Patch 5.3 and PTR fun

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)

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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

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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

3 Replies

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.

Hold your horses John Wayne, five of those bad boys are for me.

Scooter

1 Reply

This guy and his snaily brethren are some of the better PVE tanks, depending on the rock, paper, scissors of it all.

Or, rock, paper, scissors, slime as the case may be.

So, what makes snails so appealing? They generally can’t die. Not only do they have a shell shield ability, they also have Dive and the damage with return heals ability Absorb. Scooter is only available in the H/H or 6 breed, which means that his health pool at level 25 with a rare upgrade is a whopping 1960, making him one of the very few pets available with over 1900 health.

The only other snail available with the H/H breed is the Shimmershell Snail. The other breeds or other snails are also amazing tanks for sure… ‘get a snail’ is largely interchangeable in the pet community for ‘get a Rapana Whelk’ after all. But health that high even as a novelty is pretty sick in a tank.

An additional strategy would be to combine his Acidic Goo ability, which has a 25% additional damage taken debuff, with his Dive. It’s also possibly a synergy buff to a glass cannon pet like a Fel Flame. This obviously sacrifices a good amount of the snail’s survivability, though. To round out his abilities there’s the 25% chance to stun beast ability Headbutt and Ooze Touch, a no-frills magic nuke.

I personally am not as in lurve with him as some other tamers are. The Undead absorb move he uses to deal damage plus his Critter type makes him take forever to kill Critters and vulnerable to Beasts. That absorb move also deals minimal damage period, so fights with him take forever regardless. But there are certain fights where snails are integral, like my thrilling strategy for the Burning Spirit Tamer. As long as you’re not fighting beasts he’s a pretty good pick.

Some tamers doodle their name with the snail’s the same way I doodle “Ms. Liopleurodon Crab.” I prefer a tank that can’t be felled by an ill-placed salt shaker in favor of one that goes well with butter, I guess. Different strokes!

You get Scooter The Snail from the original Childrens’ Week quest, from either Orphan Matron Nightingale in the Cathedral District of Stormwind or Orphan Matron Battlewail in the Drag (lower level, beneath the inscription trainers) in Orgrimmar. He was added to the original complement of pets in 2011.

Childrens’ Week

Legs

1 Reply

Legs is one of the newest kids on the Childrens’ Week block, so he’s likely the one you’re missing, if you’re missing any. He was added to the Shattrath orphan roundup in 2011.

He’s quite unique, in that he’s a Magic pet with a mix of Magic and Aquatic abilities. The very new Tiny Blue Carp from fishing (mandatory uuuugh) is the only other pet I’ve run across which has a mix of magic and aquatic. The Carp is aquatic though, so it’s vulnerable to the flying pets which would be hurt more by the magic damage.

The aquatic abilities used by Legs are the very strong nuke Pump and the CC ability Whirlpool. He has a similar magic CC ability in Gravity. Surge of Power is a huge magic nuke, but a risky one as you have to ‘recharge’ after using it. Laser and Focused Beams are his bread & butter damage abilities. He doesn’t have avoidance abilities, so he’s pretty much a glass cannon.

Even though he was the last to be added, to me he’s the one that makes me reminisce the most about the Burning Crusade expansion. Sure, Peanut kinda looks like an elekk, and there were those beholder mobs in that one Tempest Keep dungeon. Zangarmarsh was one of the most unique environments Blizzard has designed thus far though, and Legs looks like he was directly lifted out of the swamp.

WTB 4 Fertile Spores PST. Ah, memories.

Legs is obtained by doing the Outland Childrens’ Week quest given by Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath City.

How Things Spawn 101

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I’ve recently been working on taming all rare versions of various pets, which means a lot of farming. This post may end up being more alcohol-fueled rant than actual useful information.

There are many strategies and spawning eccentricities for the rarer pets out there in the world, and they can vary pretty wildly. There are the ‘kill all the non-battle spawns in this area’ strategies like the Lofty Libram, the ‘tied to this other mob’ strategies like the Tiny Twister, and ‘just hang out for a couple hours until one spawns’ strategies like the Minfernal.

The thing most of these strategies ignores is that there is a max number of battle pets which can be in any given zone at any time. What does this mean? Well, here’s a screenshot of the area where the Minfernal spawns in Felwood on my cross-realm:

The orange arrows mark different players just freaking sitting there until one spawns. There were no fewer than 5 people just hanging out in the area when I went through on my way to find a rare Tainted Moth.

Now, hanging out on a mount and watching videos until you see something spawn is a somewhat solid strategy. The Minfernal is on a long timer and is very rare. However, in this deceptively large zone, there are many potential spawns for battle pets in semi-out of the way places. Once those spawns are populated by a battle pet and not a critter, they use up a slot that could be open for a rarer pet type, or just a rare spawn of that type. Less than 30 seconds away via flying mount, this is the scene:

3 separate camps of 3 roaches, all filled with battle pets. There are a few more in this area too. All along the edges of the map, there are roaches and rats galore, just waiting to be curbstomped by some lucky tamer.

In general, this happens when there are a bunch of grouped quest mobs, as here. Lowbies with AOE come through and kill critter-type roaches, and tamers kill other random pets in the zone. People generally see the paw prints and steer clear, because despite what trade chat would have you believe, most players aren’t just waiting to snack on a trio of billy goats.

The thing is, this strategy (and really, all other taming strategies) only work if there’s somebody else in the zone killing the other random trash battle pets. If they’re not, you’re just going to be moonfiring rats like a chump all day long with no payoff.

So, what’s a tamer to do? Before you sit down to farm your desired pet, take a minute and fly around the zone. Does your minimap look like this?

If so, you need to take a few minutes out and free up those spawns, either by fighting them or by giving them a moonfire to the face. And yes, specifically target them and use a single-target ability rather than the flashier, easier AOE. If you kill other, non-battle critters as well, that gives those critters a chance to steal the battle slot you just freed from your desired target. Then, go do whatever magic trigger wowhead suggests. If a half an hour or so elapses and you still don’t have any, or very few spawns, go to the areas which were the most densely populated before, like the above pictured Timbermaw camps, rinse & repeat.

Yes, yes, I know. All the minfernals in the world will totally respawn in those 30 seconds, and everyone else will get them all and you’re going to get none and nobody likes you and you’ll die alone. That’s really a personal problem I can’t help with. I’m just laying it out there… you’ll get better results farming pretty much any rare pet you’re looking for by killing other pets first.