Guide:Death Leveling Pets

Death Leveling is a method to create Dire pets by allowing charmable animals to kill you to gain levels. Players commonly use Death Leveling to avoid Hearty evolutions ; pre-Searing characters also use it as they acquire the Legendary Defender of Ascalon title.

Core Skill(s)

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Example of Death Leveling Pet with Hero.

Tactics

• First, find a rez shrine.
• Second, Use Charm Animal to make the animal attack you( besure to flag Henchies/Heros, if you brought them, to a location so they wont attack it)and pull it near the rez shrine.If you are not near a rez shrine, See Hero Death Leveling on this page.
• Second, Remove armor.
• Third, Let yourself die.
• Hopefully you will be rezed and the pet will attack and kill you again.
• Finally, after a long time, charm the pet when it gets to level 15.

Hero Death Leveling

There are some pets that are not so easy to bring to a rez shrine. Examples are: Raven, Phoenix(Canthan), and others. To death level these pets you will need a Hero and to follow these steps.

Step1: Make sure one hero has a generic resurrection skill(Restore Life, Flesh of my Flesh, etc. NOT Resurrection Signet)

Step2: Flag Henchmen and Heroes to a safe location away from pet.

Step3: Bring the Hero with resurrection to your location and disable all skills but the Rez. Set Attack style to Avoid Combat.

Step4: Use Charm Animal to make Animal attack you, make sure you don't charm them yet.

Step5: Remove your armor.

Step6: You can now minimize Guild Wars and do something else for a while, be sure to check how it is coming along every once in a while.

Step7: Let pet kill you and your heroes resurrect you until pet is desired level.

Step8: Put armor on again and charm pet.

Use these steps to get pets for your heroes too.

Hero Skill Selection

Note: If you bring a Mesmer Hero, they should have maxed Fast Casting.

Monk

• Rebirth Not a good option, as it makes the hero lose all energy.
• Renew Life
• Restore Life
• Resurrect
• Resurrection Chant
• Vengeance
• Mending If Hero is attacked by Pet, it will out heal the damage(if this is used, make sure Hero has high Healing Prayers and disable after it is used on Hero)
• Watchful Spirit Same thing as Mending.

Ritualist

• Flesh of My Flesh Not particularly efficient, as Heroes will lose health and will need to heal themselves.

Paragon

• Signet of Return

Equipment selection

You will need the following:

• Charm Animal.
• A Vampiric sword, axe, or spear, with the -50 HP Grim Cesta, can really speed this up.
• A way to be resurrected.
• Extra inventory space for removal of armor, unless superior runes are going to be used to decrease health.
• Minimum required player level is 10 to get pet to level 15 (but is very slow compared to if you're level 20).

For Quicker Death

For a quicker death, think about bringing the cheapest armor you can find and put superior runes on it to lower your Health. When you get 60% death penalty, you will have 1 HP. When you have 1 max HP and are resurrected with a skill that resurrects you with less than 50% hp you will be resurrected with less than 0.5HP, which Guild Wars rounds down to 0, so you will be killed instantly. Note that the pet still gains experience from this, making it beneficial to do this for a faster leveling.

If done this way, bring two heroes with a resurrection skill. They will alternate using the resurrection skill, and you will be resurrected with health. Here is an example bar:

Disable Orison of Healing and Resurrection Chant until you die enough to have 1 max health. Then enable Orison and begin dying while setting your heroes to Avoid Combat. They will heal each other while resurrecting you with 0 health, enabling you to minimize Guild Wars and do something else. When the pet is level 20, use Resurrection Chant instead of Resurrect, and in the small time window that you are alive, switch your weapon (to remove the -1hp effect). Then Charm the pet as necessary.

Notes

• Consider bringing a sacrifice skill to speed up the process of you getting to 1 health. Blood is Power is a great choice.
• Using the hero method is a great way to unlock all evolution types at the The Zaishen Menagerie. Every level 5 pet (except the Rainbow Phoenix) can be death-leveled to level 20 Hearty, thus unlocking all tiers for a pet once it is shown to Emryd the Tamer. You will need to attack the pet once, but it will not attack and does not need to.
• Since Fourth Anniversary Update (Thursday, April 23, 2009), you cannot charm animals 4 or more levels higher than you.

See Also

Alternative Methods :

• Zaishen Death Leveling
• An alternative Death Leveling set-up