How does pet affection work?

I am currently finding it fairly hard to get pet affection.  

If i am just being impatient let me know.

8 rounds of onslaught, and i have gained around 2.5 pet affection levels.    I am currently on free play, normal onslaught mode (ipwr 65) and it just seems to take forever. 

Does being on a harder difficulty affect the rate at which the pet gains affection, or is it purely timed based?

Does the pet need to be attacking enemies constantly to level faster? 

Do pet kills make it level faster?

How does affection work?

Tips and pointers appreciated!

If there is already a thread/wiki on this please point me in the right direction and close the thread.

same question

the montly quest are not good for casual :s

I'm not sure how accurate this observation is.  I seem to notice that pet affection goes up faster when leveling characters in free play and incursion than it does in end game.  Maybe it is somehow tied to the amount of XP gained?  If so, that is a mistake.

@SactoDoug quote:

I'm not sure how accurate this observation is.  I seem to notice that pet affection goes up faster when leveling characters in free play and incursion than it does in end game.  Maybe it is somehow tied to the amount of XP gained?  If so, that is a mistake.

I'm fairly certain that this is accurate - it's either based on XP, or based on the number of maps completed. I'm inclined to believe it is the former.

From my understanding pet affection works much the same way as costumes xp works, so the area that gives the highest xp will be the best spot to grind pet affection (& hero lvls).

Free Play Hard works well for me. Also dont forget, finishing the map is very important. When you open the chest you gain lots of XP.

Thank you for the comments peeps, i guess ill be doing pet grinding and ogre grinding on separate maps.

I appreciate the insight.