Pet Math - Regeneration, time, cost and Experience gain

tamlin

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The data was collected with a Bristlehog with 100% Affection and Mood. This is important, as lower Mood results in less Experience gain. In fact, I have observed a pet in a really bad mood gain no Experience at all over time. I have not verified whether or not Affection also affects Experience gains at Focus regeneration time.

When "idle", pets update internal state every 30 seconds. Let's call this a tick.

The cost of having a pet at idle is almost exacty 1 PEC every 6 minutes. It jumps around between 0.83, 0.84 and 0.85 PEC each tick, why it's clear this is only an approximated (with rounding errors displayed) representation of the internal value(s). However, longer-term testing has revealed it's pretty much exactly 10 PEC/hour.

Experience gain is roughly 0.1 experience every tick. The roughly part refers to the fact it sometimes (infrequently) gains 0.2, again suggesting the display value is just an UI representation of a different internal value - and indeed, when testing over a larger period of time it seems to become pretty much exactly 15 points Experience/hour.

I added an image to display how regen looks over time. Please note I didn't wait until the Pet reached 100% focus.
20141020_pet_regen_graph.jpg


Update 2014-11-01:
Having tested an Ancient Daikiba Strong, I believe this can now be better formulated. The following is for idle pets, and seems to be valid for the Daikia and the Bristlehog.
  • Max tt for Bristlehog (Puny): 4 PED
  • Max tt for Ancient Daikiba Strong: 16 PED
  • Decay / hour (tt of Nutrio) = max_tt / 40.
  • Experience (value increase) = decay_PEC * 1.5
 
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Excellent work with all the gathering of data.
I was wondering, do you have an estimate of the actual cost to get a pet to level 1,2,3 etc.?
(assuming it to be fully fed when reaching said level)
I would be really interested in that.
 
Excellent work with all the gathering of data.
I was wondering, do you have an estimate of the actual cost to get a pet to level 1,2,3 etc.?
(assuming it to be fully fed when reaching said level)
I would be really interested in that.

my Exo pet used at most 2 ped nutrio going from level 3-4, and it took about 8 hours or so. I could have saved a bit more if I didn't spam some of the tricks down to 13% focus every once in awhile. I went from 89 energy to maybe low 70's.

Each tick is an opportunity for skill gain also.
 
Interesting, so pet just levels up in 8 hours of standing there? Good to know for future reference, seems an odd way to design a system though.
 
I was wondering, do you have an estimate of the actual cost to get a pet to level 1,2,3 etc.?
Not yet, but it's on its way.

What I can say with 100% certainty, though, is that it will be cheaper to do tricks than just idling - at least when the mobs is at 100% Focus, Affection and Mood.

As for the time required to reach a certain level, see the post about Level vs. Experience. As an example, IFF there had been a way to have a level 1.0 pet already have 100% Affection and Mood, while idling (assuming I haven't made some silly complete miscalculation):

lvl | time
2 | 3.6 h (in reality it's way longer, due to lower starting Mood and 0% starting Affection)
3 | 10.4 h (ditto)
4 | 20.4 h
5 | 33.6 h
10 | 6 days
20 | 3.7 weeks
30 | 1.9 months
40 | 3.4 months
50 | 5.4 months
60 | 7.9 months
70 | 10 months
80 | 1.2 years
90 | 1.5 y
100 | 1.8 y
150 | 4 y
200 | 7 y

Doing tricks, then waiting for regen, the time may be slashed in half or more, but I have not yet collected that data. It's on its way, though.
 
Interesting, so pet just levels up in 8 hours of standing there? Good to know for future reference, seems an odd way to design a system though.

Let's say it takes 8h to go from level 1 to 2 on idle (I have not yet verified the time required, but it's planned). Then you need ~1.20 PED tt Nutrio just to get it Fed. Actual Nutrio decay during 8h will be 80 PEC. Considering Nutrio is currently at almost 240%, that's 4.80 PED in food (with current MU) + 8 hours of electricity.

To get to level 2.

MA makes money off of it every 30 seconds a pet is spawned.
 
I spend ~300 nutrios getting my daikiba strong from lvl 1 to lvl 2. I fed it 1600 in the beginning and then just did what ever while doing other stuff. I tried to have focus above 90 but sometimes had it sit at 100 focus when i forgot about my pet.

Also, doing tricks when at 99 focus for a while, gave it 2% of exp but the focus stayed at 99. then again doing tricks at 97 or what have you gave it only 1% exp but waiting for it to go to 97-99 again gave it another 1% so i would guess it didn't matter too much.

tl:dr: 300 nutrios for a Daikiba Strong to go from lvl 1 to lvl 2.

Regards
Thark
 
Also, doing tricks when at 99 focus for a while, gave it 2% of exp
Please try using more precision when discussing this. I think you mean XP (as in Level.XP), which is far from the same as Exp(erience).

but the focus stayed at 99.
Which is expected, considering Focus% is an asymptotic representation of the actual system-internal focus value. 99% Focus can represent anything from one tick to over 11 minutes worth of regen (actual time required to regenerate Focus from 99% to 100% not yet documented by me).

then again doing tricks at 97 or what have you gave it only 1% exp but waiting for it to go to 97-99 again gave it another 1% so i would guess it didn't matter too much.
Right. I prefer 99% myself, but keeping it above 95%-ish should probably be OK. Will display considerable drops in Focus % though from 95%, which can be a psychologically deterrent - to see "Holy shit, this requires 15-25 minutes regeneration!". :)

tl:dr: 300 nutrios for a Daikiba Strong to go from lvl 1 to lvl 2.
Just to verify it works the same for all critters, it flipped over to Level 2 at 54 Experience?
 
Please try using more precision when discussing this. I think you mean XP (as in Level.XP), which is far from the same as Exp(erience).

I meant the thing it displays in the window once you summoned it, as in % of xp until next level. I didn't know one could see the total xp in the pet description until after I read your various threads.


Which is expected, considering Focus% is an asymptotic representation of the actual system-internal focus value. 99% Focus can represent anything from one tick to over 11 minutes worth of regen (actual time required to regenerate Focus from 99% to 100% not yet documented by me).

Yup, I figured as much. Just included it for the sake of... well including it :p

Right. I prefer 99% myself, but keeping it above 95%-ish should probably be OK. Will display considerable drops in Focus % though from 95%, which can be a psychologically deterrent - to see "Holy shit, this requires 15-25 minutes regeneration!". :)
Yeah, i was playing around, figuring stuff out myself. Keeping focus high seems to be a good way if you don't plan on going afk for a while :p

J
ust to verify it works the same for all critters, it flipped over to Level 2 at 54 Experience?

Nope, as stated in the other thread it was 365ish total xp (the thing one can see in the pet description)

Regards
Thark
 
I noticed that focus increases even when a pet is in storage. Have you measured the nutrio burn and other changes that happen when the pet is not spawned?
 
I noticed that focus increases even when a pet is in storage. Have you measured the nutrio burn and other changes that happen when the pet is not spawned?

When a pet is in storage the energy bar appears to stay the same (one of my level 2 bristlehog has the same tt value for three days now), but focus regenerates slowly.
 
When a pet is in storage the energy bar appears to stay the same (one of my level 2 bristlehog has the same tt value for three days now), but focus regenerates slowly.

If the pets don't consume food when not spawned then that's a great improvement over the previous implementation. I find it hard to believe, though, especially because focus increases. I'll feed a few bars to one of my old pets and see if it ever runs out of energy.

BTW what happens now if a pet hits zero energy?
 
BTW what happens now if a pet hits zero energy?
It starts losing Mood (and I suspect Affection too, but I haven't verified this).

Once Mood reaches... was it 30%, you can no longer force the critter to perform tricks to improve its Mood or Affection, meaning you have to feed it to 30%+ and wait for natural Mood regeneration to be able to perform tricks again.

Besides that, the test I did suggests nothing happens. At all.
 
Where is the display where you can see TOTAL experience as opposed to level XP progess XP?
 
I noticed that focus increases even when a pet is in storage. Have you measured the nutrio burn and other changes that happen when the pet is not spawned?
No, not yet at least, but as it seems cost is only related to making the pet generate Experience (or reaching a condition where it starts to generate Experience - same difference), I'd go out on a limb and guess that since no Experience is generated with pet in storage (that has been observed), it also decays nothing at all.

Having it decay just by being stored would in fact seem completely crazy.
 
No, not yet at least, but as it seems cost is only related to making the pet generate Experience (or reaching a condition where it starts to generate Experience - same difference), I'd go out on a limb and guess that since no Experience is generated with pet in storage (that has been observed), it also decays nothing at all.

Having it decay just by being stored would in fact seem completely crazy.

Kept it in storage several days fed and the energy didn't change. It seems that it is true. Remember that this is "food", so the idea that it gets slowly used up even when stabled sounded plausible when they included it in the original system, even though it was a pain. Remember that we used to have to pay rent on apartments and shops, too.

Yay for one improvement in the system. May it not be a temporary state that is "corrected" when stables are implemented. I have doubts...
 
Kept it in storage several days fed and the energy didn't change.
As expected. Thanks for verifying.

Remember that this is "food", so the idea that it gets slowly used up even when stabled sounded plausible when they included
Now that is a completely different matter. I'd almost expect decay to be active while stabled.

Remember that we used to have to pay rent on apartments and shops, too.
Yup, the reason I never bought an apartment. :)

Anyway, I'd expect stabled pets keeping Energy level - it'd be "baked into" the fee you pay the stable owner (*), to prevent the pet from starving. Once the fee you paid to the stable (think of it like a glorified parking meter) is gone, the pet is returned to cryo-freeze in your inventory. Only way that makes sense.

(*) IRL, I'd tan someones hide if I paid good money for them to keep a critter and they let it starve to death - we're talking 1699-style.
 
Now that is a completely different matter. I'd almost expect decay to be active while stabled.

Well when i say "stabled" i'm referring to the passive, unspawned state. That's what they called that state back in the early days of taming, and they would slowly consume food, but obviously in the near future "stabled" will be a bit more literal. Pets used to be more like vehicles (before vehicles existed, natch) in that you had to deliberately put them away before tping away or dying, for if you left them out in the rain, they would eventually be "stabled" on their own (returned to storage), but they would lose energy and experience in the process iirc, and event potentially "run away" if they weren't well cared-for.

I imagine when stables are implemented the food will need to be provided by the stable (like fertilizer for LAs) and us poor capital-less saps will have to pay the man in cold cash.
 
First post updated

First post updated with additional data.
 
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