Reaching max power level in Darkstone now requires either reaching 2,500 Renown in All-Seeing Eye or buying more copies of Ninja Cat if it returns (Eye Pod, Ninja Cat, and Trogpole are the only three pets).
Right…
Which is an improvement over having to mythic ninja cat, because faction pets counting as kingdom pets happened just a few weeks ago.
Or you could do all 3. 
It’ll take 2-3 years for the extra tribute chance to pay off the investments. But it will “pay off eventually”. 
2 Likes
But it never ends…
If only there were some troops that were multi-kingdom to help speed this along…
I’m hoping that Darkstone is a 1-off in requiring either a delve or cosmetic pet at lv20. Hopefully by the time other kingdoms reach 17* there will be more pets in those kingdoms.
Doubtful.
Allowing the associated delve’s pet to count as the 2nd pet for Power 17 is intentional to circumvent the cosmetic pet issue. Otherwise, at 12 new non-cosmetic pets a year, it would take almost 3 years for every Kyrstaran kingdom to get a new pet.
That said, cosmetic pets do allow players the choice of sinking 2500-3000 gems into a cosmetic pet to mythic it, if they don’t want (or can’t) reach max renoun in a faction (a very difficult task). As AWRyan pointed out, the choice is out there. Players don’t have to like it, but the choice is there.
This is my only issue with the system in regards to cosmetic pets.
If it said “No Team Bonuses” then cool. But it says “no bonuses” which means getting the troop shouldn’t have any affect on game play. And today… It most certainly does.
Yes, there’s an option to get the All Seeing Eye pet to 2500. But I kinda just lucked into that. Since that was the day I went and got myself the last power orb for ZG. Otherwise, cosmetic pets are cheaper and way less time consuming than Faction pets… And cosmetic pets come with food even.
So if given the choice… I’d rather spend gems on a cosmetic pet than a faction pet.
That may change after 4.5 but that’s my opinion using this present build of the game.
Less time consuming yes but not cheaper. Also consider what you get for gems spent, a full run to lv 500 in a delve event gives a mythic pet and substantial gold,glory, shards etc. (whether or not you need these is not the point) plus renown which leads to stat points. Cosmetic pet gives a mythic pet and that’s pretty much it.
Cheaper on PC/Mobile. 
I’m not talking about winning a power orb, just finishing the delve to get mythic pet.
1 Like
Oh true. But still during the events I spend way too many gems to make it less grindy and gives the all Faction team a pretty great chance at winning.
Yeah, I think the best approach is to try it with the minimum (4x tier 7) and then you can always buy more if necessary. But I’m a real miser when it comes to spending resources.
1 Like