LET’S PLAY: FANTASTIC PETS

You can have up to three pets ‘equipped’ at a time. When you want to exceed that number, you simply craft a pet box (two paper, two leather, 1 bundle) and pop the little fellow inside. Easy!

Apparently our pet also had a skill menu. To see it, all we had to do was sneak up on our pet and interact with it. No problem, we sneak up on pigs all the time (...what?). We crept up to Mr Piggington and… whoa!

You can’t buy any of those skills without skill points, a system that’ll be familiar to you if you’ve played any. A quick look at Mr Pigginton’s stat screen told us that they gain XP by being ridden around. Oh, score! He loves being ridden, and we love being lazy.

Pets can have different rarities, too. Our second pet pig, Sir Oinksly, had the very-impressive-sounding diamond rarity, which means he got a +1XP boost, too. Now, we don’t want to play favourites so… oh, Mr Piggington is out of earshot? In that case, you’re our favourite, Sir Oinksly. Don’t tell Mr P.

After a few minutes of pleasant pig-riding and enjoying the lovely da-ding of the levelling up sound, we got Sir Oinksly to level five. Which means we’d earned our first skill point! Well, we suppose technically Sir Oinksly is the one who earned it, but now you’re just being pedantic, reader. Cut it out.

Uh oh. Agonising decision alert. We only had enough points for one skill. Do we choose Safe Rider, which grants us Resistance 1 when riding Sir Oinksly? It’s mighty tempting, but we opted for Quick Step. It gave us a speed boost when riding Sir Oinksly with a carrot on a stick. Nice!

Once you pick a skill, a shower of celebratory sparks appears! So why no screenshot of that here? Well, er, we failed to take one in time. Look, don’t blame us. You should have picked ‘Quick Screenshotter’ on our skill tree. This is clearly on you, buddy.

Anyway, we decided to celebrate Sir Oinksly’s new skill by abandoning him and trying another pet. Meet our new chick!

Chicko made a great first impression by near-instantly levelling up without us having to do anything. Now we just need to find a pet who can gain XP by writing these articles for us and we’ll be on easy street.

Apparently Chicko gets XP by simply moving on land. That might sound absurdly easy but if you’ve ever tried to get your 10,000 daily steps, you’ll know that it’s actually the hardest thing ever. 

Actually, it soon became a lot easier, because Chicko hit level five in almost no time at all and we unlocked the Quick Feet skill, which granted us a speed boost, no levelled-up pig required. Chicko has some excellent buffs at the higher-end of their skill tree, too. We especially liked the sound of Raw Eggs, which causes the eggs you throw to inflict Nausea. Bet you won’t be saying mean things about our pet names after we unlock that. 

Not all pets are as easy to level up. Our baby turtle, for example, only gained XP from taking damage. Um, no. Our pet axolotl had slightly less traumatic levelling-up requirements, as they gain XP from battling mobs, rather than just taking damage from them. Yeah, slightly better, we guess… but stay away from our pets!!!

Luckily, you can also boost your pets levelling up by crafting some pet treats. Four wheat and one sugar will let you whip up a snack that’ll give them an XP boost for the next hour. Were we finally comfortable with sending our pets into combat after that? NO OF COURSE NOT GET AWAY FROM THEM

Actually, we were probably being a bit overprotective here. Because literally while we were writing this, our axolotl wandered off and defeated several drowned like it was nothing. We just sat on the shore with our pet cow, feeling grateful that this axolotl was on our side. Remind me to never miss that little terror’s birthday… 

We’ve barely scratched the surface here – there’s 20 supported pets in the full add-on. Fantastic Pets is available now and can be found by searching for it at Minecraft Marketplace or by clicking this line of lovely green text to be taken straight there. Good luck, and remember, a pet is for life, not just for the hol… hey, where’d all ours go? Uh oh.