July 25, 2018 October 3, 2018

Common Pirate101 Pet Mistakes

As someone who originally played Wizard101 and eventually jumped ship to Pirate101 (I do not apologize for the pun), the pet morphing system in Pirates seemed very confusing to me at first. I struggled to string together multiple grants on my pets. Whenever I would stand around in the Spar Chamber, Brawlin’ Hall, or Avery’s Court, however, I’d see players with 6-7 grants on a pet. How did these players achieve such beautiful pets while my own were monstrosities such as this? What pet training mistake was I making?

After well over a year of struggling with pets, I’m proud to say that I’ve made one that I am finally proud of. It’s not perfect, but it’s a huge improvement over my initial pets. In this article, I’d like to share some of the mistakes I made when first morphing and how to fix them. By not making a mistake like these, you will start getting successful morphs much more rapidly than I did.

Common Pirate101 Pet Mistakes — The culmination of a multitude of morphs

Mistake #1: Not morphing in batches

In my Wizard101 days, pet hatching was simple. Find someone you want to hatch with. Hatch once (or twice if you both have an elixir on hand). Train the pet with the mega snacks you have from gardening. Keep training until it hits mega (ultra if you care about certain jewels) or fails. If it failed, repeat the process until it doesn’t. Without spending a single crown on training, it’s possible to churn out a pet every few days. If you have a stockpile of energy elixirs (say, from Grub Guardian), you can train a few pets every single day.

This rapid training does not exist in Pirate101. Pirate101 pets take about 2 weeks to train up to level 70 without crowns. With crowns, it can be done near-instantly, but for a whopping 13000+ crown fee (compared to the 1500ish necessary to level a wizard’s pet in one go).

Complaining about the inefficiency in Pirate’s system is fruitless. Instead, we must find a way to compensate for the slow going that is Pirate101 pet training. The answer comes from morphing in batches.

Why morph in batches?

Look at these two pictures. What notable things do you see? The two most important things in these images are:

The hatching timer – The hatching timer for Pirates is a mere 10 minutes, compared to the 12 or 24 hour Wizard timer.

The cost of morphing – Pirate morphs, as you can see, cost around half of what a Wizard101 hatch would cost. Couple this with the fact that a simple mob fight in Valencia Part II can easily net you 7-10k gold, you can see that churning out morphs is child’s play.

The extremely low cost of morphing, both in time and gold, should direct pirates to morph in batches. Rather than morphing one pet, waiting for it to fail, then morphing again, you should always do at least 3 morphs in one session (This is only a time commitment of 20 minutes and 60-70k gold).

Training one pet does not deplete our pirate’s energy reserve by itself, so why not train multiple simultaneously? And since training multiple pets does not take more time than training one (other than the extra clicks when feeding), you’re not spending any extra time. I wasted a significant amount of time only training 1 pet at a time. Training multiple pets at once would have certainly gotten me results more rapidly.

Mistake #2: Not understanding the importance of safety hatches

As I noted before, wizard pet training is extremely efficient, at least when compared to her sister game’s pet training system. A fail at ancient, epic, or even mega, generally only means a few hours to a few days worth of time wasted. On the other hand, a pirate’s pet failing at level 40, 50, 60, or heaven forbid, level 70, means you’ve at minimum wasted 3-4 days and potentially nearly 2 weeks with a pet that you will never use.

This is where the safety hatch comes in to play. Taking a pet to level 30 (the level where it can first morph) takes just over a day. If one of your 3+ morphs fails before then, you’re not out too much time or effort. In addition, you theoretically have 2 or more pets still going strong. So, when your batch of pets hits level 30, you should take each one that has not failed thus far and morph them 3 times each with the original person you morphed with. This gives you a solid pool of pets in which you can work with. This process should be repeated with every level 30 pet you get, obviously stopping whenever you lack the energy to train all of your pets at once.

Some players recommend keeping one pet at level 30 permanently to use as a “base pet” of sorts. This is particularly useful if you are working towards a very specific set of 4 talents and 3 powers, but isn’t necessary if you’re just trying to develop general pets. I personally have not kept one of these base pets, preferring instead to train up all my pets until they fail (after doing safety morphs)

level 30 pirate101 pet — An example of a Base Pet

Mistake #3: Accepting nothing short of perfection

This sounds counterintuitive. Shouldn’t I want my pets to be perfect? Of course, but the odds are incredibly stacked against you. A perfect level 70 pet, consisting of 3 powers and 4 talents, has an incredibly minute chance of occurring. There’s a joke/saying amongst the PvP community in Pirate101 that perfect pets don’t exist. Unlike wiz players, who need to get 5 talents out of 10 for their perfect pet (they even have wiggle room with 1 talent coming from jewels), we need to get 4 out of 10 from one list and 3 out of 10 from another. It doesn’t take a genius to see that the odds are grim.

Therefore, I encourage you to not obsess over one or two talents being less than ideal. Using the example of my pet, I’d love to have that bladestorm grant be a second Tide grant. That Rainbow would ideally be a Kraken’s Lament and that Backstab would be a Brutal Charge. Originally, I would not have been satisfied with these minor imperfections. Now, I don’t stress about it. My goal is to slowly improve upon this pet (Of course, selfish talents like repel boarders 2 or counterproductive grants like Cheap Shot should be erased immediately Good, although not ideal, talents shouldn’t be a stressor though) Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your perfect pet.