More pets for Hunters-- bug or feature?
by Mike Schramm 
May 24th 2007 at 4:34PM
Petopia (which has been a great Hunter resource for a long time, but only recently added a great blog to the mix), has a really interesting note for Hunters: you can now, apparently, tame an extra pet.It's always been annoying to be a Hunter in search of a new pet-- you have to either stable or permanently abandon the one you have with you, which leaves you without a pet for a while. And considering that taming new pets is how you learn new pet abilities, it's a pretty important thing to do. So for a long time, Hunters have asked for a way to tame new pets without having to go without their old ones for a while. And apparently, that's what Petopia found is now live in the new patch-- when you want to tame a new pet, you need only dismiss (not abandon) the pet you have, and you are able to somehow tame another pet.
If you then go back to the Stable Master, your dismissed pet will have been placed in any stable spots you have open. If you don't have one open, but then buy one, Petopia reports that the dismissed pet will appear in your purchased slot, and that all three pets will be available to you, even after you log in and out. You can even dismiss and tame a pet multiple times-- at one point, Petopia had a total of five pets (two inaccessible from the stable) to juggle at a time.
This a huge feature to be undocumented, which actually leads me, and a few other players, to believe that it's a bug. People who have tried it report that some strange things are happening-- selected pets are showing up in the wrong place and so on (although from what I've seen, no pets have actually been lost yet-- then again, there's always a first time, so go for this at your own risk). It could be, also, that this was a feature Blizzard was building in, but didn't get done in time for the patch, and is being found in its early state by Hunters. In the meantime, now might be the best time to go learn those new pet abilities you've haven't been able to pick up because you didn't want to abandon your three best friends.
Filed under: Hunter, Tricks, How-tos, Bugs, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jamus May 24th 2007 6:02PM
I have been wanting something like this for a while. i hope a refined version will stay put in the game. Especially handy for those pets that are in far off corners where you have to trek out solo to find them.
Serenity May 24th 2007 5:29PM
It's not a bug, and it's not undocumented, it's late. This was promised to us in 2.0/expansion and never made it in.
bwest0526 May 25th 2007 3:15AM
Serenity, do you have a link to where that is stated? I would hate for my wife to try this with her hunter and some how lose a pet that she loves. Thanks!
Ryan May 25th 2007 8:09AM
I really hate hunters as a matter of principal (unless they're our guild hunters, who are the rare exceptions who rock face), but this seems like a sensible change which should be the default behavior since the beginning imo.
Coherent May 29th 2007 1:57PM
I experienced something strange in association with this recently: I had dismissed my current pet and tamed another one to see if my current pet would end up back in my stable. It did not! The open slot in my stable was still blank.
HOWEVER, after logging out overnight and starting the game up the next day, my OLD pet was back and my new pet had vanished! My NEW pet was not in my open stable slot and was nowhere to be seen.
I then abandoned my old pet and then cast "Call Pet" and my new pet appeared! Scary!
Maybe this is a bugged "Feature in progress" where they want to give us the functionality, but it doesn't work right yet. I would LOVE to be able to tame new pets without having to travel to a stable to put my old pets away. But I don't like it when my old pet vanishes to nowhere-land or switches places with my new pet mysteriously.