Exclusive Pets

With the introduction of Deckathalon, we now have access to a variety of new pets. You will receive a class pet for placing above 25 on the leader-board. So if it’s an Ice event, you would get an “Ice Class Pet.” For positions 26-2500 you will receive the universal “Ravenwood Class Pet.” When you look at the pet, you’ll see a very large number of tags. You’ll notice the new “Exclusive Pet” tag.

The First Test

So, what does this tag mean? My first test was to try hatching by myself, with my own pets. Everything seemed normal. I sometimes received another class pet and other times I received the other parent. Then I tested hatching with another player, and I received this notification. Based on this notification, I assumed that you can’t receive an exclusive pet by hatching. However, when we hatched together, we both received a Ravenwood Class pet back. As a result, this alert’s meaning was still unclear.

The Second Test

For my final test, I found one of the few lucky people who got top 25 on the leaderboards and received an ice class pet. The person was kind enough to allow me to hatch with them. As expected we both received the same notification from before. However, this time neither of us received the other pet, after many hatches.
 
My conclusion is that exclusive pets can only be received from hatches if the pet is in that player’s pet tome. You’ll need to earn the pet first to hatch an exclusive pet.

MY THOUGHTS

In this section I’ll be covering my own personal thoughts on this feature. If you’re looking for how the feature works, you can find it above.
 
This feature has some pros and cons. Some good aspects include the pet remaining an accomplishment. Anyone walking around with a school class pet will have accomplished something great. However, one major drawback is that these pets will be ultra-rare. Only 25 players will receive the pet during any given event. On top of this, you can’t pick which school’s pet you want to receive.
 
During particular weeks I imagine the competition will be incredibly fierce, particularly Life. The cards given by the Life pet are very desirable. While this isn’t a bad thing, this type of competition is very unhealthy. The only measure that contributes to the leaderboards is how much time you’ve invested. Rewarding these pets based off the community progress bar might be better.
 
There should still be a reward for ranking high on the leader-board. It should be less impactful, like a cosmetic item. Other options include badges based on leaderboard placement. It could change based on your position, like the PvP badges. People can still be acknowledged for their achievements, but in a fairer way. This would avoid encouraging players to grind for a pet they need.
 
I’m interested to hear how everyone else feels about these new exclusive pets. Let me know what you think in the comments below!