May 26, 2015 March 10, 2019
Pirate101: Pet Training Like a Pro
So what’s the most efficient method of pet training and morphing your Pirate101 pets? Thanks to a lot of input from Leah and some trail and error on my part, this article includes my “lessons learned” and hopefully will help you get started (or kick it up a notch!). It’s organized around the questions I had when I started:
- What’s does it take to get good pets? (Hint: mass produce!)
- What will I need in order to train pets efficiently?
- Lots of energy!
- Lots of snacks!
- Lots of gold!
- What approach should I use for morphing?
- Which pet training exercises should I perform?
If you’d like to learn more about pet morphing and training, be sure to check out the amazing in-depth guides Leah wrote previously! This article is intended to be a helpful summary to supplement them.
Have other questions? You may want to check out the other articles in this series:
- What is the Pirate101 Perfect Pet?
- Pirate101 Pet Morphing Strategies
- Our Pirate101 Ideal Pet Odyssey, with an overview and links to all the articles in the series.
Mass Production for the Win, er, Tactical Victory!
Unfortunately the odds are not ever in your favor. If you are targeting 3 specific talents and 3 specific powers, only 5-10% of the pets you morph will manifest them at level 30 and less than 1% will manifest them at level 50 (assuming manifested talents/powers show up twice as much as non-manifested ones).
So to develop the pets you want, you’re going to need to morph and train a lot. In order to do so, you’re going to need a lot of energy, snacks and gold.
More Pirates = More Energy
If you are mass producing and training often, you will burn though a LOT of energy when you pets are under level 20, since you’ll be able to repeat training activities often.
If you don’t have six Pirates already, create additional Pirates until you do, quest until they reach level 5 (which can be done quickly), and complete the quest “Silly Pet Tricks” from the Town Crier in Avery’s Court.
Unlike Wizard101, you do not lose your energy when you move pets to different Pirate, so your new “pet training noobs” will give you an additional 42 energy that can be used at any time.
Snacks: Go Bananas
The highest level snacks that you can buy for gold are the Level 4 Banana Burgers and Banana Sandwiches, sold in back of Circus Maximus behind the Morphing Tent by Gallina Karus. They provide an additional 32 experience (36 if your pet likes Main Course snacks or 40 if your pet loves Main Course Monquista snacks).
Note that we are targeting all “grants” powers, so we are not focused on using snacks that our pet loves (although they can help) to maximize the “Power” stat.
You’ll be using a lot of these, so you’ll need to be able to buy a lot. Which means you’ll need a lot of…
Gold, Gold and More… Gold!
Morphs typically cost around 17,000 gold for level 30 pets and 22,000 gold for level 60 pets. So a max gold pirate can perform about 8-12 morphs — and then they’ll need to get to max gold again. Fortunately Pirate101 gives us a few ways to replenish gold quickly:
Morphing
When you morph a pet, you’ll have to wait 10 minutes until your morphing timer runs out and you can morph again.
Since you’ll want to “mass produce,” you can speed things up if you have more than one Pirate with gold. After each morph, move the pets that you’re morphing to another Pirate and morph again, since you don’t lose any energy when you do. In fact, if you have 4 Pirates with gold, the ten minutes usually runs out by the time you trade the pets back to the first Pirate, without even giving you time to eat a cookie! Not only is it efficient but it is good for your health too since you eat less junk food! Ah, I digress…
Morphing Phase I — Getting the Powers/Talents You Want in Your Pool
Initially, you primary objective is to get the talents and powers that you want into your pet’s pool. You’ll want to try to morph with pets that are the type you want and have some of the talents and powers that you want manifested (or at least in their pool).
I found it best to morph 3-4 times with an “ideal pet,” train them to level 30, and then go through another round of hatching with the one that manifested the most talents or powers that I wanted (and appeared to have the others in the pet’s pool, as far as I could tell).
Our next article in the series will talk more about the strategies to accomplish this.
Morphing Phase II — Power/Talent Manifestation!
After you go through 3-6 rounds of hatching in phase one, you should have a couple of pets that you believe have all your target powers and talents in the pool and a few of them manifested. At this stage, you can mass produce until you get a pet that’s close enough to your ideal pet.
For this phase, I found it best to morph about 7 times per “round,” since this would allow my pet training noobs to train each one twice when at lower level (exercises requiring 3 energy X 7 pets X 2 rounds = 42). You can do whatever approach works best for you, since it’s your Pirate and you can do what you want!
Which Pet Training Activity?
To maximize your pet training efficiency, THOU SHALT FOLLOW THE 2 ACTIVITY COMMANDMENTS! (better than 15, uh, or 10)
Commandment #1: Thou shalt choose a Level 5 Skull Island training activity (8 XP) if you can start another activity when your first activity is done
When you include the experience you get from a Banana Burger or Sandwich (which you should use every time), the Level 5 Skull Island training activities give you the most pet experience per minute. Leah shows why in an excellent analysis in her Pirate101 Pet Leveling Guide.
In addition, they don’t require any training gear. What a deal!
Commandment #2: Thou shalt choose a level 25 Cool Ranch training activity (32 XP) if you’re not going to be able to start another training activity right away (see some other options below)
If you’re not able to start another activity right away (hopefully you are sleeping, right?), then your objective is to get as much experience as possible from the activity. The level 25 Cool Ranch training activities provide the most experience for an activity that only requires gear from Level 5 Skull Island activities or readily available for low prices at the bazaar.
Note some other options, by level range:
- For level 10-14, choose the Skull Island Long John Long Jump activity (16 XP) for the experience and Jump Ropes
- For level 15-24, choose the Monquista Salsa activity (24 XP) for the experience and the Silver Medals
- For level 30+, if you have plenty of Jump Ropes, you can choose the Cool Ranch Downward Horse or Hands Up! activities (40 XP; sometimes you can find Jump Ropes in the bazaar)
- For level 40+, if you have plenty of Silver Medals you can choose the Mooshu Fire Walking activity (40 XP; sometimes you can find Silver Medals in the bazaar).
Should I have my Companions Pet Wrangle?
The beauty of this approach is that you don’t really need to have your companions Pet Wrangle for gear, although you can if you want.
You should get plenty of gear from your level 5 Skull Island activities. If for some reason you’re short, the gear you need is readily available and inexpensive in the bazaar.
You also could have your Companions Plunder for gold, although it doesn’t seem to be so important either. Mine recently got into Pinochle and poetry, so I haven’t really seen them much anyway, except for some occasional readings in iambic pentameter…
Hope this guide was helpful! Let us know if you have any other Pet Training tips in your comments!