Posts with tag non-combat-pets

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Pet Battles are one of Mists of Pandaria's most anticipated features, and Blizzard's been taking their time implementing these furry free-for-alls to get the quality just right. Today the devs have unveiled a new Pet Battle system section on the MoP website highlighting the ins and outs of the system, including how you can get new pets in the wild, what Pet Battle stats mean, and more.

The devs have stated in the past that pet battling is meant to be a mostly stress-free affair. You won't see the names of the people whose pets you battle, and the game will only keep track of your wins, not your losses. Don't expect to find bleeding-edge Pet Battle progression groups any time soon. That's the right call, though -- the game needs more fun, casual stuff to do, not less.

Check out the Pet Battle guide, and if you have an MoP beta account, patch it today -- Pet Battles are playable!

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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My warrior recently found herself farming a lot of Khorium in order to build her Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, and while flying a seemingly endless number of circuits in Nagrand in order to get the metal (which is a rare spawn on other Outland ore nodes), I started to wonder where this farm fell in relation to other grinds. Khorium sometimes cooperates by spawning regularly, but this time, it was its usual, awful self. I'm sure the Burning Crusade-era players can relate.

And yet, somehow I still don't think that khorium is the worst thing in the game to farm. Off the top of my head, I can think of others that are or have been equally bad or worse:

• Non-combat pets A lot of farmable non-combat pets (e.g., the dragon whelps, the firefly, the Fox Kit) have a 1-in-1,000 drop rate and a limited number of mobs up at a given time.
• Combat pets Waiting for a particular pet to spawn somewhere and then finding and taming it before someone else does can be maddening if you're consistently unlucky.
• Fishing Accomplished Angler is justifiably famous for being stuffed with requirements full of RNG. Let's talk about the year it took me to get Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box! On second thought, let's not.
• The Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest This disappeared in Cataclysm, and with it went all the work that went into farming up bug parts and Elementium Ingots, which is where I got stuck in the chain. (So close, and yet so far.)
• The Insane This almost goes without saying, although it's easier these days than it used to be.

Your thoughts, readers? What's the toughest thing in the game to farm?

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User CJGibson over on Reddit's /r/wow community made an excellent point earlier today concerning the Children's Week pets that are only available while the holiday is running.

Ordinarily, it's only possible for one character to get three pets each year: one from the classic Azeroth quests (Piglet's Collar, the Rat Cage, the Turtle Box, or the Snail Shell), one from the Outland quests (Elekk Training Collar, Egbert's Egg, Sleepy Willy, or Legs), and one from the Northrend quests (the Curious Wolvar Pup or the Curious Oracle Hatchling). But you know how in Mists of Pandaria all of the non-combat pets on your account will be shared amongst your characters? If you run a series of alts through the quests and pick different pets on each one, you'll have all the pets on all your characters once the Mists of Pandaria content patch hits (or, at the latest, once Mists itself does).

The tip was so brilliant that I slapped myself for not thinking of it, so I wanted to draw some attention to it here as quickly as possible. Pet hunters? Save yourselves four years' worth of waiting, and get cracking.

If this is your first year with the holiday and you need any help with the achievements, you can find our guide to Children's Week here.

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I started my first alt, a druid, when Ulduar was out. I meant for her to be an extra healer for my guild at the time, but I leveled her as a cat. Once I got to 80, I was playing as cat and tree for a while until I got pulled into a Gluth run as an off tank. "Just go bear, put up Demo Roar, Mangle, and Maul as much as possible -- oh, and taunt when we tell you to," they told me. The thrill of taunting and not dying a swing later sold me for life. I have been bear tanking on my druid alt ever since.

When the Argent Tournament appeared, I got excited at the pets each faction offered. For Alliance, I had access to both the Teldrassil Sproutling and the Dun Morogh Cub. While my warlock jousted eternally for a Crusader title, my druid was content to just snag the sproutling and the cub. Whenever she out being a bear, she'd have the sproutling out; whenever she was throwing heals, she'd have the cub running by her side.

Now that I have a second druid to cover the caster specs, my bear druid is a full-time feral. The cub doesn't come out to play anymore, but the Teldrassil Sproutling dances and sleeps just about anywhere.

On my lowbie Horde toons, I always get a Horde Balloon. There's always a Celestial Dragon by my guild's bear tank when she runs in for the pull. My caster druid has the mechanical bunny out, since she's an engineer who loves cute animals like Mylune. One of our moonkin hopes that non-combat pets will be nameable in Mists so he can name his always-present Moonkin Hatchling after his daughter. D'awwww!

With Pet Battles coming out, there will always be people hunting for the next best performing pet. But do you have any pets you're already partial to on certain characters for other reasons?

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A few new achievements were for added pet collectors in the latest PTR patch today, according to Wowhead. The small patch on the test realms contains three new achievements for players who collect 100, 125, and 150 non-combat pets.

• Petting Zoo awards Nuts' Acorn.
• Menagerie awards Brilliant Kaliri.
• Littlest Pet Shop awards Celestial Dragon.

Just as with previous pet collecting achievements (Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart, Lil' Game Hunter), our obsessive efforts will once again be rewarded with a unique pet. We've seen Nuts' Acorn in the patch 4.2 game files before, and the Celestial Dragon (pictured above) appeared in game files back in Wrath of the Lich King, but the Brilliant Kaliri is a new addition. Currently, there aren't any datamined pictures of the pet, but I can only assume it will be very similar to the Kaliri mobs found in Skettis and other zones from The Burning Crusade.

One thing I'm curious about with these pets is if they'll have any special animations or Easter eggs like previous pets have. If you remember, the skunk pet from the 50-pet achievement pays tribute to Pepé Le Pew from Looney Tunes by chasing nearby Black Tabby and Bombay cat pets.

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The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!

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Addon Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience: the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond -- your addons folder will never be the same. This week, Addon Spotlight reaches into the addon grab bag and pulls out some delicious randomness for you.

Salutations, friends. Welcome to another exciting week on Addon Spotlight, where addons reign supreme amongst the pitiful, smelly masses of other crap you could talk about related to World of Warcraft. Addons encompass it all! We are champion.

This week, Addon Spotlight is heading into mount and pet territory, discussing a wonderful little addon called Equus Infinata. Equus not only caught my eye because of how simple and pretty the addon looks, but how it integrates straight into your already existing mount and pet interface pane. As a special treat, I asked Robert, the addon's author, a couple of questions about creating his first addon. Click for more!

Gold doesn't matter, right? It's just gold, and you get more than enough for your needs through dailies and the occasional mining spree. Why even bother getting Gold Capped? It's not like you'll ever be able to spend it all! Wait a sec, how does that bank alt have a single Ulduar clear and have Mimiron's head? Every week, check in with Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast, as he attempts to mold all the random information jostling for cerebral space into a coherent, readable post about how to make gold in the World of Warcraft.

In real life, engineers are brilliant and dedicated individuals who work together with tradespeople to accomplish some of the technological marvels of the modern world. Historically, these are the people who built the pyramids, the boats that brought Europeans to the new world, and the spaceships that took mankind to the moon and back. In World of Warcraft, engineers are a bunch of goofy characters who speak in childishly high voices and have a tendency to blow themselves up by accident in humorous ways. Anyone else sense that whoever did the concept art at Blizzard for gnomish and goblin engineers flunked out of engineering?

Anyways, while engineering is an amazing profession for certain parts of the game, it's dead last when it comes to making money. There are only really a few things engineers can do to make cash.

Wryxian

In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

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This quote was from the Cataclysm profession preview we posted about earlier. Engineering is currently barely ahead of farming in terms of income potential, and it's nice to see that Blizzard acknowledges this and might fix it.

Not all hope is lost, though. A savvy player can eak out a living if they focus on the right markets. First off, the elephant in the room: selling epic ammo.

Gladiators, rejoice! Or at least those of you that participated in the 2009 Arena Tournament -- Murkimus, gladiator murloc extraordinaire has been changed as of today's patch. The pet, which was previously only available on whatever character you used the code with, will now apply to your entire Battle.net account. So if you claimed your Murkimus on one character, be prepared to receive a surprise in the mail on your other characters when you log in. Watch your fingers, that spear is sharp. Here's the full announcement:

Bashiok

With the release of patch 3.3.3 those who received the Murkimus pet for their participation in the 2009 Arena Tournament will notice that the pet is being changed to apply to their entire Battle.net account and all associated World of Warcraft licenses. If you previously claimed a Murkimus code for one character on an account this change will mean that all characters on that account, as well as characters on any other World of Warcraft licenses registered to the same Battle.net account, will receive a Murkimus in their in-game mailboxes.

With this change you'll finally be able to play any of your characters, stand up defiantly, and exclaim "I'm Murkimus!"

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So Gladiators, enjoy your pet -- on whatever character you'd like. I'll be over here, wishing I'd participated in it!

The Spawn got her Wind Rider Cub on Friday and it has since been slept with, rained on and taken for a ride with Barbie. His name is now Lionel and he has become good friends with Murky the Murloc. Together they embark on great adventures and battle the nefarious deeds of the Darth Vader Happy Meal toy. (Don't get me started on the fact that McDonalds believes that Star Wars is for boys and iCarly is for girls. Seriously.)

Have you shown us your plushies yet? We have some really great entries already, but yours could be even better. You have until midnight, March 10th to send us your photos of your Plushie in the Wild and/or Plushie in Captivity. WoWTCGLoot.com has generously provided the loot codes for the prizes.

All of the contest details are after the break.

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

• Restokin answers a popular set of healing questions floating around the intertubes.
• WoW Relief has a good point about the new microtransaction pets and Blizzard's history with Make-a-Wish.
• Altadin: 25 divided by 10.
• Stormstrike sits down with an interview of the developer behind Gear Score.

Back in June I brought you the news that FigurePrints were bringing out a new range in their 3D printed collectable WoW models named FigurePets. The original line up featured a limited run of three non-combat pets: The Clockwork Rocket Bot, Stinker the Skunk, and Speedy the Turtle -- who was by far my favorite!

For the readers out there who were fortunate enough to get their hands on a set of the original FigurePets then you can attest to how awesome they really are -- these little guys rock! I've got mine standing in formation around my Kungen FigurePrint letting everyone who comes near my computer know that I am a WoW player (or should that be "playa?" It does sound far more "gangsta" that way).

So it gives me great pleasure to inform you that FigurePets are back with a brand new limited series of three new non-combat pets. The line up this time is as follows: