Peanut is a cute, unassuming little fellow from Outland. He’ll occasionally stand on his hind legs and let out a little elephant tootle. In function, he’s similar to his Beast type Clefthoof Runt brethren, only just to make things interesting, he’s a critter. Even though he’s just clearly an elephant, the biggest currently living land animal on Earth.
Kay, critter.
Survival is all he has in the way of mitigation, though he does have a stun move. He has a couple buffs moves as well. Combining one of these with the percent damage ability Trample makes him a decent choice against the critter-type Beasts of Fable. A 10% health strike does a proportionally larger amount of damage to their huge health pools (you know, if you don’t want to cheese it like I do with a Nether Faerie Dragon or Cockroach).
Peanut is obtained by doing the Outland Childrens’ Week quest given by Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath City.
Much like the Wolvar hatchling, only much more tongue & teeth in the bargain.
urgh.
He has the same Humanoid benefits as the Wolvar pup, but his abilities are quite a bit different. A couple of his abilities go back to the Wrath rep he’s associated with, namely the really gross Aged Yolk. Between the teeth and the yolk, this apparently gives him Dreadful Breath.
urrrrrrgh.
The dreadful breath ability is a fun one to mess around with, especially when paired with a frog or strider who can make it rain (not in the way that involves strippers). Backflip can be strong in PVP depending on how fast the other pet is. Super Sticky Goo is a decent choice for pvp too, though in general this isn’t a very strong pet in pvp. He doesn’t pack a strong enough punch before he’s completely annihilated, depending of course on the rock paper scissors of it all. There’s always the gross out factor, I guess.
I guess he’s cute from far away. Maybe.
The Curious Oracle Hatchling is obtained by doing the Northrend Childrens’ Week quest given by Orphan Matron Aria in Dalaran.
The thing that’s tricky about pet battling addons (really, any addons) is that there are certain things that Blizzard eventually subsumes into their own default UI. This is definitely noticeable if you swap between your regular install, with its huge folder of addons, and the PTR, which is fresh and new with only the default UI. For instance, one of my favorite battling addons for a long time displayed a pet’s quality without a spreadsheet of numbers and a bit of guessing. This is a part of the standard battle UI now, though.
My first must-have addon is like this in part. PetBattle Teams can currently be used to maintain the abilities you prefer through swaps if you set those pets in a ‘team.’ Here’s a screenshot of my UI:
You can see here that I’ve selected the Aki team. You know from my fantastic Aki walkthrough that I use Radley, Ishmael and a leveling pet, so the team should come as no surprise. This addon saves the 2nd tier abilities Radley uses so I don’t even have to futz around with that. I just click in the right panel, and it equips the team of my choice. The question mark is an intentional blank spot for that pet I level. You can also see the health bars of the pets… if they’re dead, it puts a nice big red X over them (but you can still click on the team to equip it). At the very bottom, it also has buttons to press for the healing ability and the bandages in your inventory. This saves me so much time. I really recommend it.
This is one I expect to get added into the Blizz default UI sooner or later:
Battle Pet BreedID may sound like Sanskrit. Basically, there are a few different ways stats can be allocated in the same pet… some are faster, some are stronger. This is useful information because there are certain abilities which work far better if a particular pet is very fast or slow. Some pets need high HP because you’d like them to be tanks. It’s not something to worry super hard about until you get really deep into endgame, but it’s good to know regardless. If you look at the screenshot, you can see the difference between the stats at level 25… it’s not a huge difference, but it can help you eke out a win.
This addon shows you the breed of the pet on mouseover, either in battle or your journal. (either in numbers or H/P/S/B format) It also shows which breeds are available, so if you tame say, a Lofty Libram, you can know that the H/B breed you got (which is generally kind of a crappy breed) is the only available breed. I opt to switch to the H/P/S/B version of the data rather than the breed number, because come on, that’s just gibberish.
This last one is a small one, but it’s really invaluable to me. It’s called Daily Tamer Check:
And that’s all there is to it. Mouse over that little moonkin icon, either on your taskbar, in Titanpanel or what have you, and it tells you which dailies you’ve done that day on that character. It isn’t an advanced addon, since it can’t tell which alts you’ve done them on as well, but for my purposes it’s very cool. It’ll also tell you which non-bag dailies you’ve done in a sub-menu, and during the Darkmoon Faire it also displays Jeremy Feasel.
If you were around during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the Curious Wolvar Pup is no mystery to you. He’s a relatively new addition to the Childrens’ Week fold, but is still several years old.
The Curious Wolvar Pup is modeled off the Wrath Frenzyheart wolvar rep you can still grind, even though at this point that would be super silly, since with the Oracles you have a chance for a mount. You’re only going to get gross eggs though, trust. What the Frenzyheart lack in good rewards, they make up for with this little guy. He is one of the best fighters of the week, with a unique set of moves across a few different families.
He’s a humanoid pet, which by itself makes him fairly unique, but he also has beast abilities making him strong against the super populated Critter family if you so choose. The thing that makes him especially nice though, especially for lower level pvp, is the combo of Frenzyheart Brew and Whirlwind. The first buffs his damage, and the second is a really nice full team AOE in Whirlwind.
Also in the pvp vein is Snap Trap, which is a quirky and slightly unpredictable stun. He’s an excellent choice for a novice battler. He’s a humanoid, so he heals every turn he does damage, making him more robust than most.
The Curious Wolvar Pup is obtained by doing the Northrend Childrens’ Week quest given by Orphan Matron Aria in Dalaran.
The Whispering tamer is in a very picturesque spot of Pandaria. She overlooks the area shrouded in fog where Nazgrel, Windsor and Chen Stormstout fought in the Mists of Pandaria trailer, and it’s just breathtaking, even if it does make her hard to find. All those stupid pillars in the Jade Forest look exactly the same to me. I usually look for the fog because it has an absurdly long draw distance, and then look immediately west, and there she is.
Oh, hi there. I’m here to hopefully make you cry real tears. But if you can’t, since you’re made of wind and all, maybe you could like, pretend for my benefit. That would be fantastic.
The thing is, Whispering has a really big weakness, which makes her a total walkover if you exploit it. Let’s see if you can pick it out after I link the team:
One pet to be leveled, and 2 dragons.
Funny story. All the attacks of all her pets are Flying. Every last one. Seriously. So as long as you pick a couple dragons, you win. My Emerald Whelpling Emilia is a really good choice as a tank, with her Emerald Presence shield ability, and her heal Tranquility, which I as a druid especially enjoy. It’s a very similar setup to my crab. Stella the Celestial Dragon also has a lot of staying power with a self heal, and a unique combo group heal/group nuke on a long timer.
The celestial dragon may not be available to a newer collector, but don’t worry. Almost any team of 2 dragons will work. I’d definitely consider switching her out for someone with a bit more firepower like a Spawn of Onyxia.
This particular setup is a sure thing, but takes a while to win. There are no backrow abilities either, but for these tamers I like to start a bit higher, because that first attack almost kills them even at level 8. Regardless, this is a relatively easy fight and a great place to start your spirit taming journey. Even though I’m writing this walkthrough third. Whatever.
The leadoff pet is Dusty, a moth which is somehow a critter. (NOTE – After 5.4, Dusty is now properly a Flying battle pet, not a critter. However, the strategy as follows is still otherwise accurate).
Against Stella, Dusty’s name is
weak, weak, weak.
If you do opt to use an Onyxian Whelpling or some other dragon with a big nuke on a timer, be mindful of the timer on Cocoon Strike, which can absorb that nuke. Otherwise, meh.
The second pet is Whispertail the dragon. Whispertail has 3 abilities. Guess what they are.
weak, weak and weak. He does have an armor shatter ability, but it just makes his damage go from yawn to yawners. Meh. He doesn’t have any dodges or blocks like Dusty, so just beat him down until he’s on the floor.
It’s kind of weird. Neither Whispertail nor Dusty have an analogous pet a player is able to have, as far as I know. Dusty closely mirrors the abilities of all moths, but is a critter. Not that either would be a huge asset to our stables, I’m just saying. It’s odd compared to what we’ve seen before.
The last in the lineup is the Air Spirit. Like the others, all her attacks are
weak, weak.
The difference here is that the Air Spirit also has a rather annoying heal, which is why she only rates 2 out of 3 weaks. I switch to Emilia (even if Stella hasn’t gone to the Great Gold Hoard In The Sky) and make sure to use her Emerald Presence ability, because all the Spirit’s attacks are bundles of smaller attacks. I only use Tranquility when I get below 800 HP or so because otherwise I’ll spend every 3rd turn refreshing it, and dude I have other things to do today.
The Whispering Spirit Tamer’s proximity as the crow flies (druid pun) to the Vale and Black Market Auction House make her a good target to hit while you go about your day. I find beating her quite relaxing before going off and killing orcs or biting virmen in the face. Because after all, look at that view.
If you’re here to go on an Awfully Big Adventure with your Elekk Plushie, this strategy is completely valid. Just swap in your Plushie where you would your carry pet.
The video below shows a carry using my Elekk Plushie.
Mr. Wiggles has always been a favorite of mine. Back in the day, he’d stay by my side and eat schmutz he found on the floor in Scholomance despite my strident caution that he knock it off because it was probably tainted by the plague. Wiggles don’t care. He just eats what he wants.
Big, bad boss pulls in years were typically accompanied by /say Let’s do this, Wiggles. He was my lucky charm in raiding back when it was only pets, no battles. He also took up a space in my inventory. Uphill in the show! You whippersnapper.
So it’s really oddly fitting for me that he is currently the only attainable pet on US servers with the ability Uncanny Luck. If you’ve been fighting Lucky Yi, the Beast of Fable a stone’s throw from Nishi, you’ll have seen this in action. Because of the nature of this ability, I predict that pet PVP in 5.3 is going to see a bunch of matching up Wiggles with other pets with lower chance to hit abilities, like Moth Balls. Maybe not, I’m pretty terrible at pet pvp.
Beyond that, he’s a fairly standard critter. He has either a critter or undead dps in the first slot, a heal or 50% reduction ability in the second, and Uncanny Luck or a chance to stun with damage in the third. The key though, is going to be using his Luck in synergy with other pets. This will become more evident in 5.3, when chance to hit stuff becomes a part of the standard UI.
You get Mr. WIggles 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.
I have a toddler, so I hear this question like eighty thousand times a day. But one day, I started thinking about it in terms of pet battles.
Up until now, I’ve been pretty much assuming that you’re here because you’re a Tamer in some capacity, whether you’re just looking for your first basic tips, or looking for help with end-game PVE. I know that there are many World of Warcraft players out there who could not give less of a damn about my beloved battles though, no matter how hard the Singing Sunflower tries to hypnotize them into it.
Even if you’re not all that into the whole pets thing of it all, I’d like to hopefully supply Why You (yes you) non-Tamer, should try out the minigame.
I’ll skip the two most common arguments I see: Pets Are Cute! They Give You Achievements! If you thought pets were cute enough to be worth collecting you’d already be doing it. If you’re an achievement hunter at all, you know they give you achievements. They have their own tab in the achievements window.
So, duh. And yeah, that was me skipping them. Ahem. Moving on.
The most notable reason to start pet battling is probably lesser charms. You have a chance to get Lesser Charms from virtually any pet fight as long as you’re level capped. I’ve gotten from 2-6 at the end of any particular battle. This means even if you’re just in queue for LFR or whatever, and you pull out the cat you just bought from Donni Anthania to kill rats in Stormwind, you could get several lesser charms in the meantime. I got 3 of them from the very first pet battle I did on the 5.3 PTR. Yeah, you could just do dailies to get these instead. But look, if I ever see Anji Autumnlight again it’ll be too soon.
I still need to accumulate Lessers to trade for Mogu Runes so I can repeatedly get a second shot at a Ji-Kun Hatchling or whatever. I’m sure there are other uses for the Runes as well, like gear or something. Psh. The chance to get a charm increases based on the level of the pets you fight, but you get them regardless of whether you fight them with all like level pets or with level 25 ringers. When I was doing the Beasts of Fable battles, I averaged 20 per day just from doing that, which means there are 20 meaningless tasks you have to do for these bozos.
Even if you’re not max level, now that pet battles grant XP, that’s a good reason to start battling. As I noted in this post, the XP starts off kind of crappy at low pet levels. I don’t know about you though, I’d rather level an entire team from scratch again than go through Hyjal or Vashj’ir again. Especially Hyjal. But ESPECIALLY Vashjir.
I don’t know about you, but I just started twitching a little. As noted above too, you can queue for LFD and pet battle instead of questing for an extra XP boost in between.
The last reason I’m going to mention is financial. There is a lot of coin to be made buying and selling rarer pets in general. The thing is, if you level up those pets your margin suddenly drastically increases.
It takes literally an hour to level a pet like that from 1-25 if you have a few trainers left up in Pandaria for the day, but even if not it doesn’t take terribly long. It’s also more effort so you’re less likely to get into undercut wars with other players. Most of that hour is travel time too, so combine that with a gathering profession and you’re really in business.
You can also get upgrade stones, which will make you a ton of coin if you trade in pets like the Argent Tourney or Childrens’ Week uncommons. Even just the BOE stones (which are admittedly exceedingly rare) can go for upwards of 5K a pop.
I really hope I convinced you to give pet battling a shot. Even if you weren’t convinced, at least I’m comforted by the fact that I don’t have to do Vashjir again. So, win win, right?
Children’s Week is coming soon (the start date is 4/29 this year), so as we get closer I’ll be doing posts on the pets you should grab first if you’re starting from zero. Some of these pets have unique movesets that make them valuable for any collector. It’s not that I don’t like Speedy a whole bunch, but for the most part, a turtle’s a turtle.
All the Childrens’ Week pets start at Uncommon quality, so you’ll need a stone to make all of them rares. However, they’re all tradeable too, so you may be able to snap up an improved one from the AH.
Aside from being a clumsy penis metaphor, Willy is the only currently attainable non-combat pet which resembles a classic d&d Beholder, which could make him useful for RPers. Even more unique, one of his idle actions among others zaps other players’ pets into oblivion with an eyebeam. If you’re in the AH or a raid with the gratingly cheerful Singing Sunflower, bring out Willy and see if he can do something about it.
But sometimes, he doesn’t feel like it. Clearly this is my kind of pet.
As mentioned earlier, Willy’s moves make him unique. He’s Magic, so he defends well against Aquatic. Magic attacks are strong against Flying, but he has a varied toolkit, dealing Critter and Undead damage as well. All this make him a fairly strong leveling pet for a newbie, especially if you run along the coasts fighting aquatics.
You get him from the OG 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.
My current aim in-game is to get rares of every tamed pet. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out in Dalaran Crater, looking for a rare Lofty Libram. As I flapped around uselessly killing dozens and dozens of rats, I noticed something odd.
I saw the towers of the Undead in the not so distant distance, and in between this pinnacle of unstable magic and the plague-happy undead, there was… a farm? What kind of wacko would try to farm there? I mean, Arathi Basin notwithstanding.
As I moved closer, I saw the traditional yellow exclamation point on my map. Current for a level 90. Alright, this is going to be good.
This is a takeoff on the popular tower defense app, one of my personal favorites, Plants vs Zombies. You’re in a ‘vehicle’, so even if you do this on a PVP server you’re unattackable for the duration of your quest.
I use Pitbull and Dominoes, and it screws up the buttons a bit. The display is where the abilities are located for the last leg of the quest. Mousing over each button gave me the information of the ability in the tooltip. The quests will walk you through playing the game bit by bit, what each plant in your arsenal can do, until you get to the big show with the full complement of plants.
Then, after you finish the quest line, you get a pet!
The Singing Sunflower is pretty much junk. It’s an alright support pet, but it has pretty much no offensive oomph. It’s annoying to kill if you don’t have a pet with a weather change ability, and I could see it being somewhat less junk in PVP if you’re less lazy than I am and keep track of cooldowns and swap it out a whole bunch, but UGH.
So, why bother? It’s a little ray of sunshine. It’s almost like having your own portable Sha of Happiness. Scratch that… it’s a little HORRIBLY ANNOYING Sha of Happiness. It sees any horrible place and brightens it up a little.
Every so often, the Singing Sunflower lives up to its name and randomly starts singing. In the AH. In dungeons. EVERYWHERE. The song is a short snippet from a song in Plants vs Zombies, voiced by the person who sang the PvZ song. In fact, because of the traffic to her personal site from searches she also has her own how-to guide for this pet.
The great part is, this song will get stuck in your head and stay there for days. And then, every time you pull it out again, you will repeat this. It is unstoppable! It is inexorable! It is–
The Easter Bunny came to our house today and left a bunch of candy for baby girl. Here’s a short post with a few Easter-themed pets you can buy in-game to celebrate the holiday. In a roundabout way, it brings real life in-game. You’ll pay for pets, and I get to pay for Stanley Steamer after a toddler smears chocolate all over the couch.
Elwynn Lamb – Purchased with tokens from the Argent Tournament. His group heal Bleat and sleep ability Soothe make him a decent support pet. Also, Jesus symbolism, so.
Egbert – An egg that hides itself the night before Easter would be fantastic. He’s kind of crappy as a battler, but look at him go!
Crimson Lasher – A pretty pink flower that seems to enjoy lighting things on fire.
Pterrordax Hatchling – How amazing would it be if waylaid eggs during the egg hunt turned into a bitchin dinosaur instead of disgusting?
Mr. Wiggles – After the austerity of the Lenten season and fasting since Good Friday (because that totally happened), what’s better for Easter dinner than a nice fat ham?
Snowshoe Rabbit – Purchased from either Yarlyn Amberstill at Amberstill Ranch in Dun Morogh, or a Pet Battle trainer if you’re a dwarf. Bunnies are kind of THE thing at Easter.
Sprite Darter Hatchling – Baby dragons aren’t all that festive on their own, but this guy is all manner of Easter pastels. He would totally be at home perched on a church lady’s easter bonnet.
Spring Rabbit – The Noblegarden-centric favorite. Obtained either during Noblegarden (which starts tomorrow!) or off the AH. Has several interesting idle actions. Will make a leap to you if you get too far away. If you find another person with their rabbit out, they make lots of tiny baby rabbits. Nothing says Happy Easter like bow chicka wow wow.
BattlePetRoundup.com 