Pet Ranch is a fun additional feature that has been added to the Stronghold. This feature allows players to upgrade their pets and purchase various rewards, such as Skin Cosmetics and Card Packs. Let’s take a look at how the Pet Ranch works and what it offers.
The Pet Ranch is the latest addition to the Stronghold and with it comes the ability to put pets to work, generating a new type of currency called Jam Cookie. Jam Cookies are traded by players for various things such as Skin Cosmetics, pet related items, and Card Packs. The Pet Ranch also allows players to upgrade the rarity of their pets, all the way up to Legendary. Upgrading pets can provide several perks, including Pet Skills and the ability to ‘reskin’ its appearance. Let’s see what Pet Ranch has to offer.
To unlock the Pet Ranch, players must have at least a level 15 Stronghold with the Farm and Cave areas available. The quest ‘Yay, Pet Ranch!!’ will then be offered by Butler Adeline to introduce you to the feature. Pet Ranch can only be accessed from within the player’s Stronghold, through either the Management Tab (Control + 1) or the Pet Ranch Entrance portal. The Pet Ranch Entrance portal will take you to what used to be the old Farm area.
Now that the player has the Pet Ranch, it’s time to put the pets to work. Literally… on treadmills. To access the Workshop page, players can either use the Management tab or talk to the NPC, Dispatched Chromarong. All pet-related NPCs can be found right next to the Pet Ranch. Here, players can see two tabs, Ranch and Cookie Workshop.
The Cookie Workshop is where players can put their chosen pets onto the three currently available ‘treadmill slots’. There, the ‘working’ pets will generate Jam Cookies at the expense of Morale, which is akin to a stamina system. Each pet naturally has a maximum of 14,400 Morale and 300 is consumed for each production cycle of Jam Cookies, which takes 10 minutes. For each production cycle (10 minutes), the pets will gain 55 Expertise, which is essentially their experience points. Reaching max Expertise allows a pet to be upgraded to the next rarity.
Expertise can be collected individually below each pet or collectively at the same time with ‘Dismiss All’ at the bottom. Players can collect Cookies with the ‘Obtain’ button in the middle and individual pets can be dismissed by either right-clicking them or clicking ‘Dismiss’ on the left.
Depending on their rarity, the number of Cookies produced will differ. Rare produces two cookies per cycle, Epic produces three, and Legendary produces four. Players can increase production rate with an ‘Arcane Battery’, which boosts the number of Cookies per cycle by three, for a total of 14,400 Morale each. Up to 100 Arcane Batteries can be used at the same time. Players can hold a maximum of 50,000 Jam Cookies, at which point pets can no longer be placed in the Workshop until some Cookies are spent.
The Ranch tab is where the players can ‘rest’ their pets and regenerate their Morale. As a fun little feature, pets placed in the Ranch can be seen roaming around the Pet Ranch area. Funnily enough, those placed in the Workshop can be seen actively running on treadmills as well. On the Ranch, pets recover three Morale per minute.
There is also a chance for ‘Happiness’ to proc on a pet when it is resting in the Ranch. When this happens, a yellow smiley face icon will appear next to the pet. A ‘happy’ pet will gain the ability to produce an additional two cookies per production cycle, for a duration of eight hours. Keep in mind, the duration timer for ‘Happiness’ starts right when it procs, not when the pet starts working.
As players may have noticed, Morale recovery is significantly longer than the consumption rate. It takes more than three days to fully recover 14,400 Morale and only eight hours to completely deplete. This is where Vitameow comes in. Vitameow is an item that can recover 10%, or 1,440, Morale when fed to a pet. Players can actually feed past a pet’s maximum 14,400 Morale, up to a total of 144,000 Morale. This is a great way to speed up the Expertise gain of a pet, as it can work for longer without rest. Players can give Vitameow by clicking on the giftbox button next to ‘Dismiss’ by each pet.
There are two main ways to obtain Vitameow, either through ‘Pet Sitter Chests’ or through exchanging Rapport Items. Pet Sitter Chests can be bought from NPC Totocookie, the Cookie Exchange Merchant, for 500 Jam Cookies each. Pet Sitter Chests have a random chance of giving you variable amounts of either Vitameow, Arcane Batteries, or Pet Enhancement Tokens.
Minky, Protector of Pets, the Vitameow Exchange NPC, allows players to exchange their Rapport Items for various amounts of Vitameow. One Epic Rapport Item can be exchanged for three Vitameows, one Legendary Rapport Item for 20 Vitameows, and one Relic for 100 Vitameows. Efficiency wise, it is faster to obtain Vitameows from Rapport Items than Pet Sitter Chests. Rapport Items are best obtained from Wandering Merchants. It is recommended that players use third party sites like Lost Merchants (https://lostmerchants.com) to better keep track of their spawns. Daily login bonuses and Fever Time will also occasionally reward Vitameow, so be on the lookout for those as well.
Pet rarities can be upgraded at the Pet Ranch by talking to Working Achatemeow, the Pet Management NPC. To meet the requirements for an upgrade, the pet must max out its Expertise and the player must have enough Pet Enhancement Tokens. The amount for both depends on the rarity of the pet. A Rare pet requires 30,000 Expertise and 10 Pet Enhancement Tokens to be upgraded to an Epic. An Epic pet requires 100,000 Expertise and 30 Pet Enhancement Tokens to be upgraded to a Legendary.
As mentioned before, Pet Enhancement Tokens are obtained by chance from the Pet Sitter Chests and Expertise from working in the Cookie Workshop. There is, however, another way to gain Expertise and that is through Pet Expertise Potions. These potions can be purchased from Totocookie for 90 Jam Cookies each. The potions provide 1,000 Expertise each, which is a great way to speed up the leveling process for a pet. To use the potions on a pet, players can either go to the ‘Pet Upgrade’ tab, by talking to Working Achatemeow, or to the ‘Pet Inventory’ under Guide (Alt+P). They can then press the yellow plus sign next to ‘Expertise Potion’, on a specific pet, to add their desired amount.
A Legendary pet gains access to Pet Skills, additional Pet Inventory, and Pet ‘Reskinning’. When upgraded to a Legendary, the pet will obtain a random Pet Skill, out of a possible six, that procs minor buffs for the players during battle. There are three effects for each Pet Skill, two of which are the same across all six Pet Skills. The two effects shared across all the Skills are:
The unique effects across the six Skills are:
Players can talk to Working Achatemeow to change to a Pet Skill of their choosing, for a cost of 20 Blue Crystals.
Only one of the three effects can be activated at a time and the cooldown of each effect is quite long. There is no official information on how long the cooldown is, but the general consensus puts it above three minutes. The proc chance is also stated to happen at ‘random intermittent intervals’, so it is quite an inconsistent buff. In all honesty, Pet Skills are quite insignificant and offer no realistic benefit in an actual fight. The Skills happen so infrequently, with no way to predict it, that most of the time it goes to waste. However, if one must choose, Cheers of the Heart is generally a good choice. Due to the lackluster effects, players should not worry about rushing to get a Legendary Pet.
After upgrading to Legendary, the pet gains access to the Pet Inventory Expansion Ticket and Pet Customization Potion, which can be bought from Totocookie for 10,000 and 5,000 Jam Cookies respectively. The Pet Inventory Expansion Ticket unlocks an additional row (10 slots) of Pet Inventory for all Legendary pets. The Pet Customization Potion can be used on a Legendary pet to unlock Reskinning. Once purchased, this potion can be used in the Pet Inventory (Alt+P). Reskinning allows that specific pet to take on the appearance of any other pet that the player owns. There is no limit to how many times that pet may change its appearance.
Aside from the pet related items, Totocookie also sells Phoenix Plumes, Card Packs, Card EXP, and various Skin Cosmetics. Some of the more popular ones include the Achatemeow Hoodie and the Yoholing Ear Ornament. There is no time limit for these items, so players have all the time in the world to collect them. More additions to the shop will come in the future, so keep those pets ‘running’!
Pet Ranch is a fun little addition to the Stronghold that doesn’t take much effort to have set up and running. Players can take their time earning the rewards from the shop and upgrading their pets. The Pet Skills are not game-changing and the shop items are not time limited, so there is no need for players to rush. Besides, in terms of aesthetics, having the Pet Customization Potion means only needing to upgrade one pet to Legendary. It is not recommended to spend currency buying pets for the sole purpose of faster Pet Ranch progression. Players will get everything in time and more items will surely be added in the future. Have fun hanging out with your pets!
