Managing Pets in Elin: A Guide
In Elin, running a successful party is essential, and there comes a time when tackling everything alone becomes overwhelming. While companions can be beneficial, pets offer unique advantages that bring their own complexities. Fortunately, Elin provides plenty of time to learn and adapt.
Starting with the straightforward task of receiving a pet grizzly bear quickly transitions into a detailed process involving breeding, genetic modifications, and dietary planning. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help you begin raising a pet that can join you in Nefias.
How to Acquire Pets
The first pet you’re likely to encounter is given by Fiama, who provides a creature of your choosing during the tutorial quest. As you progress through the homestead questline, you’ll meet the Steel Dragon, Corgon, who can also be recruited. Animal tamers offer a range of pets for sale.
If you’re looking to expand your pet collection beyond quests and vendors, you can catch new creatures. While capturing wild animals can be easier, hatching pets from eggs yields stronger stat growth than their wild versions.
To catch a creature, use monster balls—small spheres you throw at nearly defeated enemies. Basic balls can be found in regular shops and at the Fortune Bell Casino prize counter, while premium balls are available from Miral and Garokk’s workshop. Tossing these balls is similar to using items or potions, and the hover menu will indicate if an enemy is too strong to be captured. After catching a creature, you can retrieve the ball and throw it again to release your new pet.
Another method to obtain pets is hatching fertilized eggs. While these are quite rare, you can find them through several means:
- Eggs can often be found in bird nests scattered throughout the fields.
- You can collect eggs from pets that are designated as livestock, which have a slim chance of being fertilized.
- Feeding a creature love potions might unexpectedly result in an egg, even from those that usually don’t lay eggs.
Fertilized eggs need to be placed in a bed or incubator to hatch into a tame creature. It can take a few days for the egg to hatch, so be careful not to accidentally eat it!
Raising Your Pet’s Affinity
Building a strong bond with your pet offers various benefits. For example, pets with high affinity grow faster. Additionally, you can retrieve any equipment you’ve given them without upsetting them.
Here are some effective methods for increasing your pet’s affinity:
- Adventuring Together: Completing quests and defeating enemies alongside your pet will help raise its affinity, though they may lose some affection if they perish.
- Headpatting: If you’re a worshiper of Horome, you can use this ability to improve your affinity with any character. Although it shares a cooldown with chatting, it won’t reduce affinity.
- Love Potions: These provide a significant immediate boost to affinity. You can either blend them into food or throw them directly at your pet. However, love potions are rare, so stock up by investing in a drug dealer and using influence to restock.
When visiting the dealer, keep an eye out for acid-proof liquids that can make your equipment immune to harmful acid damage.
Protecting Fragile Pets
Losing a pet can significantly drop your affinity, and you’ll have to wait a week for them to respawn. To mitigate this, consider letting them ride on you with the Symbiosis skill. This ability functions oppositely to riding: your pet will remain on your back and most attacks will target you instead. They still retain their abilities and can continue to act, with a slight decrease in speed and success rates depending on your skill level.
Feeding Your Pet
Like other companions, your pet’s stats will improve based on their diet. To develop their desired attributes, you need to feed them appropriately.
It’s helpful to have gourmet feats to understand the traits of various foods, though they’re not mandatory. Before deciding what role you want your pet to fill, use a stethoscope—available from Talesinger Farris—to examine their character sheets. This will reveal their attributes, growth potential, and any inherited traits.
For instance, the silver bell stands out with:
- Just 1% of a normal character’s hit points but possesses immunity to nearly all damage due to an innate feat.
- A remarkable speed of 300, allowing it to act more frequently than other creatures.
- High potential in marksmanship, which isn’t obvious just from observing them in the wild.
From this assessment, you can determine the best diet for your pet. In this case, feeding them endurance-boosting foods might not be effective; instead, focus on foods that enhance their attack power to maximize their speed.
Pets can also use gear just like humanoid companions. If you don’t want them to utilize shared equipment, you can instruct them not to.
Training Your Pet
To develop combat skills, your pet must engage in battles, but you don’t have to start from scratch. Use the gallows from the tutorial quest:
- Putting a creature in the gallows allows your pets and companions to practice their attack skills on it.
- Placing your pet in the gallows will enhance their defensive skills.
Rest assured, using townsfolk or pets as practice targets will not result in fatal injuries. They will always stop short of deadly damage.
Teaching Your Pet New Skills
Unlike your character, pets can’t simply learn new skills by paying trainers with platinum coins. Instead, you need to engage in gene editing. There are several ways to acquire genes for your pets:
- Genes can drop randomly from any enemy, particularly from stronger variants. Elites possess "evolved" versions of genes that offer unique abilities.
- The Little Garden, located southwest of Derphy, sells a variety of genes that allow you to modify a pet’s combat AI.
- Statues of Mani, the machine deity, provide high-level genes when visited. These can be found in the wild or dropped during fishing.
Nino at the Tinker’s Camp sells gene editing tools, but they come with a hefty price tag. It’s usually better to wait until later in the game to purchase these, especially if you haven’t yet identified a gene you want to use.
You’ll need electricity to operate the editing tool, which means you’ll have to acquire or construct a generator.
Basic genes cost fewer feat points, making them appealing if you’re merely looking to teach a skill. On the other hand, activated abilities like fire breath are costlier but open up many new possibilities.
Once a creature learns a skill from a gene, they can further enhance that skill naturally. This makes simple genes with a point or two particularly valuable for developing a pet into a specific role.
Now you’re equipped with the knowledge to navigate pet management in Elin effectively!
