Yes, yes, I'm well aware the title might sound like hyperbole or just plain nonsense, but hear me out... doesn't it annoy you at all that Fynni "pets" aren't actually pets, but rather just glorified crafting fodder for "real" pets, that so many cool ideas for potential pets were essentially tossed in the incinerator all at once? Well, here's an idea of mine setting out to change that, because even if nobody listens, I feel like getting my ideas out there is better than just daydreaming and hoping for change to happen on its own.
PART 1: The worth of a Pet
First off, what do you think of when you think of a pet? A travelling companion, a mount, something to back you up in combat, maybe even a friend, right? Well, that right there is where the problems with Fynni "pets" begins, because in spite of having a wide array of possible appearances, they're all effectively the same underlying pet but reskinned to fake being a specific monster. They don't get to keep their unique monster abilities, they don't have any real combat use since even at such high levels as 120 their stats are still the same as that of a level 1 pet of any other type, and worst of all, they're by and large just considered fodder for "real pets", their own worth and merits null and void, and yet on the other hand, Fynni Fynn is a fully-fledged pet in spite of having the exact same origin as the Fynni pets, a humble Fynni gem dropped from an enemy bearing one. Why is this the case? What is stopping us from being able to make any Fynni pet of our own into a "true" pet?
Let's assume for a moment that all Fynni pets were not just tiny, weak, and otherwise-useless versions of various mob enemies, and instead had all of their powers and abilities that the monster in question had... naturally, your first question might be "wouldn't that be stupidly overpowered?", and you'd be right, since if you made a Demi Lich into a Fynni pet and then could summon a fully-powered one on-demand, there'd be no competition since everything barring defense and protection-ignoring damage gets reduced to 1s against them. This may be one reason why they made Fynni pets into just mere crafting fodder, they couldn't figure out how to balance it properly, and while that is understandable, I believe there is in fact a way of making it all work without completely disrupting the current status quo for pets.
PART 2: A delicate balance
So, we've established approximately two things so far, those being that if Fynni Fynn is capable of being a full pet, then by extension any Fynni pet should be capable of the same, and that just outright making Fynni pets into the full-scaled versions with full abilities would end very, very poorly for both the balance of the game and just in general. So then, the question becomes "how would we be able to make a Fynni pet actually capable of being worthwhile to use without cutting into the already-existing pet market and letting each pet be unique?", and to that, I have a system in mind.
This system, which I'm calling the "Familiar" system, allows you to have a Fynni pet become a fully-fledged pet, complete with each Fynni pet having a unique ability or two based off the monster it's made from. For example, making a Hollow Knight into a pet would allow it to switch between its melee weapon and crossbow midfight, just like the monster it's based off of, and making a Golem into a pet would give it the Stomp ability that they love to spam so much. Unlike normal pets, though, these unique skills would need to be empowered using Fynn Syncing rather than just leveling the pet, and in addition Fynni pets made into Familiars would not have Fynni elements of any kind, instead being "Fomor" element to represent their unique abilities. For Familiars that would be too powerful if they were allowed to have their usual abilities, again like the aforementioned Demi Liches, they would simply outright lack things like auto-defense and damage negation abilities but would be allowed to keep things like one of their known intermediate magics as their "Fomor element" trait, meaning it would only scale with their element's rank. Leveling a Familiar would, however, raise the ranks of their normal non-unique skills, the ones currently present on Fynni pets as-is except for First Aid.
In order to make a Fynni pet into a Familiar, you would need at least 11 Fynni pets of the same type, one to fuse into and 10 to sacrifice, 10 Harmonious Cosmos Perfumes, and 1 all-new type of perfume, the Mystical Coalescence Perfume, which requires you to fuse a Harmonious Cosmos Perfume, a Transformative Aster Perfume, a Courageous Borage Perfume, and a Bonding Violet Perfume mixed with a Mandrake. Obviously, this would be a fairly high-level Fynn Crafting recipe, but once you have the Mystical Coalescense Perfume, all you'd need to do is summon one of the relevent Fynni pets, attempt to Fynn Sync it, and select all 10 of the other Fynni pets. Once that's done, as soon as you've confirmed your action, you would get a name prompt since the Fynni pet would become a fully-fledged Familiar pet after that point. This process can be called "familiarizing". The Familiar pet, as a sidenote, would also be able to Fynn Sync with Fynni pets like normal, but unlike normal pets would actually gain a small portion of the sacrifice's summon time. However, you would not be able to sacrifice a "normal" pet to a Familiar, and Familiars that would be "too large" normally like the Golem would be shrunk down to a smaller size, more akin to a Small Golem.
You may be wondering why First Aid would be omitted from the rank-ups. That's where the part about not cutting into the already-existing pet market comes in, since even when turned into a player's Familiar, a Fynni pet would not be allowed to inherit or possess an inventory of any kind, making their use almost universally purely for combat purposes. Obviously, exceptions would exist like the spider having web-production as its unique ability, but by and large Familiars are designed with combat in mind, and this system isn't meant to outright replace conventional pets.
PART 3: For the sake of organization...
Since quite a few monsters are extremely similar, we can safely sort most of them into genericized "categories" as far as Familiars are concerned. For example, Cobweb Mummies and Ghosts are by and large far too similar to be considered seperate, so they would both fall under the generic category of "Ghost" Familiars, whereas things like Hollow Knights, Incubi, Succubi, and Rat Men in addition to quite a few others would fall under the "Humanoid" Familiar category instead. If need be, we can also, for the sake of ease of development, assume that these genericized categories would dictate what unique abilities each Familiar would have. While this does cut down slightly on the number of unique Familiar types, it would also help as a balancing feature since to some extent it would be a cosmetic choice rather than a statistical one.
PART 4: In conclusion
Hopefully this post doesn't ramble on too much... I know, I talk a lot about ideas I like, but again, I really do feel like getting my ideas out there is the best thing to do in this scenario. If you want a TLDR summary, the suggestion amounts to "Let us make Fynni pets into something actually interesting", but I feel like that omits far too many details which is why I went into such length about it, to ensure that my ideas were understood. If you have questions, comments, concerns, or if you want to tell me that I wasted my time making this post, let me know in this thread and I'll try to respond as soon as possible. Thank you for your time, and have a good day.
