Utility Pets

[ShubiMaja]

First, I'd like to say that I really enjoy the direction animal taming is going right now. In general I am a fan of realistic mechanics. So I am glad to see specific skills for taming specific types of pets. With that being said, I believe that we should introduce an new category of pets: Utility Pets.

Utility pets should be pets that in some way or another offer a benefit other than simple combat abilities. While healing pets can be an example of utility -- and I'd like to see healing pets added as well, I still consider that ability tied to combat.

What I'm talking about is pets that offer abilities completely unrelated to combat. Here are some examples of the types of pets and utility skills that I would like to see:

Fireflies:
Utility skills/bonus: Passive Lighting, Flashing lights/Signalling Lights, Light Dance (can simply be the dance that they do when near music)

Crow:
Utility skills/bonus: Aggro warning sound, Auto harvest fully grown plants, bonus run speed

Parrot:
Utility skills/bonus: show quest locations on zone entry, Auto respond to chat, bonus chance to drop rare items

Monkey:
Utility skills/bonus: Increase harvest of fruits, Auto harvest bananas, Bonus jump height

Feel free to comment or add your own ideas.

[Tsugumori]

Could be tacked onto the Animal Husbandry skill or a subset of Animal Handling, neat concept anyway.

If there were a large roster of pets it would be cool to pick and choose.

[ShieldBreaker]

Very cool idea

I think the parrot should provide a bonus when digging up buried treasure, Arrr.

The firefly idea is really good.

Crow/Raven should provide some bonus when looting corpses.

other idea
Otter = Underwater Mining Doer/aid (like maybe instant mining underwater, or really quick progress bar)
songbirds: Lyrebird, Nightingale, Warbler = boost to bard effects
Doves: Bonus to - Taunt

the possibilities are nearly endless, if you took the same underlining creature model and gave it a different texture like, a raven could also maybe be a robin, then you could have large selection with less need for completely new models.

If it went this route, almost think we would end up with bird-watching skill as well.

[Easylivin]

This is a great idea.



Maybe these pets come with higher levels of a skill.


Foraging lvl 50 gets you a monkey that collects fruit, level 100 and you get a beaver that collects wood or a dog that collects bones etc.


Mole that finds metal slabs

Ferret that finds gems, and gold/silver ore

[Crissa]

Ugh, I'd hate the idea of gating the gathering skill to combat ability. There's already a limited number of pet 'slots' and the pet would need to be trained to survive in different areas, lest it die to one hit (who'd want their firefly taken out by the first AoE in combat?)

[ShieldBreaker]

I was thinking of these pets more as accessories, as seeing as they were "abilities completely unrelated to combat" So gathering still be separate from combat, and they would take up inventory space not stable space.

Falconer Gloves, when wore bring in your hawk that catchs bunnies maybe.
A Fez for a monkey, that might just be too silly or wrong.
Ring and necklaces could cover a lot of types.

Then if you could inscribe the ring for example with the name of the pet and that is the name that would appear on the pet, I'd find that cool. i.e. "Enjoy this ring, Name: Polly" and then the server picks up that the pet name is Polly.

[Eachna]

I'd like a utility pet that gives a small bonus to crafting xp (similar to, but not as good as, dancing buffs for crafting). It's hard to get dancers to dance near crafters.

Instead of having multiple unique pets (re: @Crissa's comment about pet slots) you could have one "Utility" pet stable slot and then morph the pet as needed. Since you never have more than one pet out this allows for endless variations while not taking up a lot of stable slots.

It could be a "Pet in a can" or "Pet in a box" .

I wouldn't want to give up either a lot of stable slots or bag space for these pets. There's not enough of either in game.

[Crissa]

I'd actually suggest such pets be side skills like languages or types of anatomy; that way they can be picked up in any order but need to be trained to full use.

[cr00cy]

Interesting idea. somethign to help in gathering/surveying etc could be really nice. maybe ,make it separate skill from aha, but still need few lv in it (say, 25? it takes only few hours to reach it anyway). Then diffrent summons could be learned as side bar skills. Diffrent skill for summoning difrent type of pets. This way they wouldnt take space (neitehr in inventory or stable).

Also they should be untargetable(sinc etehy are not supposed to take part in combat)

As for effects - i dont think auto-gathering, especialy for wood, would be good idea. I would opt for chance for bonus harvest istead.

Other effects i would like to see:

- reduced monster aggro range
- (mentioned alredy) treasure/gem/metal findign help (i see it as pet flyign over right spot when we are close, or pointing towards nearest location.
- not sure if it would be good idea... but maybe something for auto-lootign corpses?

[ShieldBreaker]

Two ideas that I'll just throw out there.

What if the utility pets were actually golems in pet form, got me thinking about Bubo the mechanical owl from the original Clash of the Titans.

Or if not golems, be nice if golems could be programmed with most of the same abilities that the utility pets get.