Posts with tag pets

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Every year, Greatfather Winter brings treats to all the good boys and girls of Azeroth, and this year is no exception. From December 16th until January 2nd, the Feast of Winter Veil teaches us all the true meaning of Winter Veil with a cavalcade of gifts and other fun things like toys. A variety of seasonal pets, achievements, and hats are yours for the taking, including the brand new Rotten Little Helper.

For the complete skinny on what you can get and what you can do, Wowhead has this helpful guide. If you're looking for one of those toys for your toybox, a rare pet, or a hat from one of the bosses (with several new Draenor bosses as well) then you have until January 2nd to get started. May Greatfather Winter watch over you.

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Like in-game pets? Like helping people? Then Blizzard's latest charity pet, the goat-like Argi, is perfect. The pet is available in the Blizzard Store now for $10, 100% of which goes to support the American Red Cross's Ebola relief efforts. Argi is tiny enough to get lost in the tall grass of Shadowmoon Valley, occasionally trips over herself and falls face-first when running, and when left to idle too long will prance and leap in circles to burn off energy. In short, Argi is an adorable addition to any battle pet army.

If adorable isn't your thing, however, Blizzard is also offering Argi bundled with a new mount: the Grinning Reaver. This reaver-style mount wears a skull mask (or at least we hope it's a mask) and will drive fear into the hearts of your enemies. (And possibly also your allies.) You can get Argi and the Grinning Reaver for $30 ($10 of which goes to charity) or the Grinning Reaver alone for $25.

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I've spent so many hours on the (now ironically named) Timeless Isle that I thought I knew everything about it. I was researching how I could help Golganarr to spawn to finally complete the Timeless Champion achievement, and I realized I'd missed something.

I never thought to look for anything interesting by the Celestial Court itself. I figured it was static, like every other quest hub in the game, more or less. I thought the two vendors standing next to the emperor were the only ones who sold anything of note.

Then I stumbled across Whizzig <Merchant of Time> in Wowhead's excellent Timeless Isle guide. I was sure I'd seen this snail-riding gentlemen before. But it never occurred to me that he was, in fact, a "rare vendor." He sells four different vanity items for your Perky Pug, such as Dread Pirate Costume. He also sells Magical Pet Biscuits and (for some reason) a glyph recipe. All of his items cost Timeless Coins. If you've got thousands of extra coins laying around, you might as well spoil your pup.

Once I made this discovery, I took a closer look around the court. There are so many NPCs and so many of them sell useless things that it's easy to overlook things you might actually care about. At this point I also found a pandaren boy named Ku-Mo <Hand-Made Kites>. He sells the Sky Lantern pet for 7500 coins and a consumable Golden Glider for 1000. The latter works just like the engineer's version, but it only works on the island -- if you're willing to risk your neck on a makeshift glider a little kid cobbled together.

You can't help Golganarr to spawn, by the way. You just have to get lucky. Fortunately he has a zone-wide announcement like the Dread Ship Vazuvius, and he takes much longer to kill than the average rare.

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Pet collectors, if you've been waffling over whether or not to pick up the adorable, fuzzy Alterac Brew Pup, this might be the week to do it. This shaggy little critter will not only keep you warm during the cold, mountainous nights, it will carry your beer for you, too. A dwarf's (or pandaren's) best friend, truly. The Alterac Brew Pup will be available for 40% off until September 6th, 2014. Get 'em while they're hot, and while the beer is cold.

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I'm personally not a big pet or mount person. I have the one mount I really ever use, I'm happy with it, and that's pretty much the beginning and end of it. But a lot of people (like my fantastic wife, for example) do like those things. And so, the news that Jonathan LeCraft revealed this weekend will undoubtedly make those people very, very happy - namely, that there will be a new mount for obtaining the 250 mounts achievement Mountacular, the Emerald Drake.

Even more interesting to me, from a game history perspective, is the Time-Locked Box and its occupant, the Bronze Whelpling. This is a pet with, as one might expect, a long history within World of Warcraft.

Fun fact: the bronze whelpling and its summon spell were created in 2004, but never made it into the game.

- Jonathan LeCraft (@TheCrafticus) August 11, 2014

That's a long time to wait for a pet to be introduced. But at last it's here, right? Looking forward to both, at least from the perspective of a guy who wants people to be happy.

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Bendak over at Eyes of the Beast has been doing excellent work over the course of the beta, and one of the things he's discovered is a big expansion to an existing pet family and the creation of an entirely new family - the rhino family has been renamed the clefthooves family (you can see Bendak above with one he tamed) and it now includes all the Outland and Draenor clefthooves in addition to rhinos from Azeroth, and there's a new family called the Stag family, which includes all Azerothian stags and the Talbuks from Outland and Draenor.

The Draenor talbuks aren't currently tameable, but they're slated to be.

I know quite a few hunters who've wanted stags for quite some time. This should make them very happy, and I've always thought it was weird we could tame rhinos but not clefthooves.

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Ten years is a long time. Ten years ago, in 2004, I was 20 years old and entering my third semester of college--also entangled in endless piles of paperwork while I prepared to spend a year studying at the University of New South Wales in Sydney for the calender year 2005. Ten years ago, in November 2004, World of Warcraft officially launched.

The mark that WoW has left on the gaming industry is indisputable--but we're not here for musing retrospectives. At least, not yet. We're here because there's going to be a whole bunch of fun in-game events to celebrate WoW's first decade of existence, and Blizzard has given us a lovely preview of what at least a few of them are.

The Darkmoon Faire has come to the beta servers, and with it, a bunch of updates and additions including games, pets, and vanity items. There are new ways to earn Darkmoon tickets, new ways to spend them, and new discoveries to be made on the mysterious Darkmoon Island. Our friends over at Wowhead have tested out the new games, and they seem like a ton of fun. The first is the Firebird's Challenge, where you have to fly through rings of fire in the air. If you miss, you lose the debuff that keeps you aloft. There are a series of achievements for staying aloft, and earning the last and most difficult of them rewards you with the Blazing Wings, a vanity item that gives you a pair of fiery but non-functional wings for an hour.

The second game is a racing game around the island, with a series of quests to go with it. You have to make it to certain markers along the western part of the Faire, while zeppelins shoot at you to slow you down. There are a number of power-ups to be had along the way, from simple sprint shoes to a sack of bunnies that will distract a zeppelin from shooting at you.

In addition, there is a new pet trainer--Cristoph VonFeasal--and a new pet you can win in the bag of goodies you get for defeating him. There are a bunch of new vanity items, including both skirt- and pants-set versions of NPC clothing items found only in Gilneas. Sadly, these clothing items are white-quality, which means they cannot be transmogged. Finally, there are, as ever, a whole set of new epic-quality Darkmoon deck trinkets--the Iron Deck, Moon Deck, Visions Deck, and War Deck--which I'm sure will be hot commodities come WoD. I'm glad to see the Faire getting an update, it's one of my favorite regular events, and new things to do there are always welcome.

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Over the last few days we've all become intimately familiar with the new Molten Corgi pet and its model. Two more datamined battle pet models have joined it: the Grovestrider Hatchling and the Draenei Micro Defender. In addition, there's another new pet currently sans model: the Dwarf Gronnling. I am going to make an educated guess and say that this last pet probably looks like a teeny tiny gronn. If so, that'll be fantastic. I've always wanted one of those.

The Grovestrider Hatchling is a fun, if pretty typical-looking small bird model with blue, green, and sliver feathers and red eyes. Of the two new models, the Draenei Micro Defender definitely steals the show. As one of the Wowhead commenters points out it looks like a little Protoss. It's got two shiny shields and some chic crystalline armor. I'm definitely going to try and get my grubby little paws on that thing as soon as I can.

Images courtesy of Wowhead

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In the past Blizzard has occasionally given out battle pets as gifts to players for logging in during the game's anniversary period. Previous anniversary rewards have included the Baby Blizzard Bear and Onyxian Whelpling. This year is an extra-special landmark: the 10th anniversary of WoW, and the 20th of the Warcraft franchise as a whole. As a result, we seem to be getting an extra-special battle pet, a humanoid called Hogs, who bears a strangely-similar aesthetic to that legend of lowbie leveling: Hogger.

I love the choice of a Hogger tribute for the 10th anniversary pet. It's such a community touchstone for those of us who have played the game--if you've at any point leveled a human character, even to 10 or so, you've probably encountered Hogger. That may not be all of us, but it's many of us, and it's a great choice for the game's first decade of life. Here's to Hogs!

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Leveling a new pet from 1 to 25 can be a time-consuming slog -- but it doesn't have to be. Though you'll need to start with a few solid level 25 pets, you can let two max-level pets carry you while saving your third slot with a that needs the experience. Then, just fight your way through high-level pet trainers with this guide from Adventures in Poor Taste. The trick is in having the right level 25 pets so you can win battles without having to rely on your third, under-level pet.

The guide walks you through the ideal pets for the job -- you might want to hit up their guide to the 7 best beginner pets while you're at it -- and gives you a play-by-play for what to expect from all of Pandaria's pet trainers (plus a couple of extras). So what are you waiting for? Break out your Safari Hat level your way up to the 30 max-level pets you'll need to enter the Celestial Tournament. Good luck!

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