Path Of Exile Teases New Pets, Tortoise OP Speed Demon

An update due Wednesday (19 August) will bring six (6) new flavours of pet to Path of Exile [official site]. They include the fastest tortoise I've ever seen and a well-behaved lemur. Also a pukeko which I didn't know was a real bird until now. I'm mostly posting about this because it let me assess a bunch of digital pets.

Pets can be bought as part of the game's microtransaction system. They're not a combat thing otherwise you'd be striding deep into pay to win territory, they're a set of pixels in the form of a cute* critter which follow you round and keep you company as you path and/or exile things. Here they all are, starting with this utterly broken tortoise:

They're nice enough, although given the news also gave me an excuse to go back through Path of Exile's existing pets I feel like there's nothing outstandingly weird here. Maybe they add weirder aspects later - is that how pets work in Path of Exile? For example I'm quite taken with the Gore Weta which is basically a big cricket-like thing enveloped in a cloud of blood which haemorrhages everywhere. Did they just add the normal Weta and then at some point a designer said "This Weta is all well and good and a fine addition to our game but I feel like we could spice things up with some kind of atomised blood cloak."

Will we see a toxic tortoise eventually? Speeding about in a poisonous miasma, dribbling venom across the land? Or a burning pukeko, blood-red eyes scanning the horizon, feathery flames licking your hand as you pet it absent-mindedly?

Also I am fond of the Blue Land Crab because it seems really mad at you and keeps its back to you as you scamper about:

Finally I'm going to give a shout out to the Infernal Fox which seems to just be a fox that has caught fire.

*YMMV. I find crabs cute.