leveling your lead wolf - is it worth it? how much do you fight?

I was talking to someone today who said that fighting was just completely not worth it, and that in any encounters that give you either HP or energy/herbs/anything you should take the other thing, because the average rewards from a fight are worse than the average rewards from whatever you could get instead of HP recovery (e.g. instead of 30HP from the Rest/Sleep encounter you could get the 60% more energy which will let you find some valuable things, and instead of 30HP from using herbs you could get 6 herbs and sell them, and instead of 30HP from drinking water three times you can get 1-2 healing salves and sell them). And honestly, they're right, reward-wise fighting is not worth it at all. The real reason to fight is to level your lead wolf - so, why exactly are we doing that, and is it worth it?

Of course there's no reason not to do easy fights when you have full HP that just randomly refilled from exploring and you fight in a way that doesn't use much energy (i.e. either you're almost out of energy anyway, or you mostly do the Wait action), but I fight more often than that and now I'm wondering what other people do.

So, what do you all think? Is it worth leveling your lead wolf, and why or why not?  The reasons to do it I can think of:

• you can get chased and then special NBWs at higher levels - how often does that really happen? In your experience, do you get actually valuable females often enough to be worth trying for?
• if your lead wolf is your breeding male or a breeding female, you want to level them so the stats are higher to breed more valuable higher-stat pups. Makes sense!  But my starter lead wolf is neither, so that doesn't apply. I'm not sure if it would be worth paying the 25GC to retire him and replace him with a wolf I'll breed...
• Are high lead wolf stats important for anything else? Do they give you better encounter results or anything?
  

I fight so my wolf is capable of fighting later - for daily quests that require slaying foes and potentially for events in the future. Lioden’s events almost all have benefits to fighting event foes, so I can only assume it’ll be similar here.

Special NBWs start rare, but as you level they become more common. Once you reach level 20, you’ll encounter one every few encounters. And Chased wolves are potentially very valuable, too. Especially with the heritageless/no inbreeding groups starting up.

To answer your HP-related questions, when given the choice of HP vs item, I always go for the item. But in the HP vs Energy choice, I go for HP unless I’m full already. As for Healing Salves, because my #1 goal involves GC right now, I haven’t been using them at all. In beta, though, I used them when I had a good store of them - I wanted to save a few for dealing with illness, especially Open Wound if I didn’t have a cure lying around.

Ohh, events, good to know!  Yeah, that seems like it could be pretty worthwhile.

Oh, do chased wolves lose their family tree so they count as heritageless? That's fascinating, and I didn't realize breeding groups were even a thing. Thanks!

Another thing to keep in mind, if you have an heir that has levels, they will keep their levels when made the lead. So if you send out a wolf to level up as a scout long enough ahead of time, you can already have a level 15 wolf that is your lead.

I am actively trying to get my lead to Lv 20 without the use of guarana, so I do fight everything that is within +/- 3 levels of my lead. After every battle I ensure that that my lead has at least 10+ HP so it can engage enemies if it happens to be within the 3 level range. Before engaging, I make sure my lead has at least full - 10 HP (i.e., use as many healing salves as needed but no spillovers). I use lucky foot on enemies with higher level than my lead. 

I buy healing salves and lucky foot from the player base. 

I always pick HP over items, and energy over HP (since I buy salves, but not guarana). The only exception is the one that gives salves vs. rewarding HP, where I pick the healing salve. Edit: I should say that when exploring in the rainforest and the swamp, I sometimes go for the herbs over HP because pineapple leaf and guaiacum can be sold for 2x healing salves.

Since reach level 15 I have encountered several special NBW, but only managed to claim 2x glass eyes (sold for 1 and 2 GC each) and 2x Nepheline (sold 1 for 6 GC and gave the other to a friend). I can say that there is at least a notable difference in the number of special NBW encounters between Lv 15 and Lv 18.

I choose to level for personal play-style reasons. I like to see my lead produce high-quality puppies that are more likely to become the next king and produce puppies of their own. While special base/markings are an option, different markings/bases go in and out of favour. Stats, on the other hand, are always going to be desirable. Since reaching 500+ stats, I've been able to clear out stud slots by Saturday. I was even able to raise stud prices without affecting the # of requests since reaching 600+ stats. Although stud fees doesn't quite cover what I've spent on leveling, I am very happy at the number of puppies my lead has produced. 

Awesome! That sounds like a fun playstyle.  And thanks for the detailed info about special NBWs and pricing!  So they're not very common, but I might find some, and really the main way to make money at high levels is studding - that makes sense.

ig for me I fall..like somewhat in the middle?

i fight, but not often. i always pick items vs hp because i'm broke and looking for extra cash ngl LMAO

for my gameplay i *intend* to have my next leader be of descent from the current leader; so it makes sense to slowly level her up to get better stats, so she might be able to produce some decently statted puppies next time around. which is why i pick fights, but not often, i have healing salves spare to sell, but also to heal up my wolf for when i do decide to pick a fight!

that being said; i have plenty of time to achieve it. hence why its not often that i do pick fights, because i don't see a point to fighting constantly, & i have no rush to achieve my goal! however i can understand users with their lead wolf as their breeding male wanting to get better stats because then you can def make further bank from breeding.

i have, what, 160 rollovers until my current leader retires? & given that it takes 24 days for a pup to reach an adult, i have at least 136 days (cutting it short tbh, so i'd probably want to do it a bit earlier, but going at the maximum here) to slowly level up my main wolf, before breeding her to hopefully produce a nice statted pup to continue her legacy!

ofc, she can breed, & I can spend some time sending that wolf hunting, or scouting, to level up their stats (and would like to anyway), but, its nicer to have a head start! B)

if it wasn't for wanting for my next leader to be of descent of my main wolf....i probably wouldn't care for fighting or levelling up at all.

Wow, this has been a super informative thread, thank you for starting it OP, and everyone else thanks for contributing! You've all given me a lot to think about.

I battle because TBH it's one of the few hands on, player interactive things to do in the game, lol. I want to do it because it can be fun, and because I like battle mechanics in general, even if this one is more simple than I prefer. It's kind of a lame reason, especially compared to all of your well reasoned purposes, but I figured I'd share because it hasn't been mentioned yet. 

I will admit I'm also battling aggressively because I want that level 10 so I can start getting more interesting NBWs. I didn't know that the rate of encounters increases further after that though!! Guess now I'm aiming for 20 haha. (Wish I was better at this.)

How do you guys manage HP? I feel like I'm perpetually ending every battle with just barely enough HP, then have to spend the rest of my energy struggling to regain HP, then wait for energy to regenerate. Am I doing something profoundly wrong?

I used to just do exactly what you're doing (fight, lose a lot of HP, slowly regain it through exploring, wait until I have energy again, etc) and honestly it worked fine?  I started at public access and I'm level 9 now.

Buuuut I really like Sol's trick above of only using salve once you're about to press the Attack button (so that you're not exploring with full HP and wasting opportunities to regain it) and I've started doing a bit of that yesterday. It works pretty well, honestly!  I'm close to level 10 so I want to get there quickly and see what it's like once I can get chased NBWs.  (I'm still not buying healing salves, just using some of the ones I find, so it's not a ton of battling.)

Nika, I'm actually at 9 too! Guess I'm not behind the ball. It just feels slow, I guess, haha. I'm spoiled by growing up playing Pokemon. :) 

I like that idea and will begin implementing it, I think!! I did learn the hard way to always choose the salve over the HP, since salve is always 10hp and drinking the healing water is variable between 5 and 10 in my experience. I've had my herbalist making a few salves, but have had a bit of a hard time finding the ingredients for it. It's hit or miss for me.