Mage pets
 

So from what I have read people tend to prefer the fire pet initially for soloing. The strange thing is that I have not seen a single low level mage (in 12 levels) using a fire pet. It has primarily been the earth pet and a couple air pets. Is it just a preference thing?

Fire pet is used for pet chaining (someone more knowledgeable can explain this tactic), which isn't really efficient until the mana cost of pets becomes stable or you are twinked out with lots of mana.

mages also have to research some of their pets, I remember being stuck with earth and air in the lower levels cause I couldn't find the stuff for research

Pet experience sharing is done by your share of the damage done to the enemy versus your pets. This does not count things like damage shields which is considered "global damage" and therefore not attributable to any player. In addition, a pet that has done damage and has died or been dismissed also has that damage nullified and turned into global damage.

What this means for a Mage is that, for the purposes of chaining, the pet + damage shield (which the fire pet has an amazing ds that costs "no" mana) will not be attributed to the player of the pet is dismissed. This means that the remaining hit points now represent the entirety of the hitpoint pool. If you've timed it right, 1 nuke will kill the enemy and ALL the damage will be awarded to the player which subsequently awards ALL the experience to the player instead of 50% (and 50% stolen from the pet).

Better represented is this:

Enemy: 2000hit points.
Pet does 1900 mixed damage and is killed.
Enemy now has 100 hit points. The other 1900 are now considered global damage.
You nuke it and have technically done 100% of the damage therefore securing all the xp.

Chaining is tough till 29 and gets even easier at 39 for these reasons.

- 29 fire pet and every pet up to and including the 49 fire pet summon for 200 mana. 24 pet summons for 280 lol??
- 39 fire pet regenerates for 30/tick instead of 6/tick. This is a significant boost in lasting power for your pet.

Chaining is much harder at the really low levels because mobs have so few hit points (as does your pet) that encounters can really get out of control quickly. 1 solid 2-round of damage can easily destroy a low summon pet and without one currently active you're likely not gonna channel through a mob beating on you.