I'm a lobo, psymet, nekotai that gets by on basing for exp/gold (and turn gold into credits). Ironbeard and the recent 6 lessons per day have done me well, and I am looking to trans out beastmastery in the next guild/org credit sale.

Now I need a beast to match my skill level; at least something better than that "My Little Pony" experiment I had following me around for the longest. Knowing this won't be my last beast, I've settled on a wyvern for its cost-effectiveness.

This beast will be trained with bodyguard/healing to supplement and poison/chameleon to compliment my current abilities.
This leaves me with 80 lessons, and I am not sure how to spend it.



I see few possible options:
-> 60 train gust to work with flying... though I have psychic push
-> 40 train health regeneration / 40 ego regeneration to boost the beasts ego for healing
-> 80 train burrowing or scaling... whatever proves more useful.

Considering that I don't plan to sink any credits into this beast (i.e. a collar)... what is the most worthwhile option?

I'd definitely go with ego regeneration. It boosts the amount of times you can use beast heal a lot.

I vote hands down you do the ego so that way you can keep healing yourself over and over since it can regen it so quickly.

The regeneration is nice, but it's not super-fast or anything. Definitely better than gust or burrow, though.

I dunno, I noticed a huge difference with and without it.

The difference is huge, but it's not super fast. When regen tics without the regeneration ability, it's only 1 point of h/m/e. With regeneration, that gets bumped up to around 40 per tic, if I remember.

According to my tests BEORE and AFTER training up beastmastery regeneration ego...



6 ego regen per tick BEFORE
12 ego regen per tick AFTER

That's 100% increase!!! Not bad for 40 trains. I know that gaining levels improves regen... and I wonder if that is a result of increased ego. Will this change when I pump another 40 trains into Spirit/Ego for regen health?

It's not obvious, so be aware that regen health is for regenerating the health of the beast, not your health. And the beast uses its ego when it heals your health, not it's health.

What causes a beast to loose health? Outside a PVP attack, is there anything else (like blocking) which would cause it to take damage? Cause it's a shame that my beast will eventually have 350 body trains when I really need it to have more ego (to increase beast healing health).

A beast with more ego will regenerate more ego per tick. It's a percentage. And, as you discovered, training in regeneration doubles the rate.

One of the great advantages with a custom beast is that you can decide how much health/mana/ego you want in your beast and save the body/mind/spirit trains to meet that, making all the other abilities intrinsic ones.

I hope to save up and get a custom beast if I can "master" beastmastery. It'll take me a looooonnnnnnggg while to get those 500 credits though. Though, to make a skill intrinsic on a customized beast, you pay an additional credit amount per train? So a customized beast with chameleon as an intrinsic would cost 570 credits... right?

Yes. You pay one credit per train for the intrinsic abilities and the rest is trained up like any other beast, except that you get more points to spend.

I highly recommend buying the full package deal for 900 credits and then adding on more intrinsic abilities over time, if you can.

My beast was incredibly expensive, but I love him so much.

That sounds too hot...
I want one now...

Worth every credit, amen. The only thing to think about is how you want to organize the stat pools (more trains in a pool = bigger pool: Body -> hp, mind -> mana, spirit -> ego). Spamming reflections makes my poor beastie run out of mana so fast

From what I can tell, you would want a spirit heavy pool for a healing beast. That is for better ego, ego regen, healing, and curing (focus). A mana heavy beast would get you better magical offense. That is for major/minor breaths, hypnotic gaze, reflections.

Is there any reason to build a health-heavy beast? It seems that most of the skills are body-based, but I have yet to see my wyvern take any damage. I suppose that PVP is the only way for a pet to take a hit. Oohh, and once you phoenix feather, is there any real concern about beast death after all?

Did you guys get your pets to boost PvP, PvE, or just to add to your RP (and you are rich)?

Every time I look over the abilities a pet can grant I am underwhelmed, 900 credits + an extra trans skill is a lot to spend. What specifically is their big benefit?

Makes it harder for other people to kill it, I suppose. Also, even with beast phoenix, they're still on a 10-minute cooldown before you can resummon. Phoenix just reduces the timer from 60 minutes to 10.


They can have sentience, for RP, they don't need feeding and are never permadead. Also, they have more base trains for larger stat pools, higher base level (level = 13) for more... everything. The 900 pack also adds in reactions (I have one to alert when people on my enemies list enter the room, which has saved my ass on many an occasion) among other things. There are also the increased potential for inherents, which means you can trick your beast out to be useful in a broad spectrum of things. For example, Seothanis boosts my influence (empowerment), can heal my health, has bodyguard, and hypnoticgaze. So the multipurpose utility means I don't have to be swapping out beasts when I want to go do something different.


Also, if any of you crazies out there want a timer bar for beast actions, I have one for ZMUD that I'm willing to hand out.

Thanks for the reply. I get the RP side of things can be very cool with them, that seems obvious from reading about the abilities. What I do not know is how useful the mechanic side is.

How big are those boosts you are talking about? 10% faster influencing? Do they block more than a rune of absorption? How many of their abilities can you use off balance, or do you have to give up one of your own personal attacks to use a beast ability?

When I look over artifacts and I see that something boosts an ability by X% or amount it is very clear. When I read the beast abilities I just get generalities rather than specifics, which makes it hard to compare.

All beast commands require but do not consume bal/eq. I think bodyguard is in the realm of 15%? Someone else would have to specify that, but it stacks with RoA. Things like the influence one are passive and are "always on". I'm not sure how much the boost is, but I've been told it's on par with the oils or dramatics performances, and they all stack. Beast heal is 10% of your max health (or thereabouts) and I would presume it's the same for mana and ego. Cure Body is... not so great. I don't think there's a published list of what it cures, but it certainly isn't the whole set of physical affs. The other two cure types I can't comment on, having never used them. I would appreciate a published list, though.

Bodyguard is 8%, from what I've been told.