ArvAsh Ketchum, WoW Pet Battle Tamer

When Mists of Pandaria first came out, I really didn’t spend too much time on Pet Battles.  My goal was to quickly get Arv to 90 and work on his professions and the many reputations to get as raid ready as I could.  I caught a couple of pets that were scattered around Orgrimmar and I remember Navi trying to get me some Tiny Bog Beasts out in the Wetlands, but my team was too low-level to battle.  So after achieving the Pandaren Ambassador achievement and getting all the 5.0 reputations to Exalted a couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to go on a Pet Battle Blitz and go and catch them all.  Before MoP, I had around 180 pets, which I thought was a lot, but I didn’t realize there was almost three times more than that to catch all over Azeroth.

I wanted to level up an all TCG team, consisting of my Spectral Tiger Cub, Ethereal Soul-Trader and Rocket Chicken, but got as far as level 6 before I realized that the Cub and Trader were both Magic types.  I thought that diversity would benefit me as I made my way to level 25, so I switched out the Trader for my Celestial Dragon.  Diversity didn’t last long though; one of my first rare captures was a Nether Faerie Dragon in Feralas.  The Faerie was tearing up most of the wild pet battles I was encountering, so I switched it for the Rocket Chicken.  This team served me well, and so the Spectral Tiger Cub, Celestial Dragon and Nether Faerie Dragon became my first pets to reach level 25.

While leveling my team and capturing new pets and defeating the Tamers around Azeroth, I picked up a lot of the Pet Battle achievements, which helped pushed me over the 15,000 achievement points mark.  All these Pet Battle achievements also give me a couple new pets, the Jade Tentacle and Venus, and I also got Porcupette from a Pet Supply bag.

Some pets, though, were not so easy to catch, namely the Minfernal, Silithid Hatchling and Scourged Whelpling.  I parked some of my alts in their respective spawn points and would log in everyday for a couple of minutes to see if any were up.  I was actually surprised that the Minfernal was the first one I caught out of the three, with Cross-Realm Zoning there were a lot of people camping Felwood for these guys.  The Scourged Whelpling took the longest and I hardly saw anyone else looking for them.

Raid Pets

In patch 5.1, Blizzard released 12 new pets that can be obtained by defeating bosses in the older raids, specifically Blackwing Lair, Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, Molten Core and Naxxramas.  Here is a list of the pets and the bosses they drop from:

Blackwing Lair

• Untamed Hatchling – drops from Razorgore the Untamed
• Death Talon Whelpguard – drops from Broodlord Lashlayer
• Chrominius – drops from Chromaggus

Temple of Ahn’Qiraj

• Mini Mindslayer – drops from The Prophet Skeram
• Viscidus Globule – drops from Viscidus
• Anubisath Idol – drops from Emperor Vek’lor

Molten Core

• Corefire Imp – drops from Magmadar
• Harbinger of Flame – drops from Sulfuron Harbinger
• Ashstone Core – drops from Golemagg the Incinerator

Naxxramas

• Giant Bone Spider – drops from Maexxna
• Stitched Pup – drops from Gluth
• Fungal Abomination – drops from Loatheb

I was able to get 7 of the 12 pets on drops and I bought the other 5 from the Auction House.  The Untamed Hatchling and Viscidus Globule were good buys, since Razorgore and Viscidus can be tough to solo without the right class or spec.  Collecting all 12 pets grants you an achievement and a nifty new pet for fans of Naxxramas and Austin Powers:

Mr. Bigglesworth

And I didn’t know Mr. Bigglesworth’s whiskers glowed, lol.

Battle Stones

I’ve managed to collect 8 Battle-Stones so far, one being a Flawless that can be used on any pet and the rest family specific.  My first Battle-Stone was a Mechanical one, so I decided to throw it on my Personal World Destroyer to upgrade him from an Uncommon to a Rare.

Galvatron

The second Battle-Stone I used was a Magic one and I quickly threw that on my Poor quality Minfernal as soon as I got him.  There was no way I was going to camp Felwood any longer to search for a Rare one, lol.

Crusher

I’m still debating on what pets should receive the upgrade treatment, but I’ll have to decide soon as these Stones are taking up valuable bag space again, lol.

Pandaren Spirit Tamers

After easily defeating Grand Master Aki in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, I finally got my chance to battle the special Pandaren Spirit Tamers.  The team I found that was pretty effective against all four (Burning – Fire, Flowing – Water, Whispering – Air and Thundering – Earth) was my Rapana Whelk, Oily Slimeling and Celestial Dragon.

Fighting the Thundering Spirit Tamer

The Whelk is really strong against the Pandaren Spirits, especially against the Earth one.  Because it’s a critter, it can avoid the stuns that the Earth Spirit likes to dish out.  And since the Spirits are part of the Elemental family and weak against Aquatic attacks, the Whelk’s Dive ability can inflict massive damage.

So my strategy is to first use the Whelk to take out the Pandaren Spirit.  I can usually take second pet the Tamer sends out to about half health before my Whelk dies, then I’ll send out my Celestial Dragon to finish the second and third pets.  I’ll use the Slimeling and its dots to clean up anything my Celestial leaves behind.

When you defeat all four Pandaren Spirit Tamers for the first time, you are rewarded with a choice of your very own Pandaren Spirit pet.  You can then defeat the Tamers as a daily quest for a chance at the other Spirit pets.  I took the Earth Spirit pet first as my reward and got really lucky and managed to get the Air and Water ones with the first daily I completed for both.  Navi was kind enough to give the Fire one to me as a present, and that finally brought my pet count to 500.  Bonus internetz points if you can figure out the reference to the Spirit pets names.

Dynames, the Pandaren Fire Spirit

Kyrios, the Pandaren Water Spirit

Exia, the Pandaren Air Spirit

Virtue, the Pandaren Earth Spirit

Pets Left to Get

The pet collecting doesn’t stop at 500…must…collect…more….

• Crawling Claw – the pet you receive while putting Tol’vir fragments together.  I haven’t seen this appear in my archy book yet, hopefully I’ll see it when I finish up the rest of the Pandaria solves.
• Baneling – the companion pet that accompanies the next Starcraft 2 expansion, Heart of the Swarm.  Will have to wait for March to get that.
• Darkmoon Eye – Jeremy Feasel wasn’t kind to me this past Darkmoon Faire, hopefully he’ll be more generous and drop this pet for me in the Darkmoon Pet Supplies bag next month.
• Imperial Moth – my mage Kerian has been doing his Imperial Silk daily, but still hasn’t found this pet yet.  Lots of Silkworms, though. ><
• Searing Scorchling – effin’ Molten Front dailies….hate ’em, but I guess I have to go back to do them now…/sigh
• Clock’em – need to do two more Brawler’s Guild fights to reach Rank 4 four and this guy will finally be mine.
• Qiraji Guardling – have to wait until summer for this guy and then I will finally have the Kalimdor and World Safari Achievements and the Zookeeper title.  Woot!
• Singing Cricket – the reward for the Pro Pet Mob achievement, which is to raise 75 pets to level 25.  Yeah…that’s gonna be a while…
• Sumprush Rodent – these guys are available to battle and capture when someone drops a Rodent Crate in Krasarang Wilds.  The crate can be bought with 2000 Domination Point Commissions, which I am close to getting.  I plan on hosting a LBR, Laid-Back-Rodent night (or day) on Drak’tharon for anyone who would like to get this pet for themselves (my apologies to JD for borrowing his acronym, lol).  I believe Domination Point is phased, so you’ll have to quest through Krasarang until you can open the new 5.1 quests.  I’ll let everyone know when I’ll be doing the LBR party, probably sometime after the holidays.
• Thundering Serpent Hatchling – a guild reward for obtaining a gold medal on all challenge mode dungeons.   Yeah, I won’t be seeing this for a while, lol.

Whew, sorry for the long post, but that’s covers a lot of the Pet Battle Blitz I’ve done the past several weeks, now I need to do more leveling on these guys.  Hmmm, I still have to name a lot of my pets, so  stay tuned!