Pet Transform in Aion 2 does the opposite of what the name suggests. Instead of changing your pet, it turns your own character into the pet you have equipped. The feature exists, but the game never spells out how to trigger it, and there is no transform button sitting in the Pets tab waiting to be pressed. It comes down to two things: a pet that has reached the right level, and a consumable called Empathy Candy.
Quick answer: Raise an eligible regular pet to Insight Level 3, equip it in an active slot, then use one Empathy Candy. You stay in that pet’s form for 5 minutes, and the candy is used up.
Raise a regular pet to Insight Level 3
A pet only gains the Transform function once it hits Insight Level 3. You push a pet up that ladder by feeding it souls of its own kind. Defeating the matching monster in the world drops a soul, and pulling a duplicate of a pet you already own turns into a soul as well, so copies are never wasted.
Reaching Insight Level 3 takes a running total of 105 pet souls, split across three steps.
| Progression | Pet souls needed |
|---|---|
| Unlock the pet | 5 |
| Pet Insight Level 2 | 25 |
| Pet Insight Level 3 | 75 |
| Total | 105 |
Not sure where a given pet’s souls come from? Open the Pet menu, select the pet, and check its Source tab. It lists the places that pet can be obtained, whether that is a specific overworld monster, a chest reward, or a rotating entry at a merchant.
Where to get Empathy Candy
Each transformation burns one Empathy Candy, so you need a reliable way to keep topping up. There are two sources worth planning around.
Pet collection milestones
Every time your total number of owned pets crosses a major milestone, you receive 10 Empathy Candy. These payouts land at 50, 100, 150, and 200 pets owned. Since expanding your collection also stacks permanent character bonuses, this doubles as a reason to keep catching new pets rather than farming the same handful.
Shugo Festival Shop
You can repeatedly purchase Empathy Candy in the Festival Shop during Shugo Festival, available at Level 13. Each candy costs 20 Centuryroot Tokens. Enter Shugo Festival through the main menu, open the Festival Shop, then choose Empathy Candy from the consumables section.
Earn Centuryroot Tokens by playing Shugo Festival minigames, then spend a Shugo Festival Reward Key to collect the prizes. Keys replenish on a set schedule, so check their caps before relying on this method.
| Shugo Festival Reward Key | Value |
|---|---|
| Gained per day | 3 |
| Maximum held | 12 |
| Maximum held (membership) | 21 |
| Daily reset (server time) | 16:00 |
The minigames themselves run on short windows rather than being open all day, so claim your keys regularly instead of letting them sit at the cap and overflow.
Use the candy and what transform actually does
With an Insight Level 3 pet equipped, using an Empathy Candy swaps your character model for that pet for 300 seconds. The change is cosmetic. Your skills, health pool, defense, accuracy, and every other stat stay exactly as they were, and the movement changes of the pet form carry over as you move around.
You are not locked out of anything while transformed. You can enter combat and cast skills, fly, interact with other players, run dungeons, and continue quests. The animations can look odd because the pet model has no hands to hold a weapon, but the damage and effects still register normally. The form stays active until the timer ends.
Transform is separate from mounting. A pet can act as a mount as soon as it is unlocked, while turning yourself into the pet always requires Insight Level 3 plus a candy. In open-world PvP zones such as the Abyss, shrinking into a small, unremarkable pet form can make you a little less obvious in a crowd, though it is not real stealth. Enemy players can still target and attack you if they spot you.
You know it worked when your character becomes the pet and an Empathy Candy icon appears in your buffs, above the MP bar, counting down the five minutes.
End a transformation early
To return to your regular character before the timer runs out, hold ALT and hover over the Empathy Candy symbol above the MP bar. Open the Buffs window, then click the trash can beside the buff. The change ends immediately, restoring your usual form.
Pets that cannot be transformed
Only regular pets support this feature, which covers the Cogni, Fera, Natura, and Varian genera. Pets in the Special genus, such as the Black Dragon, sit outside the system entirely. They have no transform option, so there is no point spending souls on one for this purpose. If you intend to transform into a specific creature, make sure it belongs to one of the four eligible genera before you start farming its souls.
