I've been looking through my Minion Zoo today, pondering whether or not certain specimen would make suitable companions for my pets, and realized that some of them have stats which seems to be a new thing. What is it for? And how does a minion gain stats, I don't seem to find a pattern to it?

stats have to do with Minion Battling, which was a thing five or six years ago. No new minion since that beta feature was abandoned has been assigned stats, so that's why some of them don't have stats.

This feature is intended to come back and so those stats are once again showing.

Not every minion has the same base starting stats? Not sure about taht. I know that minions were classified by us and certain minions had access to certian abilities to start with and others different based on what "kind" they were. The "kinds" of minions were like an ancient Chinese encyclopedia, so your guess is as good as mine. If you did do any fighting and gaining of experience way back when it was active, some of your minions may have higher than base starting stats.

That actually sounds really interesting, thanks for explaining! It would be great to be able to do more with minions than just have them look pretty :) Now that you mention it, I actually do vaguely remember something about that kind of battling, but I'm not sure if that was here or over on Neopets.

One more question, just for clarification: If the abilities (and possibly stats) are related to a minion's kind, I can just remove them from my zoo without them losing their stats, right?

if the stats are kind-related, yes they will stay the same. If they are due to experience, if the minion battle system that is currently up is like the old one, the stats and all their abilities will be lost.

I have no opinion or knowledge about Neopets. I know I have a Hayt that I remember using in battle here in Subeta. I detached it from its pet and kept its name Wrath and it is my strongest minion battler now. There were very few minions that could be part of a pet battle. They were decomissioned as weapons-type items even before the new minion battling came about.

Minions keep your pet happy, so presumably they are only sitting there looking pretty if that's what your pet wants them to do.

Thanks for clarifying!

My memory regarding minion battling is extremely blurry, so no idea whether it was on Neopets or Subeta. But since you said it was a thing here five or six years ago, it could just as well have been Subeta. I guess it's best just to wait and for now I'll ignore the stats :)