Last updated: Release 12.1.0

The Pet Yard is a place to maintain and upgrade your [pets](/wiki/pets), and can be accessed via the pet portal in the [Nexus](/wiki/nexus) or [Vault](/wiki/vault). There are several components within the Pet Yard, each serving a unique purpose. Italicized sections of text below come from the [official pet care](https://web.archive.org/web/20130510180442/https://forums.wildshadow.com/node/196222) article. ##Layout

##Hatching There’s nothing like hatching your first Pet Egg and the excitement and anticipation of waiting to see which baby creature will burst forth. Common Eggs will drop from monsters within the Realm, but can also be purchased in the Nexus. Rarer Eggs will drop off boss monsters and may not be that easy to come by. Once you have an Egg though, you’re going to need to hatch it. Conditions in the Realm are rather rough and much too treacherous for your beloved new Pet. Luckily, you have the Pet Yard! Wizards and Warriors alike have worked hard to carve out the safest places in the Nexus to raise your Pets. Now you can access this personal haven through a portal in your Vault. As soon as you enter the Pet Yard, any Eggs in your Inventory will be available for hatching. Hatch your Egg, and you will soon find your new companion wandering about! ##Following Walk up to your new friend to Interact with it. When you are standing near your Pet, you can command it to Follow you, or if a Pet is already following you, command it to Unfollow you. The Pet Yard will hold all of the creatures you find in your adventures, however, you can only have one Pet follow you at a time. When you want to switch between Pets, simply walk up to the Pet you want and use the “Follow” command at the bottom right corner of your screen.
After you have commanded your Pet to “Follow” you, it will do so to the ends of the Realm, (wherever that may be...), using its [Abilities](/wiki/pet-abilities) to assist you on your adventures. ##Control Console Your Pet Yard comes equipped with its very own Control Console and Caretaker, and each plays a vital role in training and enhancing your Pets. When you take a Pet to the Control Console, you can maximize its current Abilities by either Feeding it or Fusing it with other Pets to evolve and unlock new Abilities. The Console can be found at the northeast of the Yard. ###Feeding Much like all creatures in the Mad God’s Realm, your Pets need to eat too. Your Pet Yard’s Control Console has the ability to synthesize items you find on your adventures into food for your Pets. The more powerful the item, the bigger the increase to your Pet’s Ability levels! To feed your Pet, head over to the Control Console while your Pet is following you and select Feed.
This will take you to the Feed Pet Menu. From here you can select a Pet and an Item from your Inventory to synthesize and Feed to your Pet. Use either Fame or Gold to complete the process and feed an Item to your Pet. If you wish, you may click the pet in the Feed Pet modal to select a different pet from your yard.

Every time you feed your Pet, you will increase the level of its available Abilities. Items with higher [Feed Power](/feed-power-of-items) will provide a bigger increase to your Pet’s Abilities. Be sure to max out your Pet’s Abilities before Fusing it for the mightiest Pet possible! **Pet feeding is described in further detail on the [Pet Feeding](/wiki/pet-feeding) page.** ###Fusing Many brave adventurers have lost their lives trying to learn the Mad Lab’s secrets, and their sacrifices have not been in vain. Those who’ve returned do so with important pieces of technology to further the Nexus’ cause. This technology, stolen from Doctor Terrible, has paved the way for Pet Fusion! To Fuse your Pet, walk over to the Control Console with the Pet you want to Evolve. Select Fuse and you will open up the Fuse Pets menu. You can select any pet of the same Rarity to Fuse into your current one. Keep in mind, **once you Fuse one Pet into another, it will disappear forever!** Make sure **not** to Fuse a Pet you intend to keep into one you don’t. It is very important to realize that fusing a pet prior to maxing its abilities will reduce the stat cap max of the resultant pet, meaning that it can never become as powerful as it could if the abilities had been maxed prior to fusing.

Each time you Fuse your Pets you increase their Rarity, unlocking new abilities and the chance to see them evolve into all new creatures. There are 5 different levels of Rarity: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary and Divine. As your Pets increase in Rarity they will evolve and unlock new Abilities. **Pet fusing is described in further detail on the [Pet Fusing](/wiki/pet-fusing) page.** ##Yard Caretaker

Meanwhile, the Caretaker can teach you everything you need to know about Pets and will upgrade your Pet Yard to hold bigger, stronger Pets. He can be found at the northwest of the Yard. Caretakers, like all other Realm Adventurers, were summoned to the Realm by Oryx’s Dark Magic to be served as food for his Minions. Fortunately, they were able to escape to the safety of the Nexus and now reside in Pet Yards. They’ve decided to take on a more humble lifestyle, choosing to tend to the rigors of Pet Keeping rather than to the hardships of battle. Your Caretaker can tell you all there is to know about Pets, and will assist you to the best of his ability to keep them under control. Don’t let the Caretaker’s gentle way of life fool you though! Handling Pets is much more brutal than it seems (Have you seen the size of those Divine ones?!). As your Pets grow, steady handling and larger spaces will become more and more necessary. Additionally the Caretaker is the only one who can improve your Pet Yard as your Pets start to Evolve. At some point, you will need the Caretaker to make the proper modifications to the Yard, to hold bigger, tougher pets. Pay your Caretaker in either Fame or Gold to have him upgrade your Pet Yard. In addition to providing information about the Pet Yard, the Caretaker is used to upgrade the yard in order to hatch and feed higher-rarity pets. The table below displays the cost (in fame or gold) associated with upgrading the pet yard as well as the costs for feeding pets. Note that the cost to feed or fuse depends on the rarity of the pet; the Yard level only determines what level rarity of pet *may* be hatched/fed/fused--the price of the individual action is determined by the pet(s) being fed/fused.

Rarity Level	Pet Yard Upgrade	Feeding Cost	Fusing Cost
Common	-	10 or 5	300 or 100
Uncommon	500 or 150	30 or 12	1000 or 240
Rare	2000 or 400	100 or 30	4000 or 600
Legendary	25000 or 1200	350 or 60	15000 or 1800
Divine	50000 or 2000	1000 or 150	-

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