Back to Basics - Choosing a Starter Pet

[SaxMan]

Back to Basics - Choosing a Starter Pet
A Guide for Novice Wizards (under Level 50)

Hail to my fellow wizards! Are you fairly new to the game, maybe under Level 50, and struggle with pets? Maybe you’re not sure which pet to use, or what the heck is going on inside the Pet Pavilion. Does the Hatching Kiosk feels like it’s harder to search through than a library without a card catalog? Whatever the reason, all hope is not lost. There is a way for an under-50 wizard to get a decent pet and solo quest through the worlds. Welcome to my Starter Pet guide!


First, a disclaimer: I’m not a very experienced player with pets and hatching, but I have a dozen wizards on 2 accounts that vary in levels from 36 to 80. Most of these wizards used to have very mediocre pets, a few crowns pets, but nothing that really helped that much with questing, at least not as much as the starter pets in this guide. In the last few weeks, I have made a concerted effort to improve my pet collection and now each wizard has a decent pet to help with questing. I used the Wizard 101 Central Wiki to make my decisions and I want to share that information in this guide.


Before we begin, here are my previous guides. One of them was a guide written specifically for novice players, so I hope you read it if you like this guide.

Guide to Stacking Quests in Wysteria

Back to Basics - A Guide for Novice Wizards


UPDATE: I should mention why I chose Level 50 as a cutoff for this guide. When you hit L50, you can visit Celestia (no matter where you're questing, you can get a friend to teleport if you haven't unlocked Celestia yet) and learn the Astral schools' spells. Specifically, you can learn the Sun school damage enchantment spells. These spells are very useful and will greatly enhance your damage; however, you cannot enchant item cards (for example, any card that your pet gives), thus these Starter Pets are more useful for the under-50 wizards.

Please remember, this guide is written for the new/novice players. If you disagree with any of my suggestions, please tell me in the comments but try to remember my target audience.

For me, pets used to be a very frustrating experience. I used to waste hours playing the mini-games in the Pet Pavilion, feeding them whatever snacks I had, without knowing that there were much better snacks and better pets as well. However, there was no way for me to acquire these great pets unless I knew someone willing to hatch with me. That all changed when the Hatching Kiosk was added in the April 2018 update. I wish I knew back then what I know now, so I hope this guide will help players in a similar way and save them hours of frustration.

Let’s start with some basics about Pets. Each pet has a pedigree and a body type. The pedigree basically tells you the rarity of the talents in your pet’s talent pool. I will not discuss the pedigree much in this guide, but the body type is important to know. The first 2 pets that we acquire in our early quests are the piggle and the blue cyclops - those are the pet’s body types.



Here's a pic of a pet with pedigree and body type - blue oval on pedigree, purple rectangle on name, body type, age, experience.

Attributes: These are on the right side of the pet dialog. They increase when your Pet plays mini-games and/or you feed your pet snacks. The attributes can affect many aspects of your pet and your wizard. Whenever you see the phrase "Max Stats", they are referring to the Pet's attributes.

Talents: As you increase the XP (experience) on your pets, they will increase in age and manifest new talents. You can see the talent pool on the left side of the pet dialog, below the pet and the pedigree. I will go into more detail about talents at the end of this guide.

You can search the Hatching Kiosk by pedigree or body type. You can also search the Kiosk for friends’ pets (if they offered any pets in the Kiosk), or by talents. Here is a pic to show where exactly these buttons are on the Kiosk window:



As you can see, there is a green rectangle on the bottom around 3 search buttons, and the 4th search button is in a red circle in the upper right corner.

There is a Tome next to the Kiosk that explains how to use the Kiosk, so I’m not going to bore you with all those details.


Now, some basics about hatching. First, your pet has to be at least an adult to be able to hatch with other pets. For example, you can take 2 of your adult pets, go inside the hatchery, and do a self-hatch and create a new pet. But, you will not get a new body type when you do that. Basically, when 2 adult pets hatch together, the new pet will be the same body type as one of the parents (unless the 2 parents make a unique hybrid - consult the Wiki before you do a hatch). That means you can take your piggle, train it to adult, walk up to the Kiosk, hatch with a random pet (if you have the gold), and you have a 50-50 chance of acquiring a new pet body type. That’s right, it’s basically a coin flip to hatch and get a new pet body type. This is the power of using the Hatching Kiosk.

UPDATE: Okay, so the chance of acquiring a new pet body type might not be exactly 50%, but it's still a reasonable expectation. Apparently, some body types are harder to get than others. In any case, the Hatching Kiosk is an extremely powerful tool, but since I've written this guide the Kiosk prices have gone up exorbitantly. You can still hatch with any wizard you know and save a lot of gold, or you can even get a wizard to lend you their pet (a new feature that was added recently).


Example:


Warning: most pets in the Kiosk have a gold cost for hatching, but some cost crowns as well. Watch out for those if you don’t want to accidentally spend your crowns.


Before we get into the Starter Pets, let me give the criteria I’m using to choose a Starter Pet.

School - for ease and convenience, I’m focusing on pets that are the same school as the wizard. There are a few reasons for doing that, which I will get into in the following paragraphs.

Item Cards - Outside of their talent pools, some pets also come with Item Cards. They can have anywhere from 1-3 item cards. These cards are usually the same school as the pet, although there are several pets with item cards that are a different school. Typically, if they have 3 item cards, the first one unlocks when the pet is a baby, the second card unlocks at adult, and the third card is much later. Specifically, I want Starter Pets with 2-3 Item Cards and the first card is the wizard’s school blade. When you cast a pet blade and a regular blade, both blades will stack on your next attack, thereby increasing your damage. If you had another blade from your gear, then you could stack 3 blades together in 1 attack. This is why I’m focusing on pets that are the same school as the wizard, for the stacking blades. Also, you could use a tri-blade to increase your damage, but that card costs 1 pip. The advantage of a pet blade is that, like a regular blade or a gear item blade, it costs 0 pips. Hence, you’re increasing the damage of your next attack and building up your pips so you can cast a big hit. The second card will vary among the different Starter Pets, but I like a cheap 4-pip AoE as a good second card. The second card is another reason I’m recommending a school pet, as you can use your power pips to cast the AoE. In case you’re wondering, AoE stands for Area of Effect; these are the attack-all spells that are very popular in the early worlds.

Adult Pets - Most of the pets that I looked at have a second card that unlocks at adult. For my recommendations, I’m focusing on these pets, as it will take a lot of pet snacks to train a Pet to Ancient or Mega or Epic. You don't need mega-snacks (rank 8 or 9) to train a pet to Adult; just use your rank 5/6/7 snacks to get a pet to Adult and you're good to go. Also, you want to stop training your pet at Adult so that you can focus on improving your pet’s talent pool via hatching. Consult the advanced pet guides for more about hatching techniques.

Availability - Anyone can look through the Wiki and find all the pets with a school blade (which is exactly what I did for this guide). However, the pet’s availability in the Kiosk is a totally different matter. I will try to recommend a Starter Pet that is widely available in the Kiosk.

Deck (construction) - Having a small Deck is very important in choosing a good Starter Pet. You want your fights to go as quickly and smoothly as possible. If you have 30 or more cards in your deck, then you’re wasting a lot of turns discarding and/or passing and you’re unnecessarily dragging out your battles. Keep your deck small (15 cards or less); the smaller, the better. With a small deck, adding a few pet cards will increase the likelihood of drawing those pet cards in your first 2 turns and thus being able to use them. The type of deck doesn’t matter; you don’t have to fill every slot in the deck. Many W101 players have empty slots in their decks. Don’t forget that you can cram your sideboard with very useful TC’s (treasure cards).

School Weakness: this is not really a criterion, but how I make my recommendations. If a school has a glaring weakness, and there is a school pet that can cover that weakness, then that pet will be aces, in my book.


Next, I will list the different pets for each school that has a blade and at least 1 other item card (that usually unlocks at Adult). Then I will give my recommendation with my reasons for each choice. I’m only listing pets that have multiple item cards; I know there are many pets with a single item card that are useful but I’m trying to make this guide short and to the point.

Some pets that I have omitted are the school Class Pets (I think they’re called Hamsters but the Wiki calls them Class Pets). Since they’re the final reward in the different Deckathlon events and can’t be acquired through the Kiosk, they’re basically unavailable for hatching purposes.

Note: If you don't have the gold to hatch for pets, or if you don't like any of my recommendations, then I suggest trying to get the Deckathlon Hamster. You do have to spend gold on the TC's needed for the event but these pets are very good Starter Pets; they just can't be acquired via hatching. Also, you might have to wait up to 7 months to get your school's Hamster, since each Deckathlon event is a different school and each event is a month apart. Bottom line, you can get one of the following Starter Pets in a few days or wait several months for a Hamster.

Note: if you don't want a school-specific pet and just want a general questing pet to help with any school, then you can't go wrong with the Enchanted Armament (Balance). The EA has 3 Sharpened Blades, that you use to boost your own blades, so you get a similar stacking blade effect on your hits for increased damage, and the cards work for any school. Normally, you have to learn Sharpened Blade at L86 in Azteca, so for lower-level wizards, this is a great card. I recommend using this pet if you just want a universal Starter Pet. There is another pet similar to the EA, called a Party Corgi (Myth), but it's not as easily found in the Kiosk.

UPDATE: here is the basic summary of my guide - either use an EA as a Starter Pet, or go for a pet that has your school blade and your school's 4-pip AoE attack. Most of my recommendations are exactly that kind of pet.

Let’s move on to the different schools:

Life
Candidates: Courageous Bull, Dryad, Kookaburra, Lifedactyl (2 versions), Lively Opossum, Timberland Yeti. Lots of good choices here; normally, this would be a tough decision but there is 1 pet here that stands out for covering Life’s big weakness.

My Recommendation:


The big weakness of Life is the lack of an AoE attack, until you complete your L58 quest for Forest Lord. Even then, Forest Lord is an 8-pip attack, so it takes awhile to amass pips and cast the attack. This is where the Kookaburra shines, as its adult card is a cheap 4-pip AoE (Leafstorm). You can stack your pet blade with a regular blade, then cast the Leafstorm, and you should have a quick fight. You will be breezing through DragonSpyre with this pet.

UPDATE: ok, so they changed the L48 and L58 spell quests for Life. Now you can get Forest Lord at L48, and it's a 7-pip attack. Even better, you don't have to slog your way through DragonSpyre to complete the spell quest. As soon as you hit L48, you can get the quest and go to Grizzleheim (assuming you have that area unlocked) and complete your quest. Still, even with FL in your spell deck, the Kookaburra is the best Starter Pet for a Life wizard. I still see Life wizards with this companion after L50. There are some interesting Life pets being added to the game but I'm not changing my recommendation.

Death
Candidates: Acid Rain Core, Avenging Fossil, Dark Hound, Deathdactyl, Ghastly Opossum, Ghulture, Gloomy Eye, Scrappy Gryphon, Wildwood Yeti (2 versions). Once again, several good choices that could have made for a tough decision, but I’m covering Death’s big weakness with my choice.


My Recommendation:


Similar to Life, Death’s big weakness is the lack of an AoE attack, until you complete the L48 quest for Scarecrow, which is a 7-pip attack. Gloomy Eye’s adult card is a cheap 4-pip AoE (ColossaFrog). Basically, it’s a Death version of the Myth Frog attack.


Myth
Candidates: Enigmatic Ghulture, Li’l Medusa, Mythdactyl (2 versions), Plucky Gryphon, Wandering Eye, Party Corgi. A short list with some strong candidates. The Party Corgi is similar to the Enchanted Armament with its 2 Sharpened Blades. Any school can use the Corgi but it’s a Myth pet so I listed it here.


My Recommendation:


Unlike the other spirit schools, Myth has plenty of cheap AoE attacks. The 4-pip Frog and the 6-pip Earthquake are useful attacks, but it would be nice to have an AoE with more punch. The Wandering Eye’s adult card is an 8-pip AoE that packs a lot of punch; almost triple the damage of either the Frog or the Quake. You stack 2 myth blades with this attack and the mobs will run screaming. Try not to confuse it with the 4-pip Frog as the cards look very similar.

UPDATE: so, the L48 spells have been improved for most schools, especially for Myth. Now, the 7-pip Orthrus is an AoE attack. Personally, I never understood why the previous version of Orthrus was a single attack; it was basically a stronger version of Minotaur. Even so, there isn't a Myth pet with a 4-pip AoE attack (unless I'm mistaken) and both the 4-pip Frog and 6-pip Earthquake are a bit lacking in damage, so the Wandering Eye still makes a great Starter Pet for Myth wizards.


Balance
Candidates: Blaze Fox, Gallant Bull, GobblerBall, Harmonic Quetzal, Noble Kookaburra, Opossum, Sabertooth, Snappy Gryphon, Enchanted Armament. There are some strong choices here and this is a tough decision, as Balance is a versatile school that has multiple play styles. So, I’m going to give multiple recommendations, based on whether you play in groups or you prefer to solo PvE. I know this might seem like a bit of a copout, but Balance is such a versatile school and these are some strong Starter Pets. Keep in mind that the pet Balance blade will stack with your regular Balance blade, so either you or your teammates will see nice boosts in damage. I already mentioned the Enchanted Armament but I listed it here because it’s a Balance pet.


My Recommendation (solo PvE):


With a boosted Sandstorm as a second card, this is the obvious choice for solo Balance wizards, as you can never have too many AoE attacks.


My Recommendation (group PvE):


This pet has a Bladestorm for its second card, which you can stack with your regular Bladestorm and your other Balance blades for some massive damage. However, Bladestorm is a 1-pip card so be mindful of your pips.


Alternatives: Enchanted Armament, Blaze Fox, or Harmonic Quetzal. Even though I stated in my criteria that I’m only considering pets that unlock their 2nd card at Adult, I need to mention these 3 pets, as they’re great in groups. The downside for each of these pets is that the second card doesn’t unlock until the pet reaches Ancient, and the 3rd card is at Mega. That can be a lot of training and pet snacks. The Fox and Quetzal each have 3 Balance blades, which you’ll be handing out like Skittles. The Blaze Fox is also available from the Team Up vendor next to the Bazaar so you don’t even have to hatch to get it (although it can take awhile to complete 500 Team Ups). I already mentioned the EA, which is a great universal Starter Pet.


Storm
Candidates: Babydactyl, Charging Bull, Clamoring Ghulture, Deep Leviathan, Rain Core. Some interesting variety and utility here, but strangely none of these have a cheap AoE attack like the other school pets. Honestly, this was a tough choice for me, so if you have a better suggestion, I will listen to your advice.

UPDATE: This is an oversight I made in my original guide. The biggest weakness for Storm is the lack of a shield-breaker DoT attack (damage over time/turns). More experienced wizards will tell you that you don't need a shield-breaker attack. I have to admit, I don't see many school shields as I'm questing through Arc 2 worlds (Celestia, Zafaria, Avalon, currently in Azteca), but I still see the occasional tower shields. However, this guide is written for under-50 wizards who are questing through the Arc 1 worlds, and those enemies love to shield. So, I'm changing my recommendation but keeping the original in here for reference. Both pets are useful Storm companions.

My (new) Recommendation:




As I stated earlier, Storm needs a shield-breaker attack and this pet delivers. However, this is an X pip attack so it will use all of your pips (similar to Tempest). For years, I ignored this pet because I thought the 2nd item card was similar to Supercharge. Turns out that I'm not crazy, as KI did change this card several years ago. Thus, that's why I overlooked this pet and many humble apologies for my oversight when I wrote this guide.

Honorable Mention: another Storm pet that is great for breaking shields is Storm Elf - it has an attack item card that is similar to the Fire Elf. It doesn't have a school blade and that's why I did not mention it in the original version of this guide. The Storm Elf attack is only 2 pips and can be a good alternative over the Rain Core's X-pip attack.


My (original) Recommendation:


Storm thrives on doing massive damage with its AoE attacks, but lack a cheap AoE attack. Tempest uses up all of your pips, so if you don’t wipe out all of the enemies, then you have to wait before you can attack again; meanwhile, if you’re using your minion or playing in a group, then the mobs will turn their attention to you and start hitting you. I see far too many Storm wizards misusing Tempest by hitting too early. If you wait a few turns. then your Tempest will do even more damage. That’s why I recommend the Clamoring Ghulture; its second card is a boosted Windstorm. So, you could stack 2-3 Storm blades, 1-2 Windstorms, then unleash your Tempest and wipe the board. Just pay attention to your pips when you use Tempest; if you think it’s not enough damage, then wait a turn to use it.

UPDATE: the Clamoring Ghulture is still a solid companion, but I seem to be mistaken about the Windstorm item card. I could have sworn that it used to be a bigger boost than the trained Windstorm. It's possible that the item card (or the trained spell) could have changed. Anyway, if you have white pips that need to be converted to power pips, use the Windstorm and you also boost your damage. Oh, and I still see Storm wizards using Tempest too early. Wait a few turns, especially in a boss battle, to make sure you kill the minions with just 1 Tempest. Sigh...


Fire
Candidates: Fennec Fox, Ornery Kookaburra, Raging Bull, Sun Serpent. This is a very short list, and nothing really stands out in terms of covering up any Fire weaknesses.


My Recommendation:


The second card is a stronger version of Meteor Strike. Generally speaking, if you have a pet with a school blade and a 4-pip AoE, that tends to make a very good Starter Pet.


Ice
Candidates: Freezing Rain Core, Frosty Eye, Icedactyl, Lord of Winter, Mountain Yeti, Shiverous Knight. Actually, I went back and forth on this one. The big weakness of Ice is the lack of a blade, until you complete your L38 quest, so a pet with multiple ice blades is not a bad thing. But I will make a different suggestion.


My Recommendation:


Similar to Life, Death, and Fire, I’m going with the pet with the cheap 4-pip AoE (Blizzard). Ice wizards get to learn Frost Giant (7-pip AoE), which is a very strong AoE; thus, Ice doesn’t need another big AoE in the early worlds. Having a boosted Blizzard in your deck will suit Ice wizards just fine.


Talents
Now, let’s talk about some useful talents by category:

Resistance: Spell-Proof and Spell-Defying increase your resistance to any attack. The amount of the resistance is affected by the Pet’s Strength and Agility. The “-proof” talents have greater resistance than the “-defying” talents. Other resistance talents are the different school “-ward” and “-away” talents. Those only resist a specific school, whereas the “spell-“ talents are universal resistance.

Damage: Pain-Giver and Pain-Bringer increase the amount of damage to any attack. The amount of the damage increase is affected by the Pet’s Strength and Will. The “-giver” talents increase the damage more than the “-bringer” talents. Other damage modifiers are the school-specific “-dealer” and “-boon” talents. The school-specific “-dealer” talents have the biggest damage modifier.

Critical: Critical Striker and Critical Hitter boost the amount of critical to any attack. The amount of the critical boost is affected by the Pet’s Agility and Will. The “Striker” talents have a bigger critical boost than the “Hitter” talents. Other critical modifiers are the school-specific “Assailant” talents, which have the biggest critical boost.

Note: there are some exceptions to these prefixes and suffixes.

Those are the 3 main categories of talents that players look for in an advanced pet. There are also “may cast” talents, healing talents, card talents, and numerous other talents. The Hatching Kiosk was added in the April 2018 update, but it was very tedious and cumbersome to use, until they added the ability to search for talents in the November 2019 update. It’s a very tiny button that is hard to see, but it’s there in the upper right corner (see the following pic, blue hexagon):



Originally, you could search on up to 5 different talents, but with the horrible April 2020 update, that was illogically reduced to just 2 talents. Here are some tips to get around that problem:

• For damage boost, instead of searching on “pain-giver” or “pain-bringer”, try searching on the school-specific “-dealer” talents. That way, you’re more likely to find your school pet, plus the “-dealer” talents give a bigger damage boost.
• Similarly, for critical boost, instead of searching on “critical striker” or “critical hitter”, search on the school-specific “assailant” talents. Again, these give you a bigger critical boost and narrows your search down to your school pets.
• For resistance, you can combine “spell-proof” with something else. There isn’t as much flexibility here as there is with the damage and/or critical boosts. If you search on both “spell-proof” and “spell-defying”, you will get a ton of matches.

It will take many hatches to get the exact 5 talents you want on your pet for the later worlds. That is why I’m focusing on Starter Pets, as you only need to train to Adult and use the pet’s item cards to help with your questing. Later on, you can do all the hatching you want to improve upon your Starter Pet and its talent pool.


However, if you’re willing to focus on talents just for your Starter Pet, there are a few talents that can be very helpful to the under-50 wizard:

Balanceblade - not to be confused with the “may cast” talent of the same name, this talent will add a Balance Blade to your deck.

Gargantuan - this talent will add a Gargantuan card to your deck. When you enchant an attack with this card, it will add 225 damage to the base damage of the attack. Effectively for lower wizards, it will almost double the damage of your attacks. Of course, you can only use it once during a battle, but it’s still nice to have, especially when you enchant an AoE attack. One caveat - you can’t enchant Item Cards. So, if your pet has an AoE card, it can’t be enchanted.

There are other talents that are similar to Gargantuan, but for whatever reason those talents are more rare to find in Kiosk pets. In general, these enchantment cards are the Sun school damage enchantment cards, also known as “fist” enchantment cards. Normally, you have to be at least L50 and visit a Sun school trainer in Celestia to learn these damage enchantments.

UPDATE: I can't say enough how useful this Gargantuan talent is - being able to enchant 1 damage card (especially an AoE attack) is huge in the Arc 1 worlds. But, I wouldn't go out of my way to get this talent on your pet. You can also use TC's (treasure cards) for the same effect.

The Deer Knight Rises - this talent is more helpful for Death wizards, as it adds a Deer Knight card to your deck. Deer Knight is a 5-pip AoE, that is also a shield-breaker because it’s a DoT attack (Damage over Time/Turns), so it’s great against Life mobs that like to cast those pesky Death shields. Some death wizards like to add this card by affixing a Deer Knight jewel to their gear, or by farming the Loremaster for the dropped spell, or by crafting the Deer Knight spell. No matter how you add the spell to your deck, Deer Knight is a solid addition to a Death wizard’s arsenal. On my L37 death wizard, I manifested this talent on my Gloomy Eye pet; suddenly I went from no AoE attacks to having 2 AoE’s in my deck.

UPDATE: so, they changed Loremaster drops a bit. It will not drop spells anymore but will drop spellements. Collect enough spellements and you can learn a new spell. Thus, Death wizards can acquire Deer Knight this way, but it will take an awful lot of grinding. I've already mentioned the other alternatives to acquiring the DK spell.

You can also buy the TC (treasure card) versions of some of these Item Cards from the bazaar or any of the librarians in the different worlds. The TC’s also drop from plant harvests. In other words, there are several options to manifesting a single talent on a pet, so don’t worry if you try to get a card talent on a pet and it doesn’t work out.

Strategy, Tips, and Tricks
Here is how to use your new Starter Pet:

Turn 1 - cast your pet blade
Turn 2 - cast your school blade
Turn 3 - cast your AoE
Turn 4 - clean up

Obviously, you can change the order of your first 2 turns, but a double-bladed AoE will usually make for quick battles. Storm can take a few extra turns to cast a Windstorm if they want, and to boost their Tempest; likewise, Balance can use an extra turn to cast a Bladestorm.


Events - Make sure you take full advantage of the recurring events, especially the Spiral Showcase and Pet Promenade events. The other events (Beastmoon and Deckathlon) are good too, but don’t have any pet-specific activities. Completing activities in these 4 events will get you Scroll of Fortune points, which will lead to lots of rewards, including tons of gold.

Spiral Showcase - feed pet snacks for XP. I used to not get very far in this event, because I had no desire to cycle 12 wizards through the Pet Pavilion and play the mini-games. Now, thanks to the April 2020 update, we can skip the mini-games and go straight to feeding our pets. To get the Skip Game button, you need to pick 1 mini-game and play it at least 25 times on a wizard. The counters are different for each wizard and each mini-game.

Note: for the crafting activity, I highly recommend crafting pet snacks; more specifically, the school-specific cereals as most school pets love their school's cereal. The cereals are very easy to craft and don't waste any valuable reagents. They used to be rank 6 but evidently got changed to rank 5. Still, they're worth crafting and feeding to your pet (for XP) to earn activity points in these Events. You can find the recipes in the Pet Pavilion, Ravenscar (Grizzleheim), or the Atheneum (Dragonspyre). You might need a friend to port you to a recipe vendor but most definitely worth it.

Pet Promenade - play pet games, feed pet snacks for XP, hatch, feed pet snacks for happiness. One of the few bright spots in the dreadful April 2020 update was the addition of this event, even though some of the rewards were bugged the first time they ran the event. We just had our 3rd iteration of the event, so let’s hope they ironed out the kinks. Unfortunately, the last 2 rewards are total junk, but the other rewards are good, especially the elixirs. The grilled cheese recipe looks interesting (you only get the recipe once), but you only receive some of the ingredients. You have to go to Mirage to get the bread. Just make sure you don’t accidentally sell the cheese or feed the cheese to your pet. I suggest depositing the cheese in your shared bank as soon as you collect the reward. If you ignore the last 2 rewards, then you really only need to do 2 or 3 activities each day, which means you don’t have to do any hatches. But if you really need to hatch, I suggest using 2 adult pets for an inexpensive hatch.

UPDATE: okay, so the second-to-last reward is not junk; you need the tokens to unlock certain talents on your pet. These talents are called Will-Cast talents and require Happiness to be able to use them (usually in Deckathlon events). The last reward is still junk, so you can just focus on the other rewards and reasonably complete the event activities.

Note - playing Grub Guardian counts toward Pet Promenade events (2 activities - playing pet games and feeding snacks for pet XP).


Finally, let me thank everyone who took the time to read the whole guide. I know it seems on the long side but I hope there is a lot of useful information here for the new/novice players.

Good luck and see you in the Spiral!

Thanks to @Zarin64, @JaredSpellFrost, and @jlegendwielder for their contributions to this guide.


EDIT: changed a few of the pics; added a comment about Deckathlon Hamsters; added a comment about talent prefixes/suffixes.

EDIT: moved some paragraphs around; added some comments about Deckathlon Hamsters; added a note about crafting pet snacks (cereals).

EDIT: moved some paragraphs around; cleaned up some paragraphs; attempted to remove some of the extraneous text links; added some info.

EDIT (7/07/2020): added a couple of pics; fixed some text links; added thanks to contributors.

EDIT (7/01/2022): added several paragraphs because of changes in the last 2 years. Changed my Storm pet recommendation.

[Icy BlackHeart]

Very nice info :D

[Zarin64]

A few remarks:

Life-Bringer is actually Life's version of the "-Dealer" suffix. Why they singled out Life on this I have no idea. Probably a similar whim to "Black Spinel of Battle" instead of an expected "Onyx Ring of Battle" dropping from Nastrond.

Enchanted Armament is in a pet category of its own. It is useful for all schools, and is amazing when trained.

Deckathalon - not an easy event to get through, but the last reward is an amazing pet for the event's school. Requires training to Mega to be fully effective, and to Ancient to start being really useful, but the set of talents alone is worth it. And anyone with enough patience to grind for Deckathalon runes and points should be able to pull off training to Ancient. Just saying
One minor note: it seems they revamped the set of talents on those reward pets by including some "will cast" locked stuff. Life one is garbage (Triage, not even mass), let's see what other schools bring from now on. I particularly hate this change, as they took almost a perfect reward and nerfed it to showcase this new useless concept.

[jlegendwielder]

So your basic advice is to train a pet that gives a school blade that will stack with a trained blade. I think that is an excellent strategy, one a new wizard can't go wrong with.

My go to pet for new <50 wizards is the Enchanted Armament (which you mention). It gives you Sharpened Blade, which will also create blades that stack with a regular school blade (and can be used for elemental and spirit tri-blades) and which cannot be trained until Azteca and which are very difficult to obtain as treasure cards.

Makes a young wizard very powerful!

Excellent guide, by the way!

[JaredSpellFrost]

Some pets that I have omitted are the school Class Pets (I think they’re called Hamsters but the Wiki calls them Class Pets). Since they’re the final reward in the different Deckathlon events and can’t be acquired through the Kiosk, they’re basically unavailable for hatching purposes. Actually, I don’t think you can hatch with these pets anyway, so they’re an obvious exclusion.

I would highly recommend Players new to pet hatching to go after their Deckathalon Hamster. These Pets have the best First-Gen talent pools (Although they have been muddied slightly with the introduction of "happiness" talents) and the best* selection of item cards. You can hatch with them, but to get the Hamster back you must own it yourself.

It does take some know-how to grind the Deckathalon for these pets, and a Healing Pet is perhaps an essential asset to have. Plus, there is the issue of gold to buy all of those TC too. However, I would argue that it is worth it. Getting a clean pool will save you so much time and gold in the long run, and healing pets are incredibly easy to create.

*For Life/Death Wizards without their Lore AOE spells, the Gloomy Eye and Kookabura are the better choice. I would still go for the Hamsters though, just to get a cleaner pool.

[SaxMan]

Wow, thanks for all the positive comments.

I did make a few additions based on these suggestions:

• added a comment about the talent prefixes/suffixes having exceptions to what I wrote.
• added a paragraph about pursuing Deckathlon Hamsters instead of my suggestions.
• added a comment about using Enchanted Armament as a universal Starter Pet.

Thanks for the suggestions. Personally, I've struggled with the Deckathlon event, but I have yet to grind through it for 7 or 8 days straight. I can see how a new player can take full advantage of the event since it ignores your gear.

[Zarin64]

I did make a few additions based on these suggestions:

• added a paragraph about pursuing Deckathlon Hamsters instead of my suggestions.

Not "instead", please. Your suggestions were absolutely sound ones, and are often better for the beginning players, without much access to mega snacks etc. Some schools cannot even benefit from Enchanted Armament for quite some time (Life and Ice, I'm looking at you), at least not fully.
I'll review your latest version and will come back with more if I have anything, but the overall idea is fantastic. Keep the attitude!

[Zarin64]

Ah, I recalled what else I found useful back in the day: for Balance, there is an interesting Life pet which makes sense and plugs a school's weakness: Eternal Leviathan. Here is my reasoning: Balance cannot easily shake off weaknesses, so having a Cleanse Charm on a pet early on may be beneficial. The second card, Guiding Light, will boost those Helping Hands well enough. This pet might work well in both solo and team settings. Not really helpful in places like Marleybone where they spam Weakness like there's no tomorrow.

Of course, the best approach to Cleanse problem is growing plants dropping the TC: Boom Shroom is the easiest to obtain and grow, Silver Trumpet Vine is not too bad, too, once you get up the ranks to grow some regular Trumpet Vines and get STV/UTV from them. But that's for a different guide.

Overall, your guide seems complete or quite close to it. Good job!

[SaxMan]

Once again, thanks for all the great comments. I took a break for a few days to focus on the Spiral Showcase event; it feels great to finally be able to push to the final rewards in that event (on multiple wizards).

Some small changes:

• added a few lines about the Deckathlon Hamsters. Once again, I'm not really recommending them over my suggestions, but I just want the new players to be aware about them. I find the Deckathlon event very difficult, and the drop rate on the final reward in Pet Promenade event is ridiculously low. Plus, you have to wait several months for a particular school. I think acquiring one of my recommended pets is much easier.
• moved a few paragraphs around. In particular, I moved the paragraph about Enchanted Armament to the end. I wanted that paragraph to stand out but I'm not sure where to put it.
• added a paragraph about crafting pet snacks (cereals) after the Spiral Showcase paragraph. Not a big deal, but I remember a thread discussing what to craft for the Spiral Showcase activity, and with the new Pet Promenade event, I think the rank 5 cereals are the slam-dunk choice for that activity. I'm a bit miffed that the cereals are now rank 5; I remember them being rank 6.

I still need to add a few more paragraphs, and a couple more pics, but I'm almost done. Also, I need to get rid of some of the links.

[JaredSpellFrost]

• added a few lines about the Deckathlon Hamsters. Once again, I'm not really recommending them over my suggestions, but I just want the new players to be aware about them. I find the Deckathlon event very difficult, and the drop rate on the final reward in Pet Promenade event is ridiculously low. Plus, you have to wait several months for a particular school. I think acquiring one of my recommended pets is much easier.

The Ravenwood Hamster obtained in the Pet Promenade is not worth anyone's time, only the Class Pets in the Deckathalon are viable. As for the Grilled Cheese snack recipe, Fortified Cheese is only dropped from the Pet Promenade Event and Fortified Bread is sold by a vendor in Mirage. Both snacks can be found in the Bazaar, though.