Non-Combat Pets (also called Pets or Vanity Pets)[1] are companion creatures that will follow the player. They are account-wide vanity items and don't help in combat. Some pets have special attributes unrelated to combat, such as the Bristleneck War Boar, which increases your inventory capacity by 5 slots on all characters account wide.
A pet can be summoned by activating it from the Collections tab, although they cannot be used in Cyrodiil. You can only have one pet active at a time. As of Update 6, pets can be given individual names. Pets were originally bound items, and needed to remain in your inventory to stay active. A summoned assistant will temporarily replace your pet until dismissed.
Some of the pets were available as loyalty rewards given for a certain number of months of paid subscription, and some are purchases available from the Crown Store. Others are only available from various promotions. Several pets are available from standard gameplay, including Razak's Opus and the Stonefire Scamp, and more can be earned in a similar fashion by completing DLC content or as DLC loyalty rewards.
In the Collections window, pets are sorted into five categories: Daedric, Domestic, Exotic, Flying Pets, and Inventory.
NotesEdit
- In an interview from June 2012, when asked about the topic of pets, game director Matt Firor stated "We're not talking about this right now". They were later confirmed to be given to players on official launch with the beta participation Imgakin Monkey and pre-order Nibenay Mudcrab.
- At launch, pets were not part of the Collectibles menu as it did not exist yet and were instead stored as items in character inventory. Any character could read the in-game mail that a vanity pet was delivered in, and retrieve the attachment. When a character retrieved an attachment, the attachment was removed from the in-game mail and placed in the character’s inventory for use. If you sought to use the vanity pet on a different character, you would have to place it in the bank and then retrieve it with the new character.[2]
- Patch 2.6.4, released on October 5, 2016, is when the term "Non-Combat Pet" was implemented throughout the game to describe collectible pets.
- In Patch 2.7.5 (the Homestead update) pets were placed in eleven categories in the furnishing menu, which were more specific than and separate from the Crown Store categories, listed as follows: Aquatic Pets, Canines, Creepy Crawlies, Daedric Pets, Desert Creatures, Dwarven Constructs, Felines, Flying Pets, Frosty Critters, Volcanic Critters, and Woodland Creatures. These were later streamlined and merged with the current broader five categories in Patch 4.0.5 with the release of the Summerset Chapter.