After more than two years of development.
The Player Forum had divided the growth models of different builds into two categories: the Orthodox Path and the Unorthodox Path.
The Orthodox Path referred to mainstream progression methods.
War, hunting, competitive combat, fishing, Spirit Chef work, instances... these were all mainstream activities, and the progression choices of the vast majority of players.
The Unorthodox Path referred to growth models that ran counter to mainstream gameplay.
Its representative player was Little Mage.
Players called his progression route the Evil Demon King: he had defected from the Player Faction and established a brand-new faction outside it.
He was also one of the strongest players in many players' eyes.
There were plenty of other Unorthodox Path playstyles.
Among them, one that leaned toward the mainstream was the pet build, known in the early days as the control-type build.
By capturing pets from the outside world, players obtained a pet that could not benefit from life soul traits and could only be granted the effects of actively applied buff traits.
This was fundamentally different from the summoner style.
A life soul summon could incorporate all of a player's abilities.
For example, trait effects such as Inkflame and thundering lightning that players had mastered could be granted directly to their summoned beasts.
External pets, however, could only be strengthened through actively applied enhancement traits such as Blood Burn and windbreaker.
Going against mainstream gameplay was precisely what characterized the Unorthodox Path.
The emergence of the summoner style had introduced the concept of a struggle between orthodox and unorthodox versions of these two playstyles to the forum.
Some players planning to follow the summoner style even declared, "The Unorthodox Path ran rampant back then. Now the Orthodox Path shall rise."
Those words undoubtedly conveyed one message to pet-build