Posts with tag manias-arcania

• Beetles Tenacity pets that like fruit and fungus, these are bugs. Just imagine Neil Patrick Harris reading your pet's mind, and you're in the ballpark.
• Dogs Ferocity pets with a fairly broad appetite, these will eat meat, cheese, fish, bread, fruit, and fungus, so they're easy to feed. They're dogs. I'm positive you know what a dog is.
• Foxes WoW Insider shadow priest columnists, they like to eat public adulation. Ferocity pets like the dog, with a hankering to snack on meat, fish and fruit. They do a little dance which is painfully adoable, like what I imagine gnome shaman's ghost wolf forms would do.
• Monkey Cunning pets that enjoy fungus and fruit and being fairly closely related to humans for a pet. What's next, Vrykul pets? Actually, that would be pretty cool. I'd tame King Ymiron myself.
• Shale Spider These seem to be an exotic Tenacity pet (which means only beast mastery hunters could tame one) that are made of stone and that eat meat, fish, raw meat, and raw fish. Why they don't eat rocks is beyond me.

There's more than just new pet families, however.

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Mania of Mania's Arcania has some interesting ideas as to what Blizzard should do with Hunter pets to improve them and the whole system around them. I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds Spirit Beasts a little odd.
• Blog Azeroth's shared topic this week is, "Relationships within Azeroth." Check out what many bloggers had to say about it!
• World of Matticus's Mimetir has kicked off a two part series on his 10 golden rules of raid leading.
• You asked, The Stoppable Force answered. What happens when Lil' KT and Mr. Bigglesworth are stuck in a room together?

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Episode 11 of the Hunting Party Podcast is available for download!
• The team lineup for the MLG tournament in Anaheim upcoming in just a couple short weeks has been officially announced.
• Mania's Arcania speculates on how many new hunter pet families we'll get in Cataclysm, or if we'll get any at all.
• Episode 64 of the Twisted Nether Blogcast is in a round table format, featuring bloggers Graylo (Gray Matter), Honorshammer (Honor's Code), Matticus (World of Matticus), Saresa (Destructive Reach) and Stoneybaby (Big Hit Box).
• Speaking of Honor's Code, the blog has started a series on setting up a UI for Protection Paladin.

I love this, as I seem to love most of the things that Mania does. She's just posted that she's put together a whole guild of hunters, all with XP turned off at different levels, for one purpose: testing pets as they move up the leveling ranks. She says she cheated a little bit to do it -- transferred alts from other realms, and it's Alliance-only -- but just having the idea to put something like this together is super creative. We've talked about people who've leveled up one of every class before, but I never considered just how much the XP-off option changes the game in terms of what Mania calls "special purpose characters."

Of course, raiding at level 60 is one way to use it, but you can go even lower than that -- want to farm Runecloth without it getting too boring? Roll up a death knight, and leave him in Felwood to grind on Furbolgs. Really love running, really running, Scarlet Monastery with your friends? You can all roll characters to 39 (or lower, if you're looking for a regular challenge), turn XP off, and leave them camped outside the instance. Turning XP off means you can create characters for almost any purpose, and having heirloom items (especially if you buy cloth, which any alt can wear, even if it means they take an armor hit in some cases) means that leveling them up doesn't take more than a few days of free time. Lots of interesting ideas to play around with there for sure.

And here lies the final chapter in the Taming of the Worgen saga: Mania reports that, just a little while after the troublesome Worgen Garwal was hotfixed to be untameable, Blizzard has magically changed all of the already-tamed Worgen to level 68 (or Hunter's level minus five) wolves. Why level 68? Because, Mania says, they've all been turned into Winterskorn Worgs, a level 63-69 NPC that wanders around the Howling Fah-jord.

So that's the end of that. Obviously, no one really expected to keep those pets as their own, and especially with all of the Worgen-as-playable-race speculation flying around, it wouldn't do for Hunters to have one of those humanoids at their beck and call. Some Hunters who went to the trouble of taming probably won't be too happy. But the good news is that the new white wolf in your stable is completely fixed -- it has all of the normal talent trees and abilities that wolves are supposed to have. Guess you and your pet Garwal were just never meant to be.

As the holiday weekend rolled around, we started to get a number of tips that Hunters were successfully training themselves a...Worgen pet? Worgen?!? How was this level of cool allowed into the game without anyone knowing about it until now?

Well, it turns out that the Worgen pet is in fact a very clever use of game mechanics somewhat akin to those used by Hunters in order to tame the (now sadly vanished) Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Garwal, a warg NPC in northern Howling Fjord who can turn into a Worgen as part of a questline (the link is the Horde version, but it's the same for both Horde and Alliance) can actually be tamed and kept in Worgen form if the timing is right. Mania's Arcania has a look at the process used here, which involves a little math, a little guesswork, and the strategic use of Wyvern Sting.

For those of us who like to collect stuff in WoW, one of the cooler announcements for patch 3.2 was the inclusion of a whole new set of raptor hatchling pets, dropped around the world by rare and elite raptors. Of course, it was also an announcement of dread for serious collectors who can tell horror stories of killing thousands upon thousands of slimes and dragons for rare pets before. But will it be all as bad as that? WoW fansites have been on the case.

Mania, maven of Hunter pets, has also been looking into the drop rates and drop mobs, and has compiled a handy chart on her blog. Between Mania and the news on Warcraft Pets, it seems we can mostly confirm that the rare raptors (such as, for example, Takk the Leaper) will always drop their pets, while those that drop only off elites have a very rare drop rate more similar to the aforementioned slimes or dragons.

• Ming over at WoW Riot talks about his Rogue predicitions for the season in 3.1. A good read!
• Many Annas hate Northrend. But it's okay Northrend, I've still got that lovin' feeling for you.
• Mania's Arcania gears up the lackadaisical Hunter.
• OurGirlFriday continues her series: What kind of Warrior should I be?
• Ret QQ is the best QQ, complete with input from Ghostcrawler.

Mania's got an excellent, if longer-than-usual post up about an issue I'm dealing with as well: the need to play, but confusion about just what to do in the game. I've pretty much done everything I want to do on my Hunter -- after a very lucky night the other week, I'm decked out in all the gear I want, I've topped off my professions, and while I do have some reps to grind out yet (I still want a few rep mounts), most everything I want just depends on dailies, and those I can finish in just a few minutes a day. But just like Mania I've still got that itch to play, to explore and advance and progress, with nowhere to go.

For Mania, the answer turned out to be going to a Death Knight -- she may discover that she's opened up a whole new world in choosing to level with a completely different class. An alt was also the answer for me, but I have a few different reasons, the first of which is Engineering -- I thought for a while, after hitting 450 Leatherworking on my (also Skinning) Hunter that I would switch to Engie and just buy all the mats, but I think it'll be more fun (and profitable) leveling up a Mining/Engineering alt. And he can always make the BoE chopper for any of my characters as well.

But while an alt is sometimes the answer, there are lots of things you can dive into to find a completely new area in the game -- try Arenas for the first time, do a Wintergrasp grind, seek out an old world reputation or title that you've always wanted. We're very lucky, in a game like this, to have lots and lots of new things to try even when it seems like we've done everything we want.

As many of you pointed out through numerous, apprehensive e-mails, our favorite Hunter pet resource was down for a while. As Mania pointed out, however, she was aware of the issue and was working actively to get the site back online. It seems like she's knocked the right heads, too, because Petopia is back on its feet again, supplying us with all the Hunter pet information we could ever want. So as unsettling as Petopia's disappearance was, especially in light of another favorite WoW resource closing its doors, there's no need to panic. Whew.

Mania's been doing a great job of covering the undocumented Hunter changes in the latest patch -- she's got them on this post down below the usual patch notes. In short, there are a few pets that have become untameable: the Sapphire Hive Queen in Sholazar Basin, the three Oracles spirits summoned during their daily quest, and Gezzarak the Hunter, a Warp Stalker summoned back in Skettis during the Aversarial Blood quest. Strangely enough, problems with those pets have been fixed, so if you've got one tamed from before the patch, it should work better, but you can't seem to tame them now. And finally, the low-level blue moths on Bloodmyst Isle can now be tamed (apparently though the ability to tame Moths got added a while back, these guys couldn't be tamed for some reason).

Of course, lots of BM Hunters aren't real thrilled about the changes to their class, and getting to tame some low-level moths probably isn't a good enough tradeoff. But still, if you've been waiting to go all the way back to Bloodmyst and pick up a moth to take to 80 with you, now's your chance.

Mania has released the 2009 Petopia calendar, featuring 12 beautiful images of some of the best pets in the game -- pretty much the perfect gift for the Hunter in your life. The pictures were put together by Aaron Perez, and each one was commissioned by Mania herself, so the calendar features all pets picked by her, including many of the new pet types: there's my current pet, a Rhino, in there for December and of course the Spirit Beast makes an appearance as well. It's available right now over on her Cafepress page for $19.99.

Which may seem a little expensive, but Mania breaks the price down on her site: of the $20, a full $15 goes right back to Cafepress for printing costs and their profit. And of the $5 she gets, Mania sends it back to the artist for his work, so she doesn't even really expect to break even. Which is too bad -- there's certainly interest in these, I think, and it would be nice if we could set it up so the money goes somewhere besides Cafepress (but of course, then Mania would have to find a different printer and a different way to sell it, and who knows how much that all costs).

At any rate, it'll definitely turn out to be a nice calendar, so if you know any pet tamers who need help keeping track of the date, there's your holiday gift.

No, I'm not talking about parenting and honey-do skills. In Wrath of the Lich King, each hunter family will have its own unique skill, just as Warp Stalkers currently have Warp.

While we've known this since the release of the Beta patch notes, we now have some of the details, courtesy of Mania of Mania's Arcania and Petopia.

In fact, some of the pet skills are so enticing that I'm beginning to think I'm going to need about 8 more stable slots! Here is a look at some of the juicier talents:

• Bats will be able to stun an opponent for 2 seconds.
• Bears will be able to Swipe similarly to druids, hitting three enemies in melee range.
• Birds of Prey will be able to disarm opponents for 6 seconds.
  
• Hyenas will reduce movement speed.
• Moths will be increasing their own attack power, and healing themselves.
• Nether Rays will have a spellcasting interrupt, preventing any spells from that school for one second.

Are you as excited as I am? Don't forget to head over to Petopia to check out the full, detailed list. What pets will you be taming?

Tip: Don't confuse pet skills with pet talents! Read up on the new pet talent trees for more information.

We had heard that there were problems with the Blizzard Authenticator (a few people who'd ordered them had gotten their money refunded by Blizzard), but apparently there are at least a few going out. Mania got hers -- she says that it works great, that she has already associated it with her accounts, and that she's thrilled with her purchase.

Not everybody is so lucky -- reader Tweaky emailed us to say that his order was supposed to go out UPS Next Day Air, but after it didn't show up and he had a tussle with Customer Support, he then found out it was actually going through the USPS and that it would show up late. No word on whether he's seen his yet or not. A few people commented on our last post that they actually had shipping returned to them, so maybe Blizzard originally planned to send some UPS, and then had to switch to a cheaper mailing method.

At this point, Blizzard has the keyfob sold out on their website, and there's no indication when we'll see any more (soon, probably). It appears that not only did they vastly underestimate demand for the Authenticator, but that people are seriously concerned about the security of their World of Warcraft account. No other game company has ever offered anything like this before, but given the response, it could soon become a standard.