My pet starter bear cub is really weak?

[Kysska]

Can I buff him somehow? Does it need equipment? It seems to run off and die pretty often

[lowercase_donkey]

It's not obvious at all, but you can ride one party member and have a second ride you (parasitize). This will keep them from running away. Buttons are on top right, with abilities like quick crafting.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Inwoods:

It's not obvious at all, but you can ride one party member and have a second ride you (parasitize). This will keep them from running away. Buttons are on top right, with abilities like quick crafting.

It doesn't just keep them from running away. Ride/Host pets CANNOT DIE. If their health goes to 0 they just go "unconscious" for a short time until they either get healed or regen normally. They still get attacked though, which is good because that means they absorb damage that otherwise would have gone directly to you.

The downsides have to do with Speed. Normally, your speed is set to that of your "mount", and your "parasite" is set to your speed, so if you use both all 3 will be the same speed as the mount. However, the higher the pet's speed or possibly overall level, the higher your Ride and Symbiosis skills need to be. If your skills are too low you get huge penalties to your speed and I suspect the pets do too. Also certain pets (specifically ones with high speed) like Bells and Younger Cat Sisters have "bad mount" and can never, no matter how high your skill, be ridden effectively.

Also, both Ride and Host have huge penalties to your Casting chance. These can be overcome by increasing your Casting skill sufficiently, but assuming your skill isn't already EXTREMELY high, you can expect around a 20% additive penalty for Riding and another 40% penalty for Hosting. Spells that already have >100% chance might still end up with 100%, and the formulas are so weird I don't even want to try and figure out exactly how this works, but it's big.

Despite the penalties though, you should try to always be mounted and hosting if you can. Just riding a pet and having a pet ride you train their respective skills over time. So that's 2 skills you can passively train at all times while doing literally anything else, which will get you more levels (HP/Mana), more feat points, and more Charisma and Endurance. Same deal with always being Burdened to train Weightlifting and buying Model Follower (2 for pets as well) to always be training Faith. Shield and Armor skills train when you take damage, including self-inflicted damage from exhaustion, hunger or other things, so always wearing a shield is another way to ensure that you can passively train more skills.

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Kysska:

Can I buff him somehow? Does it need equipment? It seems to run off and die pretty often

So the Bear Cub is generally considered weak compared to the Little Girl. Mainly because he only has limited available equipment slots, while the Little Girl has the full Human set just like you at the start if you aren't a Chaos Shape.

It's not a major concern though, as you can easily get other/better pets and most players will get rid of their starting pet in favor of something better pretty early on. Some easy/popular options are to use the story NPCs you unlock by completing parts of the Main Quest, since they are always available and most of them are Human giving them full equipment options plus some extra abilities as well. God Pets, obtained by worshiping the various gods (requires at least 15 faith and sacrificing until the maximum bonus for that level), are generally THE strongest pets in the game for their particular roles once you've leveled them up. They also all are "human" when considering equipment, even the black cat.

[Kysska]

Thanks a bunch for the tips! I'll definitely try the riding / being riden thing. And saving up money to buy better pets

(I found Host but not Ride, so I'm assuming that's a skill I need to learn somewhere)

[Chief_Curtains]

Use gallows and strap him up. Then beat the snot out of him. It doesn’t make them upset with you and it is a form of… mutual training… it will train their defense/evasion and train your skill.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Chief_Curtains:

Use gallows and strap him up.

How? I can't figure out how to put an ally on them instead of myself.