Path Of Exile Teases New Pets, Tortoise OP Speed Demon
Furry, scaly and feathery friends
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.