This is an article I wrote that was published on a now-defunct website, so I thought Id repost it. Its about pet collecting and pet battles. Getting Started In order to start pet battling, you need a character that is at least level five. The pet battle trainer in your city will charge you ten gold to get started. Trainers are scattered all over the world; the two easiest to find are Alliance trainer Audrey Burnhep, who can be found next to a tree by the little pond near Stormwind where the portals are, and Horde trainer Varzok, who can be found on the central mesa in Orgrimmar. This training will get you started on a series of basic quests that will teach you how to do pet battles. Note that this training is account-wide, as is every other aspect of pet battling, collecting, and achievements. You only have to pay this training fee once, and all progress you make in pet battles will apply to every character on your account. When pet battles were added to the game, all of the pets for all of your characters were merged into one listing on your menu. Some pets will appear several times if more than one of your characters had such a pet, others will appear only once. When you gain new pets or level them up, this will apply across all of your characters. Now that you know how to battle, what should you do? There are three main activities you can take part in, and you can do any combination of them and still advance, though each activity has a different method and goal. First, you can collect pets. There are a number of different ways to get pets – some are drops from instance or raid bosses, some are world drops, some are given for achievements, some are bought from vendors, and some are rewards from quests. You can also get pets in the bags you may get when you queue alone for a random instance (typically for tanks, although sometimes healers get them), or from the bag you get when you defeat a master pet tamer. Many pets will also be available in the auction house, as certain pets can be removed from your pet listing and ‘caged’; more on that later. Pets will have a level that is related to the level of monsters in the area they are caught; for instance, pets caught in a starting zone will be level 1 or 2, while pets in Pandaria are levels 21 up to 25. Second, you can battle pet tamers. These are found all over the world. The levels of their pets typically are similar to the pets you will find in their zone, so as you work your way through the world, collecting and leveling pets, you can fight them with the pets you should have around those levels. Third, you can take part in PVP pet battles. When you queue for a PVP pet battle, you will be matched with another player, whose identity will be hidden, who has a team of pets similar in level to yours. You will not be able to communicate with the other player. Note that PVP pet battles do not give pet experience, but you can earn achievements through PVP battle victories. Resources There are a number of web sites where you can either find useful information on pets, battling and collecting. These include sites that have been around a long time and are well known to most players, such as Wowhead and wowpedia.org, but there are also a number of sites dedicated to pets, such as Warcraftpets. Discussion of the details of these sites could be an article all on its own, so I’ll leave this to the reader to check into these sites for the help they can offer. Addons There are a number of addons that have been specifically developed for the pet collector. These are the ones that I have found most useful. Pet Tracker shows the spawn location of pets on your maps, and which has filters that can be set so you can choose to see all spawn points, only spawn points of pets you do not have in ‘rare’ quality, or only spawn points of pets you do not have at all. Another extremely useful addon is Pet Battle Teams; this allows you to configure a number of preset teams of pets, which you can name and save for use in specific battles. I’ve found it useful to set up teams to battle specific tamers, where a special lineup can make fighting much easier; for leveling up pets (more on that later), and for PVP, among other lineups. The final addon that I’ve found useful is Auto Safari Hat. The Safari Hat is an item that you receive when you complete the achievement Taming the World, which involved defeating forty pet tamers. This achievement requires you to defeat pet tamers on both factions, as you can only battle 39 tamers from either the Horde or Alliance side. While wearing the safari hat, your pets will gain an extra 10% experience from pet battles; the addon will automatically equip the hat when you begin a pet battle, and swap it back out when done. Managing Your Pet Collection Currently, there is an absolute cap of 660 pets. That may seem like a lot, but as you may start out with quite a few of some of the exact same pets (due to the initial merge of collections), it’s actually pretty easy to reach that number after a while. Some pets that were gotten as achievements will only have one in your pet listing, regardless of how many characters had the pet prior to the collection merge that happened when pet battles were added to the game. The initial merge of your collection may cause you to have quite a few identical pets – I had as many as seven of some commonly captured pets – but since pet battles were added to the game, you can no longer add a particular pet if you already have three of that pet. Therefore, you will want to keep an eye on your collection, as you cannot capture a wild pet if you already have three of that pet. Note that pets come in four levels of quality, somewhat like magic items. Pets can be ‘poor’ quality, and will have their name in grey; ‘common’ quality, and their name will be in white; ‘uncommon’ quality, and their name will be in green, and ‘rare’ quality, and their name will be in blue. Pets from drops, bought at vendors, or from achievements will typically default to at least uncommon quality, and many are rare. You can go into the pet listing and sort your list by name, which will group all of the identical pets together, to easily see where you have duplicates. If you have three of the same pet, and need to reduce your collection, the best strategy is to remove the lowest quality pets from your collection. You can do this by right clicking and selecting ‘release’; this will delete the pet from your list. However, pets that were dropped from bags or monsters, or which you bought from a vendor, can be ‘caged’, which will allow you to trade or sell them, or store them in your bags or bank – some of these pets are worth significant gold on the auction house, but many are practically worthless. You can also rename your pets, and these names will appear to other players who see your pet. Standard naming restrictions apply – no titles, nothing obscene, and so on. Entering Into Battle In order to get the most experience possible, you will want to battle pets that are at or a little above the levels or your pet (except if you are power-leveling, see below); the levels of battle pets shows on your main map, which can give you a guide of where you should be doing your battling. These levels roughly follow the levels of the monsters in the zone (although about one-third in any particular zone, since pet levels cap at 25). When combat begins, you will notice that either your first pet or the pet of the group you are fighting has a gold border around the pet image. This indicates which pet gets to go first that round, determine by which pet has the higher attack speed. Some abilities will override this by making that pets speed higher, or the other pet’s speed lower. When you first start battling, you will only be able to have one pet in your battle group; this will increase to two pets as you get higher level pets, and eventually to three pets. When you are fighting wild pets (not pets of pet tamers), you will have the option to capture them instead of kill them. This will happen when the pet you are currently battling has less than 25% health. A button on your pet interface that has remained greyed out will light up when this is possible; pressing it causes your character to throw a cage at the pet, possibly caging it; you have a base 25% chance to successfully cage the pet, and for each subsequent attempt at a given pet, that chance increases until you succeed. However, you must win the overall pet battle before the pet is moved into your pet roster – lose the battle, and the caged pet escapes. When you capture a pet this way, level 16-20 pets lose one level, and pets of level 21-25 lose two levels. Experience gained by your pets for that pet battle is also reduced by 25% when capturing instead of killing. If you choose to stop fighting for some reason, you can click the button for ‘Surrendering’ and drop out of the fight. Since the 5.2 patch, however, this imposes a 10% damage to the health of your battle team pets each time you do it. It’s a common strategy to drop out of a battle if you are only wanting to capture a particular pet, or a higher quality pet, and it doesn’t appear in the lineup of the wild group, so if you are doing this, you can issue your original challenge with some pets you don’t plan to use for combat, and then switch to your real battle team when you find the pet you want to capture. (Note that you cannot see the quality of any of the pets in a wild pet battle until the fight starts, and you cannot see the accompanying wild pets in groups of two or three until then, either.) If you run from a pet battle, the pets will stay spawned, with the exact same group, unless they are killed. While you can’t directly target a wild pet to kill it, you can kill them with Area of Effect spells, if you want to kill them in the hopes that a more desirable pet will appear on respawn. During combat, you may find that the particular pet you have in combat is very weak against the pet you are fighting. You can, whenever it is your turn, move that pet to out of combat and move one of your other pets into combat. This will, however, give your opponent a free attack after the swap. Leveling Your Pets and Learning New Skills As your pets level up, they will, just like your characters, improve in every way. They will get stronger, faster, gain health, and at some levels, will gain new abilities. Most are useful in any sort of battle, but you will see some abilities that are much more useful in PVP battles than in battling wild pets and tamer pets. In particular, some pets have the ability to delay the ability to swap pets during combat; wild pets never do this, and most trainers will never do this either. Your pets will eventually have six abilities, in three pairs; you must select one of each pair which will be your only options once battle actually starts. Some pets have healing abilities; typically, these apply only to the particular pet, though a few have healing that applies to the entire team. Some pets have various ‘buffs’ that will affect whatever pet is currently in combat. Neither of these is common, but they are very useful when you do have them available. Healing and Resurrecting Pets Your pets will be damaged and killed during combat, just like your character, and there are a number of options for healing and resurrecting them. (Unlike characters, pets will not gradually heal just sitting around.) The most useful healing method is the ability to heal and resurrect all your pets with a single click; this is a button on your pet interface. It has an eight minute cooldown. This cooldown is triggered when you sign onto any given character, so you can’t just switch characters and heal your pets. You can heal your pets at any stable master (the NPCs who keep excess pets for hunters), although this is seldom convenient. Finally, you will sometimes get pet bandages as a reward from pet battles; these stack to 25, and are bound to account, so you can mail them to other characters. There is no cooldown on the bandages. Combat on a PVP Realm Pet battling in a PVP realm has special challenges, because while you are in a pet battle, you are essentially standing still and unable to see any players or creatures within a fairly short radius. Monsters and unfriendly NPCs cannot attack you, as they will ‘phase out’ when passing near you, but other players can attack a flagged player even during pet battles, so you may find yourself suddenly assaulted in the middle of a pet battle. Exceptional Pets There are a number of pets that spawn only under specific times or conditions. If you wish to capture one of these, you will have to make some extra effort. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following. The Qiraji Guardling spawns only in the summer in Silithus. The Snowy Owl spawns only in the winter in Winterspring. The exact definitions of summer and winter may be those on the calendar; note that this means each is only capturable for about three months a year. The Baby Ape spawns on the Eastern side of Jaguero Island in southern Stranglethorn Vale when it’s raining on the island (the island’s weather is different from the rest of STV, you’ll have to go to the island to be sure). The Silithid Hatchling only spawns in sandstorm in Tanaris. The Arctic Fox Kit only spawns in snowstorms in Storm Peaks. Some spawns seem to happen only once a day, or only at very long intervals. As such you need to either hang out at a specific time, or just get lucky. These pets include the Scourged Whelpling near the tournament grounds in Northrend, the Minfernal in Felwood, the Restless Shadeling in the early morning in the caverns near Karazhan in Deadwind Pass, the Stone Armadillo in Desolace only at night, the Wanderer’s Festival Hatchling on the beach in Krasarang Wilds at Turtle Beach at 9 p.m. pacific time (not your server time), and the Widow Spiderling in Duskwood at night. For all of these, the best method is to park a character in the spots, and check on them often. These are all lucky spawns, cannot be predicted, and they are often heavily camped. Battle Stones If you have not been able to find a rare quality pet of a creature you really want to maximize, don’t despair – it’s possible to increase their quality. You will sometimes get an item called a ‘battle-stone’ when you win a pet battle. These are usually specific to a type of pet, such as ‘beast’ or ‘critter,’ although you will rarely see a stone that can be used on any type. When fighting tamers, these are apparently more common than from fighting wild pets, and the type of stone received may be related to the pets the tamer has, although evidence on this is only incidental. These stones will upgrade the pet they are used on to ‘rare’ quality. In addition, you can purchase an item called a ‘polished battle-stone’ from Commander Lo Ping, the justice point vendor in Townlong Steppes in Pandaria. This costs 1000 justice points, and will upgrade any pet, but only to ‘uncommon’ quality. Note that in order to use any sort of battle-stone, you must have the pet summoned, click on the pet, and then click on the stone. You cannot use battle-stones on other people’s pets. Note that when you use any of these stones on high level pets, they will lose one or two levels. Level 16-20 pets will lose a level, level 21-25 will lose two levels. Types of Pets As noted earlier, pets can be of four different levels of quality, in the same manner as magic items – grey is poor, white is common, green is uncommon, and blue is rare. The higher quality pets have higher stats than lower quality pets of the same level; these stats include hit points, attack speed, and attack power. Pets also have a ‘family.’ This is one of ten different types of battle pet, such as beast, critter, elemental, humanoid, and so on. This is important, because there is an interrelationship between pet families – each family is strong against one other family, and weak against another family. This can be seen on a mouse-over button on each pet’s listing in your pet interface, and can be also seen on a similar button on enemy pets during pet battles. This works as follows: Humanoids weak to Undead Undead weak to Critters Critters weak to Beasts Beasts weak to Machines Machines weak to Elementals Elementals weak to Aquatic Aquatic weak to Flying Flying weak to Magic Magic weak to Dragon Dragons weak to Humanoids Much like player characters, battle pets have different types by their capabilities. Some are exceptionally good at all-out offense, some are fair at attack but can heal, some have fair attacks and good defenses, and some have fairly weak attacks but can both defend and heal themselves. There are all sorts of variations on this – some attacks break armor and cause double damage, some only do mild damage but harm all of the other team, some can stun; some defenses reduce all damage by a small amount, or completely block one attack, or make the pet immune to damage for a turn. Leveling Your Pets So, now you have a selection of battle pets, and you want to start leveling them up so you can get to the really interesting ones. There are two ways to level up fast. The first is to do all of the pet battle quests you can, and to fight every pet battle master that you can currently reach. The other is a little trick of grouping. You can group together one or two of your most powerful pets with two or one much lower level pets. When combat begins, at some point rotate in your low level pet(s) but just for a round – and let the powerful pets do the bulk of the combat. The low-level pets will get a lot of experience this way, as experience is divided among all the pets that take part in a battle. This is especially effective if one or two of your pets is level 25, as these pets get no experience at all, and the low-level pets can gain several levels in a single battle. Pet battling is a fun diversion from the rest of the game that can give you many hours of chasing after pets, knocking out achievements, competing with friends, trading pets and building those perfect teams. The list of available pets continues to grow, and you will always have more goals to pursue if you take up this aspect of the game.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 05:18:44 +0000
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