Pet's in WOI

An overview of pets

This would seam quite a simple area to cover but because it spiders into to so many other aspects of the game it is a source of great confusion for many players,

We will begin with simply choosing the right pet for you.
Combat pets:
A combat pet is a pet that will assist you in battle, think of them as an extra party member.
choosing a combat pet is like choosing your class, what do u want from it?

My personal recommendations:
Dex pets: these benefit from a naturally high evade and crit rate so in general make good companions for regular PvE encounters, the are low cost to maintain because they are least likely to consume pet recovery potions.

Vit pets: they are like walking HP potions if skilled correctly, they are least likely to die at a crucial time and weaker players can use these to taunt some of the attention away from their main character.

Str Pets: the all out brawler, expensive to maintain in potions because they are the most likely to take on the damage but will increase your kill rate because of the sheer weight of damage they can lay down.

Int Pet: these should generally maintain a distance from the action and lay down huge magic damage, there only flaw is they are the most fragile, Glass cannons come to mind.

Sprt pets: this is your mana battery, if skilled to do so they can rescue your MP during those dangerous times, they are good buffing pets and still allow for decent damage, they do benefit from the highest natural defense of any pet type.


Ok so once you have your combat pet sorted, what else do you need?

Fusion Pets

After the demigod scenario quest line, pet fusion changes the game.
Now you are able to absorb the power of your pet for limited periods.
how does this affect you?
Well picking what pets you need for fusion means knowing your characters strengths and weaknesses.

most players carry 2 pets for the purposes of fusion, one to bolster there main attribute and one to cover their weaknesses,

we will use a mage as out first example, mages cause huge amounts of damage, but often draw agro beyond what they can handle, so to counter this, fusing with a good Vit pet would allow them to have enough HP to survive.

But, for those times when damage isn't a worry and you just want to lay down insane amounts of damage, fusing with a pure Int pet allows your to bump your damage output excessively.

Special Note: Only a Spirit pet boosts Phy/Mag Defense so it is recommended for All classes to have 1 good spirit pet just to fuse when things get to tough.

Now that your have your chosen pets how do you make the best use of them,

Fortify levels: combat pets will be taking damage, regardless of type so fortify levels reduce the amount of damage the pet takes,

Growth: this relates to how much the base attributes increase per level, it should be improved before leveling a pet to allow for maximum strength. it does not appear to be retro active so waiting till you have the cash later appears to be a waste of every level you put onto a pet.
(Unless you plan on ascension)

Pet Ascension

Pet Ascension

These are the findings from many attempts at the pet ascension system, broken down into each stage.

Sourcing a Pet to ascend.

Only 2nd Gen and boss pets may be ascended and since the quality will be locked from here onwards it's best to try and source a close to max quality & Growth Pet before you begin.


Beginning the absorption.
Upon finding your pet, you can open your pet page,
select the ascension tab
Pick your chosen pet from the menu
Lock it into the ascension tab
(once locked it cannot be traded, unlocking resets any absorption)

Upon locking the pet you see what is required.

Max absorptions: This is the amount of tries you have to reach 100%
Absorptions: how many tries you have used
Absorptions Left: how many of your daily absorbs you have left to use

Star core average: this is the amount each absorptions needs to be in order to reach 100%

Current Star core: The combined total of the 3 slots potential.

In order to have a chance at ultimate ascension you have to reset your current star core to be equal or more than the star core average.


Items Containing Star cores

Once you have used all of your absorptions, if you have more than 60% on the progress bar, your pet can ascend.
Hit the "open asc." button at the bottom

you will see your pets current natural growth quality fortify and boost.

once u hit ascend your will see the results.

hit receive to collect your new ascended pet.

here are some of my current low level test results, all ultimate ascended.

Pet Focus Orbs

OK so the time has come to tackle pet focus orbs, we will begin by understanding how to select the correct orbs for your pets,

Focus orbs are divided into three categories.

Red
Yellow
Blue

We start by identifying each focus's primary stat:

From the yellow table above we can identify that ACUITY is related to CRIT CHC when dealing with yellow orbs, so for this guide we will select an undead claymore as it's maximum stat for acuity is higher than the other stat's.
This Mark's it as this orbs PRIMARY STAT,

Higher level focus's may contain 2 Primary stats.

after capturing a ton of undead claymore souls we can begin the smelting process.
What to look for:

1. Talents - Each orb can have up to 3 talents, Stats highlighted as a talent grow more as you improve the focus, so smelting until you gain a talent on the chosen stat, CRIT in this case if your first goal.

2. Meld's - Each focus can be melded with up to 15 times, this process is used to improve your base orb (above) stat's.
The goal to get as close to perfect with all 4 stats and have meld's left to improve upon it's growth rate.

3. Set a target - by the half way point in your meld's you should be looking at these stats as a minimum, if your just not having the luck getting the meld's delete and start fresh the next day, it is a wasteful process but without allowing a cut off point, you'll waste ether, time and money polishing a turd.

4. Don't rush it - this process is limited by smelt exhaustion, just because u can only smelt a few more orbs today, doesn't mean you have to use up all your meld's.
The best focus's take weeks to find the right melds for so be patient.



Addressing the skills and composition will be added tomorrow after exhaustion resets.

Dragon Blood Locations

I've been asked for the locations of the dragons used to obtain the scales, you must have the previous level scale when killing these, i.e. you need scale 8 if you want to kill dragon 9, otherwise it wont drop a scale.

Eos-I -50- -Roan Harbor(66,243)-
Eris-II -55- -Undead Canyon(114,171)-
Eros-III -60- -Dwarves' Forest(80,174)-
Naiads-IV -65- -Doomed Jungles East(213,157)-
Kalypso-V -70- -Doomed Jungles West(159,283)-
Simois-VI -75- -Sand Castle(52,117)-
Achelous-VII -80- -Cursed Desert(275,106)-
Axius-VIII -85- -Demigod Prairie(258,141)-
Glaucus-IX -90- -Nordic Lands(53,256)-
Triton-X -95- -Burning Land(150,192)-
Leucothea-XI -100- -Everstill Lands(113,108)-
Nereids-XII -105- -Plain of Despair(128,224)-

Gearing in Detail

Recent discussions have asked for a more detailed look at the gearing system in WOI, my obscure set up has raised many questions.
Because of the amount of detail in this section I may have to return over several days and tweak this depending on feedback regarding it's formatting and clarity

All gear types have 4 primary area's of focus to help you choose which is a perfect part for your play style,
the 4 blue stats are the most important when deciding which part is for you.
the blue stats can feature rare special attributes such as increased crit/lucky strike rate and massive amounts of damage to specific monster types depending on the part so understanding the limits of each part is important,
I will use the helm as my example of the differences from each set,

Gold Stat will always be
Physical Defense

White stats will always feature:
Physical Defense
Magic Defense

Yellow stats Will always feature:

Dex

Spirit

Mag Def

Max HP

Evasion

Blue stats can* feature:
Damage Vr's (animal/human/dragon/demon/undead)
Damage reduction Vr's (animal/human/dragon/demon/undead)
Increased % to (white/yellow/gems)
Crit block
Elemental attack
Elemental Resistance/Penetration
Physical/Magic attack bonus.

Where this confuses most players is choosing the best blue stats is a very individual choice, it may seam obvious that a set of.........
+13% white stat
Crit block 2%
Phy/Mag attack + 100
fire attack + 100
would be the most awesome helm ever dropped, but in reality these stats only really benefit a Pure DPS class, a champion for example is most likely already at the damage reduction limit so stacking more defense may not always be the best option, instead sticking with a yellow bonus would increase his HP/Mag Def which is much more important.
Sticking with the champion class, your not a DPS toon so
elemental resistances would be much more beneficial than the bonus attack stats also.


The most common way I've advised our members is that each class has 1 or 2 primary pieces of gear, those are essential to find the highest part with +% to white,

Quick list:
Champion: Pauldrons
Hera tic: Belt
Enchantress: Belt
Slayer: boots
Duelist: Chest/Greaves
Magus: Belt
Berzerker: Chest/Greaves


After sourcing your main white pieces, chose your least beneficial part, this will become your gem stack.
DPS character pick Gloves usually so they can embed powerful attack gems (only gloves and weapons can have offensive gems embedded) most other classes prefer Helm or Greaves.
For everything else we normally advise Yellow Bonus

My Hybrid set of gear does not reflect it's potential in terms of "Power" but I gave up worrying about what my power says when my golden set had me at 152k HP/1700 Def (6200 power) and my Soul Gear has me at 121k/1600 HP (7300 power) when a boss is hitting for 52k damage which set would u rather be wearing,....

Examples of unusual choices

It seams insanity that anyone would spend the money on a weapon featuring yellow stats by choice, especially with a legendary price tag, but consider the blue stats for a moment...
It's for a champion, adding 13% to both the champions primary stat (VIT) and main weakness (Mag Def) is much more important than 77 extra points of damage.

These Greaves were chosen for 2 reasons, the rare lucky strike attribute and also the Gem bonus.
Each character should have 1 gear piece with this stat, 
DPS toons tend to make this Gloves so any attack gems used can be increase as this is the only main gear part offensive gems can be socket-ed into.
I chose Greaves because I have an abundance of both the white stat and yellow stats already, 
This allows me to focus my most powerful defensive/Resistance gems here and gain an additional 8% for pre-polish.

Purchase Luxuries - Daily

From 11:30 -23:30 server time a daily event is available that can bring in more income than magic academy if done right, with a lot less shouting at the screen about "he jumped that bomb".

The premise of this daily is that you get to craft 3 luxury items and the board will give you coins for the highest quality result.

Once you've chosen a crafting skill from Lillan luxuries appear on the recipe lists at levels 10/20/35

Avoiding the common mistakes:
There are 3 available crafting skill but the board will only cycle 2 available quests every 90 mins, so make sure you are able to craft the listed item from your recipes, many people take a quest from the board only to discover the luxury is either too high or from a different skill tree. If yours isn't listed then just wait for the board to recycle after 90 minutes.

Ok, so the actual quest...
You will buy a compass from the board for your chosen skill, This will give u clue as to where you can get the "special" ingredient from,
LV10 is usually sand castle or Dwarfs forest,
LV20 is Soul bound caverns 3rd floor or Temple of withering Floor 1 (clue will state deaths temple, bad translation by PWE)
LV35 consumes150 x Tier 4 Clan Resources and doesn't net a profit worth doing.

Once you reach the clue destination, right clicking the compass will give you a sub quest,
Kill a spawned mob
Harvest a small spawned material (usually a pink crystal)
or escort an NPC to a location,

Once this part is done u will either be rewarded with your "special" ingredients or be told to return to Lillan in Atlantis.

Craft the 3 luxury items, check for the listed qualities and submit the highest to the board for nice cash rewards,
The 2 Lesser luxuries can be right clicked to gain some EXP.

The higher your Production Reputation, the better the possible results.

Production Master - Hidden EXP

Lillan in Atlantis is one of the most commonly overlooked sources of Daily EXP and Income.
Players are able to submit crafted materials in exchange for Decent EXP and an increase in production reputation.
This does not appear to be a direct source of income, rather the opposite but by raising your Production reputation the max possible quality on items crafted for the Purchase Luxuries Daily increases,

Many items can be submitted such as food, energy pots and even star word recharger, most only giving 10 Reputation per submission.

But over the course of our play we discovered that submitting LV80 or LV90 unopened food stacks produce the best results, Giving 15 Rep and 30% more EXP per item.

As your reputation increases so does the amount you are able to submit daily, currently I am able to submit 18 items per day for an increase of 270 Rep and 5Mil EXP, and have crafted Luxuries up to Quality 90,
A LV20 Luxury @ 90 Quality nets between 350-600k Coins (per day)