change of strategy

today's rolling restarts are supposed to implement a change in how experience is awarded after a successful battle. up until now, the experience was divided equally among all of your pets which participated (ie, cast a spell or received damage). if any of these pets were level 25, then their share of the xp was lost forever. now, however, the max-level pets will not be included in the division of xp. this means that if you fight a battle with one low-level pet and two 25s, the lowbie will get all the experience, instead of only one-third of it.

this changes things.

my standard system for leveling pets has been to pair two of them up with a 25 and go to the valley of the four winds. if the two lowbies can defeat three wildings, that was great because no xp was wasted. but depending on the pets, it was sometimes necessary to suck it up and bring in the 25 to finish things off. now, however, the optimal method is to team a single low-level pet with two 25s. since all the wildings in the vot4w are either a critter or an aquatic, the 25s should be one with attacks that do beast damage (preferably rampage because a cold methodical analysis of this attack has demonstrated that it is fucking awesome) and one that has flying damage attacks. send in the lowbie to take one hit, then pull her out and then let slips the 25s and end the fight as quickly and brutally as possible. having a second pair of 25s available to swap in when the first pair get worn down should be sufficient to keep grinding without needing bandages or a stable master visit until the cooldown on your revive is up, allowing you to keep the party going until your eyeballs bleed.

myself, i'm going with a rare scorpion and sea gull for team 1, and a flayer youngling and chicken for team 2. there will be pain, blood, sweat, tears, rending of flesh, flinging of parts, screaming, roaring, and much nomming of xp. you get the picture.