pets PETS GALORE!!!

[Camper]

Pets are an amazing part of this game that are extremely underutilized. They act as a storage unit, provide buffs, and travel with you as an adorable companion. These are great features for a pet to have but they dont do them well. The buffs they provide range from pretty great, to outright useless buffs.

The storage is useful, but one minute your collecting things off the ground and the next your accidentally throwing gear into its inventory cause it walked into your crosshair. Speaking of their pathing, they constantly push you off whatever your building and can easily, accidentally kill you. Finally, the lack of variety for this little travel companion.

There are 6 pets, and 4 helmets. FOUR!!! All the helmets do is increase their healthpool so why not add variety. As for the pets, why no pet spiders? What if to tame a spider you had to get a spider egg as a lucky drop from an egg sack and/or a special spider miniboss that summons through waft invasions. Then to tame the spider you had to feed it another pet.

The ability to pick up and move your pets, along with the ability to set them to stay mode or wander mode, would be a great QOL change. The customization aspect of both the pet house and the pet should exist. Maybe an upgradable size for the pethouse using higher level materials. How about different types of pethouses to match the pets that is purely cosmetic.

The accidental accessing of inventory could be easily fixed using a toggle button in your own inventory next to the pet inventory button. The issue of pathing could be fixed by turning of its collision. Then no matter where it moves, it won't be interfering with the player in a negative way. 

Finally buffs, please just make them usefull. They can be for extremely niche situations, and that would be amazing. The gnat is literally useless as of now, except for being extremely cute, because of the change to dandelion tufts. The hauling strength is good and in combination with red ant armor is perfect for building. In fact, all of the ant babies have very useful buffs. That is why I wish that same usefulness was seen with the other pets in the game. If all pets are unlocked, then why not reward the players with mutation that allows for your pet to have your armor and/or mutation bonuses.

If balancing is a concern, then make a way for players to upgrade their pets using a renewable, or limited, high tier materials and/or a leveling system for each individual pet. The leveling could involve experience points, a friendship score, certain items to be fed to them, or a combination of the sorts. Maybe if maxed out on friendship and fed fungus snacks, it could become an infected variant. Pets that take weirdly specific requirements to obtain, almost like easter eggs, would be both engaging and rewarding to many players.

Overall, pets were one of my favorite parts of the game when i started but quickly took a backseat after obtaining them. With some changes to the quality of what players are rewarded with for interacting with the mechanic, pets would easily move to my, and many other players', number one spot. People love small little critters that remind them of their pets in real life and, if done right, could easily draw in many new players to this already intricate and engaging game.