Out of Eggs

It finally happened: I ran dry on pet eggs.

Empty nest.

This was predictable, and I knew it was coming, but still kind of interesting.

Does it change anything?  Well, not really.  However, there is one thing that I should have mentioned as soon as the pet-egg-hatch-time boost appeared.  We now expect, over the long run, to have lots of spare hatching time.  (This will be true for everyone unless they either spend money to buy pet eggs -- and I am not sure you can keep pace even then -- or unless IGG creates new ways to get them.)

Given that there is now excess hatching capacity, this means that obtaining eggs is now important, whereas (pre-Yulephant), it wasn't.  Back then, getting extra eggs would help you only if the extra egg was blue or purple.  They'd give you slightly better chances at rare pets.  So, even then, the benefit of extra eggs was marginal.  As such, it was never worthwhile to do anything to obtain that extra egg.  It just didn't matter, so there was no reason to change what you did.

But now, any extra egg can be hatched.  The benefit from the marginal egg is a full egg's worth of pet dupes.  That's a lot more than it used to be.  As such, it may be worthwhile now to change how you play to get those extra eggs.  Everyone should be getting the 2 daily eggs, and the 2 bonus eggs for doing quests.  But now there is the question of should you spend gems to get the 3 bonus eggs you get via gem spending.

For a gemmer, it seems pretty obvious that you should now do a handful of gem rolls every day, just enough to bring your daily spending of gems up to 900.

I don't think FtP players can do that; we don't get enough gems for it.  (Here's my earlier article on gem spending strategy.)

Generally, I think that FtP players should not worry about pets much.  The marginal value you are getting from a pet egg is quite small.  I don't have any characterization for it in terms of gems. But just intuitively, getting a few more pet dupes is not going to make much difference.  (By comparison, gems cash out as either chances at new heroes or crests; both can have dramatic impact on your game.)

By comparison, the gem bonus you get from doing "Spend Gems and Win" at the 2500 level is, in effect, at least 36%; and usually it is higher than 36% since it is very rare that you have spent zero gem over two days.  (My record spending before topping off during two days of SG&W was 1310 gems.)  So, you should definitely save for that.  

Now we do find a small difference that pets make.  When a SG&W is on, you should spend gems on both days, not just the second.  On the first day spend gems to get to 900 to get the extra eggs.  Second day spend so as to hit 2500 as normal, again (probably) getting extra eggs.

What about extra gems beyond those needed for SG&W?  IGG doesn't run SG&W that often.  With my gem income, SG&W does not consume all my gems.  What's next in terms of value?  Well, the other kind of event for gem spending is "Uncover the Treasure".  Usually this runs two days, sometimes one day.  My feeling is that you should continue to do these also, to help consume extra gems.  Soulstones are not worth that much, but they are still better than pet eggs.

Again, there is a small difference if the event is running over two day.  Spend at the end of day 1 to hit 900 and get those extra eggs.

I'll have to see if the two spending events can use up all my gems.  If they don't, then that's when I will want to consider doing daily spending to round up my gems-spent to the next 300.  Obviously, the most efficient way to do this is one hero roll on a day when you are at 150/450/750.

Pet Strategy January 2017

Pets were introduced in the fall of 2016.  At the time, I wrote a strategy guide to pets in CC which is still by far the most popular thing I have posted here.  By now there have been some important changes to the game, and I'd like to revisit what I wrote then and add some additional discussion.  First I'll lay out the changes to pets, then I'll look at some of the ramifications for a few aspects of CC play.

Changes Since Introduction

There have been several changes to the situation since pets were introduced.  Let's review.

The first thing is the addition of Yulephant, which happened in the December update.

Yulephant

Yulephant has a purely defensive talent: it shields two heroes against stun and fear, and gives them +30% dodge.   Yulephant is ideal for a hand-to-hand based attack, which often has to deal with stuns coming from magic towers.  For sniping attacks, he's less important, though still 30% dodge is nothing to sneeze at.  Give him to your third sniper if you snipe, or any hero in a HtH team.

The second change worth discussing is that we've had several months to get eggs and open them, so everyone should be getting the pets to medium levels.

My pets are now level 14 (one is level 15), with the rares being level 8 and 9, except Yulephant (the new one in the Christmas update) being level 4.  Unless you've slacked on opening eggs, or started the game after pets came in, you should have about the same.  You might have higher levels if you've been spending gems to open eggs.  Though I would not recommend that for most players.

(If you do plan to pay substantial gems to open eggs, there's an event which drastically reduces the price when you spend at least 24000 gems opening eggs.  It is called "Egg Hatch-A-Thon"; one is going on as I post this.  If it's over by the time you read this, I'd suggest waiting for it to come around again; there have been three so far.  Accumulate your eggs and wait for it.)

Egg Hatch-A-Thon rewards

With increasing pet levels come increasing pet skill maximums.    My average pets have max skill level of 6, while rares have 5.

The final big change to pets was a boost to their attack based on a fraction of the attack of the hero they are assigned to.  This attack boost happened in the December update.  Note that the hero's attack is his "base" attack stat, which is shown on the "Attributes" page for him when you look at him in the heroes altar.  This is determined by his level, his inscriptions and the attack boost of his crests.  War God and Bulwark do not affect it as a talent; as a crest you get each crest's attack bonus but not the bonus for a set.

It's a pretty big increase.  Just looking at my pets, most of them have gotten at least a 50% boost to their attack, and it is nearly 100% for my Aviar (assigned to my 199ee PD).  Does it matter?  We'll consider that...

Pet Offense Still No Big Deal

First off, let's discuss pet attacks as damage producers.  Even with the attack increase they get from their assisted hero, this is still a fairly minor effect.  My Little Havoc, for example, gets 2754 attack on his own, adding 1994 from my Druid (16% of the 8044+4421 shown on his Attributes).  He does 350% of this when he attacks.  So his total attack is 16618, and it has a cooldown of 4.6s.  Since he attacks only with his hero, and it goes 60% of the time, it will usually take him a couple tries to proc.  So, he might average one attack every 6 seconds or so.  Total DPS: ~2800.

By comparison, my Druid (181ee and inscription 90, berserk 5 talent) does 12465 every 0.8 seconds, so total DPS is 15581.  The pet is at least in the ballpark, and it will continue to increase whereas Druid has only a small amount of improvement possible.  But still, at least for now, the pet damage is a fraction of hero damage.  And note that pet damage does not get amplified by Cupid/PD/Druid effects.  Thus, compared to the effects of the pet skills, pet damage is still not worth worrying about much.  So, as in 2016, I am going to continue to ignore pet damage to heroes.

I do predict that as pet levels improve further, eventually I will want to revisit pet damage.

Pet Healing Is Getting Important

Now let's discuss pet healing.  Previously I felt it only really mattered for snipers.  But now I am beginning to notice its effects in several places.

Pets -- Angi and Bubblow -- are starting to make sniping attacks harder.

Bubblow in particular is starting to degrade my sniping attacks, particularly in guild wars.  A modern Bubblow should have around 2500 attack on its own; you can probably assign it to at least an evo1 hero for another 1500 or so.  At skill 6, it restores 390% hitpoints of the three allied heroes with lowest HP every 4.5s.  The total heal can be up to 45000 hitpoints; the total HPS (heal per second) can get up to 10000.  That's... a lot.

10000 HPS is not going to be enough to drastically change a hand-to-hand fight involving many high level heroes on both sides.  My Druid has 15500 DPS of melee damage.  A team of six heroes, many of them with offensive procs, will do many times that.  (Never mind adding a PD/Druid/Cupid boost.)

However, in combat involving only a few heroes, 10000 HPS is a lot.  It will matter when sniping in many modes.  It will also appear in limited contexts such as Torch Battle guards.

As an example, I often snipe with the combo of Warlock and Aries.  Both of mine are level 195e; both of their attacks are right around 11200, although Warlock gets another 25% from his War God crests.  When sniping, Aries procs about every 9 seconds; this does 33600 to five heroes.  So his DPS is 18666.  Warlock procs every 8.4 seconds, doing ~64400 to three heroes.  So his DPS is 23000.  Total DPS for the two of them is around 40000.  So, you can see that even a lone Bubblow is going to make sniping considerably harder: you need 25% more buildings.   Give Bubblow to an evo2 hero, especially one with high level offensive crests (War God, Berserk).  That will make any base very hard to snipe, at least for me.  Even a base with an "easy" sniping layout.

Snipers need to up their damage rate, which did not matter much before.  (See my sniping guide for the reasoning.)  So, evolve your snipers if you have not already.  If you have evo1 snipers, think about how you can go to evo2.  Also consider offensive crests and talents.  Before it did not matter if you had Tenacity or Wargod on your sniper; increasingly it does.

You can also counter defensive healing to some degree by adding more snipers, so as to increase their net remote DPS.  For example, I might add my Griz into a sniping attack.  He is evo2 199, and War God 6, for total offense of 23100 DPS; added to the 40000 DPS of Warlock and Aries he makes it harder for Bubblow and Angi to keep up.

One more place where pet healing is starting to be effective is in many-vs-one fights, aka boss battles.  I discovered this accidentally.  I have my Team Dungeons team set up for Lava3, using a team with no healer in it.  But I missed some Lavas for various reasons, and needed to use up my tries in Mesa4.  I used my unmodified team without thinking.  The Mesa started and I realized what happened, but then I was amazed to see that all the damage I was taking was being healed.  It was all the Bubblows and Angis.  I have used it several times hence, mostly in pickup Mesa4, and I have never lost a hero.

It is tempting to try Wretched Gorge 3 without my Druid.  There are DPS heroes I could put in instead... but I have not tried this yet.

I have also noticed some fails in Wretched Gorge 3 that I suspect are related to pet healing.  The final demon does a fair amount of damage, but I think with an Angi or two heal/guarding a hero and several Bubblows healing it, many heroes can take the damage.  Eventually we are going to have to reconsider what sort of teams to have and where heroes go.

Pet Skills

Finally, let's discuss spending on pet skills.  Last year I advised everyone to max all the skills! they're cheap!  That was true enough.  But now, at level 5->6, skills cost 75000 skill experience, which means 3750 shards.  That's still not a huge amount, but it's significant.  So, while I generally stand by the advice I gave last year, there are a few pets who you might be able to scrimp on.

Finix with skill 5

First is Finix.  His attack slows the enemy.  Generally it is never going to make or break any slowdown team to have this.  So you can leave it low to save shards.

Second, Doom Balloon.  DB only affects buildings, so unless killing buildings is important to you, you can leave his skill low.  If you are doing the "DD cheese" attack for GW/raiding, then you can use Doom Balloon effectively and may want to max his skill.  Otherwise, it is not important and you can leave it at a low level.  (Mine has level 3.)  You might want to put a little into it if you are pushing dungeons.

Pet Strategy

[UPDATE January 2017: the information here is still basically pretty good, but there have been enough changes to pets that I wrote a new article to discuss them.]

With the advent of pets in Castle Clash, there's a new aspect of strategy to think about.  That is how to manage pets -- where to put them, what to give them resource-wise, etc.

Resource Allocation

There are two aspects of resource allocation that are related to pets.  One is, spending to get them.  Then once you have them, spending resources on them.

I assume that anyone reading this is going to do at least two quests per day, and log in every day to get the two free eggs.  If you aren't, then you're not playing CC that seriously.  But what about spending gems?  I'd say for sure if you manage to spend nearly 300/600/900 gems you should find a way to spend the last few to get it over.  If you are around 150/450/750, obviously a gem roll is the best way to get the other 150.  If you are very close (I was at 285 the first day of pets), you might buy something from a merchant that you wouldn't otherwise, like red crystal.  Or perhaps you have a building that is almost done.

What about allocation of resources to pets?  It is clear that leveling pets is going to be slow enough that this won't become a problem, at least for a while and probably not ever.  Also it seems that all pet skills will be worth leveling as fast as you can (which isn't that fast).  Leveling the pets themselves should be done ASAP, since this increases their "Compendium" boosts.


Pet Assignment Strategy

The main aspect of pet strategy is where to place pets.  Which pets are best placed with which heroes?  Of course, this depends almost entirely on which heroes you have, and how you use them.  If you have a SK but never use him for some strange reason, don't give him a pet.

At least at their current low levels and low skills, I don't think the damage that pets do is significant enough to make much difference.  This is because pet damage, unlike hero damage, is not affected by any existing hero.  That is, your PD stack doesn't help them.  So, I am ignoring pet damage pretty much, and when describing their skills I say they do "some damage".  Their healing is similarly low, but especially for snipers (who should be self-healing with Lifedrain), sometimes even a small amount matters.  So I feel the healing is a bigger deal.

But the most important aspect of pets is their "other", non-damage and non-healing abilities.  Pets with these are going to be the important ones.  I have bolded the "other" stuff below, to keep the focus on it.

Anyway, I'll list each pet and which sort of hero I would want to give him to.  Also, I'll also say which hero I gave my pet to.  Bear in mind that I mostly do raids/expeditions/GW using sniper strategy (see my guide), because I do not have either of the super tanky heroes (SK and DD) needed to charge in for hand to hand.  (Update: just rolled DD!  He's not evolved yet, though, so not really a player in most modes.)

Aviar -- skill has a 65% chance to deal some damage to a random nearby enemy hero and silence it for a few seconds when its hero is attacked.

Silence!  Wow!  Any "when its hero is attacked" pet is only good if its hero is attacked (duh).  So you want to put Aviar with a brawler.  SK and DD are the main guys for this.  Aviar will be most useful in game modes which include hand-to-hand fighting: Boss fights, LBF, Arena, and HTH raiding.  If you snipe for raids, as I do, then he is not that important.

I put my Aviar with my new DD.

[UPDATE: In fact Aviar procs when its hero attacks.  Not when hero is attacked.  I've posted about this separately.]

Bubblow -- skill restores some HP of 3 allied heroes with the lowest HP and increases their MOV SPD somewhat.  So far as I know, Bubblow auto-procs every N seconds; it does not key off its hero attacking or being attacked.

On the attack, restoring HP is nice, especially for snipers.  Perhaps it will be a lot at high levels, but right now my bubblow is level 2 with a level 2 skill, which means he restores 1827 HP (times 3) every 5.5 s.  That is underwhelming in pretty much any situation.  As I suggested earlier, I do think that even a small amount of healing can make a difference occasionally when sniping.  This is because snipers tend to be in combat for long periods of time.

Defensively, it doesn't matter who you put him with, but this is a pet you'll want standing around for GW defense.  Once it levels up, it's going to make sniping a tougher proposition.

I put my Bubblow with my Warlock.


Celestin -- skill has a chance to deal damage to a nearby enemy hero when its hero attacks. Also removes the target's buffs.

Holy cow!  Removes the targets buffs?  This guy is a tank killer, if you can put him on a hero that will go up against a tank.  Its hero needs to attack, and it has to be "nearby", whatever that means.  You want this guy on a brawler -- SK or DD.

I put mine on my Pumpkin Duke, to make sure he'll be in every boss battle, etc.  If I had a SK, that's where I'd put it.  I may end up putting it on my new DD, but not yet, because I am not using him that much.


Doom Balloon -- skill deals damage to 5 nearby enemy Buildings. Also increases the DMG they take for 3s.  Autoprocs.  The skill description says "nearby", but I have not found that to be true.  It appears to be buildings anywhere on the map.

Generally, a weak hero, since he affects buildings and they are relatively unimportant.  Obviously you don't want to give this guy to any sniper, since he'll consume building HPs for nothing.  He's good, though, for cleanup or for times when you want to kill buildings without concern for heroes.   Dungeons is the main example.  You'll want to give to a hero that you use in dungeons and/or for cleanup.  Santa is the most obvious place, or Mino.

I gave Santa my Doom Balloon.


Drako -- skill has a chance to deal damage to a random nearby enemy hero and targets around it when its Hero attacks.  Reduces energy of targeted heroes.

This guy screams "scatter team".  Any time you're trying to scatter -- one of your teams in LBF, bosses -- you want this guy in the lineup somewhere.

I gave mine to my Cupid, since he's a member of every scatter team.


Finix -- skill has a chance to set an enemy hero's location on fire when its hero attacks. Damages targets within the area over 3s.  Also reduces their MOV SPD.

This is your guy for a slowdown team.  Appears that the damage might help a sniper (need to test this).  I don't have a functioning slowdown team right now.  So Finix is just a bit of extra damage to dish while sniping.

I gave it to my Grizzly Reaper, who's my third sniper.  I might give him to Harpy Queen if I start using slowdown on a boss.


Little Havoc -- skill has a chance to deal damage to a nearby enemy hero with the lowest HP when its Hero attacks. Also reduces target's ATK and ATK SPD.

This guy is a debuffer.  Put him with any hero that you want to use on tough bosses where you'll need debuffing.

I gave mine to my Druid, who is always present in boss fights.  (I don't have Ghoulem.)


Mini Angi -- skill reduces DMG taken by allied Hero with the lowest HP by a substantial amount.

This is like a mini Treantar, except Angi autoprocs.  Great for HtH fights, great for snipers if they are dealing with arrow towers.  Also could be very useful in boss fights if you are not easily tanking a boss.  (This is still the case for me with the Rage Goblin.)

I gave mine to my Aries, since he does both HtH and sniping.