Pets explained — how companions scale and who should buy them

Pets arrived with the Paws & Claws update: companions that follow you, attack on their own, and take a weapon slot's worth of budget without taking a weapon slot. Our pets list has every one with its numbers; this is how to think about them.

What pets scale with

A pet's damage is a blend of your damage stats — melee, ranged, elemental and engineering all contribute, in different proportions per pet. That is the key fact: a pet is the one thing in the game that benefits from spreading damage stats, which is otherwise a mistake. Attack Speed does not affect pets; their own cadence is fixed.

How pets die

Pets have their own health and go down for the wave when it runs out. They come back next wave. A pet that dies on wave 3 of every wave is dead weight; Max HP items for pets, where offered, matter more than they look.

Who should buy pets

Beast Master cannot hold weapons at all and gets Speed per pet; it is the pet character, and the only one where buying every pet you see is right.

Characters that already spread stats: Apprentice gains four damage stats per level, Generalist feeds melee and ranged into each other, so a pet rides on stats they already have.

Economy characters who hold few weapons: Captain wants empty slots, and a pet adds damage without filling one.

Who should not

• Single-stat characters like Mage or Engineer: the pet uses stats they have zeroed.
• One Armed: every material belongs on the one weapon.

Pets in co-op

A pet draws aggro, which makes it a free tank for a fragile partner. In four-player, one pet owner is worth it just for that.

Pricing

Pets are priced like Tier II–III items, so they compete with your second and third weapon early. We would not buy a pet before wave 6 on anyone but Beast Master.