Having Aether as a pet in Valentines Event

[76561198843119572]

I deeply regret having Aether, even if Aether is free.
Bug:
- You get from feedback button
Aurelius
- 4 basic elemental pets
Aether
- Unlock first dungeon (or beat newbie dungeon idk)

The other pets are unlocked normally AND I JUST WANT TO SAY MAN, WHAT THE HECKKKKK ALL THE EXTRA GROWTH IS GOING TO AETHER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ BROOOOO

I WISH THERE WAS "KILL THIS PET BUTTON" OR SEND THEM BACK TO THE OPRHANAGE BUTTON

[Horatio Hornbläser]

Wait until you have the other elementals.

[76561198843119572]

Originally posted by Horatio Hornbläser:

Wait until you have the other elementals.

Is it even worse, the other elementals, sigh.

[muljostpho]

It all started as an April Fools gag, after all. Ryu came up with Undine first and released her on April Fools, so she was designed to troll us. Some of the patreons set the terms for Aether / Gnome / Sylph / Salamander, and they kept that spirit of trolling alive through that whole set. So Aether has that ring that you have to level up and the next four all have their upgrade quests to deal with.

But yeah... When you unlock Aether he starts out with his total growth equal to -10 x your current ChP at that time. The newbie dungeon boss should be possible for a new player to beat long before they beat Baal for the first time so this will be 0 anyway. This condition just screwed over players who had been playing a while already when Aether was added to the game. The other four alongside him on the other hand are all non-negotiable about starting out with about -33k total growth when they're unlocked.

Of course, Aether also trolls newer players. Not just experienced players. The game scales the growth that he gains each time you level up his ring, and those gains get better if you wait until you have more ChP before you do the fights to level up the ring. So the design is that you unlock him very early in the game and let him chill for ages just absorbing growth from feedings and wherever else, and you turn your attention back to him for his evo a bit later. (I forget / I'm not sure how much later... Maybe something like late earlygame or early midgame?)

[n00bdragon]

Why are you mad about growing Aether? It's a fantastic pet and the more you grow it before doing Delirious Essence fights the better.

[adeyke]

Once you get it evolved and upgraded, it's amazing. The issue people have with Aether (and the other elemental pets) is that it takes quite a while to get to that point, and until you do, going from "negative growth pet that's useless at everything" to "slightly less negative growth pet that's useless at everything" isn't a big improvement. Meanwhile, the pet they got from the event could benefit from the growth in order to evolve.

[Kreuz]

I'll put it like this - 494-ish days since I started, I got Aether as soon as I was aware of it, and it's still not evolved because not enough growth yet. Meanwhile I have Undine and Sylph evolved, and Gnome and Salamander I just need the t2 mats to evolve them - pushed back Salamander for other pets that also require fire stones.

These events help greatly with increasing these pet's growth, and the only reason my Aether doesn't have enough growth is it's my 10th highest growth pet owned so it doesn't benefit from these events while the other elementals did.

Now, once I get enough ChP and growth I'll be able to get Aether high enough to evolve it, but at my current ChP I need to get another 5k-sih growth before finishing the last 10 battles required to evolve it.

[Shadow]

Your 10th highest growth pet is negative? And you have 2 other elementals? You should have FAR more than 9 regular pets before you even start on the elemental pets...unless you mean it's the lowest one in your growth campaign. Looking through the list, it looks like it's possible to have at least 10 regular pets just from getting to Baal...and if you haven't gotten that far yet, it's FAR too early to worry about elementals.

[Kreuz]

No, it's my 10th highest growth pet currently, sitting at 39,721. Because it's so high growth from these events doesn't affect it anymore. The "doesn't have enough growth" is for evolving it, not that it has negative growth.

Edit: As an aside, I'm torn on what to use the event pet token on since nothing really "fits" with my current progress. It's either stuff that won't make much difference even if I evolve them, or stuff I won't be able to evolve for a long time. Been torn between things like Earth Eater, Succubus, Tenko, and the Anniversary pet mostly - really want to boost my GC floor since it's just shy of 40k, but there are also lots of pets that require time to evolve.

[muljostpho]

Aether's evo target was higher than that? (checks wiki) Oh. 55k. For some reason I was thinking something more like 25k. Did you already level up the ring enough and it's just the growth that you're short on? You could still level the ring even further than that if you're strong enough, of course. But it would have been better to reach all evo conditions at the same time.

Ideally a new player ought to unlock Aether very early, run the first 10 fights early just to bring its camps up from -99 to +1, and then wait and let it veg out for ages until as much growth as possible and much ChP as possible have been earned before you even think of running fights 11-25. There's a guideline on the wiki "CHP = (55555 - Current Growth) / (remaining fights * 0.2)" to decide how much ChP you need to have before you continue the fights. With a little planning you could've grown Aether as high as your growth camp could take him and then leapfrogged the rest of the way from the fights.

[Kreuz]

Originally posted by muljostpho:

Ideally a new player ought to unlock Aether very early, run the first 10 fights early just to bring its camps up from -99 to +1, and then wait and let it veg out for ages until as much growth as possible and much ChP as possible have been earned before you even think of running fights 11-25. There's a guideline on the wiki "CHP = (55555 - Current Growth) / (remaining fights * 0.2)" to decide how much ChP you need to have before you continue the fights. With a little planning you could've grown Aether as high as your growth camp could take him and then leapfrogged the rest of the way from the fights.

Yea, I got it as soon as I saw it and I ended up doing 15 instead of the suggested 10 boss fights. I still have 10 left for the evo condition (max is 50? iirc) but I don't have enough Challenge points to take me high enough in the next 10 fights just yet. I'm using one of the compiled spreadsheets to keep track of that kind of stuff, specifically, this one - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UjiffX9dlVDNy5VpbVRhwVwlwsFBDto3FS5hzXOvhPk/edit?pli=1&gid=1653374939#gid=1653374939

I prefer to use that for some of the simple stuff cause you don't have to use it online like the big compiled spreadsheet and I have no idea how to keep that one up to date without having to re-enter all the old info cause I'm not too good with these things.