Pet abilities are a recent addition to SWG (publish 21). They give pets additional abilities not found in most wild creatures; you, the Creature Handler, can learn an ability from a pet that was born with the ability and then teach it to your other pets. A very complete guide to pet abilities can be found in A Guide to the New Pet System (Included Abilites, XP Listings, & How To's).
Pet Growth[]
A pet has a Combat Level also known as a Difficulty Level. A baby pet has the same CL as it's parents and starts the same HAM and combat statistics it will have when fully grown.
Pets develop and grow as they gain training XP by killing things. A pet has an XP requirement for leveling based on its Difficulty Level; each time it earns enough experience, it gains a maturity level. Each new level brings:
- an increase in size until fully grown
- training points, which can be spent to learn an ability
- possibly a new slot for a trainable ability
You can see the number of available slots and training points by examining the pet control device in your datapad.
There is a maximum number of training slots available to your pet, depending on its CL. Any innate pet ability does not use a slot, which makes sense since you didn't have to train it. When the last training slot has been allocated and filled, your pet is fully mature and can no longer be improved.
Learning Abilities[]
Some babies in the wild are born with an innate pet ability; each type of creature may have one of three possible abilities. Once you tame such a pet, you can learn the ability by using the pet in combat (the pet must not have been used by anyone else in combat). After some random number of kills (the chance of learning the skill after a kill seems to be based on the maturity level of the pet, the level of the ability, the phase of the moon—but I don't know which moon, etc.) you will get a message saying you have learned the ability.
One of the games within the game for Creature Handlers is collecting all the abilities. This is a challenge that can carry on well after you attain Master Creature Handler status.
Teaching Abilities[]
Ok, so now you know a number of abilities and you have a pet mature enough to learn them. You can now use the Train Pet ability to train the targeted pet. A window pops up allowing you to select the ability to train and telling you how many training points will be used by the pet to learn it.
Please note that abilities come in three levels (L1, L2, and L3) and you can't teach a pet the ability at L2 until it has learned it at L1 (and not at L3 until L2 is learned). Also each new level uses a training slot.
Using Abilities[]
Once your pet has learned an ability, it is ready for use. Many abilities provide permanent changes in your pet (e.g., better stats, automatic stance changes on low health); some however, are triggered. You can train your pet to recoginize these commands using the same mechanism as for the basic pet commands.
Ok, so what are the Abilities?[]
| Ability | Description |
| Aggression | your pet produces more hate with every attack |
| Beastly Constitution | your pet regenerates health faster |
| Bleeding Attack | triggered attack that makes the enemy bleed |
| Combat Agility | increase your pet's chance to make a critical hit |
| Cowering Vigilance | your pet will automatically enter a defensive stance when low on health |
| Defensive Agility | increase your pet's chance to make a critical defensive save |
| Eye Gouge | triggered attack that makes the enemy blinded |
| Fleet Footed | increases your pet's movement speed |
| Frenzied Assault | triggered stance that trades damage mitigation for increased offensive damage |
| Frenzied Blitz | increases your pet's attack speed |
| Guarded Stance | triggered stance that trades offensive damage for increased damage mitigation |
| Hamstring Attack | Ttiggered attack that snares the enemy |
| Hunted Withdrawal | your pet produces less hate with every attack |
| Imperiling Feint | triggered attack that reduces the enemies defenses |
| Intimidating Attack | triggered attack that intimidates the enemy |
| Knockdown Attack | triggered attack that knocks down the enemy |
| Lightning Reflexes | increases your pet's defense |
| Marring Storm | increases your pet's attack damage |
| Panicked Rage | your pet will automatically enter an offensive stance when low on health |
| Pinning Attack | |
| Precision Strike | increases your pet's to hit chance |
| Self-Sacrifice | triggered stance that causes the pet to protect it's owner by taking some of the damage that the owner would have taken |
| Staggering Attack | triggered attack that stuns the enemy |
| Thick Skin | increases your pet's armor |
| Vigorous Health | increases your pet's maximum health |