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Your Leveling And Pets

Before we get this blog post a-startedddd, let’s get this out of the way. This particular part of the game has been re-tuned roughly a dozen times since it’s hit the servers, and it’s only been live for 3 weeks. I’m going to discuss in general terms so hopefully it stays relatively accurate for a while, but don’t be surprised if it’s the exact opposite from what I say here if you’re reading this from far in the future. Also, don’t get all pissy because I got 70 XP and you got 75 XP for the same freaking THING Liopleurodon, you SCREECHING NOOB, GOD. Clear?

Alright.

When 5.2 dropped, among other fantastic pet developments, Blizzard also added the ability to get player XP through pet battles. Like everything else in the game, this can be very quirky.

There are a few rules of thumb which have stayed consistent thus far.

1 – *ALL* the pets on your team must be within 3 levels of the pet you’re killing in order to get XP. Yes, even if you just have your level 25 terrible turnip in the back row just in case and never ever use him, your character will not get XP.

2 – You must win the fight or you don’t gain any XP, even if you kill or trap a couple pets before you lose. This also applies in PVP.

3 – The amount of XP is dependent both on your level and the level of the pets you’re fighting. This post has been a wall of text with no pictures, so here’s a level 2, 15, and 85 characters fighting the same level (ie, lvl 2) pets:

So, the XP you get is dependent on your character’s level. But, it’s also dependent on the level of the pets you’re fighting, AND the level of your pets vs the pets you’re fighting. From here on out, we’ll use the level 85, because flying mounts are a thing.

I got 5.9K xp using my level 3s against level 2s. In the next screenshot, I used level 25s and a level 24 against a level 23, and in the following one, I kept them all at or below the level of the pets I was fighting.

The interesting part here though, is that it seems like there’s only so high you can go with XP. For level 85s, you will get a maximum of 87,149. The range of pet levels you’re capped out seems fairly wide.

Yes, you do get XP from tamer battles too.

To contrast Major Payne’s 25s, I was fighting 18s in Hellfire Peninsula, which is a couple dozen levels beyond gray mobs for a level 85. The gap may be even larger though. I didn’t get a chance to do further testing, as in the process of pet fighting, a fel reaver sneaked up on my poor little unplayed alt.

You may want to send flowers.

Cloud Serpents

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In a beautiful ceremony, today at long last, I officially became a member of the Order of the Cloud Serpent!

Why should you care? Well, first of all, thanks so much for being so supportive. It’s not like I had a wicked sweet mount I really wanted to use that I couldn’t without Cloud Serpent Flying. Because druids use mounts, ever.

Alright alright, this isn’t just a post to talk about how awesome I am. If you really closely, in the bottom right corner, you’ll be able to see why I undertook this thoroughly annoying grind.

There are 3 different colors of wild cloud serpent hatchlings, and they only appear as battle pets after you have exalted reputation with Order Of The Cloud Serpent. If you go over there otherwise, it’s just a bunch of frogs and moths. You have to repeat this rep grind for each character you’d like to fight the cloud serpents on, which should be completely shocking for those of us who have played through Pandaria up to this point.

The Golden and the Jade Hatchlings are pretty much identical in function. As discussed before in the entry about my clockwork gnome, they make good buff pets with mechanicals and pets with a lot of DoT and multi-attack spells because of their Call Lightning ability. If you’ve fought Grand Master Tamer Aki or the Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer, you’ve seen all 6 of these guys’ abilities in action already with Stormlash and Crimson respectively.

The Crimson Hatchling is different from the previous two, but has a move set identical to the Spawn of Onyxia wild pet. Most notably the heal and huge nuke, which makes this a rather annoying pet to tame.

If you’d like to tame these, there are a couple things to watch out for. First of all, with Cloud Serpent rep, make sure to go make a few passes around Windward Isle, especially if you’re in the area around server restart time. You can net a ton of rep just from looting onyx eggs. Since we’re so deep into the expansion, there is frequently at least one spawned when I go look. I barely even needed to do dailies with a pass a day.

As mentioned above, the Crimson Hatchling in particular is kind of a pain to tame. For these guys I brought out my turnip, my tanky crab, and a level 20-ish pet to grind XP. I didn’t go higher just in case I zoned out and did foolish things, because that never happens. There must be some other reason. But if I did, hypothetically, the 20-ish pet should be able to finish out the last battle pet in the trio after a couple turns.

All the battle pets in this area share spawns, and they have that thing going on where you can only have so many pets in one area, so if you’re looking for a specific rare you should summarily dispatch the moths and frogs in the middle first, then fight the hatchlings while you’re waiting on repops.

Jurassic Park Wait I Mean

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The Isle of Giants is now live, which means there are 5 new pets out there just waiting for a good home. So, I got suited up for a new adventure.

The shoulders are to help me blend in with my surroundings. This is some big game hunting we’re about to do, and we really need the camouflage. You’ll see. I mounted up, fired up some tunes, and headed for parts unknown.

Well, slightly unknown. To get to the Isle of Giants the first time, go to Zouchin Village in Kun-Lai and start flying north. You’ll start to get fatigued, don’t panic. Because you aren’t allowed to use your flying mount on the Isle, once you cross over into its waters, you will be dismounted, but that’s cool, just turn into a whale if you can and keep swimming. Oh, YOU can’t turn into a whale? Well, keep swimming anyway. You’ll make it. Probably.

Once you get there, make sure to pick up your faction’s flight path on either side of the beach that greets you as you swim up: Alliance in the West, Horde in the East. Aw, they’re slant-wise named after one of my favorite dinosaur video games of all time, Bubble Bobble. I wonder why. Hmm.

Oh man wait, there are dinosaurs here! In fact, therAAAAAIIIEEEEEEE!

Besides exploring and getting smashed to bits by enormous dinosaurs, there are 2 things for pet collectors to do. You can kill dinomancers for the adorable pets they drop. There are 4 tiny baby raptors wearing helmets. They will soulbind to you as items, but you can cage them and sell on the AH if you get too many of one type while waiting for the one you don’t have yet to drop. As of now they’re ranging ~300g, but that should drop shortly, as hunters also need to kill the dinomancers for the very rare book that allows them to tame the direhorns on the island.

For me as a moonkin, the dinomancers can be tricky. They have an ability which heals them to full, but they only cast it when they’re above 50% health. It’s a relatively short cast, and if I screw up my interrupt with a minute-long cooldown (seriously, a minute? siiiigh) I basically have to wait that minute. However, once they go down below 50% health, they stop casting. Why?

Let’s just say it’s kind of difficult to cast a heal when you’re a triceratops.

So, why even kill these guys, if it’s difficult and you can buy those silly raptors off the AH anyway? Well, look up 2 screenshots. See that bone? Yes, I said bone. Stop giggling. That bone is currency. You go here, in this cave on the map, to do so.

You can trade in 1 bone for like 2g, 10 for a mote of harmony, or 999 for a spectral porcupette. Once you get all your baby raptors though, I’d consider switching over to killing direhorns, as they drop far more bones per kill and also have a chance to drop an egg. The eggs haven’t been fully datamined yet, but from the anecdotal commentary on wowhead, it seems like they’ll contain mounts and other goodies.

There are many other goodies and places to see on the island. I recommend seeing the boat (with a full group and a tank), as well as just general exploration. Unfortunately there aren’t any pet battles to do on the island, but the ambiance is jus–

Clever girl.

Update – The very first thing I got out of my primal egg was a sweetass black raptor mount.

It’s Patch Day, Patch Day, Gotta Get Down On Patch Day

Darkmoon Faire

Hello

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Hey, I’m Liopleurodon.

I am a Worgen Druid. I do quite a few dailies and some… wait what? Am I a magical Liopleurodon? What does that even mean? Anyway, I also really enjoy pet battles.

I have a stable full of sometimes fun, sometimes ferocious, sometimes completely useless battle pets. However, I haven’t found a ton of blogs discussing how those adorable little pixels rip each other new ones the best, so here is my attempt. Granted, this post is all about me, but I promise I’ll write more about pets sooner or later, for swears. And… FINE. ALRIGHT. I AM A MAGICAL LIOPLEURODON.