It’s that time of year again. For 2 weeks the blog is about to get real incoherent as I get plastered on rich German Beer and don’t really eat anything other than soft pretzels. It’s Brewfest time!

One of the very first seasonal pets, most veteran players will have a wolpertinger or 5 hanging out in their logs. It’s a critter, and starts off Uncommon, so for most battlers that’s where they’ll stay. He’s a fairly decent pet, though.

To get the Wolpertinger if you don’t have one yet, go to your faction’s Brewfest area, outside of Orgrimmar or Ironforge. There are breadcrumbs in most major cities. I also made a map:

There are 2 ways to get the Wolpertinger. The first way you can also employ to get another holiday pet, the Pink Pachyderm. Every day there are many repeatable quests you can do to  earn holiday currency, as well as a few one-time quests, basically there to show you how to do the dailies. Ram racing, repelling invaders, all kinds of shenanigans.

This currency isn’t a technical ‘currency’ found in your Currency tab, though. It’s an item which takes up bag space. You can use this currency to buy either of the holiday pets, or any number of other vanity items.

The two pets are (clumsily) highlighted here. You might notice the Wolpertinger is quite a bit more expensive than the Pachyderm. Luckily, there’s another method for obtaining that tankard.

You can do this quest with any level character, and it’s relatively simple, though if your cross-realm is rather populated you may want to try & snag it at off-hours, or save it until later in the holiday so there’s less competition for the wild wolpertingers. Unless you fiddle with your video settings, it’s already a difficult quest, since the Synthebrew Goggles make it really hard to see anything. Because you’re drunk. Get it?

The wolpertinger itself is a somewhat odd mix of abilities. It’s the only Critter with a strong offensive Dragonkin nuke in Sleeping Gas, though there aren’t a ton of opponents where that combo is particularly useful. Sleeping Gas shares a slot with Fly By, one of the easier to use damage debuffs in the minigame, and this pet can use it starting at a relatively quite low level. He also starts off with the utilitarian critter Scratch.

The Wolpertinger rounds out his moveset with Beast abilities. Rampage is alright if combined with that Fly By debuff, but is fairly mediocre for the 3 round tradeoff. By contrast, Headbutt is fairly stellar, and has a chance to stun. Horn Attack is his last move. It’s an alright move, but the Wolpertinger is relatively slow, making his RNG-unfriendly stun a near impossibility, especially in PVP, where speedy pets are king.

As you level he gets relatively worse and worse, but he’s a very solid choice for an early team.

Just not early as in, in the morning, as in I really wasn’t kidding about that beer.

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.