*Updated* Ultimate Pet Guide

You would be correct about the paths. A Playful pet cannot evolve into a Dire later, nor can an Aggressive turn Hearty. That, obviously, is not a possible explanation.

Also, I'd like to add in a correction to the above couple of posts in saying that pets do not take a death penalty, so that also is not a valid explanation. As anyone who has tested pet's health via poison can attest to, no matter how many times your pet dies, its health remains stable. The only decreases you will see fit well within a margin of error and become quite obvious when you repeatedly kill the pet. When I ran my own test, I killed the pet 18 times consecutively and the recorded time to death varied from 73.5 seconds down to 67.78 seconds with an average resting at 69.8 seconds.

I'm not sure what could have caused the health difference between the two boars. Are you certain the difference wasn't just a misperception? For instance, are you certain that the difference wasn't due to something like outside damage on one pet in addition to the poison, the use of Comfort Animal, Pretator's Pounce, Symbiotic Bond, or other things which would make one pet appear to be taking damage faster than the other? Hearty pets lose health extremely slowly in the poison, as you can tell from a level 20 one needing a full 70 seconds to die. It's quite difficult to simply eye up how fast their health is dropping, and if indeed you're certain the two pets had different levels of health, then some carefully controlled and documented information would be appreciated.

I have finished testing the lower pet levels from 2-8 (I haven't found a level 1 animal to test), but testing is slow - I'll try to do some mid-level pet testing soon, and will release all data once complete.

Most interesting so far is that the distributions of attack damage have not been uniform at the lower levels; they have with only 1 exception been rejected from uniformity using a chi-squre test (and the p-values are as small as 1E-07!). I suspect that they are originally from a uniform distribution at higher levels, but that the transformation and rounding to calclate the lower level damage results in tails on most lower level damage ranges.

Pet damage thus far is not a step function at certain spaced out levels, but progresses smoothly upward with pet level.

My testing so far is being done with 0 beast mastery vs 0 armor, as this gives identical results to 12 beastmastery and 60 armour (See the combat mechanics guide if explanation is needed) and is easily done, any class can take off all armour.

Nice guide except for one thing which bugged me:

That's completely wrong as having 16 in a weapon attribute (swords, hammer or axe) IS in fact very much worth it.

You have got to kidding.. Thats it pretty retarded. I guess it takes care of have an 'Uber Pet' but GW is very good at balancing. It seems like they could have made: movement speed, attack speed, AL, DL, & Damage Type all different and yet balanced. Wow.. that really takes a lot away from pets.

I'd just like to reiterate I've had an Elder Black Widow go to a Hearty Black Widow too.. odd!

As was asked before, when you captured the Elder Black Widow, were you able to verify that what you were capturing was in fact an Elder Black Widow (as in, was it unnamed or did you reset the name to verify what it was when you first captured it)?

I've seen many people believe that the only spider to be caught in the Underworld is an Elder Black Widow, and thus they capture a Hearty and when later they realize what it is, they're amazed at how it "evolved"... I'd just like to clarify whether or not this is a possibility in your scenario.

The spider I caught came out of the chest was as an enemy "Elder Black Widow", I have seen ones emerge as Dire and Hearty from there too. At the time, my pet was named so I can't confirm if it was randomly changed when it became my pet. I recently unnammed my pet to find it was miraculously now a hearty Black Widow.

could anyone tell me the difference in dmg or w/e between blunt, slashing, and peircing?

There are no differences. UNLESS, the reciever got a mod on his/her equip that defend against one of them (example: necro armor-> piercing armor), while some monsters in PvE are naturally built to be weaker against some dmg (example: [not verified] skeleton recieve more damage from blunt, and less from pierce)

ok thx

That example has been verified.

ya sry, i found it a while after i said thx

ive found this thread to be incredibly helpful. jsut wanted to thank everyone who actually bothered to put this much research into pets xD

ya it is great but...

i made another ranger a day ago, just to be a beast master. i charmed a warthog and got it to lvl 5 before i left pre-ascalon. I put most of my point into BM and had a minor BM and a BM helm. I also put my skill list as 6/8 of it are BM skills. My pet didnt take dmg or die very much, he mostly did dmg...but..when he got to lvl 11...he became playful, and i was trying to get aggresive, did i do something wrong? or did i just do the exact opposite of what i was supposed to do?

so would the normal wolf be a 'cool' pet cuz you can only get it in pre? or does everyone still love those spiders...?

Evolution is poorly understood... there are still many questions about pet evolution - the number of pet deaths is a factor it seems, as is damage output, but it's really tough to figure out. You could try again, charm a new Warthog in Kryta and repeat?

Attribute Level --------- Pet Damage Increase...
looks pretty much like the regular damage modifier:
=damage modifier for ANY classes right hand weapon depending on the classes weapons attribute.

=100*2^((5*[weapon attribute]-60)/40) if [weapon attribute]<13
=100*2^((5*[weapon attribute]-60-([weapon attribute]-12)*2,5)/50) if [weapon attribute] > 12

in case your numbers are approximated and "pets" are just a "weapon" that havs beast mastery as "weapon attribute" those numbers may be more accurate.

I think I saw someone with a drake type pet that I've never seen before...can anyone confirm if there is a Drake pet available, where it would be, starting lvl..etc?

there is no Drake pet in the game... u prolly just saw a Hearty Dune Lizard...

Alright thanks, probably right. Does anyone know if a Strider pet gets much bigger than a Moa bird, or are they around the same size. I kind of want a really BIG Hearty pet for kicks and giggles when I'm bored. I think a really huge bird would be hilarious following me around. Not that I could get a Strider anymore (only in pre-searing), but I may not do it if Strider's get a lot bigger. The biggest pet I'd assume would be a lvl 20 Hearty Black Bear? Can anyone show me exactly how big these guys get with a screen or in-game to show?

Also are we sure about this being the best way to make a Hearty pet? (capped Moa bird at lvl 3) And then let it die, 0 pts into BM, and run around getting exp? Does the dead pet have to be in a certain range to keep getting exp or what. I heard they'll even get experience from mission completions and such. I already completed my missions/bonuses so I'm assuming they can't get that even if they could, but it'd be nice to know for future reference. Thanks in advance for handling my questions, this thread alone has already taught me a ton.