What pet in the game is your favorite? Which one is the best?
I like the hyena best for its rapid attacks and crippling ability, that syncs well with my longsword build. Wolves are great too when their attacks connect, and I’m going to see how well rhinos do now that I have a couple in my pen.
My favorite so far is the greater shaleback… big, looks tanky and I love that it has sunder 
Dancer Thralls with hammers. First they smack enemies down, then they dance on their corpses.
I had a dachshund named Abigail VonFlab…she was amazing. Currently checking out the meta with two chihuahuas that I inherited from a former female guildmate I was “close” with. I had an emperor scorpion, Helga Pinchdenschting…but she was extremely passive.
As for the game, I don’t actually know =P. I think bears, but only as they are most common for me to acquire and the greater version has more HP then any other pet I have. (The charge effect is nice when it hits)
I think lots of people like to use sabrecats due to their attacks and bleed.
I for myself dislike pets or companions to begin with and only use them in certain situations (like in calamitous mod, killing bears). I prefer to stay hidden until I strike.
I noticed that about a couple northern mobs, wolves and bears sometimes have a hard time hitting me.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sabrecat, they’re in the ice area?
was my saber but it does randomly for no reason the other day. Now I’m worried about my white tiger lol
Sabertooths are the nastiest animals in the game. They hit hard, cause bleed, and they are difficult to outrun. I still cannot consistently strafe around their lunge, which I find is more useful than simply rolling due to the range and lateral hop before they. They make decent pets.
Thralls are still far more effective combat companions. Lola, my long standing T3 cimmerian fighter in the mounds, will annihilate 3-4 NPCs with her warhammer in the time it takes a pet to deal with 1.
The Yama Crocs look Soooo amazing. I love their overall aesthetic.
I tend to go with White Tigers (My character lives in tiger country. I have plenty.
Otherwise I find my thralls derpy. (Do they have a preferred weapon. Or something? Cus I defend mine more than they defend me)
Overall I’ll stick with my Tigers, Sabres, Jaguars and Panthers.
Sometimes, i wonder who is the slave, and who is the master…
With Animal the Greater Sabretooth had no match with 8k Hp Bleed and lunge.
With humans Vathis the Heirophant with 6k Hp. But add top tier armor and a spear I have seen him take out 6 pets( inc a couple of greaters ) at a base i was raiding by himself and a loss of 30% of his hp. He is bad news
Archers with the new poison arrows are great for base defense imho
Alas poor Vathis… no more shall we see him enthralled … and never again with boobs … I do wonder how long before thrall Vathis’s are code-wiped from the game as we were never meant to able to capture him(or the rogue transgender Vathis) in the first place … I was amazed that when they corrected that code that all the enthralled Vathis’s didn’t go poof…
Hopefully never. It’s a nice little “grandfathered” issue that will eventually correct itself: sooner or later they’ll die off, or the server wiped, and they’re of course irreplaceable.
I could live with “unplaced” Vathises being removed (though I don’t want that either), if we’re given some warning, but the ones I have placed and fully kitted out… let 'em live. It’s not like they’re without equal, they were just easier to get (for a while), but the same can be said for Volcano crafter thralls. I am particularly fond of my gender-bending female Vathises, they serve as squad leaders!
For the record, I don’t think it was obvious that we weren’t meant to capture him, you can capture all his followers after all (though I do acknowledge that now that he has dialogue options and all, it IS obvious).
My favorite pet is without a doubt Greater Sabretooth, it’s a bit weird that there are no difference between a normal and Greater version if they are decorated, only their name and hp value shows which is what.
I also like the Greater Bear, still not too big a pet and really great against mobs.
But as others have said thralls are the best fighters and deals a lot more damage than a pet, so I rarely ever use pets as followers unless I need cargo of heavy stuff.
I still have some Vathis the Heirophant in storage chest, 4-5 of them being a female version and while they have the highest hp I suspect they aren’t the best fighters…
I made a little test with the Black Rhino near Sepermeru where I killed all other predators around him and let some thralls fight him alone in Epic flawless heavy armor and a Legendary sword with upgraded damage.
Dalinsia Snowhunter managed to kill him and so did a Cimmerian Berserker, but Vathis the Heirophant didn’t make it despite having roughly 50% more hp.
On a side note: I have a boss croc trap with 8 level 3 Dafari archers, they could kill the boss croc in 4-5 minutes, but when I exchanged them with Votarie level 2/3 archers it took 10-15 minutes killing the croc boss.
I did the archer exchange around the new bow mechanics update, so that might have influenced the result, but it is definitely a lot slower now.
All these small tests may be coincidental, but it does make me wonder if high hp thralls not necessarily means better fighters.
I like the bear Bors, went to the cave with skeletons and spiders, I got killed when I got back he was still fighting the skeletons.
Vathis doesn’t seem to be as effective as others despite his HP, and I’m not sure how his HP compares to Spinas, the other cano fighter. I have a dragon slaughter ring with two vathis and two zerkers. The vathis tend to bug and stop mid fight, the zerkers do not.
I too would like to know. HP is the only stat we can see in-game, but there might be other inherent stats too (such as damage?), so it’s hard to know.
But then I do feel the “thrall ranking/naming system” is somewhat haphazard to begin with. A “level 3” (III) thrall from one faction (Exiles, say) can be much weaker than a “level 1” (I) from the Volcano, and there’s no way to really know who is what unless you just know.
The “I < II < III < named” tiers follow an easy to understand progression. On the other hand, the factions feel pretty arbitrary, and yet they’re seemingly more important in determining the thrall’s real strength.
It’s not a big deal by any means, but it just makes an already muddy system even more so. Maybe the “level” characteristic which all thralls currently have at zero (or is it one? I forget which) was supposed to indicate something here?
Vathis and Spinas has the same hp as do other named fighters/archers from the Vulcano, they all have 6150 hp.
I haven’t tried with other t4 fighters from the vulcano, but I agree that Vathis doesn’t seem to be as effective as some other non vulcano t4 fighters with lower hp.
I think/hope they have planned a levelling system for thralls to be added at some point which definitely would improve the thrall system, but their faction should be a part of their info/name so you would know.
if a cimmerian archer is from the mounds of dead or the vulcano until you place them and see their hp, same goes for a lot of others from different factions.
I gave my Vathis the Jedi Lightsaber and she clears through mobs pretty reliably.
Dancers seem to be the most aggressive. Luba the lucsious is an outright murder machine bent on the death of all who approach me.
A whirling death trap of food processor goodness. And when the battle is done. Corpses laying everywhere. Luba just picks right back to the beat where she left off and dances her favorite dance.