Combat pets effectiveness

[Cuchilain]

Im severely disapointed by them. Im not looking for them to do much or even ANY damage really. But the thing is they are so WEAK they die quickly making them useless. Ive put the Healing 3 collar on my main hover bot, and it gets blown up before i even know it.

This is an issue to me, because im at that end state where i want to optimize my gameplay for really tough stuff, like volcanic and acidic planets. In order to do that i have many EPP packs with augments suited to the situation, such as burn and poisin immunity. Or damage 3 or healing 3 augments. Id like to put the light collar on my pet and use it as a mobile lantern since you cant emit light from vanity items.

If the pet cant fight for crap, and it dies in mere seconds on high level planets, then i figured itd be really cool to at least use it for a tool to light stuff up.

What im wondering i suppose is. . . . WHAT AM I DOIN WRONG?!

Are everyones pets just horrible?

[Avarice]

I have the same issue, all tiers of pets seem to die in a few hits, collars don't seem to do much.

[strkrjns]

The top tier health regeneration collar is the only way to make pets even a bit useful.

[Cuchilain]

but the healing 3 isnt even enough. So i think. . . ill find something soon. because i keep finding stuff and saying, 'whaaaat?! they have something like that?!'

I found this light collar, and thought immediately of how awesome it is because i can take the light EPP augment off my back piece and use one of the other very cool ones. Like dmg 3 that raises my dps from 460% in the manipulator dps armor, to 598%. Wow right? Thats a 25% gross boost.

So there is this light bug you find on cold and machine biomes. I could catch it, and put the passive collar on it, and that would make him a mobile light. . . but hed die in one hit, and id be left in the dark. Really pets are so negligable on dps, that they should just be invulnerable. Same with crew.

With 598% dmg increase, my crew still hits for like 5 dmg on mobs on volcanic planets. Im hitting for 100+ or even 300+ with a staff. Plus they die SO fast, they may as well stay on board because thats where they are going anyways.

[Eperos]

tier 3 regen for a tamed orbide has been working pretty well for me. Takes out most monsters on the lava planet im on no problem.

[Cuchilain]

whats an orbide? the cylon heads?

as ive gone farther into the end game doing more and more of the inconcievable planets and getting green and blue weapons that are better than the legendary and uniques, im seeing that its more about a slower patient progress across surfaces. So the pets and followers are mroe likely to survive, but only if you really buckle down and do things like, cover lava pools 3 tiles or greater, etc.

Ive also noticed that there are essentially two enemy types in the game. Animal and humanoid. Your %dps does not effect humanoid targets at all. When fighting any humanoids you do the exact dmg of your weapon per hit. Your dmg increases from armor only effect animal targets. So i havent been able to discern what other differences there might be. Such as pet dmg vs. animals and humanoids, or the dmg taken from them.

My pet has 55 atk, and it doesnt seem to actually do that much to most things it fights, and since its a flyer, it basicly rams everything and causes dmg to itself. Maybe ill try something that shoots.

[Eperos]

orbides are the orb headed tall guys in hive minibiomes. They dash pastthe enemies as they attack so they don't take many hits. I found mine on an inconcivable planet.

[Cuchilain]

those things freak me out still. Play on harcore if you havent yet. just to get a taste of how much of a horror game Starbound can be.