Monthly Archives: May 2013

Cascading (a pet leveling technique)

I know there are a lot of people out there just dipping their toes in the pet battle water for the first time since 5.3’s launch. This is a technique I personally used on the PTR to get a level 25 pet ASAP. I’ve seen a lot of people discuss and debate how to most quickly grind a single pet to lvl 25 (if you accidentally found this post looking for that information, try elepheagle’s tiered walkthroughs), but not many talk about the quickest way for a newbie to get their first. Once you do get that first one and can start beating tamers which award bags, the whole minigame suddenly gets far easier.

And then sometimes you get junk.

This technique is for people who are higher level, specifically those players who have fast flying. Otherwise this is just as much a huge, time-consuming drag as grinding your pets to level normally. You need to be able to access the stable masters quickly in case you bite off more than you can chew, and fly between zones quickly. I am fudging this a little bit here, because there’s really no way to just randomly start from 0. If you really are starting from nothing this will be a bit more time-consuming just because my trap works more quickly.

To start, you need to grab a pet. Any pet at all! I’m going to start in Dun Morogh, but it doesn’t really matter which starting zone you choose. You’ll also want to set your hearth to your faction’s shrine in the Vale.

So, we start with a level 1 bunny I just bought, and we’re pretending I don’t have my other slots open. Let’s go fight another level 1.

After 1 fight, your pet will now be level 2, yay! Now, fight a couple more pets. If these pets are green or blue, try to trap them. Once you have a green, just kill them (always trap blue pets if at all possible as a rule of thumb). After a couple more fights, you’ll have a level 3 pet, and you’ll be able to unlock your second pet slot. Put the green or blue pet you collected into that slot. If you haven’t found a green or blue, fight one last level 2 and trap it even if it’s gray like mine was, then equip it.

Now, we’ll move from Dun Morogh into Loch Modan (or whichever secondary area is the closest to your starting zone of choice). Here, we’ll fight level 3s and 4s. The fights are a little tougher. You’ll want to trap a level 3 or 4 as soon as you can, even if you get a gray.

Avoid level 5+ if they’re in your area. When you trap that 3 or 4, ditch that level 2 pet you trapped. You don’t have to hit ‘release’ if you don’t want to or anything, just swap in the new pet. Keep in mind though that you can only have 3 of any specific pet at a time, and we’ll be grabbing a bunch of duplicate squirrels and rats and stuff as we go. Keep that bunny (or whatever) for now.

If your first pet from this zone is a 3, use it to grab a 4. If your 4 is worse quality than green, grind until you find a green. Keep that second 4 in reserve. At this point, you need to grind til your first pet hits level 5 to open up that last slot. You can also level up that level 4 you tamed, but by the time I get 2 green level 4s, I’m usually well on my way to level 5 on that first bunny.

You may be able to trap a level 5 before that first pet hits level 5, but it’s very risky to try.

When that last slot is open, drop that 4 you grabbed into that slot, then turn to fight your first level 5. This first fight will be rough, since the lvl 5 comes with a friend. After I get that 5, I try a 6. If I fail, I grab an extra 5. I trap a 6, then make my way to the next zone, because its level range overlaps to 6.

You may see at this point why I’m dubbing this the Cascade Strat. In the next zone, I grab a 7, see if I can take on 8s, grab a couple 8s, next zone.

You can also be less cautious and make larger jumps if you’d like. I was able to go from a full group of 8s in Arathi to tame a full group of 11s in Hinterlands, but if you do it this way you may waste more time than it’s worth on flying to go heal. Part of the reason I pick this particular path is that I can make my way to the Eastern Plaguelands and load a full team of 12s.

Then, I hearth to Vale and port back to Stormwind (Horde players can go to any city, then use the Dark Portal port). Next, I go to Deadwind Pass. That’s the only place, as far as I know, where there are pets above level 15 that show up without friends.

The leap you can take in level makes it totally worth it even if you screw up a couple times. The first one is a bit difficult to nab, so you may need to go back & forth to either Duskwood or Stonard to heal up. If there are no Arcane Eyes or Restless Shadelings up (the latter being generally super rare, so keep one if you cage it!) go straight to Swamp of Sorrows. You’ll find both 14s and 15s there. Be sure to avoid the 15s until you have a full team of 14s. It’s not nearly the pushover as if you had the arcane eyes though.

I load up 2 arcane eyes regardless of quality, then backtrack to my first triple match in Swamp of Sorrows. My Eyes will dispatch the pets easily even with that level 12 anchor (replace that one ASAP, obviously). If you have 14s it might be hard-fought.

One big issue starting now is that from here on out whenever we tame something it’s going to lose a level. When we hit level 20s, they’ll lose 2 levels. I’ll tame a 15 in Swamp of Sorrows just to ditch that one level 12 (and it’ll become a 14) and make sure 15s are doable with my current team, then move on to the Blasted Lands for a tame or two. After that, we cross the Dark Portal. From here, my path is Hellfire to Blade’s Edge to Netherstorm. I start off with taming pets on the lowest side of the level range and move to the highest in each zone.

After you have a team of 19s and 18s, go to Dalaran, tame in Crystalsong and Dragonblight then use the portal again to hit up Pandaria. I would stay in Crystalsong, but there never seem to be pets up there. Again, I’m being a bit reckless so you can take it slower and try less disparate matchups and tames if you’d like. If you’re having trouble try going to Deepholm. The portal there makes it a quick stop.

If all goes according to plan you’ll make it up to Pandaria and level 23 without much trouble.

Well, close enough.

When you do, you have 2 options.

One is to grab your favorite ‘real’ pets, like a cinder kitten or perky pug and start leveling it using the swap method I outlined in this post. You can throw in the lower quests too, to get bags and begin to open dailies for yourself.

The other is to finish the grind with these temporary pets. There are 2 issues with doing so. One is that, unless you tame a blue, you’ll want to stone any pet you’re going to keep. Above level 15, all pets lose 2 levels when you use a stone on them so that puts you at level 21 at best to start, or you have to repeat that last couple of levels when you use the stone. 21 to 23 isn’t a horribly long grind, but at those levels it adds at least 20 minutes onto your time. The other issue is that, unless you stone or get rares, you likely won’t have the offensive oomph to do very many tamers after you hit the Outland ones. Several Northrend tamers in particular are very difficult unless you have the right matchup to beat them. You’ll be able to beat Lydia Accoste and Stone Cold Trixxy easily with 23s though, which means you get bags, bandages and all that fantastic stuff. It’s up to you!

Personally, I would do the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor tamer things ASAP, because those bags are really invaluable.

Doing this on live servers took me roughly 3 and a half hours, so it’s far faster than grinding up the same baby pets. The disadvantage is that this feels almost a bit mercenary. You don’t get a chance to develop favorites or figure out matchups. You’ll also have to go back and collect the pets you want, where if you do it normally you’ll organically get a large bulk of them as a matter of course.

A few final words. Believe it or not there is more to say! Alright whatever.

Try to make sure you’re using at least 2 different families of pets in any team. There are a lot of critters out there, but if you have an all-critter team and suddenly find yourself facing a critter whose backups are both beasts, you’re probably in trouble. I generally found it easiest to just look for water when I first enter a zone, then tame a frog or crab. Aquatics usually have a heal or other defensive ability which gives them a lot of extra longevity against a higher level, especially if it’s being stubborn about getting in the trap. Also, because of the change to accuracy, you’ll want to use 100% chance to hit abilities whenever possible. When you fight higher level pets, your pets have a 2% additional chance to miss per level, so every little bit counts.

Good luck, baby tamer. Pandaria awaits you!

Beyond 5.3

2 Replies

First of all, pet PVP isn’t that bad. I’m not sure why I was hesitant to get into it from a ‘I’m gonna lose so muchhh’ perspective. Even though, let’s be real, I started off losing pretty frequently. Now I’ve leveled off to winning roughly 4 out of 5.

The issue now is that there isn’t a ton of reward for it. Yeah, cute little direhorn. And right now I’m getting exactly 1K XP per battle I win at level 17, so that’s additional incentive. But other than watching my win totals go up (which right now that’s bugged and I’m not properly being awarded achievements or wins for my weekly quest, so that may have something to do with my disenchantment here), and that weekly quest, there isn’t any way to progress. I keep getting these cruddy green upgrade stones and that’s about it. Because of how long the battles take, dozens and dozens of turns, that 1K XP is just barely beating out grinding lowbie squirrels. Throw a loss or two into the mix, a longer queue time, and it completely tanks my XP per hour.

If this is your first time PVPing, I’d encourage you to just keep at it. I know I still have a lot to learn. I mean, if you’re raiding you don’t say “well, Kel’Thuzad did this thing I haven’t seen up to this point, I guess I should just give up.” Same goes for lil KT. Don’t give up! Pretty much the whole time I’m doing pvp, I like to keep this song in mind (no really).

If your team combo doesn’t seem to be working, try a new one. My composition right now is my Wild Golden Hatchling with Call Lightning and Cyclone, my Clockwork Gnome with his turret, and my Scourged Whelpling with Plagued Blood.

I make a lot of swaps, and if I come up against another heavy DoT team or a team with a pet that has a shell shield ability I could be in trouble. But for now, it’s working out pretty well for me. PVP has a steep learning curve, because you need to know your pets’ abilities to the utmost, but you also need to learn everyone else’s pets’ abilities, frequently on the fly. I’m pretty sure part of the reason I’m having success here is because the Wild Golden Hatchling isn’t common for pvp, so people aren’t too familiar with what it can do.

I feel sad for some of the people I’ve been fighting, too. That isn’t meant to be a brag or elitist comment. I’ve beaten people with green quality pets, clearly just standing on their wobbly pet battle legs for the first time like baby fawns. It makes me almost wish I could find these people afterward, to tell them they’re just not going to win with a team made up of an un-upgraded Wolvar Pup, a snake and a breed 13 rabbit. And of course, there are also the maddening tri-teams of triple speed rabbits, or triple Kun-Lai Runts, all named in such a way that make it obvious the player is just there to troll for lulz, so clearly being able to contact opponents isn’t a good idea in general. I just want to give some of those poor little tamers a hug and tell them to not give up.

But those are both few & far between, and it’s mostly the close wins, or even if I lose by a huge bit, learning a new pet, that makes it fun. I’ll definitely continue to do this for the leveling challenge, because it makes it a lot more tolerable to alternate grinding & pvp. Were it not for this silly leveling challenge I’d get my 10 wins on the week and go do PVE until next week. I’m not asking for a currency-like mechanic like player PVP, though that’s how PVP avoids the same feeling of character stagnation. I’m not sure how you’d fix it, honestly. But, it’s so time-consuming I need a carrot other than ‘fun’.

Speaking of carrots and wasting time, no I haven’t gotten a Val’kyr yet. I tried for about an hour in Grizzly Hills, then went to go poke around in Zul’Drak for a minute. When I came back, it was obvious that I was no longer in the same CRZed Grizzly Hills as before. With the small number of spawn points, until we know more about how taming changes the spawn I can’t see devoting more time to this in the short term.

I’m 1/10 for Raiding With Leashes 2 pets (got the waveling). Later today I plan to farm some bones and maybe a baby direhorn, plus LFR for maybe pets.

The Beasts of Fable are a lot harder, which is fun, and no I’m not being sarcastic for once. I felt since 5.2 that they were too easy to be the ‘epic challenge’ they were presented to be. As epic as flying around for an hour is, lol no. Apocalypse still functions properly, and Life Exchange does the correct amount of damage, though overall this is less damage, because the Beasts Of Fable’s life pool is relatively smaller. However, the Beasts hit much, much harder, and roaches and faerie dragons seem to be made out of wet paper, so using both is a no-go now. I’ve been using the Roach, plus 2 others based on the pet’s family type (eg, for Gorespine I used my Pandaren Dragonling and Darkmoon Zeppelin). For the pets that heal, I’ve been using my Gilnean Raven equipped with Darkness, though there are better choices. You have to have something to cut that healing though, because otherwise it’s just silly.

As to the Barrens stuff and story, I was really hoping that Alliance would get the kickass, “no sleep til Orgrimmar!” moment. I’d actually avoided the spoilers about it, because as soon as I read that line, I knew we were in for something really epic. Instead I got to tool around in a mechanical cat. I haven’t done anything in the Barrens since handing in my initial 15 resources, even though Gahz’rooki is on the line, because I’m really annoyed with this. I know that at this point this is the Horde’s story, but this feels slapped together.

And just a tiny bit insulting.

level 15

2 Replies

I was going to skip this post altogether and move forward, because let’s be real. Leveling is leveling. Nobody cares until you’re 90, and the previous post on the topic was me griping about how bone-dull boring it is so this is clearly a terrible move in terms of keeping an audience. I have a couple observations which may be important going forward, though.

First of all, I found the breakpoint. Well, numerically speaking anyway.

The huge jump in XP between level 4 & 5 is because the wild team gains a pet at level 5. So, you gain extra XP with each additional pet, which means the breakpoint where pet battling suddenly gets a whole lot better for player XP is probably around level 40-ish, when you can start battling level 15+ teams with 3 pets.

I knew this, and was thinking to myself the best places to try & get around player level restriction to battle 15+ pets, when a devil appeared on my shoulder on Twitter. Specifically, it was a Devil Who Wears Transmog, and she said, “Have you tried level 25 pvp?”

No, I hadn’t. I’m really rubbish at pet PVP you guys. Really, really rubbish. I didn’t know that pet PVP gave you any kind of XP either. But that new green baby direhorn for winning 250 battles is coming in just a few days, so I figured I might as well give it a shot. And after some battling (SO MANY RUNTS) I finally won one. Contrasting the XP I got against that level 6 team, this happened.

Oh. OH goodness. Now that’s a breakpoint. I also gained 150 XP for ‘discovering’ Darkshire, booya.

The thing is, you only get XP if you win. All those times runts and brooms rubbed their butts all on my pets’ cold dead bodies I got bupkis, so this is only as time efficient as your queue and your pvp skill (and how trolly the teams you go against are… but Triple Turkey has been sort of quashed) allows. All it takes is 12 wins to level at this point.

So, come 5.3 and its achieve for winning max level PVP battles, I will definitely be adding level 25 pet pvp battles into the mix. I still have a few lowbie rares to collect and there will be a post with me griping about that, trust. I’ll continue to do mostly wild battles for statistical purposes. The provisional nature of pvp XP, that you have to win to get XP, makes it so I don’t feel like it’s cheating the challenge (too much). I expect that once I’m high enough level to get to triple pet wild teams this huge spike will even itself out and it’ll be more efficient to battle wild again, just from the time wasted due to losses.

For now, I’m going to move on to the southern part of the continent to do some more rare tames, and wait til Tuesday, when I’ll unleash my PVP prowess onto the world at large.

Current level – 15

Current /played – 1 day 8 minutes

Number of ginvites – 102 (31 since last update)

Kun-Lai Runt

8 Replies

With 5.3 coming, I figured it was a good idea to start profiling some of the better PVP pets. Max level pet PVP is going to see a lot of action very soon, so you can tame this guy to help you succeed.

The preferred breed for the Kun-Lai Runt is 4, or P/P. Right now, but getting fixed with 5.3, his stun Deep Freeze is broken in your favor. It ignores the resilience buff and stuns anyway. Even without benefit of a bug, that stun plus his humanoid ability Takedown, which hits for over 300 damage, and twice if a pet is stunned, are crazy, crazy deadly.

Before 5.2 you had to team him with a pet with a chill like Blizzard, because the runt’s Frost Shock was broken and didn’t apply a chill effect. This can still be a beneficial synergy, as you can then sub out Mangle for the low-ish damage Frost Shock and not have to worry about your opponent swapping pets in the round after you frost shock. Watch out though, because if your opponent has a Runt in their lineup as well (and they will) Blizzard also buffs theirs.

My Blizzarding pet of choice to pair with my runt, Hyde, was a Winter’s Little Helper named Jekyll (I mean, obviously). This is still also good synergy because she has her own delayed stun in the form of Ice Tomb. Double stuns to complement an awesome ability which hits twice when your opponent is stunned? I don’t think I need to spell this out here.

Another good, possibly better, choice for Blizzard synergy is the Tiny Snowman, which has an AOE attack and is elemental. This gives you protection against counters, since both Jekyll and Hyde are humanoids. Better than that, because Elementals aren’t affected by weather effects, opposing Runts won’t be able to use your own Blizzard as a chill effect against you.

If you come up against the Runt in PVP, and you’re going to come up against the Runt in PVP, your best counter is to use a pet with a lot of Undead attacks and hopefully some healing over time spells (so you get heals while you’re stunned, or in the back row). A Restless Shadeling, Ghostly Skull or Giant Bone Spider are popular picks. The Scourged Whelpling is another choice I’ve seen a bit of, but I haven’t had much success with him as a counter.

In PVE he can also pack quite a punch. He’s a good pick to beat that jerk in the Dragonblight, Okrut Dragonwaste.

He’s not all killing machine, though. Sometimes, he just wants to quietly sit and contemplate the fleeting beauty of the wildflower.

As the wildflower begins to die the moment it is picked, so does he, because if he’s picked we’re going to go PVP. Nice knowing you, Hyde.

Patch 5.3 and PTR fun

8 Replies

Since the PTR is finally (FINALLY) on a release build, I figured it was time to finally put out my 5.3 pets guide.

Fun fact: On the PTR, you have no pets or account-wide achievements. Blizzard helpfully supplies you a couple super rare pets you’ll likely never get in-game though, so that’s cool, but it’s a crapshoot as to whether you get any pets you actually use on a regular basis. I got 2 poor quality Tolai Hares. So useful. As fun as it would be to re-form and re-tame and re-level my entire team, and then do all the tamer quests to try everything out? No. If you’re super interested in that, here’s a generic training montage.

Close Enough. But there are still plenty of observations to be made just by looking through achievements, the pet journal, etc. The first I noticed was that all abilities now display a percent chance to hit, which is nice.

By the way, Burrow has an 80% chance to hit. Spoiler alert. They’ve also removed the base 5% chance to miss for all abilities, but they also built in a % chance to miss on some abilities which formerly only had that base chance to miss. Each family has an ability which has a base guarantee to hit, too. The ‘base’ throughout here is to note that things like Blind still cause you an increased chance to miss where applicable. There is a longass list of all the ability changes in the full patch notes.

This is also why, if you’ve noticed, I’ve stopped putting up guides for the past month or so. I have a couple ready to go, but I need to make sure they’re still valid before I put them up. Would be kind of silly to edit them less than a week after I posted them (I’ve been expecting 5.3 to launch ‘next Tuesday’ since I first started this post on April 5th, so).

In other fantastic quality of life news, according to the patch notes, “All Pet Battle daily quests on Pandaria, Beasts of Fable and Spirit Tamer quests will now award experience, valor, and Lesser Charms of Good Fortune.”

This may make them my new favorite way to earn… well, everything. They’ve also boosted the Beasts of Fable quest, making the Beasts more difficult (though by what measure I can’t be sure) but the rewards are better. The quest itself is broken up into 3 sections, so you don’t have to spend upwards of a half an hour travelling to do the entire thing every day. ANDPLUSALSO, the bag now has a chance to reward a new item which boosts your XP gain, which is pretty fantastic too (and my main gripe with the BoF quest, whee). ANDDOUBLEPLUSALSO, the Spirit Tamer bags now have a chance to drop upgrade stones, AAAAAND, there’s a new ‘luck’ mechanic where, if you don’t get a stone you get an unseen stacking ‘unlucky’ buff which increases your chance to get one, from both bags and battles.

That’s a lot of alsos.

In 5.3 they start very helpfully marking the tamers on the map now. The paw prints persist even after you complete that particular quest or daily for the day, so you still need your ‘did I do that one yet?’ addon. They also added a new achievement, “The Longest Day” for fighting all the tamers involved in dailies in a single day. All.

I didn’t even begin to attempt this on PTR. The marked stone reward is nice (and BOA!), but it seems like you’re really going to need to have all your strats down for all the tamers beforehand or this is going to take freaking hours, travel time aside. Also note that this is faction-specific… I didn’t have to go fight the Durotar Tamer, though I was in the area.

This time there’s only one new pet to be tamed, the much-anticipated Unborn Valkyr. When I looked at the pet journal, I saw something… disturbing.

“Northrend,” really? I can understand why they wouldn’t want to get more specific on PTR. but it’s like they want me to squander a couple Saturday nights flying around with the windows rolled down drunkenly yelling. But then, that’s nothing new.

Like the psycho I am, I did exactly that. I started by going to the place @mumper took the infamous unborn valkyr teaser shot. I did a whole bunch of random stuff to try and trigger a spawn… jumping off cliffs, getting naked, moonfiring roaches and the like. Then, @mumper was all, HAHA MADE YOU LOOK it’s not even in the game yet! And then I blacked out and when I woke up got on an FBI watchlist somehow. Immediately afterward, the random PTR pet system gave me one.

That’s right. The computer was RUBBING IT IN MY FACE. And this pet is really gorgeous and well-done. Check those transparent wings!

Right now, we know they have a ‘unique’ spawning mechanic. According to Mumper on Twitter, this mechanic is server-side, so you’re not going to find one by killing a bunch of vrykul or something. They are confirmed to spawn in the area around Icecrown Citadel. The current operating theory is that they spawn in the same places as rare mobs (confirmed sightings at Loque’nahak’s spawn point, as per wowhead comments).

There’s a super cute mini-direhorn farmed from mobs on the Isle of Giants, so if you’ve been putting off your spectral porcupette, now’s the time. There’s also a new pet from the Isle of Thunder, farmed from the living piles of filth in the Saurok area. It looks like the piles of living filth. Ugh.

There are also 3 new pets from encounters in Throne of Thunder, so to prepare I’ve been farming the auction house. One is from only LFR Primordius and one is from only normal or heroic Primordius. So, the likelihood that I’ll get both (or really even one) is roughly the same as my character spontaneously becoming an Unborn Valkyr. The 3rd is another baby direhorn which drops from Horridon, because obviously. That one doesn’t specify difficulty level, and has the same look as the others, only more blue/aqua.

There are a few new pets obtained via farming BC-era instances cheekily dubbed ‘Attunement Addition’.

Thanks for the memories, Heroic Slave Pens. I guess.

Karazhan, Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine Cavern are included, not the more grueling to attune to Black Temple or Mount Hyjal. If you collect all 10, it will net you the achievement Raiding With Leashes II and a cute Tito all your own.

I soloed Kara a couple times and didn’t get a single one. It’s worth noting that Lil Bad Wolf’s note says he drops from Big Bad specifically, and I got the Romolo encounter both times. May be coincidence, as a sample size of two is hardly telling, especially combined with the murkiness of whether these pets were even live when I tried farming them.

The other new pet of note comes from aiding Vol’Jin’s rebellion. You complete a couple scenarios and then *events transpire* (wiggly fingers!), and the quartermaster is eventually unlocked. You have to do dailies and turnins for currency, then turn in that currency for pets. It’s kind of like every mid-expansion content we’ve seen thus far, now that I think about it. Huh.

Unlike any content we’ve seen before, Spectator Mode for all pet battles is now live. Sorry, Arena pvpers who’ve been asking for a Spectator Mode since Burning Crusade! Spectator Mode means whenever anyone battles pets out in the world other players can monitor your progress and see whether you’re battling or just standing there like an idiot. This includes cross-faction players on PVP realms, so get ready for the ganking to commence. This also breaks pet battling in stealth, after a fashion… the battle is still played out for all to see, but your character is replaced by a placeholder. They have to hunt around a little to find & gank the ‘real’ you.

Lastly, the one I’m dreading most! There are new pvp achievements.

That’s not the part I’m dreading, but bleh anyway. This is an achievement with several ‘steps’. There is a really adorable new baby dino pet awarded for winning a certain, huge number of specifically level 25 Battle Finder battles.

Yeah, of course the PTR awarded me this one, too. Jerk computer. Additionally there’s a new weekly quest you can complete by winning a lvl 25 pvp battle, too, but I haven’t familiarized myself with that at all.

This is the bit I personally have been prepping for the most in-game. I have a few kun-lai runts, a few dragons and my trusty clockwork gnome ready to go. I get the feeling that these battles are going to be the easiest to do after a week or so of 5.3’s launch, so getting prepped for PVP now is the way to go.

Most of the coolest stuff in this patch is about regular character play. I’d add ‘unfortunately’, but I have a revolution to go foment.

HELLS naw. *cracks knuckles*

Level 10 (pet leveling challenge)

6 Replies

This is the first time I’ve ever taken a ding shot lower than level 60. It’s also the first time level 10 has felt like an accomplishment in any way.

I know there’s good potential for getting trolled here, because this is obviously not difficult. It’s lowbie pet battling. You have like, one ability per pet at these levels, maybe 2. Press button, press button, press button, win. Walk a few dozen yards. Press button. At 13 hours, and with the no guild restriction of Iron Man, it’s bizarrely lonely. I talk to my Battle Tag buds, and have been listening to podcasts (I welcome suggestions for new ones in the comments!), and have been streaming to make it easier, but it’s still awful.

It’s hard to put into words the psychology here. This is more difficult than any race to cap I’ve done… in those cases, I have new things to do, new information to parse, new locations to explore. Race to cap also tended to be more about physical stamina than mental. I typically had competition, which gave me extra drive to keep going. I had strangers randomly sending me tells, either to cheer me on or tell me I sucked and had no life (or asking me to run them through Zul’Farrak, plz & thxu). This exercise is mentally un-stimulating radio silence, and it really, really sucks.

In fact, partway through level 7, I went to Loch Modan just because I needed a change of scenery that bad. Once I got there, something I suspected and hoped wasn’t the case was quickly confirmed.

My XP in Dun Morogh had grown slowly as I leveled, but made up a smaller and smaller percentage of my overall XP to level. At level 7, when I left, I was getting 40 XP per fight in Dun Morogh, which was .88 (repeating of course) percent of a level per fight. As soon as I set foot in Loch Modan and fought a level 5 wild pet, I got 105 XP, 2.3% of a level per fight. The percent per level in Dun Morogh continues to decrease. I’m down to .73% of a level per fight at level 10.

In other words, with those level 1 critters in Dun Morogh, I will never reach a breakpoint. The only way to increase my ratio of battles required per level is to fight higher level pets, which means I have to go to higher level areas in order to get more efficient. However, there is a tipping point between real time efficiency, XP gained per fight, and just how many times I get my face bitten off by a skull level bear.

Even though I gained much more per fight, my downtime was such that Dun Morogh and Loch Modan were roughly equivalent in real-time efficiency, but that efficiency plummets in the Loch when you die. However, I can say pretty conclusively that at this point, battling with higher level pets than the available wild pets, though it gives me a couple XP hit per battle, ends up being way more efficient because I can churn battles more quickly.

Current Level – 10

Current /played – 13 hrs 44 mins

Number of ginvites – 71 (51 since last update)

Number of references to Charlie The Unicorn – 1

sigh.

Diemetradon Hatchling

4 Replies

I admittedly have a soft spot for these guys. Dinosaurs gotta stick together, amirite?

There’s a very special thing about these dinosaurs in particular that makes them heartwarming. It has nothing to do with how they fight. It’s how they spawn: almost literally.

The Elder Diemetradon mobs in the area have a chance to spawn as a ‘mother’ diemetradon. This won’t change the mob itself in any way, but after a couple minutes, it will spawn a baby diemetradon hatchling!

If you fight that diemetradon hatchling and kill it, the mommy will make a new baby diemetradon in a few minutes which is actually really screwed up if you think about it. Once the elder diemetradon mobs are spawned they won’t spontaneously become mommies, so if you’re hunting hatchlings you’ll have to put them down, preferably via a moonfire to the face.

To farm these guys for a rare, I set raid markers on the diemetradons I knew were mommies. After around 10 minutes of circling to make sure I’d marked all the momma dinos, the carnage began. Eventually, enough non-momma diemetradon respawned as moms for me to farm up a rare, hooray!

A few other animals share this unique, adorable pattern. Cheetah Cubs and Infested Bear Cubs do, and I’ve heard Tiny Twisters do too, though I haven’t tried this out myself. Flayer Younglings do too, though that’s even more disturbing as they’re humanoid type pets.

As a fighter the diemetradon is a fairly standard Beast, with a mix of critter and beast attacks. He has one of those handy two-turn abilities where, if you kill something with it you gain health, and a mix of critter and beast abilities otherwise. But the novelty of his relationship with his mom is enough to make him a fun choice to seek out for a tame.

Maybe today you should give your own mother a call. She worries, you know.

The Iron Pet Leveling Challenge

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I saw this over on Blog Azeroth (a great resource if you’re a blogger). Since it was pretty much the first community blog challenge I’ve seen that would fit into the topic of this blog at all, of course I had to give it a shot.

The challenge is to level a character to 90 from only pet battles. No quest XP. No kill XP. No professions. Exploration XP is OK, because you kind of have to explore as a pet battler. No new gear after you pick up your obligatory safari hat from the mail.

I know what you’re saying. “Oh but that’s so easy now. I knew this one guy, Tommy? He went from 85-89 in like 5 hours from pet battling.” Well, this challenge is unique in that it starts off hard and then gets harder. At some point there’s a breakpoint (I mean, there has to be, right?!) and from there it gets easier & easier until you can coast to the finish. I think this is intentional, because Blizzard intends for you to actually play your character in the lowbie levels.

When I say ‘easier’ vs ‘harder’, I mean less or more time-consuming. There’s really nothing hard per se about lvl 1 pet battles. It’s when you start doing the math, and see that XP bar creep up more and more slowly as you level that you see where the ‘hard’ is in this challenge. It’s bizarrely psychologically difficult. This may also be because I chose a Dwarf, and it’s just all freaking snow all the time. Makes for thrilling screenshots too.

And yes, it is psychologically difficult. Here’s a slightly fudged graphic to help explain why:

The gist is, the XP needed per level grows at an alarming rate, but your XP from battling barely budges. At level 1, each fight is 3.5% of a level, and you need to do 28 battles to gain the 400 XP required to level. Contrast that with level 5, where each fight is 1.1% of a level, and you need to win 93.3 battles, 2800 XP, to level up. It just keeps getting slower and slower so far.

Theoretically I could go fight some higher level pets to speed things up, but I’m level 5. There’s almost nowhere else for me to go where I won’t aggro everything in the zone yet. I have been toying with using higher level pets and getting less XP per battle but chewing through battles more quickly, after a twitter tip from Farli of The Overcut. Regardless, I’m already almost out of level 1 and level 2 pets, all of which were duplicates of pets I’d already leveled. You can see I took off my safari hat at some point, and this is why.

My entire stable of pets was already up to 10+, so I won’t get to do much to actually improve the pets I want to keep until I can start battling level 5+ pets reliably. I may get some of these in the Loch Modan area, around level 10 for me. I’ll get a lot for sure once I get to the Wetlands but this won’t happen until–sweet baby jesus help me–I’m level 20 or so.

I’m not sure yet whether I’ll take ‘help’ (ie, gold) from higher level characters, but if I don’t that means no mounts, and no taxis except for the handful of free ones between capital cities. It seems more in the spirit of an Iron Man, but the thought of that makes me want to lay my head down on my desk and give up already.

‘No Quests’ may also restrict entry to places like Deepholm. Without a personal flying mount, this may mean all of Cata content. Maybe even Pandaria as a whole, too. I know it restricts me from getting to the Vale, but man. MAAAAN. Also, no combat means no killing critters to free up spawns for battle pets, which stinks. However, I’m definitely ignoring one of the central rules of the ‘official’ leveling Ironmans – permanent death. I feel like this is already soulcrushing enough, and I know that if I add in that rule, if I do die I’m just done. Plus, I figure I’m going to be going to places I’m stupid low level for, there’s virtually no way I’m not going to die.

This is one of the few times in WoW where I’ve actually thought to myself, “what in the high holy hell are you thinking” while I’m doing it. Usually my abject moronitude is just an afterthought, but this time it’s like my brain would punch me in the face if it had arms.

Current Level – 5

Current /played – 4hrs 56 mins

Current number of unsolicited ginvites – 18 20. I got 2 more when I logged in to take an extra SS for this post.

Frog

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After 8 years of World of Warcraft, there is a certain amount of nostalgia people have for the game. Now that we’ve returned from Outland, now that we’ve crushed the Lich King, now that we’ve lived through the Cataclysm and Deathwing’s fall, there are very few things which have remained constant through the years and continue on as a touchstone of what the game once was.

For some people, that constant is their character. This is not the case for me. I started off as a priest, then made my way to a badass pvp hunter, turned over a new leaf as a mage, and then rerolled as a druid, with lots of alts peppered in between. Even now Blizzard is making a concerted effort even to change these characters with upgraded models and graphics. It is definitely time for an upgrade to these graphics, but it just adds to the growing feeling of impermanence.

For some people, the constant is their guild. I’m in a guild right now which actually is several iterations removed from my very first guild in vanilla. There were so many stops, schisms and gquits the guild today is barely recognizable as the one I joined in November of 2004. There are very, very few guilds left today with a charter that old.

Even the world we knew has changed with the Cataclysm. Mankrik’s Wife has received a loving, proper burial, and the bridge in Redridge has reached its completion. NPCs have moved, rep grinds have changed, items have been removed. I still have the tea with sugar given to me by poor little Pamela Redpath. Though she remains trapped in the same long, tragic unlife as when I first visited her in early 2005, my tea with sugar has changed to sweet tea. I haven’t lived in the American South for terribly long but dude, those are not even close to the same thing.

But, there is one thing that has remained the same. One thing that binds us all, regardless of faction. One constant through the turmoil that has been our lives, in-game and out.

Low texture frogs.

Low texture frogs accompanied us to the alien landscape of Outland and frozen tundra of Northrend.

Low texture frogs survived the Cataclysm. Even now low texture frogs live in our very cities.

When we landed on Pandaria’s rocky, inhospitable shores, low texture frogs were there to greet us, and low texture frogs entered the Vale of Eternal Summer before we did too.

There are currently 18 pets in-game that use the low texture frog model. Some are hard to get, like Mojo. Some aren’t tradeable or trappable, like the Jubling. The Lifelike Toad is a mechanical. They all share a moveset, so I have to also mention the Horny Toad, which has the same moves but looks like a lizard and isn’t really low texture. The tooltip reflects this too.

Low texture frogs have a unique move called Frog Kiss, which has a chance on hit to turn your victim into a frog, taking them out of action for a turn. It also increases your damage done with each hit, much like Arcane Blast, and can ramp up into a powerful nuke. Frogs also have the option for a good single-turn self heal, or a weak AOE heal with a weather component. Their abilities are rounded out with a DoT that persists through pet swaps and the no-frills aquatic ability Water Jet.

The one variant is that the Lifelike Toad replaces the DoT with the mechanical heal Repair, giving him a whole lot of healing power.

I’ve really enjoyed using them in low-level pvp. The large heal plus Frog Kiss makes them a force to be reckoned with, even up against one of those teams where they try to cheese the level gap to win. They don’t really translate well into higher-level PVP though. I’ve also been using one as a workhorse while I tame new pets and level old ones (I really like AOE heals for that).

But more than that, low texture frogs are a touchstone. Low texture frogs are a reminder of what once was. In this time of faster, smarter, brighter, prettier, low texture frogs remain as Blizzard’s embodiment of the Pandaren mantra, “slow down.” They continue to be–

OH FOR THE LOVE OF—

Breeds

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I’ve been seeing breeds mentioned more & more right now, mostly with the addendum, “what are you even talking about? Did you eat a mushroom from outside?”

Um, maybe. Look, I’m a druid. I’m a Worgen. Things happen.

That doesn’t mean that you need poison control on call to understand battle pet breeds, and the benefits of knowing yours. In fact, as you get into the later Pandaren tamers it can be the edge you need to succeed if you know your pets’ breed. After that rhyme I may need poison control after all.

Here’s a bit of pet knowledge you may find surprising. With certain pets, each individual pet with the same rarity has identical stats. All Lofty Librams, all Emerald Whelplings, all Dark Phoenix Hatchlings are identical at level 25. If you level a Celestial Dragon to 25, this is what its stats will be, with no alteration.

You will never find a Celestial Dragon at level 25 with 1648 health, or 239 speed. However, some pets have variations on which set of stats an individual pet will have, and this variation is called a breed.

There are 13 different breeds. Yeah, it’s a lot. But really it’s just combinations of 4 different types of stats–(H)ealth, (P)ower, (S)peed, and (B)alanced–in 2 slots. The first three stat names are rather self-explanatory; balanced means the stat weight is spread across all 3. This is why I tend to go with the X/X notation rather than the numerical. It’s easier that way to tell at a glance exactly what you’re working with. Lord knows there are enough random numbers to remember in the game as it is.

As an example, we’ll contrast my beloved crab Ishmael with another lvl 25 crab I have kicking around.

It’s really obvious to see the differences here. The red crab has over 1800 health while Ishmael has just under 1500. Ishmael has over 350 attack power, and the red crab has just over 250. The difference, besides that garish red color, is that Ishmael is breed 4, or P/P, while Red is breed 6, or H/H.

That bit of jargon means that Ishmael’s stats are assigned to Power (hence the P) twice, as reflected by his radically higher P stat, while Red’s are assigned to Health twice. If you look up Emperor Crabs, you’ll see that they’re also available in the high health version, and that version ends up being identical to Red’s. All H/H Spirebound crabs have the same exact stats as Red, and all P/P Emperor Crabs have the same stats as Ishmael. The reason the pets I cited above all have identical stats is because those pets only have one available breed to choose from.

This is good information to know for a tank. As much as it pains me to say it out loud, the Spirebound crab is probably going to be a better tank than Ishmael because of that increased health pool.

But that’s somewhat relative, and a bit debatable. Crabs are going to be good tanks regardless, and Ishmael’s power stat boosts the amount of healing he does, too, so over a longer fight he may be a better choice anyway. Here, breed just gives you a scale of good to also good. Let’s look at another case where breed can make or break your pet’s functionality:

The big difference here is the speed. The Alpine Hare is S/S, and the Rabbit is B/B. It doesn’t look like an enormous difference, and again, for most purposes the B/B will do just fine. The reason the S/S breed is incredibly popular right now is because with a speed of 357, it is one of the 4 fastest pets in the game.

The critter family perk is to break CC, but this only kicks in at the end of a round after both pets have done their actions. This means that, though they’re not out of commission for very long, a critter which is slower than its opponent will still ‘lose’ the current turn. With the rabbit’s ultra-quick speed, there is only very rarely a scenario where this will occur, making it by default a better pick than a myriad of other critters out there. In general, speed is a very good stat to keep an eye on in PVP because of how it affects swapping, but with rabbits it’s the difference between a win and a loss even in PVE on occasion.

This can also affect which pet you pick as well. Right now you’re probably thinking to yourself that you’d best go farm up a high-level bunny ASAP. The thing is, not all pets have the same available variants. If you want a speedy rabbit, don’t try to run to Hyjal and get an Elfin Rabbit, because you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

There are breed gaps like this throughout the minigame… as noted in my Scooter writeup, there is only one other snail that has the same H/H breed available, while there are 6 or 7 different kinds of snails.

An additional note is that the split of abilities can increase or decrease the total number of stats a particular pet gets. Pure breeds (S/S, P/P and H/H, not B/B) will get full stats. Straight hybrids (eg, H/S) will get slightly fewer stats. Where it gets really messy is when B gets into the act. B/B gets the fewest stats of all, and is generally thought of as the cruddiest breed in any situation. Pure/Balanced hybrids get more stats than B/B, but fewer than the other hybrids. This is explained far better, and with graphs, over at petsear.ch.

So now that we know about breed, how can you figure out what you’ve got in your stable? The easiest way by far is to download an addon. As discussed in my thrilling Addons post, I use Battle Pet BreedID in-game to sort mine out. This is the addon you see displaying the available and current breed throughout the post. If you’re averse to addons, you can also do it on a case-by-case basis using warcraftpets.com or wowhead.com. Each individual pet has sliders for level and rarity, and you can cross-check your pets manually against their database. Additionally, if you sign up for an account with Warcraft Pets and load in your pets via the WoW Armory, the breed, level and rarity of the pet you have in your possession will be pre-set when you look up a pet, removing some of the guesswork.

It’s kind of a complicated idea, but I hope I did an okay job of communicating it. It gets much easier to understand as you use your newfound knowledge to stomp on some pets. Now that you got through all that, I owe you a drink.