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| rawr. dundee is hungry. |
My latest obsession has been pet battles. Not necessarily the battling part, but the major changes to collecting pets in general. I do have to say that the battles can get pretty addicting! When I first heard that WoW pokemon was going to be introduced, I thought it was a silly idea and I just didn't think it was going to be something I was interested in--I was totally wrong. I really like running around Azeroth collecting and leveling pets. The pet battles are turn based and usually have one attack(or heal/defense what ever you choose) per turn. The animations that the pets do during the battle are super cute. I have to say one of my favorite things about the new pet system is the fact that you can actually name them. I love it :)
Leveling/Fighting
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| My team before I started leveling the robo bunny |
Pets start out at level 1. At first you only fight with one pet--moving up to three after you unlock the slots by leveling. The wild pets level 4 and below will only have one to battle, after that there will always be two or three to battle. So it does get progressively harder if you don’t manage your health and attacks well. There are 10 different family types. Each will do better or worse against certain other families, Warcraft Pets has an
amazing guide for this. Go on...click it and scroll about half way down the page. The best way that I have found to level is with a mechanical, an aquatic and an elemental or dragonkin “healer.” Which for me ends up being a robo bunny, a crocodile and a crimson lasher. So far this team kicks butt because the majority of the things that I have been battling are either critters or beasts. Right now this team is level 11/12, I would be higher but this weekend I got pretty obsessed with collecting pets level 1-10. I also wanted to point out that you can switch out your pets (only the ones on the team of three) to fight when it is your turn. Doing so, however, takes up your turn so the enemy pet gets to take the next turn. Switching out to another pet is good for healing, or just bringing in another pet to get points. The pets are awarded experience based on their level vs the wild pet's level. Higher enemy pets award more xp to your pets. I want to point out though that once you get to be much higher than an enemy pet you will no longer recieve xp for the battle. Also the pets must live through the battle and have taken one turn to get xp. Queuing for PvP pet battles does not award xp and neither does battling a friend. Oh! You can “power level” lower pets. With my group I could keep my mechanical and aquatic on the team and then level a level 1 up to their level. All you have to do for a pet to get xp for that battle is to have them in for *one* turn, in which they’ll get hit--so don’t make the battle too high level or they will die. After that pet gets whacked, switch back to one of your other two pets and defeat the enemy pet. If for some reason you really want a certain pet leveled it’s a good way to do it--but I would recommend leveling three together by going to the zone appropriate for the pet level. I like to do the same level or one above. So far, I have a handful of level 10s, as I was trying to get the achievement "
No Favorites" for the fun of it. It's to raise a member of each family to level 10. I got pretty far though, only have four left!
Collecting
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| FuFu! |
Over the weekend I was working on getting
250 pets so I could get my
Feral Vermling. There are so many new and adorable pets to collected I can hardly contain my excitement. I do it somehow, but it’s hard. This weekend I picked up a good chunk of pets and I’m now sitting at a pretty 269 toward the next goal of 400 for the achievement "
That's a lot of Pet Food." which you get a
Venus fly trap for completing. Among the common rats, snakes and squirrels that are everywhere, this weekend I got a gorilla, a tiny twister and a giraffe--just to name a few my new cuties. Another of my more recent loves is my little white fur-blue eyed
vermling, FuFu. I got him from doing the achievement
Ling-Ting's Herbal Journey with my guildies a few weeks back. I had not realized that the little vermlings could be so cute--they are. It’s a pretty easy achievement too, so if you’re 90, you should check it out.
In the battles, not *all* pets are capture, and though this can be frustrating--and I don't know why they do it...there are many other pets that you can capture. It is nice that they added the paw print on the mini map for when you want to search for pets to battle. Just so you know though, you can only capture *one* pet per battle--so choose wisely ;) I've noticed that not all pets like to hang out by themselves, they tend to be the "back up" pet for other wild pets. So if you are searching for this one moth or something and all you can find is snakes (above level 4) try picking a fight with the snake and see who comes to back it up. Not all pets are like this. Some spawn only at night, some only in one location and only when it rains. Others only spawn when you've cleared out a bunch of other wild pets. There are tons of pets with silly little restrictions on them, but I don't mind them--it would be pretty boring if it was just cut and try run and capture them. This makes it a little more interesting. You know the hardcore collectors (ahem, that would be me) will sit and farm for them until they get them.
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| Pet Battle UI lots of helpful information on the tool tips--make sure you read them! |
Another thing I want to bring up is that while the stats are important, if you are just collecting and never plan to fight for them--there really isn't any reason for you to try and farm for rare quality pets. They look pretty just the same. If you plan to fight with it, then yes--good luck with your farming for rares. I think it's really cool when I get one, but I already have my team picked out to fight with so I don't care if it is grey or blue. All qualities count towards the achievements. If you are looking for help in your quest to catch them all, check out Warcraft Pets
search by zone, and combine that with WoWhead's
map. You'll be golden. So amazing together. It's like mac and cheese. Or peanut butter and jelly. But I digress.
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| Freckles stands over my goblin's head |
Trading
If you aren't aware, pets/mounts and some achievements are now account-bound. This is a really big deal. I'm so happy about this. It also means you can buy pets on the AH of alliance side, and have them on your horde toons. A lot of the companion pets that you already own can also now be "caged" traded and sold on the AH. Lots of pets that are drops and purchasable can be traded as well, but not all of them. For example, pets from the collectors edition of WoW are *not* able to be traded :( You also can't trade the Wild Pets that you capture in the pet battles. You aren't able to capture player pets either. It is also good to know that you can trade/sell pets that you have leveled. Recently, I purchased a level 18 Tol Barad fox. I spent quite a bit of gold on him, but taking into account that I no longer have to farm Tol Barad OR level him to 18--it made the purchase very very worth it. One thing to note about buying pets that are already leveled is that you *can not* use that pet until you have a leveled pet of that level in your pet log. So currently, I can't use my little fox until I level one of my pets to 18. Even IF you are the one who leveled the pet, once you put it in the cage it is no longer yours and you will have to wait (unless of course you have a pet that level). Aside from pets that you may have across a ton of your characters, like me with 10 snowshoe rabbits from having so many gnomes, you can only have 3 of each pet. So you can only have three black king snakes, three adders, three tree pythons...you get the picture. You can only have a total of 500 pets in your log. There is an easy fix though if you are running out of space--release your duplicates. You don't need an uncommon, a common AND a rare Alpine Hare. Chances are you just need the rare. Also, only *one* of your alpine hares will count towards your achievement of collecting. This has been quite the long post and now I must get to the part you are all waiting for. Yes, yes. Lil K.T. Giveaway. It will work the same way as my last giveaway.
The Giveaway
This giveaway will be conducted through the
comment section of this blog. To enter, answer the following question:
"Do you like the new pet battle system? If you do, what is your favorite part? If not--why don't you like it?"
The contest will go from
11/2/12 to 11/9/12 with the winner being announced on Friday November 9th. Only one entry per person, US realms only with an active WoW subscription. I will be using the wow /roll system to find the winner based on the number of entries. One winner will receive the cute
Lil K.T. pet.
That is all for now. Good luck collecting <3
~Nichole
