Infested Doggos and Infested Kitties of the Cambion Drift

The Heart of Deimos has brought us new companions! The last companion we got was the third type of Kavat, the vampire-like Vasca. The Vasca appeared in the Plains of Eidolon revamp update. Since then, companions have been pretty quiet. But now we have six new ones! SIX! Three Kavats and three Kubrows. Oh, sorry, they’re called Vulpaphyla and Predasites. Anyway, let’s have a look at them!

Three cats that look like foxes, three dogs that look like sphinxes.

For some reason, the appearances of these pets are reversed. We have infested fox-like creatures with long snouts that are actually cats, and short snub-faced creatures with sphinx-like manes that are actually dogs. The reversed appearances are pretty interesting, but you can tell by the way they move which is which. Vulpaphyla do the obvious cat-like stalking, while Predasites bounce around like you’re their new best friend. Of course, they use the basic Kavat and Kubrow animations.

They’re all kinda basically the same.

Aside from some head decorations and frills, all the species of animal are the same. The three cats all look the same apart from their various head spikes. The four dogs are all mostly the same as well aside from their head frills. There’s slight variations in bulkiness, but that’s about it.

But they all have different abilities and rarities. Sly Vulpaphyla and Vizier Predasites are the most common. Medjay Predasites and Crescent Vulpaphyla are the least common. Their appearances on the Cambion Drift are based on the Infested cycle of Fass and Vome, with Medjay Predasites and Crescent Vulpaphyla only very rarely appearing in the wild during Vome. Luckily, we have pheromones and normal conservation to allow us to capture the rarer ones.

None of them really offer… much.

Their abilities though… Well, to put it nicely, there’s no real reason why you wouldn’t want to switch away from your Adarza or Smeeta Kavats. Most of their abilities seem somewhat interesting on paper, but because companion AI is crap, they just can’t be used properly. Sure, the corrosive and viral procs that Predasites can spit SEEM useful, but 99% of the time your infested dog will miss. The even weirder thing is that the Vulpaphyla seem more useful dead than alive. When they are dead, they turn into a larva and give their master some sort of buff, similar to their while-alive buff but somehow stronger.

I suppose at least the Sly Vulpaphyla and Vizier Predasites have the best abilities, despite being the common variants. The Sly Vulpaphyla actually gives allies a boost to Evasion, an underused stat that basically gives you a chance to not be hit. Its larva (i.e. dead) form though is far more useful than when the Sly Vulpaphyla is actually alive.

The Vizier Predasite is even more amusing. It shudders and leaves a trail of “Iatric Mycelium”, which heals anyone who steps in it. But the animation totally looks like the Vizier Predasite is shuddering after a nice, good piss, and we are now stepping in its piss to heal ourselves. Hence why I called one of my Vizier Predasites “Jarate”.

At least they’re somewhat easy to get.

To get any of these dogs or cats, all you have to do is your normal conservation stuff. Weakened animals are the ones that you can turn into pets. To get a weakened one though, you have to let the animals be attacked by Infested. Thankfully, this isn’t TOO difficult, since both cats and dogs actively get attacked by Infested and attack the Infested back.

You then need to make an Antigen and a Mutagen, combine them with a weakened animal of your choice and, voila, you have a new pet. Unfortunately though, you also need to gild the animals, and this costs 10 Son Tokens and 5k Entrati standing. Easy to obtain, a pain in the ass to max out.

But hey, we have ourselves some interesting companions.

I mean, they all LOOK cool. Even if they’re not that useful…