Pets

Pets are a gameplay mechanic that allows the player to tame certain creatures. They benefit the player in several ways including giving certain buffs, producing items, and providing inventory slots (20 for baby ants, 10 for others). Pets can be named and dressed with pet attire with the use of a Pet House.

Pets will still be preyed upon by their respective predators, so it is recommended to be careful of where you take them. Upon death, pets will drop a Pet Memorial along with their normal creature loot. In Mild and Medium, pets are always invincible by default. On Whoa! difficulty, pets can be killed.

Taming

To tame a pet, the player must use a Grinder to create one of three different slurries, each taming a different pet. When the player has acquired the slurry for their desired pet, they need to go to an area where the non-pet creatures are present, such as the Eastern Flooded Zone for gnats or anywhere aphids and/or weevils are found. The player needs to drop the slurry from their inventory and wait for one of the creatures to approach and consume the slurry from the ground. Once the pet consumes the slurry, the player will receive a notification, and the pet will become tamed. It is recommended that the player brings multiple slurries of their respective pet, as it is not guaranteed that the pet becomes tamed upon consuming a single slurry.

In the case of taming aphids, the player must back away slightly from the slurries on the ground, as they will still get startled and run away from the player. However, if the player wanders too far away, the aphid will consume the slurry and not become tamed regardless of how many slurries it consumes.

Happiness

Happiness is a feature of all pets. If a pet becomes unhappy, they will display different, less happy animations. Feeding them their favorite slurry, visiting them/going on adventures with them, or petting them will keep them happy. They will also become more happy if they are wearing any Pet Attire. Happiness can be viewed in the Pet House.

List of Pets

Pet Personalities

Pets, when tamed, can come with one of 101 randomized personalities in the form of adjectives. These personalities are purely visual and have no effects in-game. This is a complete list of possible personalities:

List of Pet Attire

Pet Attire is a special type of armor that can be equipped on pets. These armors increase the pets defense and resistance, like player worn Armor. They also give a x2 increase to the pets health and increase their overall happiness.

Notes

• Happiness and personality is purely cosmetic and has no bearing on a pet's actual functionality.
• Pets count as nearby storage so players can build if the pet is carrying the appropriate materials. Players cannot quick stack their items into a pet's inventory however.
• Players can only have one ant pet of each kind across the server, however a very easy workaround is that if anyone with a pet ant disconnects, their pet will leave too. This allows another player to obtain an ant pet from the tamed queen.
• Only one pet can be tamed at a time. Aphids, Weevils and Gnats will never be tamed if the player has a pet following them. If the player acquires an ant pet, the pet following them will automatically be replaced by the ant baby, possibly requiring the player to backtrack to reacquire them.
• The player can acquire pets very early, however they will be unable to dismiss them until the Haze Lab is cleared. This can be particularly troublesome outside of Whoa!, as there is almost no way to get rid of a pet until then.

Trivia

• Happiness used to be much more strict, requiring near constant attention from players and being very difficult to increase once lowered. Pets would also become untamed and start wandering away if too unhappy.
• If a Gnat is holding an item when tamed it will continue to hold onto it indefinitely.
• Even outside of Whoa! bugs will aggro onto pets. This can be most easily observed in an ant colony the player is friendly with where soldiers will constantly try to attack them. This can result in the player getting hit by them.
• In older versions all three baby ants had the exact same buff of providing hauling strength.