Pet Exp Gain & Leveling

[Azz Dan The Ripp3r]

Does anybody understand how pet animal leveling actually works? I'm making a god tier crab in my current playthrough and have watched his exp gain carefully from pup-adult. The system by wich he lvl's is very confusing to me. I understand that animals lvl in a differing manner than characters due to their age based stat multiplier, but there seems to be other mechanics at work. At times Iv'e watched meh crab's melee attack exp bar fill from 0-100 without the melee attack level changing. Sometimes this exp bar will fill 3 or more times without changing the displayed attack level. Just for reference I purchased a companion crab at the same time as my lil brute to act as a control and also have several 150+ day old elder crabs to compare my budding world ender to. Any insight/input would be great! Crabs are life, Crabs are truth, you wont last out here without a crab. Thx people =)

[Pyrrhus]

Crab's strength stat is harder to raise cuz of no backpack unless you have animal backpack mod filled with generator cores. Even crab's athletic at high, they're still slow. Crabs are more designed for base defense basically as gate guard.

[bunny de fluff]

Crab has the widest aoe attacks among animals, could be the widest in game. I don't go anywhere without bring my crab. My new recruit carries it for weight training and if the fighting gets tough they just drop the crab to save their rear.

[Azz Dan The Ripp3r]

I could not agree more Pyrrhus, I have not even bothered with the crab strength for that reason. And my crabs are certainly more than happy sitting at my gate entrances, watching over us all =)

[Faerador]

As your animals age, they basically have two versions of their stats: the true stats, and the age-governed stats. You'll only see age-governed stats in the stats screen, meaning they're likely nerfed by some penalty unless the crab is fully grown. This is why your stat bar is increasing, but the number is not showing the increase. It's being penalized by the crab's low age. You really did get the stat increase to your true stats.

On the normal play screen, if you look at the general HUD on the left where it shows a few chosen stats for whatever is selected, you can see your crab's true stats when you select it.

[Azz Dan The Ripp3r]

I'm glad to hear that you are one with the crab, bunny, may you prosper and thrive as the crabs do. I initially started this experiment bc it seemed to me that crabs could be made into the most formidable pets, and while their aoe attack arc is massive, it can only hit two opponents at a time :/ I'm not going to give up on my crabs because of this, that would just be suicide. BUT, pack bulls at the elder lvl with 60ish combat stats are DIRT NASTY. Yesterday my bull charged a swarm of black dragon ninjas at my gate and was able to hit 15+ AT THE SAME time, I wish I could upload the screenshot (they were all bunched up but still). SO even tho crabs may be more tanky and have higher damage per hit, a war bull would be totally broken. I'm going to start working on one today. Anyway, thanks my fellow crab enthusiasts

[Azz Dan The Ripp3r]

Originally posted by Faerador:

As your animals age, they basically have two versions of their stats: the true stats, and the age-governed stats. You'll only see age-governed stats in the stats screen, meaning they're likely nerfed by some penalty unless the crab is fully grown. This is why your stat bar is increasing, but the number is not showing the increase. It's being penalized by the crab's low age. You really did get the stat increase to your true stats.

On the normal play screen, if you look at the general HUD on the left where it shows a few chosen stats for whatever is selected, you can see your crab's true stats when you select it.

This would explain most of the issues that I have with understanding what is going on. Your explanation certainly makes sense and I agree that this is likely what is going on. Only thing I might add is that the general HUD "true stats" do in fact mirror my age-governed stats. Either way I appreciate you taking the time to explain to me how crabs work =) I'm an aspiring crab expert, may I one day be privileged enough to be half the crab expert that you are. Hail to the crab