Control over these pets is gained by the use of commands through your chat bar, you can find a list of the commands below as well as a handy guide as to how to turn these commands in macros so you don't have to do a lot of typing!!

There are three ways in which pets come under the control of player characters.

Summoned Pets
These belong firmly to the Meta Physicist profession - they can conjure up these pets from thin air using their nano abilities. The MP channel their inner thoughts to create a physical manifestation of their rage, anger and inner demons.

These summoned pets can have very different abilities, some are angry fighting pets, some heal and some can exert forms of crowd control by calming and aggro'd mobs.

An MP can one of each type of pet active at the same time, so at any one time the MP may have three pets buzzing around them.

High level MP's can summon some fearsome creatures indeed, even demons like the one pictured above!.

Constructed Pets
These type of pets are 'made' by the Engineer and Bureaucrat professions. They use nano formulae (and a credit cost) to create a shell that resides in their inventory - this shell can then be activated (by right clicking it) and the pet will appear.

Examples of the pet 'shells' as they appear in your inventory

The credit cost increases with the QL of the pet.

Engineers are by far the kings of this type of pet and their pets are far more powerful then the 'crats line at similar QL's. The screen shots above show the Engineer's line of pets and were taken from the superb engineer site AO Workshop, if you need any engineer information it's definitely the place to visit!

Charmed Pets
The third way that players end up with a handy pet is to 'charm' them - this is a skill that belongs to the bureaucrat profession through the use of nano formulae. basically if successful it means that a targeted mob becomes a pet for the 'crat for a certain duration of time.

A bureaucrat can try and charm any mob but is most likely to successful with mobs lower in level then he/she is themselves.

Some NPC's are not intended to be charmed (such as some quest mobs) and have insane nano resist rates to prevent crats from causing havoc with charmed NPC's.

Also be careful when the charm runs out as the mob will immediately aggro on the 'crat.

A bureaucrat can have a charmed mob in addition to their own pet so can therefore have two active pets at a time.

Pet Commands

• /pet report - Your pet will tell you who he is fighting, where he is and his current health percentage. Perfect for when he gets lost, when you want to know if you have to jump in and take some hits for him. Very important command as it tell you how much health it has left as well!!!
• /pet attack - Tells your pet to attack whatever you are currently attacking.
• /pet rename "Name" - Renames your pet to whatever you replace "Name" with
• /pet wait - This tells your pet to wait for you where ever he is currently standing. He will only move if something attacks him or if something attacks you and he is within perception range
• /pet follow - If your pet is just standing around, he will start to follow you again.
• /pet guard - Asks your pet to guard your current target, and if no target is selected, Guards the current spot. Similar to /pet wait except if he does move for combat, he should return to his spot afterwards.
• /pet hunt - This means that your pet will run off and start attacking anything and everything in range. This includes friendly targets! (but not players) however it will attack guards! so be careful, I would not really recommend this command outside of mission environments.
• /pet terminate - 'Kills' your current pet.
• /pet chat "Text" - This will make your pet say whatever you replace "Text" with.
• /pet behind - This will make the pet always keep behind you. This is also the state that over equipped pets will fall into if you fall below the 120% rule that will be introduced in patch 14.2.
• /pet free and /pet release - Releases a charmed mob from the control of a 'crat.
• /pet cycle - A command that allows crats or MP's to cycle through their pets (or charmed mobs) and issue commands to the correct pet.
• /pet help - Not really a command, this will just list all the options in case you forgot the command you are looking for.

Hotkey (Macro) these commands!!

It isn't very efficient however to be forever typing in the commands listed above, to this end most players who rely on pets will create macros that can sit in their hotbar and therefore be activated at a click or button press.

To create a macro type:

/macro "Macro nametag" /<instruction>

Replace "Macro nametag" with the text you want to appear on your icon and <instruction> with what you want to do. For example to make a hotkey for your pet to attack it would be:

/macro kill /pet attack

The nametag will only display five characters, once you hit enter an icon will appear (with the tag 'KILL') on your mouse pointer ready to be placed in your hotbar like any other skill or item. Press 'y' to bring up your hotbar if it isn't already in view and you can then place the macro there. An extension would be

/macro Kill /pet %t attack

This would make your currently targeted pet attack (handy for MP's as they have more then one pet). You can also put the pets actual name into the macro, so it would be:

/macro Kill /pet 'insert name here' attack.

This is important for MP's in particular as if you try and tell a heal pet to attack something it will just plain refuse and not do anything. By customizing the macros you can ensure you can easily give the right command to the right pet.

Pet Pathing
Ok, you might be reading this and have heard all the horror stories about atrocious pathing that AO was infamous for. This is no longer the case and patch 14.7 completely re-wrote the pathing code. The pets in AO now path very well, and pet professions are no longer hindered by pets deciding to get stuck on tables, doorways or anything they were attracted to. Now though the pets by and large get about very smoothly and very rarely get stuck.

Playing with pets
Being a pet profession can be a very different experience from a more 'hands on' profession. By and large you will be relying on your pets to do all the hard work and fight your opponents. Sometimes this takes a little getting used to as often (depending on your level) you simply sit far back and let your pet do everything. If you are the type of players that likes to get 'in the face' of mobs pet professions may not be your cup of tea.

However on the other side, once you get used to your pet profession you will find that the solo opportunities open up to you. Once you have learnt how to boost your nano skills you will be using pets of a far higher level then you which allows you to take on missions alone that would be beyond most solo players.

So the choice is yours...but pets can be a very fun thing to play with.