#Blaugust2019 Day 27 -- Pets of War

In-game pets, they're pretty amazing. It's a virtual item with personality that expresses your own personality. They vary from game to game in their power and function -- everything from cosmetic to ultimate gamechanger. At some point I may even want to write a longer blog post about this very topic, but seeing as it's Blaugust and I don't have a ton of time (since when did August get so busy?), I'd like to narrowly focus on the pets in the game I've been writing a lot about lately . . . Gems of War!

In Gems of War you collect pets typically in a couple of different ways. Typically you "rescue" them as a part of an in-game event that is limited time. Or, you gain them in Delves as a faction reward.

During the pet event you have 10 battles you fight through in succession that become increasingly more difficult. As you win battles, you also win event points that translate into prizes. Typically those prizes are the pet food you need to level your pets, but if you're lucky, you'll win the pet itself. If you make it all the way through all 10 battles, they give you the pet at a 100 percent chance.

At this point you can feed your pet and level it up to 5.  Every five levels you earn on a pet will earn you a small gem reward. This is where we start seeing the benefits to leveling pets both individually and collectively as a collection of pets because Gems of War then places you into a "Pet Mastery" cycle where every collective 25 levels of pets (or so), earns you an Orb of Chaos.



That's the real carrot on the stick here.  Orbs of Chaos are shortcuts to leveling, traits, ascension, and guild favor grinding. In other words, those orbs can provide real and permanent benefits to your troops.

The pets themselves provide minimal benefits at early levels. For example, this Snow Bunny pet (which I've affectionally named Zuzu after my Lizardfolk's raptor pet in D&D) provides a small bonus to water gem mastery. A +6 bonus is so small that it's hardly felt at all.

Even at high levels I'm not sure if my gameplay would really even feel different, but you know gamers . . . typically any slight edge is a welcome edge.

Another big component of pets in any game is . . . charm.  If a pet makes you happy and looks fun with your character, it's a big win, am I right? In Gems of War, the charm is minimal in that the pet simply goes over the shoulder of your character, but I will say they've made some of the pets look super cute . . . like this baby "Shymera." CUTE!

So, do they make the company money? Hard to tell without looking at their data closely, which I highly doubt they'd share with the common folk, but it does look like there's potential to make money . . . or at least drain your gem supply in that during the events, the same pet baskets you win for each of the 10 battles can also be purchased for gems. And since there's so many pets, if there's a pet you really really like, you're probably going to invest in those baskets so you have a chance to win multiple copies of the pet so you can level it beyond level 5.

I'm sure there is room for improvement on the pet system in Gems of War, but as it sits now, it seems to be low-hanging fruit for the company and just an additional item that can add charm to players while providing an additional avenue for obtaining Orbs of Chaos.

Happy Dueling!