III. PET TRAINING POINTS

III. PET TRAINING POINTS
Date: 05/18/2007

1. What are “Training Points?

Pets can learn different skills and abilities (some more than others) and different ranks of skills and abilities. For example, all wolves can learn the special skill “Furious Howl” and there are 4 ranks of furious howl available in the game for your pet to learn. What skill(s) your pet can learn and what rank of those skills he can learn depend upon:

1) The skill and its rank (for example, your pet must be level 30 to learn the pet skill “Dash, Rank 1” but be level 50 to learn “Dash, rank 3”);

2) The type of pet (for example, Owls cannot learn “Dash” but cats & wolves can); and most importantly for this section

3) The number of Training Points (TP) your pet has available (for example “Dash, Rank 1” might cost 15 TP whereas “Dash, Rank 3” might cost 25 TP).
Note: The pet skill "Growl" is trainable to all pets and is free of any TP cost, though pet level vs. skill rank is still an issue.

Once you have determined, therefore, that your pet can learn a certain skill (more on skills later) and what rank of that skill it can learn, you must determine if your pet has enough TP available to learn it. You need to note at this point that after about level 35 or so you will not have enough TP available to you to train your pet in the max rank of all the skills he can know, you will have to pick and choose which skills you want your pet to know and/or what ranks of skills. This results in your having to engage in a trade off; do you want more armor or a higher rank of “Bite” etc. Luckily, the cost to untrain and retrain a pet is small, 10 silver, the first time you do it in any 24 hour period. If you always wait at least 24 hours between the time you untrain and retrain a pet it will only cost you 10s each time. This makes it possible and practical to “reconfigure” your pet on a regular basis to match your needs in the game.

2. So how do you calculate TP?

The basic formula for calculating training points is: TP = (Loyalty Level – 1) * Exp. Level. So, for example, if I have a level 30 pet at loyalty level 5 he will have a total of 120 TP (120 = (5-1) * 30). When that same pet hits loyalty level 6, I’ll get an instant 30 TP boost and jump to 150 TP available for use (150 = (6-1) * 30). However, when the pet then levels up to level 31, I’ll only get a 5 TP boost for a total of 155 TP (155 = (6 -1) * 31). People often get confused when they see a pet gain TP at a rate of 50 or 60 a pop and then suddenly it slows to only 5 a pop. This is why this happens. They are seeing huge gains from the initial loyalty level going up, but only small gains from the pet’s experience level increasing.

3. Well why did my pet come with negative training points?

As noted above, pets learn skills and those skills cost TP. Some pets that you tame, however, come with skills already known. You might, for example, tame a mountain lion that already knows the skill “Prowl, Rank 1.” Well, “Prowl, rank 1” is a pet skill that costs TP to learn and teach to a pet. When you tame a pet that already has a skill, the TP cost of that skill shows up as part of his TP when he is tamed. For example, if you tame a pet that has no skills at all, when he is first tamed you’ll have -0- TP (0 = (1-1) * 30 [or whatever level the pet is]). On the other hand, if you tame a pet that knows a skill that costs, say 15 TP, upon first taming the pet it will have -15 TP. He starts with -0- TP and then loses 15 due to the cost of the skill he already knows. A pet with several skills or a high rank of a skill might have a large number of negative points. As the pet gains loyalty though, it will gain TP in accordance with the formula, but will reflect the TP cost of the known skill in the number of available TP that show up in your pet’s character sheet window. So, for example, if I tame a level 30 pet that has a skill already that costs 15 TP when I first get him, he’ll have a -15 TP. When he hits loyalty level 2 though he’ll have 15 TP available (15 = ((2 – 1) * 30) – 15). At loyalty level 3 he’ll have 45 TP available (45 = ((3 – 1) * 30) – 15) and so on.

To see how many TP your pet has available for use just right click on his portrait under yours and then open his character sheet. You can also open your spell book and click on the general tab and then click on the “pet training” icon (it looks like a sling shot) and see how many TP your pet has available for use (more on the rest of the window that opens when you do this later).

People commonly ask if they should “save” their training points or if taming a low level pet and raising it up to a higher level will give them more training points that taming a high level pet. The answer is “no.” The formula is the same no matter when you tame your pet. A pet leveled from 8 to 70 and a pet trained at 70 will both (at max loyalty level) have a total of 350 TP available. That’s all there is to TP. Next comes the big issue, how do you use them to train a pet in the various skills he can learn.