Release era was anti magicians.
Dolalin just gathered evidence of classic EQ and documented it. Mages were not the only aspect of EQ affected by his diligence.
You are lucky that devs didn't have the time nor inclination to implement Research in its initial iteration (i.e. completely unusable). Then mages would have 'no pets' from 24+.
To be honest, I view the required level for mage pets in this era as similar to the required weapon for proc weapons; sure the obsidian flamberge can proc at level 17, but good luck actually attaining it by then.
You need to alter your expectations; no longer can you expect to have a full spell book every level.
You will have decisions to make about which vendor spells you can afford to upgrade. You will have decisions of pragmatics for which pets you will be able to research.
You may want to specialize on one pet, just so you can stock up on the materials to create that line. As i recall from my own mage, I had to 'upgrade' one pet in to another by researching the earlier versions as reagents for the combine for upgraded versions.
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