For pets: you have to find either a drake egg or a pan flute.
Drake egg - (Pet lvl 1) dragon hatchling - (lvl 16) Drake - (lvl 31+) you can decid to get mounted or leave unmounted.
Pan Flute - (lvl 1) Pony - (lvl 16) horse - (lvl 31+) you can decide ti get mounted or leave unmounted.
to transfer the item into a pet:
take the item to loraine, talk to her untill you receive the quest for the pet. then go to teleporter and go to Dratan. after you do this u need to find the person in the town of Dratan name Archiologist Jajan. take to him and he will give u a pet.
(The pet will not show up inside of town unless it is a mount)
and for lvling the furthur from town u go the higher lvl the monsters get.
mining u can either get the skill upgraded or just buy a pickaxe/hamer at the Merchant in juno and go to the mining spot (i find it faster to equip the hammer/pickaxe, then drag an item drop booster onto it, makes getting stones faster (these are used to feed pet, remove the hunger))
ull also need to collect herbs to heal pets (take a knife to a herb field)