I've heard some people talking about a way to upgrade the new pets (similar to the way the hatchling turns into a strider). Does anyone know how to do this? My cougar's already level 58 and he's still tiny!
No the new pets will always be baby's unless NC Soft changes something in the future.
Some people will talk about seeing full grown version of the cougar, buffalo, and bird but those are not the baby pets. These are actually from the Beast Farm north of Rune.
The beast farm is a fun place to go and is great for soloers. First you need to be in your 60's. I go up there with a mid 60's PR and the mobs are mostly white with a few greens once in a while. The baby pets you can train up there are white (buffalo and bird) or yellow (cougar).
You go to a special NPC up in the beast farm (think there are 3 of them) and purchase golden spice or crystal spice. You then go out to where the baby mobs are and select one and use a spice on them. They will get bigger and agro you. Do this 3 times and they either become trainned pets or 4X mobs.
If the mob becomes a trainned pet you do not get a pet window, and you have no control over them. They simply follow you around and give you up to 3 buffs every 20 minutes and will occassionally heal you. They will stay with you as long as you have spice in your inventory (but needs to be the same type of spice you used to train them..golden or crystal).
Once in a while they will run off and you will need to go train another one. Or if you see the pet running off if you chase after them eventually they will turn and come back to you. You can leave the area with them but keep an eye on them because they will try to run off. You can port once with a trainned pet, the next time you try to port the pet is released.
I experimented and trainned a cougar and was going to go by foot all the way down into aden territory. I made if from the beast farm , through the forest but it ran away from me crossing the swamp on my way towards Goddard region. So the next time I got a cougar ran it to rune them ported to Maryters with the event gatekeeper. Then went by foot to dion area to show it off. Basicly walked from martyers to dion so that I didnt get to far from the pet to keep it from running away. Then some fool ran up and attacked it (was a low lvl player too which was kind of funny since the cougar was probably lvl 68 to 70 or so) and it got stuck in attack stance and wouldnt follow or do anything so I ended up putting it down :( I did notice that after leaving the beast farm area the trainned pet was less likely to heal me and was very slow on buffs even skipping them so they may need to stay in the beast farm area for full use unless its a bug.
Each of the pets offer differnt buffs depending on what class trains it. For melee types the pets will heal, for caster types the pets will regen MP. Buff wise I have always gotten a cougar and the cougar has given me Bless the Body 5, Guidence 3, Haste 2, Regeneration, and VR3. Only 3 buffs at a time and if you have a buff that it gives it will not over write it but cast something else. The cougar also healed me for 833hp each time.
Its a fun area and if your solo the pets really help out. I can go up there with my PR and grab a cougar train it then go find a good spawn and just constant pull till I run out of supplies. You do need normal heal pots because like all healers it seems the pets go AFK at times and wont heal (they will even say Did I miss anything Did I miss anything?).
Everytime you see a pet text (when they speak) they are consuming a spice. They do this about every 5 minutes or so. Spice is about 165a per so its not to bad if your solo to go up there get one and have a buffer/healer of sorts to help you out.
The raider mobs up there are single exp mobs but have crit chance and crit dmg. They also cast spells and appear to use SS so there is some risk. Exp is pretty good up there though, but if you want to max exp heres a trick:
Train one pet then go to the other trainnable pets and feed them atleast 2 spices. This will cause them to grow up a bit and agro. Then kill them. The pets are like transenders and their HP goes up each lvl from 2x, 3x, 4x etc. Get one to full size and kill it and get about 20k-22k exp per. Or kill the raiders that are single exp mobs and get about 7k-9k per.
Its a fun area and probably where I have had the most fun in C4 so far. IF your over lvl 60 head up there and give it a shot its pretty fun :)