going to try to make my own newbie guide as the current ones seem somewhat outdated. as I am a newbie myself I'm not going to have all the answers. I will try to be informative without highlighting any spasific way to play, as that is completely up to you!

first, complete the tutorial. this is a bunch of quests at the beginning of the game that is designed to teach you how to play. you cant skip it so do your best to learn from it. its hard to remember all of it but if you can get 2 thirds of it down, you have a good start.

when you are choosing an element for your pet, read all the spells you can unlock. this will show you in what area your pet will be most powerful. I never leave home without a light proficiency! thats just me. but I like mass healing options. I cant tell you what elements to choose because everyone likes to play differently. just know each element is strong at something.

be careful how you spend proficiency points. you dont get very many. they arent explained clearly in the bubble when you are choosing them either. I know that life will put focus on increasing hit points. strength and intelligence increase damage from either attacks or spells. agility helps you avoid getting hit at all and I am not sure what dexterity does. anyone know?

you might even want to fight a little bit without choosing points to see how your pets do in battle to see more clearly where their weak points are and how well your team works together. my personal team has a high hit point guy who gets hit the most, a high damage guy who attacks the most and a healer with high agility that never needs to heal herself. thats just my team. I'm sure your own will work well for you.

the higher the level of your pets, the more options become available to you in a battle. I'm not going to list them. read their descriptions and try them and you will come up with your own fighting style. this is the challenge of playing the game and it wouldnt be fun if you dont find your own way of playing.

healing/unconscious pets:
there are multiple ways to heal and revive unconscious pets. first, is to stop battling and let the pet regain health naturally. this is completely free, but takes time.

there is also a healer in every village that will charge a fee for healing and reviving your pets. this is both fast and relatively cheap way to go back to fighting.

potions are also a good way to regain health and revive unconscious pets, but they are very expensive. if you earn potions from completing quests and missions, by all means use them! but buying them all the time will eat away all your money and that isnt really as much fun..

if you are loosing a lot of fights, Back Up. the area is too strong for you and you need to go back to a weaker area until your pets are a higher level, or maybe even restructure your team. you may choose to have multiple teams going or just mix and match different pets until you find a combination you like.

capturing vrs buying pets:
capturing is fun. but remember traps cost 1000 gold or more! and even then traps can fail or the creature can flee and you are stuck with an even higher investment. not all pets are worth 1000. before you go out hunting, do a pet search and find out what pets are selling for and why. this changes, so I am not going t go into the whats and whys.

When you do see that pet you simply Must have (and we have all seen them) then expense is of no concern. you will throw net after net until it is caught or flees. So be sure to have some traps available for just such an occasion. the stars are the difficulty of the creature and the colors of the stars are the rarity. so if you are trying to catch a super difficult and super rare animal, dont bother using cheap nets. what you can afford is going to change throughout the game, so Try to pass up creatures that arent absolutely perfect, so you can save up for appropriate traps for the one that is. I dont have a list of stars/rares/nets. I will try to find one.

advanced pet care

first off, you have your stables. this is where your adult and adolescent pets live. you only get so many stalls for free, and then you have to buy more. you can choose to stop collecting pets when your stalls are full, sell pets by using the "manage pet" button or release pets. if you absolutely cant part with your pets, then you will need to buy more stables.

your adolescent and adult pets need to be fed or they become malnourished. every pet has 10 hunger points and each pet in your stables drops one hunger point a day. feeding your pet costs 10 gold per point. if your pet is down all ten points, feeding them will cost 100 gold. you have to feed them until they are full.

Hatchlings and eggs do not need to be fed. but they do gain benefits by being nurtured. you can nurture your own eggs and hatchlings once a day, and other players can nurture them as well. one way to nurture many pets at one time us to use the Nurturing Grounds located under explore. you will find a scale or two with each pet, ad sometimes even rare items. there is a scale shop located under shops that give a list of what you can buy will your scales.

eggs, hatchlings, adolescents and adults are your pets age categories in order from youngest to oldest. eggs and hatchlings just sit in your hatchery until they grow. nurturing will help them along, but they will grow without it. Adolescents can be in the hatchery or the stables depending on if you have moved them yet. when an adolescent is in the hatchery when it becomes an adult, it is automatically put into your stables. if you dont have an open stall, you loose the pet.

Adolescents and adults are both able to go to battle and run missions. they also need to be fed. Adults, however, are able to breed. this opens up a whole new element to caring for your pets. you can choose to breed your own pets, make your pets available for other players to breed to, or breed your pets to other players pets. this is where the pet search option is very helpful. you find it by hitting Social and Advanced search. you change the search from player to pet and fill out the parts of the form that are important to you.

to actually breed your pets, you must go to Explore and Breeding grounds. there you select the desired male and female of the same species and they will produce an egg made up of random genes from both parents. this is why choosing compatible parents is important! what makes them compatible is up to you.

once the female produces and egg, she is tired and needs time to recover. this is marked by an egg picture under her image in stables and in her information, there will be red letters telling you when she will have recovered. a recovering female can do everything except lay another egg. males do not need to recover.

whatever I forgot