Imagine running a Forgotten King with your guild. After a successful run, you hit the chest with you and your pet and earn a life and an Acclaim. Your pet runs to the dead site, with a glimmering bag in its mouth, and you end up getting a Crown and another life on top of this!
Introducing a Pet Ability: Scavenger!
Function: Your pet can earn a separate chance at Soulbound that it brings to you after the boss dies!
Ability: Has a (1 + 0.Level)% chance to earn double of a generated bag, plus needs to deal -(Level/2)% soulbound in order to qualify.
This means a level 30 pet with Scavenger and an Offensive ability (like Electric or Attack Close) has a 30% chance to earn twice the bag contents it would earn, and needs to deal 15% less damage in Soulbound to qualify for loot.
Similarly, a level 100 pet will always Double any loot it gets, and will need to deal 50% less damage in order to meet soulbound qualifications.
Loot is not guaranteed with your pet, even if it hits soulbound with its ability. But if it does get loot, the pet will run towards the dead enemy site, and come back to bring along the bag in front of it to where you are currently standing.
“Isn’t this game breaking? A level 100 Scavenger and you will get a total 3 pots for soloing a dungeon! A tomb nets you 9 life pots! Imagine your pet gets you a double white! Grinding becomes so easy!”
The trade off is that you NEED your pet to have an ability that deals damage, which removes either Heal or Magic Heal in order to possibly get extra loot. This makes pets have a niche use for you, and forces the player to make a trade off between Mana usage and Health.
An example of a Heal/Electric/Scavenger pet would be with running Mundane-based classes, ones that don’t rely too heavily on ability usage, like the Mystic and the Huntress/Archer. Their abilities aren’t a complete must, and they function well enough with just their weapon and damage.
An example of a MHeal/Electric/Scavenger pet would be a Priest or Necromancer, possibly also a Knight. If the Mheal is 100, the priest could perma activate Prot, giving Armored almost indefinitely and allowing for the user to Healing around 306 health every 3 seconds as well! Who needs a pet when you’re practically a knight with super heals!
How this is good for Deca Games: The meta will become shifted towards grinding and force players to have a secondary pet meant for grinding. Those who can afford to buy their way to a second backup legendary can grind themselves sick with a ton of reward! This will make Pets another worthy investment towards the precent of cash the companies make from the dedicated players, needing a second pet.
How this is good for the Players: It shifts the economy to producing more common items due to this ability doubling or tripling the amount of loot you can get. Players need to run half or a third as many dungeons, and the amount of pots and items in existence will increase due to the influx of dedicated grinders.
NOTE: If your pet is Pet Stasised at the frame a boss dies, for example in the Puppet Master’s Encore, you will not get extra loot, even if your pet qualified for Soulbound. If your pet becomes stasised but earned Soulbound before it got stasised, and it is not in stasis when boss dies, it has successfully qualified for Soulbound.
NOTE: This will NOT ruin the chance for Soulbound for another player. For Example, if you duoed a Shatters and you + your pet get loot, your friend will also get loot for every chest. Instead of going from 2/2 to 2/3, Scavenger pets will simply create another slot eligible for loot, becoming 3/3 getting loot. If both players have a Scavenger pet and deal damage, the pets and the players will get loot, resulting in 4/4. Your pet can get loot even if you don’t, as well.
NOTE: If a pet gives you double loot, the loot isn’t two separate soulbound chances, the items from the initial drop is simply doubled. Meaning if you get a life from a tomb through the pet, the second bag will always have a life and nothing else. You could get two white bags for example, but only if the initial drop gets it as well.
Your pet’s drop and yours are unique and seperate. A level 100 pet dosent mean you will get 3 of the same exact bag. If you get a Pyramid ring and your pet gets a life, you get 2 life and Pyramid ring if you get the double pet bonus.
On top of this idea, I propose that Backpacks should be able to stack, and up to 5 backpacks can be used on one character. It supports the Pet Scavenger idea due to the increase of pots the user would be getting.
Pros:
- Increases grinding rates of unpopular dungeons
- Lowers the price of pots
- Increases the influx of equipment, making items more abundant
- Makes some players not have certain “broken” abilities on their pets, whether it be Heal or MHeal (Anti Pet Argument)
- Popularizes abilities that are considered useless, like the Attack Close/Mid/Far trio
- Gives money to the developers by giving another option for a pet to develop and feed.
Cons:
- Supply and Demand for the playerbase will also decrease, making more common items common and rarer items rarer. Pots will decrease in value, while white bag drops stay rare.
- Considered too broken due to the ability to grind becoming awfully easy.
- Players will have to choose whether to keep their healing pet or drop one ability for another generator for extra loot from bosses.
I honestly don’t expect this to be seen as a good idea. As a veteran of Realm with over 1k hours clocked in and 5 and a half years of overall playtime, I find the grind to be quite painful. I also always hear of players complaining about how much Pets have destroyed the game in terms of survivability in terms of their creation and usage. This can help solve both of those issues!
