Table of Contents
Introduction – Why Use Pets?
If you started in the Black Desert Online game, you will notice there is no auto-loot system, not even for silver drops for monsters. Instead, you have to manually pick up loot; otherwise, your loot will disappear and be gone forever. It will not take long before you get tired of doing this. Believe me, I have been there! That is when you need to start thinking about pets.
Pets auto-pick up loot for you every once in a while to alleviate the looting process. One pet will be able to pick up one monster’s loot; it does not matter how much loot that singular monster drops, the pets will take all of it if you have inventory space, of course.
The frequency at which your pets loot will depend on three things:
- The pet’s tier
- The pet’s level
- The behavior.
Pets Tier and Breeding
There are four tiers of pets. When you acquire a pet for the first time, it will always be a Tier 1 pet. There is no way of obtaining any higher tier pet right from the start. To get higher tier pets, you need to have to pets of the same species breed together. The breeding process is instantaneous and you will get a chance to acquire a higher tier pet, but take into consideration that it is only a chance, not a guarantee.
For example, if we get two cat pets, both Tier 1 and breed them together. we have a chance to get a Tier 2 or a Tier 3 pet. What you want is a Tier 3 pet because Tier 2 pets are not any faster than a Tier 1 pet. If you succeed in getting a Tier 3 pet, you will need to get two more Tier 1 pets, breed those together, and hopefully get another Tier 3 pet.
Once you have two Tier 3 pets, you will be able to breed them both together to either acquire a Tier 4 pet or fail and get another Tier 3 pet. If you are not comfortable spending over $200 dollars on virtual pets, then do not go for Tier 4 pets. Try for Tier 3 pets if you want and you will be more than happy with the results.
Breeding Combinations
Tier 1 + Tier 1 = Tier 2 or Tier 3
Tier 1 + Tier 2 = Tier 2
Tier 2 + Tier 2 = Tier 3
Tier 3 + Tier 3 = Tier 3 or Tier 4
Pets Level and Skills
Each pet has a maximum level of 10, at which point, they will learn a skill. Each pet has to ability to lear these types of skills. Tier 1 pets can learn one skill at level 10. Tier 3 pets can learn up to two skills and Tier 4 pets can learn up to three skills. The type of skills they learn vary depending on the species of pet you have.
For example, cats have an inclination to learn more life skill-oriented skills, while all species can learn skills like combat experience and karma recovery plus 3%. What you obtain is actually RNG. If you get two pets who learn combat experience plus 3%, the effect will stack and you will see an increase of combat experience plus 6% when both pets are out.
When breeding a pet with a skill, you can choose to keep the one skill, which allows your newly bred pet to start with whatever skill you kept. Keep in mind, though that even if you keep a skill while breeding, you cannot go over the Tier’s skill limit. Therefore, if we breed two Tier 1 pets, keep a cooking skill and the result is a Tier 2 pet, you will not learn a second skill at level 10 because the Tier 2 skill limit is one skill.
Pets Behavior
Behavior is a fairly new mechanic for pets that allows you to change the loot speed of your pets. You can change this behavior option in the pet window, you can toggle between agile, cautious and normal behaviors.
Normal is the standard speed pets start out in at 3.0 seconds. Agile behavior makes pets loot faster at 2.7 seconds but also increases the rate at which their stamina depletes.
Cautious behavior slows down the loot time at 3.3 seconds but also slows down stamina consumption, allowing your pets to last longer before needing to be fed.
If you are overclearing, you might want to use agile behavior. If you are life skilling, you want to use cautious behavior.
Feeding your Pet
There are four different ways to feed your pet. You can buy cheap feed from any stable keeper in towns. You can cook feed and organic feed if you are into cooking or you can buy cook feed and organic feed if you are too lazy to cook them. Also, you can spend money and buy nutritious feed in the Pearl Shop, which is something no one does because it is not worth the money.
Each type of feed recovers a certain amount of stamina. Cheap feed recovers the lowest (12 stamina recovery), while organic feed recovers the most (140 stamina recovery).
Nutritious feed recovers 60 stamina and good feed recovers 80 stamina. You want to use the type of feed that fits within your budget.
It is important to know that when you use whatever feed, the pet with the lowest stamina percentage will get fed first, regardless of its tier or level. The only way pets can gain experience to level up is by feeding them.
How to Obtain Pets
If you buy a bundle when purchasing the game, you get your choice of one pet and other goodies of decent value if you can grab the bundle on sale. You can also get a penguin pet every six to nine months through an attendance award. Do not take into much consideration as it does not come often and the publisher has changed the limit so you cannot have more than one penguin out at a time. Therefore, if you play long enough to get two penguins, breed them to make any use of the new one.
If you also play long enough, you will be able to choose a pet as an account playtime award for playing 5,000 hours. You get to choose a random cat or dog pet to own. The strange thing is that some species of pets you get are actually worse than a normal pearl shop version.
Luckily, pets can be bought and sold in the marketplace. You just set up a notification and bid on every pet that is available and pray that you win one.
Spending on your Pet
You are going to spend money on pets. Buying four pets will cost a game currency equal to approximately $36 dollars plus a $10 game price, which is not so bad. Having one pet is good enough you are just starting the game and as you progress through the game, you will find out if you need to acquire more pets.
Some Examples of Pets and their Abilities
- Dogs and Turtles: detect hostile enemy players.
- Cats: detect gathering points nearby.
- Crabs and Foxes: reduce the durability loss of your gear.
- Birds: Increase knowledge gain.