There were many options for both types of pet classes, which mostly defined what ‘types’ of pets they could own and use. Some could only tame animals, others could command monstrous npcs, and some had even more esoteric requirements.

There was also the matter of pet rarity. Every 3 pet class was restricted to “Common” pets or “Common and Uncommon” pets only, while 2 pet classes could tame “Rare or lower” pets or “Legendary or lower” pets. The rarity limitation was based on how restricted the class was in type of pet. The 3 pet classes that could command animals were all “Common” restricted, for example, because there were many types of animals. Meanwhile, the 3 pet class that could command “living plants and fungi” was “Common and Uncommon”, because there weren't as many of those types of creatures.

So Chan Si's choice of what pet class to pick wasn't just about 2 pet or 3 pet, but what ‘type’ of pets she wanted.

There were too many types of pets for her to make a truly informed decision, but she at least had some standards. Monstrous npc followers were right out - she already planned to have a monstrous character in the party, and npc followers would compete with it for resources. Even with the advantage in diplomacy her monstrous character would have in dealing with monstrous npcs, thus allowing a monstrous pet master class to gain access to better pets, she didn't think it was worth it. In fact, the ‘follower’ type pet classes were out in general; regardless of if they were humanoid or monstrous, they would compete for resources, negating her advantage of mostly gear free classes.

She continued whittling down her list until she was left with four types she would choose between. They were Animals, Plants and Fungi, Elementals, and Animated Objects.

Animals were self explanatory, and the most common. Animals as pets were in fact the most popular choice of the permanent pet classes! Animals had high natural stats, were easy to command, and who didn't want a pet wolf, tiger, or bear?

The fluffiness could not be underrated.

Of course, Chan Si had never had a pet, so she did not know what she was missing out on.

Plants and Fungi had the strangest abilities. Even if she went with a 3 pet class, she would get access to weird effects. Yet in contrast to animals, this group had the lowest natural stats and were the most difficult to command. What good were esoteric abilities if Chan Si couldn't command their use easily?

But there would also be ways around that eventually, with enough time, due the ‘Bond’ mechanic. She couldn't discount it as an option.

Elementals were almost always pets of summoned classes. There was only one permanent pet class that used elementals. It was a 2 pet class, the Dual Elemental Master.

The class would select two elementals of a specific type to contract to; those elementals would always be active, and the class would gain specific abilities based on which two elements were contracted. The class could later contract with different elementals, but they would need to be of the same element chosen at initial contract.

So a Fire and Ice Dual Elemental Master would receive Fire and Ice related abilities, and could change from the basic elementals to new ones later, but would always only be able to use Fire and Ice elements. Chan Si knew if she chose this class she would select Light element for one, for its healing, but was yet undecided as to other.

The downside of the class was apparent - if she made an incorrect choice for second element now, she would only be able to regret it later. There was a second downside, and that was elemental creatures all had obvious weaknesses to opposing elements. If that was exploited against her, or she simply ran into a bad opponent, it would be a disaster. Yet, still, if she truly decided to be a 2 pet master, it would probably need to be the Dual Elemental Master. With any other options, she would select 3 pet master.

Animated Objects tempted Chan Si greatly. Even though it meant three pieces of gear she would need to dedicate to being pets instead of being worn or sold, it effectively increased the number of item slots she had between her six selves by three! Sure, being a 3 pet master with the class would only let her animate uncommon items at most, but it wasn't like uncommon items couldn't have unique effects, just that they would be less impactful than the unique effects of Rare or Legendary items.

She would also be able to integrate things with her item hot swapping tactics.

Although animated objects were expensive to replace if they died, not just for the object but the soul animating it, they could be exchanged between objects for free and nearly instantly while alive, and in fact this was the main method of healing Animated Objects, as their HP would be restored to full when doing so, and the old object would be left with durability damage based on the health restored. Having separate methods for the class to heal animated objects and heal fellow party members would make resource management easier, as Chan Si would more easily be able to arbitrate between whatever resource she had the most abundance of.

Plus, there was a specific 3 pet master animated objects class that she was interested in, the Free Soul. The Free Soul could activate their own personal abilities from the locations of animated objects as one of its most basic class skills. This would increase the range and flexibility of Chan Si's healing options immensely.

To summarize, Chan Si was picking between four types of advantages; the advantage of reliability with Animals, the possibility of breaking the game the most with Plants and Fungi, the Legendary rarity with Dual Elemental Master, and the resource and healing flexibility of the Free Soul.

She deeply considered these options, and decided to start by crossing out the one she felt was the worst.

Plants and Fungi!

Although her goal was to break the game and she wasn't sure how she would accomplish that yet, she felt most of her game breaking would come from other sources, and she truly needed to be up to par in overall team composition if she was to have any chance at all. Plus, the complexity of Plants and Fungi would negate the simplicity advantage that 3 pet masters were supposed to have over 2 pet masters. She was smart, but she was already splitting her attention as far as she could, so she wouldn't dare split it more unless the gains were enough.

That left the 3 pet master Animal class (of which there were many), the 2 pet master Dual Elemental Master, and the 3 pet master Free Soul.

If Chan Si was going to choose properly, she would need to investigate the 3 pet master Animal classes further.

What they all shared in common was “Common”, there were no 3 pet master Animal classes that could tame “Uncommon” Animals. Chan Si could get 3 bears - widely considered to be the best tanking animals. If she wanted to mix things up she could get two bears and a bird, using the bird to scout.

But dedicating an entire slot to a scout, she would rather use either of the other pet master classes, whose pets could be used to tank or scout interchangeably, without dedicating to one or the other.

Three bears were safe, reliable, and boring. Chan Si hated boring. There would need to be some truly exceptional class abilities to make up for it in her mind. The most interesting 3 pet master Animal class which could perform healing was the Mountain Shaman.

The Mountain Shaman was a combination healing and buffing class in addition to being a 3 pet master class. They focused on buffing themselves and others with the abilities of various animals, including their own pets. So a Mountain Shaman could buff a bear with the flight of an eagle, or an eagle with the toughness of a bear. Many of the abilities the class had access to depended on its 3 pets, similar to the Dual Elemental Master, although the Mountain Shaman was not stuck with specific types of animals, the only restriction being “Common”.

Did Chan Si want a buffing focused class? Buffing her main character would no doubt help in faster leveling, and the advantage of healing on top of that using the three pets as tanks would be a great boon. Plus she could actually get stronger buff access by using multiple of the same type of animal. So if she chose three bears like she planned to anyway with an Animal pet master, then she would get the strongest defensive buffs.

Bear, I bless you with the toughness of 3 bears!

Quadruple bear skin!

Times 3 bears!

Twelve bears worth of meatwall!

Then buffing her characters as well, that would 15 more bears worth.

27 bear meatwall formation!

It was utterly stupid in the best way possible.

But, it would also be the weakest healing option, and buffs couldn't be sustained all the time. Plus, although she mostly planned for her characters to group up, she also knew there were times they would need to split up to cover more ground. If the Mountain Shaman with 3 bears met an enemy on their own, they would be the definition of useless. They wouldn't even be able to deal proper damage.

No, she couldn't pick Mountain Shaman.

That left the Dual Elemental Master and the Free Soul. Either would be massive boons. Three Uncommon Items or Two Legendary Elementals would be the limit of either class in terms of their pets, even subclasses could not change this.

‘Legendary’ sounded impressive, and it was, but there was a reason 3 pet masters could compete with 2 pet masters, as they typically had better abilities on the class itself. Just the starting ability of the Free Soul to use its other abilities from the location of its pets, it was a fantastic ability that even legendary items wouldn't be able to replicate! And it would help Chan Si in breaking the game.

Yet, two Legendary Elementals, who knew what existences out there in the world she could find and contract eventually, if she chose her second element correctly. The class itself, however, would only ever be able to access straightforward abilities of the elements. The light elemental would allow access to mostly healing spells, some buffs, and a few damaging and debuff spells. Nothing fancy. It all came down to what she selected in terms of her second elemental.

There were nine elements in the game. There were foremost the five elements of Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. Then there were the two elements of Light and Dark. Then there were the two ‘weird’ elements, Toxic and Arcane. The Dual Elemental Master was far away from the only class focused on certain elements. In fact, most element based classes only focused on a single element, and made up for it in other aspects.

The five elements were of course taken from the five Chinese elements. Fire would beat metal, metal would beat wood, wood would beat earth, earth would beat water, and water would beat fire.

Each of the five elements also had two companion elements that could combine with it for unique effects. Fire could combine with Wood or Earth; Earth with Fire or Metal; Metal with Earth or Water; Water with Metal or Wood; and Wood with Water or Fire.

Most Dual Elemental Masters would select two companion elements from the five elements as a result, as the combination effects were the only way the class itself could gain complex abilities outside of what abilities the elementals had access to.

However, Chan Si had to choose Light, because she needed healing! There was no companion element to light. Light attacks had advantage over Dark element and Dark element had an advantage over Light element, they wouldn't work together. She could still choose Dark of course, but would gain no special advantage from it.

The two ‘weird’ elements were even more disconnected than Light and Dark. No element had an advantage against Toxic or Arcane, and Arcane had no advantage against any other element. That was why they were ‘weird’ elements.

Toxic was actually a very popular element in classes that weren't the Dual Elemental Master, many classes would take advantage of Toxic effects as their only element to simultaneously debuff and damage enemies. Toxic had absolutely zero healing or buff effects as an element. None! Yet, it was strongly beloved by many players for its ability to debuff and damage at the same time.

Of the few well known Dual Elemental Masters who select Toxic, they would all select either Water or Dark as their companion element. While there was no inherent elemental synergy, Water element could spread debuffs and damage between enemies, while Dark element could increase the severity of enemy debuffs.

But if Chan Si selected Toxic Element, she would need to pair it with light element, no synergy at all!

At best she could use it to give the class some ability to deal with enemies on its own between focusing on heals. In that respect, it wasn't a bad choice, but it wasn't what she was looking for, either.

Arcane element. Unlike other games, not all magic was arcane. Arcane was a specific type of element that directly altered other magic, a ‘meta magic’ of sorts. Arcane magic could be used to store a buff and automatically cast it later when entering combat, for example.

Chan Si was very tempted by Arcane Magic, but like all things, it had a downside.

Unlike most things, the downside was very large.

All arcane magic costed permanent resources to cast. If Chan Si had to compare arcane magic to other games, it would be like buying magic scrolls to cast magic for you, the only difference being you would be making the magic scrolls to your own specifications. It was very flexible and very, very expensive.

Plus, Arcane Elementals had the weakest fight power of all the elementals, and would mostly cast buff spells. In the case of Arcane Dual Elemental Masters, the Arcane Elemental would focus on supporting the other elemental in combat. While there were no pets capable of healing, the Arcane Elemental was the closest one could find to a support class pet.

No matter how much Chan Si wanted it, no matter how much help it would be in breaking the game, she could not pick the Arcane Elemental. The loss in early combat power would slow her down too much, and she would never make it to the part where she could exploit it properly. The existence of a monstrous character in her party already filled this role of ‘bad now, fantastic later’, and that one was her limit.

Thus, Chan Si considered the five classical elements. Fire was self explanatory, it was mainly about dealing damage, with a few buffs and debuffs, and as far as healing went, could only self-heal. There was one fire buff the Dual Elemental Master would get that Chan Si was very interested in, the Burning Muscle buff. It could enhance the speed and overall physical capability of an ally at the cost of damage over time. Since her other element was light, she could pair that buff with healing to enhance her main character to its limits.

Earth had damage, buffs, debuffs, and healing all in roughly equal measure. It had no implicit synergy with Light element at all.

Metal would focus on buffs and debuffs, with little damage or healing. It terms of spells it had no interest to Chan Si, and she was only considering it because Metal Elementals were the best tanks of any element.

Water would focus on debuffs and healing. Having two healing focused elements would be amazing, but if Metal was the best tank of the five, then Water was the worst, and only Arcane elementals would be worse still! Light elementals were only middling rank tanks, Chan Si could not afford to pick a terrible tank. At worse she could select another middling tank.

Wood was about buffs and healing, just like light element. It even had some damage in the form of lightning spells, as lightning was associated with wood. It had no debuffs at all, as all the associations wood would have with debuffs was part of the Toxic element. Chan Si could pick it, as Wood elementals were middling tanks as well, but she did not like that the healing of the wood element was healing over time.

Healing over time was far less useful in general, but even more so to Chan Si. She already had the AoE repeated heals of the Dark Weaver, and the quick large heals of the light element, she did not need a heal over time effect on top of that. It wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't help either. The reason to pick wood would be its buffs, which were the longest lasting and most varied of any of the elements.

In terms of elemental tanks, the best was Metal. The next best was Earth. Then Dark. Then Wood. Then Light. Then Toxic. Then Fire. Then Water. Then Arcane.

She could not choose Water or Arcane due to the poor tanking. Fire was barely acceptable due to its buffs and damage making up for things. Metal or Earth would of course make the best tanks, but neither had spell synergy, so she would not choose Earth over Metal. Wood would give her the best buffs, but the healing would be redundant. Toxic's DPS would be welcome. Dark would be the middle point choice between all the others she was considering.

Should she choose Metal? Should she choose Dark? Or Wood? Or Toxic? Or Fire? These five were her short list.

She decided to eliminate the weakest link of Wood. If she wanted to focus on buffs, she would rather pick Mountain Shaman, and she had already eliminated that option.

Next she eliminated Dark. It was a middle point option, but she wasn't going to compromise. She was going to decide what mattered to her most.

In a way, Toxic and Fire could be said to represent the same interest of damaging enemies the most effectively, and were comparable in terms of their tankiness. If Chan Si picked either, the Light Elemental would be her main tank, and the Toxic or Fire elemental would lessen the pressure primarily by harming enemies.

But, was this really acceptable to Chan Si? She wanted the class to act as a dual tank and healer, not deal damage. The only reason she was at all considering it was because the upsides were enough to make up for the downsides.

Metal? It was the best tank. It could buff and debuff as well, although Chan Si had little interest in that aspect of the element. It would be her reliable main tank, and the light elemental would be the off tank. It was effective! Plus, Metal was not a popular element among Dual Elemental Masters, which meant she had the highest chance of running across a good elemental for the role.

Actually, thinking about it further, if she combined the defensive buffs of the Metal Element with the Healing of the Light Element, wouldn't that make her character for the class closer to the paladin than a pure healer? While that had little impact early on, later after her party was sufficiently geared, she would get a third tank.

The main downside was the lack of damage if the Dual Elemental Master had to operate on its own. It would be reliant on a weapon to deal any real damage, and wasn't she trying to avoid that kind of gear reliance? It was a problem similar to the Mountain Shaman, except with more gear reliance than buff reliance.

In Chan Si's mind, she eliminated Toxic, because since it and Fire fulfilled similar roles, she would rather have Fire.

Fire or Metal, those were choices for the Dual Elemental master - a more all arounder with poorish middling tanking, great healing, and decent damage, or a full on tank-fest with great healing but almost no damage to speak of.

The latter suited her needs the most, but the former was competitive considering she did not truly know what she might face in the future.

Whichever she chose, it was in competition with the Free Soul. Free Soul had no special choices to make up front, it was what it was. It was not a gear reliant class despite using items as its pets, as the quality of the items would not affect things like damage or tankiness. Only the special qualities of an item would have any impact - so an item that could be used to cast a spell could be commanded to cast that spell by the Free Soul, even though the Free Soul was using the item as a pet and not equipping it.

Early on, there would be absolutely no disadvantage to Chan Si if she used the cheapest items possible. The only impact the item choice had was the item ‘type’ affecting the item's stats while used as a pet. So animating armor would make a defensive focused pet while animating a sword would make an offensive focused pet. It wasn't very complex, and Chan Si planned to animate three suits of armor no matter what, unless she found an item with a good enough unique ability to make up for it. Given that she could only animate up to uncommon items, that was unlikely until much later, so she didn't have a lot to worry about.

Picking the Free Soul would free up a lot of her strategy and planning compared to the Dual Elemental Master, letting her focus more on the class's strange abilities.

Early on in her journey, the Free Soul would not doubt be her best choice between the two. It simply did more and had more tools at its disposal, while also being more reliable at the same time. Yet, when it came to later, the advantage of two legendary elementals would far outstrip the advantage of three additional uncommon items in Chan Si's ability to break the game.

Legendary creatures could have many abilities and [Skills], who knew what Chan Si might encounter? It wasn't that the Free Soul was useless in this regard, only that it could not compare in sheer potential!

Chan Si had studied the abilities of the Free Soul, and its level one ability to use other abilities and [Skills] from its pets position was its most potentially game breaking one. Other abilities were very useful, and she would love to have them, but only that one she could truly exploit.

If Chan Si had to put it a certain way, it was that she had four other characters. If they decided to split off, she could send an animated item with each, except one character who would stay with the Free Soul itself. The Free Soul had no limits to how far its pets could travel from the class, it was truly free. Thus, she would be able to heal anyone in the group at any time, keeping her primary advantage of being the same person even if the group split up!

It was too good of an ability to give up, but so too was the potential abilities of Legendary rank Elementals.

And it was not like she expected to split up frequently, only if doing so would actually be an advantage. Most of the time, she wanted to keep her party together, as only then her decision of selecting a Dark Weaver could truly shine.

It was too difficult a choice, thus Chan Si could only sigh and decide that she would come back to the decision after selecting other options.