, and/or carpentry skill, and any missing combat related skill should be your focus. Cooking will be used for when your pet cooks you breakfast. Pickpocketing is useful for a pet because it can use that skill to get some gold off of enemies which they can use to visit their trainer. Detection, gardening, fishing, and gene engineering are skills that your pet will use to gain materials for you so you can craft stuff. Tailoring and carpentry are skills your pet will use to craft armor pieces for you. Tailoring tends to make light armor pieces while carpentry makes heavy. A pet will tend to craft more of light or heavy depending on which is higher. You can try to manipulate what your pet crafts by not adding one of the two skills or maybe delaying the acquisition of a skill so one of the skills can pull out ahead. Combat related skills can be anything from eye of mind to casting. However you want your pet to attack.You can take your time getting the rest of the skills with your pet since some skills aren't really that useful for pets such as sense quality. Still, eventually getting all the skills should be an aim since skills help level attributes.

Leveling Pets [8]

Pets normally get exp level by dealing the finishing blow on a monster. The stronger the monster the more exp they get. For this reason dungeon bosses, enemies in the void or in an awakened dungeon, and enemies in challenge or panic quests are ideal monsters for leveling pets as these creatures are normally high level.

Another way to level up pets is through gene engineering a higher level creature into your pet. You can get some quick levels for your pet through gene engineering the creatures that the slavemaster in Derphy has for sale. Along with levels gene engineering higher level creatures into your pet will give them attributes. To get the most out of leveling and giving attributes to your pet through gene engineering some people prefer to slowly level up their pet. For instance, if their pet is lv 20 they'll try to find a creature that is lv 23 instead of lv 100 to fuse to their pet. By incrementally leveling up their pet instead of boosting their pet to a high level really fast they hope to gain more attributes this way. It certainly is a valid way of gaining attributes but tracking down creatures with exact level requirements can be very time consuming. Considering there is a faster way to level up attributes which I'll share in a coming section, I'm not exactly a fan of incremental leveling through gene engineering but it is an option people should be aware of.

I normally just fuse fuse the highest level creature I can find to my pet.For most pets I would recommend an initial level injection through gene engineering if they need it and then after that I would gain most of my pet levels from panic and challenge quests. Note that you need a certain amount of fame before you start seeing panic and challenge quests on the job board. After the levels dry up from that I would go somewhere with enemies that scale the further you go such as the void or an awakened dungeon.

Increasing Pet Skill Levels [9]

Pets gain skill levels as they use them. The more potential they have for a skill the easier it is for them to level the skill. For this reason keeping your pets potentials as high as possible is ideal. I personally rarely let my pet potentials fall below 200.

To keep your pet potentials high they should visit their trainer in town. This costs gold so make sure you allow them to either pick up gold, gems, and possibly other valuables on the dungeon floor or give them gold using Evochat. A pet may also get gold through pickpocketing. If a pet has enough gold, all you have to do is walk around town or rest, shift R, and your pet will visit its trainer. You'll know if this happens because a message in the logs will say so. Trainer fees for a pet are affected by two things. Pet INI score and charisma. The higher the pets INI score the higher the trainer fee. The higher the pets charisma score the better as it helps lower trainer fees. It is not uncommon for pets with very high INI scores to have 10k or more in trainer fees. To get all potentials to max for some high INI score pets the player may have to spend close to 200k or even more each time they're in town. Due to this, it's best for new players or players that don't have access to a lot of gold to stick with low INI pets as their trainer fees are not as expensive.

Aside from traditional skill grinding, once South Tyris opens up the player can visit the NPC Leold to exchange AP for bonus points that can be used to level up skills. This is repeatable. The exchange rate is 500 AP for 100 bonus points for pets. This is quite the bargain compared to the player that needs to spend 1500 AP for 100 bonus points. My guess as to why the pets have it so good is because pets don't get bonus points on level up compared to the player but I digress. Once your pet has bonus points to spend do note that they don't spend it automatically. You have to open up their character sheet and put in the points manually so you most likely will need to visit an Informer NPC in town.

Pets gain AP from fighting challenging creatures. Initially this usually means a creature that is very fast but that doesn't need to be case later on. As a pet gains AP it becomes more and more challenging to keep getting AP. To constantly keep getting AP a pet will have to keep fighting stronger and stronger monsters. So the best places for a pet to gain AP will be places that offer monsters that scale. This can be monsters from challenge and panic quests, monsters deep enough in the void, and awakened dungeon monsters.A pets INI score plays a role in AP gathering. Lower INI pets generally don't have to begin fighting extremely strong monsters to get AP compared to higher INI pets. This means that lower INI pets generally start gaining AP much sooner than higher INI pets. If a player is having a difficult time gaining AP for their pet they need to go somewhere with more challenging monsters. The problem is if said place is too dangerous for the party to survive. A lower INI pet will be much easier to train since the monsters they need to get AP can come from lower level dungeons, less dangerous challenge and panic quests, less deep void enemies, etc.

So now that we're aware of how to get bonus points for a pet how should we spend them? I would recommend creating a build for your pet. For instance if you want a pet that will be a two handed warrior damage dealer your build will probably consist of the skills two hand, tactics, and eye of mind. Those three skills should be your bonus point dumps. A wizard like pet is probably the easiest pet to build for and level up. They only have one skill dump. Casting. Keep in mind that when creating a build for your pet that it's best to keep it in line with their AI behavior. A melee AI oriented pet should be built with melee skills.

Increasing Pet Attributes [10]

Like with skills, keeping potential very high for attributes is very important. The higher the potential the easier it is to raise an attribute. To keep potentials high for a pet make sure they visit their trainer in town. Give them gold through evochat or allow them to pick up gold and ores from the dungeon floor so they can afford their trainer fees. Walk around town or do shift R to rest and you will see that your pets will visit their trainer in your log.

The traditional way to raise attributes is through leveling skills since all skills have attributes keyed to them. For instance casting raises the magic attribute. Another way for pets to raise their attributes is through gene engineering and leveling your pet through fusing higher level monsters to them. The best way to level up pet attributes is through herbs and herbed in herbs through the pot for fusion. One way to begin creating an herb farm is stated below:

When South Tyris opens up you can do the quest offered by <Milis> the soldier.

http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Demonstration_Level_60

One of the rewards for the quest is the statue of Kumiromi. Every 5 days you can collect seeds from the statue. One of these seeds can be an herb seed. You can make copies of this statue through doing the repeatable little sister quest.

http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Little_sister_level_30

The more statues you have the more herb seeds you'll get every 5 days and you can use these seeds to make herb farms. Two of the most common herbs you can harvest from your herb farms are Stomafillia  and Curaria . Luckily these two herbs are really good for increasing all the attributes of your pets including speed. All you have to do is make stacks of them, drop them on the floor, and have your pets chow down on them when they're hungry. If you have enough rare herbs, you can make herbed in Curaria. Herbed in Curaria are even more potent in raising attributes but can only really be used once you have a couple of herb farms cranking out herbs consistently.

The speed attribute can be leveled by exchanging AP for speed upgrades through the NPC Leold. 30 for each AP turn in. The amount of speed you can get up to through speed upgrades through Leold is 500 however if you open up Lost Irva you can upgrade your pets speed to 800 through AP if it's not 800 by the time you get there. Another way to level speed is through potions of Hermes Blood which you can get from Miral and Garok's workshop for 60 small medals. Make sure you bless them before you give them to your pet. A blessed Hermes Blood increases pet speed by 20.

Speed upper potions which you can sometimes find in random dungeons on the floor increase speed by 1 and restores speed potential to max 400%. Speed potential isn't listed on character sheets by default but it does exist. One would need the item Yacatect's glasses to see speed potential. For speed to increase at a decent clip through eating herbs for instance, potential for speed needs to be as high as possible so every now and then drink a speed upper. Speed upper potions can also be gained through the NPC named Stoke through music tickets.

http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Rich_person_Stoke

Pet Equipment [11]

If your pet is dying a lot it could be due to not having enough PV/DV, resists, and immunities. For instance if a certain baptist or hound tends to kill your pets before you can react that's a sign your pet desperately needs some resist gear. One way to equip pets is through hand me downs where if you find a piece of equipment that is better for your character you equip that and give your old piece of gear to your pet. Traditional means of getting gear revolves around finding gear in random dungeons off the floor, off of treasure maps, and rewards for finishing various quests.

If you have a sewing kit and tailoring skill on your character you can make armor pieces for your pets assuming you have enough materials. This is perhaps the best way to gear your pets as you can mass produce miracle and godly gear through crafting. All the gear your produce that you will not use should be sold in shops that the player sets up. By selling gear that you will not use you can earn a good amount of gold and trade ins can give you another chance for finding a piece of equipment that can be useful to you or your pet. Materials used for crafting can be found from resource points in dungeons and gain material scrolls. If your pet has the right skills, you can also get materials from your pet.

Another cool thing about crafting equipment is the possibility of crafting a living weapon. An example of this would be using tailoring to craft a living panty or using the carpentry skill and tool to craft a living lightsaber. You can level a living weapon to do damage or to fill resist holes. So if you're in need to cover lots of resist holes with just one slot you might be interested in making a living weapon. As for weapons, most static artifact weapons make for good weapons for pets. Just equip them with a weapon suitable for their build.

Special Actions and Traits for Pets [12]

There are various special actions that are meant to be used with pets. This section will cover some of them as well as some special actions and traits that can be learned from Leold or are naturally found on some pets.

Ensemble: Learned when you have 30 performer skill, this group special action allows you to perform with pets boosting how successful you are in related performer activities. Such as not getting stoned and in party time quests ensemble makes it easier to get stars over the head NPCs thus making those job board quests much easier. The performance with pets does take longer than a performance without though. The pets performer skills help your own performer skill in delivering a successful performance so you may want to gene engineer the performer skill to your pet. You do not need to give your pets instruments for you to use ensemble. Ensemble will help raise pets performer skills.

Preaching: Learned when you have 10 faith skill, this special action is mainly used to convert people to the god you're currently worshiping but you also can get some gold donations out of it as well. When used with pets the faith skill of pets helps your preaching attempts. Preaching can be used in party time quests to get stars over people's heads as well. Preaching can be used to raise a pets faith skill.

Reading Party: Learned when you have 40 learning, this special action uses your pets literacy skill to help yours when you attempt to read spellbooks. This special action can be useful in avoiding catastrophic failure when reading spellbooks. Can be used to train a pets literacy skill.

Over-Ray: Learned when you have 80 control magic, this special action can only be used when the player has at least 50% gauge. It takes your magic attribute and casting skill and combines it with your pets magic attribute and casting skill to pull off a very damaging attack. Scales with more pets and their skills and attributes.

Fire a Volley: Learned when you have 40 marksman, this special attack can only be used when the player has at least 50% gauge. When used your character and pets will attack a creature multiple times with whatever they have in their shoot slot.

Tag Force: Can only be used when the player has at least 50% gauge and needs to be tagged to a pet. To do this press i on your keyboard and just hit enter. Select tag organization and choose a pet to tag to yourself assuming the pet is already out. Tag Force will give you a buff that enhances you and your pet's attack damage.

Boost: Special action found on certain pets. Increases perception and a bit of strength.

Megid Flame: Special action found on certain pets. Inflicts elemental scar and removes buffs from enemies.

Cheer: Special action found on certain pets. Gives speed and hero(increases strength and dex) buffs to all party members.

Super Armor: Special action found on certain pets. Decreases damage taken.

Hyper Dash: Special action found on certain pets. Displaces enemies from their tiles and inflicts one turn of wince which increases damage to fire.

Shadow Step: Special action found on certain pets and can be learned from Leold by selecting the Tactical Attack option for 400 AP. Ability warps the pet to the target and attacks. Note that the shadow step from Leold has a rare chance of activating due to the AI routine in the game. Elona Custom and its AI tweaks can fix that though. More on that in a coming section. If shadow step is an innate ability found on a pet it's likely the pet does regularly use it though.

Shadow Rush: Learned when you have 100 tactics, this special action can only be used when the player has 70% gauge. When used player and allies all perform shadow step on a target at half their melee strength and will attack regardless of distance and whether or not they can see the target. A good way to get multiple attacks in in one action.

Browbeat: Special action found on certain pets. Used to lower target's attack and can draw them close.

Emergency Evasion: Special action found on certain pets. When this special action is active the pet will avoid critical hits.

Charge Attack: Special action found on certain pets and can be learned from Leold for 1000 AP. Pet uses 10 turns to charge up one attack that does 10 times normal damage. Could be a useful special action for pets that have a lot of front loaded damage such as two hand wielding pets armed with a large weapon. Not so useful for pets that do small amounts of damage in one turn but do a lot when you total all the attacks they do in one action. If an enemy likes healing themselves when it gets to a certain amount of HP a charge attack just a little bit above that HP amount can end the fight before that becomes a problem.

Magic Equip: Special action found on certain pets. Used to increase magic power by 1.2x

Platinum Song: Special action found on certain pets. Puts Holy Shield, Divine Wisdom, and Feather on all allies. Increases PV, learning, magic, DV, and gives float.

Gravity Sphere: Special action found on certain pets. Scales with constitution and attacks a single target with a gravity attack.

Variable Breath: Leold can teach this to your pet for 300 AP. Pet will use a breath attack of their highest resist. Can be set with the item Elements Eyes.

Variable Storm: Leold can teach this to your pet for 800 AP. Pet will use an AOE spell of the element of your highest resist. Can be set with the item Elements Eyes.

Tactical Martial Arts: Leold can teach this to your pet for 400 AP. As the name implies, only really helpful to martial artist pets since it teaches BakuretuKen, Clear Mind, and Attribute to pets. BakuretuKen is a small AOE attack while Clear Mind and Attribute buff martial artist damage considerably.

Tactical Heal: Leold can teach this to your pet for 500 AP. Pet will learn Healing Rain, Regeneration, Heal Critical, and Absorb Mana special actions.

Tactical Curse: Leold can teach this to your pet for 500 AP. Pet will learn the debuff spells of Slow, Weakness, Element Scar, Nightmare, and Silence.

Struck Out: Leold can teach this to your pet for 500 AP. If your pet uses throwing weapons this special action attacks the targeted enemy and the enemies adjacent to it.

Zero Shoot: Leold can teach this to your pet for 500 AP. A special action where the pet does a ranged attack at melee range for always critical damage.

Provoke: Leold can teach this to your pet for 200 AP. Makes enemies target the user and inflicts 10 turns of Mist of Frailness which halves PV and DV

Insult: Special action found on some pets and Leold can teach this to your pet for 100 AP. Causes Dim which lowers the attributes of monsters

Dimensional Move: Leold can teach this to your pet for 100 AP. Special action acts like a short teleportation spell.

Synchro Hearts: Special action found on certain pets and can be learned from Leold for 800 AP. Special action heals the player and pets gain boost and regenerate. Only activates when the player is at low HP and if the pets are at soul mate.

Metal Gaurd: Leold can teach this to your pet for 500 AP. Gives the pet the metal bitflag for a few turns which causes them to take considerably less physical damage.

Continuous Attacks: Leold can teach this to your pet for 100 AP. Allows the pet to make a lot of attacks but the attacks are not that strong.

Punishment: Special action found on certain pets. A hex that decreses speed, PV and DV.

Time Stop: Special action found on certain pets. Stops time for 2 turns.

Drain Blood: Special action found on certain pets. Deals nether damage and steals HP along with restoring some stamina.

Absolute Protect: Special action found on certain pets. Pet takes damage instead of others.

Swarm: Special action found on certain pets. Pet attacks all adjacent targets when used. Can be very strong if a pet can do multiple attacks as the pet will do for instance 1 to 8 attacks on each enemy near the pet in one turn.

Extermination Breath: Special action found on certain pets that needs 25% gauge. A stronger and wider breath attack similar to variable breath.

Bewitch: Special action found on certain pets. Stops an enemy from moving.

Trait Charm: Can be learned from Leold for 1500 AP. Any enemy that attacks your pet gets dimmed causing their attributes to be reduced for a period of time.

Trait Brave: Can be learned from Leold for 1500 AP. As HP decreases damage done to enemies increase beginning when HP is at 50% for 1.3x damage and capping out at x3 damage when HP is 5%.

Trait Obstinate: Can be learned from Leold for 1800 AP. As health decreases evasion increases, damage reduction increases, and your critical rate increases while the enemies critical rate decreases.

Trait Barrier: Can be learned from Leold for 2000 AP. Damage is done to your MP instead of HP if your MP is greater than 1/3 of its maximum value. Very useful for pets that don't have good life attribute but decent or good mana attribute. Can act as a second HP bar for pets that don't use magic.

Elona Custom's Improved AI [13]

Elona Custom is a mod for Elona+ that can help improve pet AI. Specifically, you can create some robust AI routines through a bank of if then statements. Each if then statement is checked sequentially from top to bottom with statements that evaluate as true being executed and statements that evaluate as false being ignored. The routine eventually repeats itself starting at the top again to do its checks.

I have provided an example of my martial artist pet's AI routine. I wanted her to buff herself with Attribute and Clear Mind if she didn't have those buffs on. I then wanted her to begin moving in the direction of an enemy if she saw one. Once she was in range I wanted her to shadow step to the enemy and begin attacking.

AI routine:

//If pet doesn't have Attribute buff then have the pet buff itself with Attribute
1)Entity: Self Condition: Buff Comparator: != Value: Attribute Action: Attribute

//If pet doesn't have Clear Mind buff then have the pet buff itself with Clear Mind
2)Entity: Self Condition: Buff Comparator: != Value: Clear Mind Action: Clear Mind

//If the target spotted is greater than or equal to 4 spaces away then move towards the monster
3)Entity: Target Condition: Distance Comparator: >= Value: 4 Action: Move (Forward)

//If target distance is not one space away(melee range) then use Shadow Step to warp to target.
4) Entity: Target Condition: Distance Comparator: != Value: 1 Action: Shadow Step

//If target is in melee range(no reason to continue using shadow step) then begin attacking target
5) Entity: Target Condition: Distance Comparator: = Value: 1 Action: Attack(Melee)

The best way to learn how to use the custom AI feature of Elona Custom is to get your hands dirty and experiment with it. Think up what you want your pet to do and try to translate that into if then statements. Then play with various entity, condition, comparator, value, and action options.

Evochat, Sleep Sharing, Breakfast, Crafting [14]

Recent patches to the game have introduced intimacy and social interactions with pets. These interactions do have in game benefits aside from the roleplaying it brings to the table.

Evochat is an option that comes up when you interact with pets that are friend status or above. You can also only do evochat once before you need to sleep so that it becomes available again. The options available in Evochat are Be Kind, To Embarrass, and to give 100,000 gold. The goal of Evochat is to make the pet happy(represented as hearts) through action points. Max hearts is 10. By selecting Be Kind and giving 100,000 gold you can increase your pet's happiness. Selecting To Embarrass only makes your pet happy if they are passive/obedient through the master/slave relationship mechanic or through the tamer's whip. The happier your pet is the faster their gauge will increase for gauge related special attacks.

Sleep Sharing is where in the middle of the night you find that your pet has climbed into your bed. You can then take actions that are left to your imagination. You can force sleep sharing through standing on top of a double bed or equivalent(as long as it has room for two) and using the squeeze special action(learned at 30 strength) while having the sleepy status. A word of warning, if your pet doesn't like you or is indifferent to you forcing a sleep sharing event on them will cause them to hate you. So you may want to save doing this until your relationship with your pet is better.

A pet can also initiate sleep sharing at random when you go to bed by giving the pet a sleep sheep pillow. You also need to have the pet at fellow or above relationship for this to work. The Sleep Sheep must be in their inventory and it's advised that the pet carry fire blankets because a sleep sheep pillow does burn easily and your pet can lose it.

Once sleep sharing starts you'll be given a dialog box with choices of what you can do to your pet. The goal of the mini game is to have both of you reach your limit. I personally just repeat choices f,e,d,c in that order until we both hit our limit. If you both manage to reach the limit you'll get points towards increasing your relationship with your pet. Sleep sharing is one of the best ways to improve your relationship from soul mate to *love*.

Breakfast events can happen early in the morning and only early in the morning. So make sure you go to sleep around 8 to 9 PM so you can wake up early for it. A pet must also be at fellow relationship level or higher for the breakfast event to happen. If the requirements are met, a pet will use its cooking skill to make breakfast for the whole party. This breakfast increases all attribute potentials and makes everyone full. The amount of attribute potential increased scales with the pet's cooking skill. If you want to control who cooks in your party consider giving pets that you don't want to cook a pleasant sleep blanket.

Also if you have soulmate level or higher with a pet and manage to wake up early you may be treated to one of the items your pet crafted while your character slept. The pet will use either the tailoring or carpentry skill to craft you armor pieces. Tailoring is used for lighter armor pieces while carpentry is used for heavier stuff. As with the breakfast event, you can control who crafts stuff for you with a pleasant sleep blanket. Do note that for both breakfast and crafting that only one pet can do this so no multiple breakfast meals in the morning and no no multiple crafted things in one morning.

Finally pets can make you valentine chocolate. If the month is February in the game(any day is fine) then one of the options when you interact with them will be for valentine chocolate. The chocolate doesn't do anything but it does fill you up and provides a roleplaying moment.

Customizing Your Pet [15]

A pet's portrait, sprite, and dialog can be customized in Elona. Portraits need to be 80x112 and a .bmp file. They should be named face(some number) Example: face2 They are then put in the user/graphics folder and can be chosen in game by interacting with your pet, choosing the appearance option and cycling through the portrait options until you find the one you added.

Sprites can either be static(like enemy sprites) or PCC/animated(like player sprites).

For custom static sprites put it in the /user/graphics folder. These static sprites are 48x48 bmp files and must contain a black background around the actual character.Custom static sprites should be named Pic_(some number) Example: Pic_2 Custom static sprites are then chosen in game by interacting with your pet and choosing the shape change option. Under apply cycle to the custom sprite you added.

For custom PCC sprites put them in the /graphics/PCCs folder. PCCs are 128x192 bmp files and can contain a black background or whatever that greenish color is. Custom PCC sprites should be named pcc_body_(some number) Example: pcc_body_3 A PCC for a pet is selected in game by interacting with your pet and going to appearance. Once there select Custom 1 and then select body to cycle to the PCC you selected.  You may need to get rid of clothing, pants, and other items if they overlap your PCC. To do this change cloth and pants to 0 and go to set details and make sure everything is set to 0 as well.

Evochat and interactions with your pet can use full body portraits. These full body portraits are 300x500 bmp files with a black background. Put custom full body portraits in the /user/graphic2 folder. Full body portraits can then be selected in game by interacting with the pet, choosing talk, and then choosing change atmosphere. You need to create 4 full body portraits to make this work. (B,E,F,H) So if you have a custom full body portrait you need to name one face(some number)_B.bmp, face(some number)_E and so on. Example: face3_B and so on. Other examples should be in the graphic2 folder.

Dialog for a pet as seen when you interact and talk with a pet as well as dialog that appears in the log after pets do certain things or just stand around can be customized through creating a talk file. This talk file is a simple text document that is placed in the talk folder. (Path:user/talk). A sample exists in that folder showing how the talk file should be set up. There are japanese comments indicating what triggers each line. If you don't understand japanese simply run the text file through google translate. The comments are so simple that even a machine translation should give a good hint at what the lines are for. Once you've finished setting up a talk file like the sample name it, drop it in the folder, and in the game interact with your pet and choose change tone. Select the text file you made.

Now if you're artistically challenged like I am you're probably wondering where to find custom PCCs, sprites, portaits etc. Well for your portraits, PCCs, and sprite needs you can check out one of the packs or links in this pastebin:

https://pastebin.com/HcTtYVsn

You can also download pictures from VNs, manga, or anime stills and use MS paint, GIMP, Photoshop, etc to edit the pictures to make them work in Elona. An anon(s) has shared their talk files for a couple of their pets in the pastebin above but for the most part you're on your own in creating them for your pets. Same goes with full body portraits.