Section 09

Pets & Beasts

Which pets to build, which to skip, and why Pet Food and Wild Marks call for opposite strategies.

Two currencies, two strategies Every pet in your cage gives passive Troop Attack and Defense just by existing, scaling with Pet Food. So Pet Food is worth spreading. The skills live on your top pet and scale with level, so Wild Marks are worth concentrating. Getting this backwards is the usual mistake.

How unlocking works

Pets unlock sequentially — each one requires the previous at a set level. You can't skip ahead to the good ones, but you also don't need to max the early ones. Clear the gates with the minimum, then bank.

Build order

Pet	Gives	Verdict
Cave Hyena	Construction speed	First. Maps directly onto the constraint every account has. City skill still needs a manual tap — the patch only automated combat skills.
Musk Ox	Instant resource gathering	Second, to level 15. That's the hard gate for Giant Tapir — being stuck behind it later costs more than the marks now.
Giant Tapir	Gated behind Musk Ox 15	Clear the gate, don't over-invest.
Snow Leopard	Combat	The standard free-to-play bank target. Once you have it, the hoarding phase is over — pour marks in.
Cave Lion	+10% attack to all troops at max	Alternative bank target. A passive that applies everywhere.
Iron Rhino	Rally capacity up to +150,000 for 2 hours, 20-hour cooldown	Close to mandatory for rally leaders. More capacity means more allied troops in one hit — it changes what your rallies can do, not just your numbers.
Snow Ape	Squad / march capacity	Solid, situational.
Giant Elk	Unearths a random item, 1–2 day cooldown	Skip. No combat utility at all.

The free-to-play plan Cave Hyena and Musk Ox first — they solve construction and gathering, which are the two things holding every account back. Then bank every Advancement Mark and Wild Mark for Snow Leopard or Cave Lion. Don't spread pet food across a wide cage while your marks trickle into a mid-tier pet.

Pet skills

Combat skills now fire automatically when squads deploy, calculated at their level at the moment of deployment — so feed your pets before registering for an event, not after. No more wasted cooldowns from forgetting to tap.

City skills still need manual triggering from the pet menu. Cave Hyena's construction buff is the one people forget, and it's free value every single day.

In the Labyrinth, pet skills activate automatically in both Gaia Heart and Cave of Monsters.

Beast hunting

Separate system, same principle: the cost is stamina, not troops.

Beast and Polar Terror levels depend on your state's age, not any unlock you control. Higher levels appear as the server matures — by around four months most levels are available.
Always send Gina. Maxed, she cuts beasts from 10 stamina to 8 and Polar Terror rallies from 25 to 20 — a permanent 20% discount on every hunt you'll ever run.
Hunt the highest level you can reliably beat. Higher levels give more resources for identical stamina. There's no reason to tap a lower one outside a specific event requirement.
Polar Terrors are more stamina-efficient for event points — with Gina, one Polar Terror is 20 stamina for 3 points; three beasts is 24 stamina for the same 3.
But level 26+ beasts win for SvS Beastslay. Different events, opposite answers.
Collect the Storehouse stamina package at 12:00 and 24:00 UTC — 240 free stamina a day, lost if you don't collect before the next one appears. The single most-missed source in the game.
Don't let stamina sit at cap. Anything near the ceiling is regeneration thrown away.

One event timing note Don't complete the 16:00 UTC Intel mission the day before Defeat Nearby Beasts begins. Save that kill for inside the scoring window.