Pet Improvement Project (P.I.P.)
I
cannot take credit for this idea as others before me have had variations on a
theme with projects to improve their pets in Wizard101.
However,
I loved the idea and decided to start my own project, for fun and maybe to help
other players. So, I started a new character and decided that I would start
with the first pet that I receive in the game and see how far I could improve
that pet.
The
first pet I received, as a “drop” from a fight in Unicorn Way, was a Sprite.
The pet is from the school of Myth, and has a pedigree number of 31. In other
words, for those who are more familiar with what this means, it is a very basic
pet that will never amount to much other than its aesthetic appeal. I can train
it up to Teen, Adult, Ancient, and Epic and this pet will never manifest
talents beyond what are called “selfish talents”. For those who don’t know,
selfish talents just increase one of five categories of a pet’s fields of
experience. I have seen on the wiki page for the Myth Sprite that there is the
potential for this first generation pet to manifest the talents for adding
focus of Myth attacks, adding damage for Myth attacks, and other talents that
help your character in a fight, should your character be in the school of Myth.
Let me
back-track and explain some of this jargon for those who are just starting out
with the online computer game of Wizard101. Ok, so you have chosen a wizard
from one of the seven schools, you maybe have some clothing, and then maybe you
have a pet. First, I recommend that you pay attention to the tutorial mission
given to you at level 7, where the whole process of pet training, pets in
general, racing your pets in the derby, pet snacks and pet hatching is
explained. You probably will have the Piggle (a cute flying pig) that is
automatically given in this quest.
There
are four mini-games where you can put your pet through some challenges. How
well you perform determines how well your pet increases in experience at the
end of the mini-game. At that point, you have the option to feed your pet a
snack as a reward. If they like it, they gain additional experience, and even
more if they love it. And, the snacks have rankings which help to determine how
much base-line experience your pet receives from eating that snack.
All
pets have a number of talents. Those talents are manifested as your pet reaches
certain milestones of experience called: Teen, Adult, Ancient, and Epic. These
talents can be either selfish (they only increase the experience categories of
the pet, but do nothing to help you) or they can be talents that help you when
your wizard is in a fight.
If you
still don’t understand what I am talking about, I recommend signing up on the
game and give it a go – learn by doing.
Anyway,
let’s begin my personal story with my Myth Sprite. By the time that I started
training this pet, my character was around level 20 and about halfway through
Krokotopia. It took me this long to get the gold necessary to buy some higher
level pet snacks for Myth – I bought as many Delicious Cookies (a level 5
snack) as I could afford. I got 20 snacks. At this time, I was also starting
out gardening so that I could get more gold to buy snacks, and work my way up
to a high enough gardening level to start growing Evil Magma Peas.
Here is
my game plan for training my Myth Sprite:
First, I am going to buy a simple Wooded Cottage (a house for my
character), and set up a very large garden. It will take lots of gold, time,
and gardening before I get to the level necessary to have gardening spells that
affect a large area. But, I plan to get there step by step.
Ok,
second, once I get high enough with gardening, I will grow lots and lots of
Evil Magma Peas. These plants can give high level snacks, called mega-snacks,
which make training pets go a lot faster. I know, it is really just a trade-off
of time, one for the other. But these plants also drop gold and other goodies
that will help my character in other ways – sooo, more beneficial for time
spent.
In the
meantime, I am running my little Myth Sprite through the hedge maze and dance
games in the Pet Pavilion. For me, these two games are the easiest where I am
most certain that I will get a perfect score. My goal with this very first Myth
Sprite is just to get her up to Adult level. At Adult, I am going to hatch this
pet with one of my brother’s pets.
My
brother has three characters: Myth, Balance, and Death. I also have three:
Fire, Ice, and Balance. All of my brother’s characters are Transcended (level
70). This was written right before the launch of Avalon! My Fire character is
Transcended, my Ice is in the low 50s, and my balance is in the low 20s.
My
brother never embraced improving his pets, but rather just trained those pets
that manifested the talents that he desired. He spent most of his pet training
time advancing his pet Mustard Troll, called Bruno, which manifested some very
helpful talents for his Myth character. However, at Epic, the troll did not
manifest “Cast Spritely”; so, he hatched the troll with a Utility Dragon that
did “Cast Spritely”, and then trained up Bruno 2 to Epic. This pet had all the
desired traits he wanted including “Cast Spritely”. And that was largely the
end of his desire for advancing his pets.
My
first thought was to cross the Myth Sprite with this Mustard Troll. They are
both Myth pets, and Bruno 2 has some great talents and is a level 59 pedigree,
and only has three talent slots that are labeled Un-common – the rest of his
talent slots are Rare, Ultra-Rare, and Epic. So the odds are great that the
result of hatching will be a pet with much higher pedigree, and with talent
slots that are better than Common (with no pips next to the slot) and Un-Common
(with one pip next to the slot).
FYI, I
have noticed that talent slots with very desirable skills that help your wizard
are called Epic and have four little pips; Almost as good are Ultra-Rare with
three pips, and then Rare with three or two pips. Anything lower than that and
you run the risk of getting selfish skills that really do nothing, in my
opinion.
For
instance, my brother has a Utility Dragon (Myth) that is only 58 pedigree, yet
the dragon has four Epic talent slots, three Ultra-Rare, and four Rare talent
slots. The dragon is a cross between a standard Utility Dragon and a Sea
Dragon. I have not seen what talents it has manifested, but my brother
commented that it is an incredible pet. He does not use it much because its
talents are offensive, and he likes to use pets with strong defensive talents
like his Mustard Troll Bruno 2.
I do
not want to do a hatch with that dragon because of the low pedigree number. My
odds of improving the Myth Sprite are increased if I hatch it with a higher
pedigree pet, like the Sea Dragon I just mentioned which has 72 pedigree. However,
with that pet, I run the risk of getting a Sea Dragon and not a better Myth
Sprite. Too many times my brother hatched with the Sea Dragon, and just got
another Sea Dragon. He said it was rare to get a higher level pet of something
else. My balance character who has the Myth Sprite that I intend to improve has
very little gold, so I cannot afford failed hatches. But, I am thinking of
doing this in the future when I have a larger garden and the gold coins are
growing on trees.
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