23.5.8 Artifact Pets and Mounts

Pets, in Aetolia parlance, are mobiles that can be customized to a fairly large extent in certain ways, and which are loyal to a particular player. They are _not_ really meant to assist you greatly in combat, though they will be useful to a certain extent.                         

The basic price of a pet is 500 credits. With that you get:
  - The pet itself (including fully custom descriptions and name).
  - The ability to order it to move about via tells.
  - The ability to order it to follow you.
  - Resets to you so that it cannot get stolen or lost permanently.
  - Resets to you in the case of death.
  - The ability to order it to enter your inventory (if it's small 
    enough).

Beyond this, you may purchase add-ons, either at the time of buying the pet or any time afterwards. For 900 credits, you can get a pet with add-ons 1-4 plus 10 reactions (see #5). Things not on this list are possible, but will tend to add on considerable cost due to the fact that custom coding would be necessary.

Add ons are:

1) Invincibility - 150 credits
  - Your pet will not be able to be killed.

2) Sentience - 150 credits
  - You will be able to order your pet to say things, emote things, and 
    use the hundreds of pre-defined emotes.
  - This is a bit of a misnomer. Until this is changed with an update, please be 
    aware that 'sentient' here just refers to the ability to use says/emotes, 
    and not the metaphysical concept of self-awareness.

3) Flight - 50 credits
  - Your pet will be able to fly.

4) Mountable - 100 credits
  - Ride your pet like a pony! We will only allow this for pets that 
    riding makes sense for. No riding a cockroach, for instance. You 
    could ride a giant cockroach of course, but not a cockroach of 
    normal size.

5) Reactions 
  - Refer to HELP REACTIONS.
  
  
GUIDELINES
----------
* Sorry, but no more dragon pets are being considered for approval.
* The pet shouldn't be a normally sentient race like a human, xoran and so on. It should be reasonable to refer to it as a 'pet'.
* It should not be recognizable as a bipedal humanoid at all. No golems, elementals, semi-sentient slaves, etc.
* It has to be, at a base level, some sort of alive creature.
* We don't just stick wings on anything.
* We'll try to be fair, but some things are a hard no. Be prepared to have to work with the administration to hash out a game-appropriate solution.

CREATING A HOUSE MOB
--------------------
In order to create a pet, you must make use of the customisation system outlined in HELP CUSTOMISATION.

1) Do CUSTOMISE NEW PET to get started.
2) Set the type, which can either be the pet's name (e.g. "Fluffy") or some other good one-word description for the mob (e.g. "snake","tiger")
3) Set the appearance, dropped, examined, enter, leave and death messages.
4) Set any additional features you want.
5) Submit

PET COMMANDS
------------
Aside from the commands in HELP MOBILES, the following will apply to    
your pet.                                                               

TELL <pet name> FOLLOW ME
  - Makes your pet follow you.

TELL <pet name> CLIMB UP
  - Makes your pet climb up into your inventory.

TELL <pet name> COME HERE 
 or
RECALL PET
  - Teleports your pet into your inventory from anywhere.


FOR MOUNTABLE PETS
------------------
MOUNT <pet>         - Mount your pet.
DISMOUNT <pet>      - Dismount your pet.
SPUR <pet> SKYWARDS - Your pet flies to the skies with you on its back.


FOR SENTIENT PETS
-----------------
ORDER <pet> <xx>             - any built-in emote, like nod, or weep.
ORDER <pet> EMOTE <xx>       - any free-form emote.
ORDER <pet> SAY <whatever>   - pet will say whatever you want.

See Also: HELP MINIPETS, HELP CASTLES, HELP HOUSE MOBS, HELP SHOPKEEPERS, HELP CUSTOMISATION