Archive for July 16, 2012

Pet Battling

July 16, 2012

by Cymre in Beta

Day Two Highlights

Once I had fought quite a few in Durotar, I headed over to The Barrens to see what other types of critters I could find. I engaged the first one I saw. That was a bad move as my core hound was level four and I had selected a level nine to battle. It didn’t end well… :P

After heading back to Org to hand in a couple of quests, I decided to see what the ‘Find Battle’ option was all about. I was hoping it would be like The Last Relic of Argus and teleport me to the nearest critter or something but that was just wishful thinking. I was teleported right outside Org to find my level five core hound in a battle with a level thirteen pet. OUCH!

But the odd thing was, I died soon after entering. I initially thought it was a side effect from battling a much stronger pet. I’ve since found that there’s a glitch which lets the player fall through the earth. FUN! It appears that you can still keep battling even though you’re dead but I didn’t see the point.

I rezzed and continued fighting critters the old-fashioned way, heading over to Mulgore to see what they had to offer.

Day Three

Things eventually came to a standstill with a lot of the issues I was having yesterday. The predominant one involved battles starting with dead pets. Yeah… not much is going to happen like that. It was pretty sporadic though, even in the starting zones. I eventually gave up when the quest to battle one of the Master Pet Tamers kept glitching up. People seem to think it’s a phasing issue in zones. I just hope it gets fixed soon.

If you’re interested in a particular type of pet or even something specific, look no further than the Pet Journal. I had a good look at it today, noticing that some could even be found in raids and dungeons. I thought I would do some general exploring though so I headed to Uldum to see what they had.

Core Hound (8) vs Tol’vir Scarab (23)

When I saw this trio of critters, I was immediately attracted to the scarab. I mean look at it? It looks like a distant cousin to my newly acquired Sand Scarab. Even though I noticed it was level 23, I knew it would kick my ass – well my pet’s ass – and it did. After I while, I continued flying around different zones to try and find the more interesting ones. Eversong Woods has some Ruby Saplings if you’re into miniature trees and Tanaris had some seagulls but since they were so high up, it was impossible to begin a battle due to an ‘unstable ground’ error.

Here are some of today’s highlights.

My what a huge Gazelle

Oh and I finally found a Giraffe in Northern Barrens. This one’s for you Pando :)

Southern Barrens team

The next day, I was excited that the battles were working again so I went looking for another giraffe. It took ages! They seem to be as rare as the cheetah cubs but I found three giraffes by the end of the night.

Tanaris team

Remember those sand kittens hanging around Tanaris?

They are now able to be captured. Hurray! If you were wondering how you get the sea gull (since they are all in flight) just wait until you get one in the challenger’s teams.

Cool insisted on battling me today. Turns out it was a tie… :P

Stonetalon Mountains – Tamer Challenge

Traitor Gluk

Gluk appears to be the last Tamer on the continent you need to defeat but his quest hasn’t been implemented yet. Poor guy only has one pet with him too. Perhaps he ate the other two.

I plan on collecting and levelling at least one of each type of pet and will continue to collect the more rare ones since they offer better stats and easier levelling.

Oh and if you get the chance, battle your moonkin hatchling with a rat (or any pet with a stampede ability). It was the cutest thing, I couldn’t stop laughing. The rat’s stampede ability caused the moonkin to spin around… so much cuteness, I almost couldn’t watch :)

Pet Battle System

July 16, 2012

by Cymre in Pet Battle System

Let’s get ready to rumble!

A couple of days ago, I was excited to hear that the Pet Battle System was up and running and that you no longer needed to be level 90 to test it. Although I suspect Blizzard did that as a way to lock people out of testing the system (which was not ready at the time).

Things to note:

Pets cap at level 25
The skill for Pet Battling only needs to be learnt once.
Players can have up to 650 pets in total and up to 3 versions of the same pet e.g. 3x Ruby Saplings.
The source info (under the Pet Journal) can show you where to obtain a pet, including a small blurb about it.

First of all, head into Goblin Slums in Org and talk to Matty. For your convenience, there are also pet trainers in each of the capital cities. Just ask a guard if you need help locating them.

For Alliance, head to Audrey Burnhep in Stormwind who can be located under a tree – between the bank in the Dwarven District and the Cataclysm portals.

Any of the Stable Masters can heal/revive your pets whenever you need, for a cost. Good to know when your own ‘Revive Battle Pets’ is on an 8min CD. Note that you cannot use your heal in the first 3mins of logging in. This was to prevent players from logging into another toon just to use the heal spell. Blizzard considers this an exploit so was changed accordingly.

Starter Pets

Your Pet Battle Trainers can also offer you a racial pet for purchase (if you don’t already know it), so be sure to check before you leave.

Alliance
Draenei – Blue Moth
Dwarf – Snowshoe Rabbit
Gnome – Snowshoe Rabbit
Human – Orange Tabby Cat
Night Elf – Great Horned Owl
Worgen – Gilnean Raven

Horde
Blood Elf – Golden Dragonhawk Hatchling
Goblin – Shore Crawler
Orc – Black Kingsnake
Tauren – Brown Prairie Dog
Troll – Black Kingsnake
Undead – Undercity Cockroach

Pandaren – Jade Crane Chick

Before you attempt to battle, make sure you have an active pet inserted into the first battle slot of your Pet Journal. You can track eligible critters on the mini map which will come up as a green paw icon. Just right-click on the critter you wish to battle. You’ll eventually be able to allocate up to three active pets for your team.

Battles

When you tag a critter, you will be phased out with other wildlife until the match is over.
A good way to level all your active pets is to have them all participate during a battle – without dying.
If you think your pet might die, you can switch it out with one of your other active pets by using button four on the action bar. This uses a turn.
Winning harder fights will allow you to gain bonus Difficulty Points – either from higher quality pets (rare, uncommon, etc.) or level/length of the fight.
Live pets heal a portion of their health after every fight, provided they took part. The amount healed is 50% of the damage taken.
Each battle requires a certain amount of room (on a flat surface) so make sure the ground is not obscured by rocks, cliffs or trees, etc.
You won’t be able to start a battle if you’re in combat. Alternatively, if you get in combat with a mob or player during the battle, you will be knocked out of phase.
If you happen to see a critter who’s not moving, it’s more than likely that it’s in the middle of a battle.
Failing to win a battle will cause the critter you were fighting to despawn.
As you progress, you’ll start battling teams with one or two other critters. This can be good or bad as you don’t want all of your active pets to be killed if the enemy pets are too strong.
There’s a forfeit option to use as you see fit – next to the trap button. However your pets will lose most of their remaining health as a penalty.

Captures

When your pet reaches level 3 you can start capturing critters. The ‘Trap’ slot becomes active once they are below 35% health.
You can only capture one pet per battle so choose wisely as soon as you can see the other team.
Traps upgrade via specific achievements, improving your chance to catch higher level pets.
If you manage to capture a pet during battle which has two or three in a team, you must win the overall battle, otherwise the pet will be lost.

I was really excited when I saw this little guy

Traps

Attempt to capture

You’ll know very quickly if your trap succeeds or fails

Falling forward means your trap has succeeded. Falling backward will indicate that your trap has missed.

Success

Fail

If your trap fails the first time, you can keep trying but since this is a turn-based game, it will use up your turn each time. If you can, weaken the pet a bit more before you try again. Over time, your traps can improve twice with Strong Traps and Pristine Traps – both are achievement-bound.

Pet Quality

Higher quality pets get a larger stat allotment each time you level. So be on the lookout for Rares!
There is no way to determine the quality of a rare before you engage it in battle since it’s predetermined as it spawns.
You can tell the quality of the pet somewhat after you start battling. The health bar is a good indicator, especially if you’ve already tamed a wild one of the same type. The rare ones will have a substantial jump in health compared to the poor, common and to a lesser degree uncommon varieties so use your initial pet as a baseline for comparison.

My list of favourites showing the quality of each pet

When you open your Pet Journal, you can tell the uniqueness of each pet by selecting each one and looking in the main box or by looking at the coloured border of each pet going down the list. You can also rename the pets the same way or set certain pets to a favourite short-list (see above).

Addons

A few addons I’ve found really useful:

PetJournal Enhanced – Sort Pets by level, alphabetical, pet type, rarity, pet specialisation and more.
BattlePetCount – Shows the quality of battle pets you already own during the battle, cage or tooltip.
Battle Pet BreedIDs – Download this addon to see all the BreedIDs in-game. Good to know for any serious pet battler.

Since pets are now account-wide, you will notice the same active pets in your team when you log between toons. However, you’ll only be able to do the Pet Tamer challenges once per account. If you find you have several of the same pet or ones you simply don’t want, you can right-click the pet to cage them to sell in the AH or gift. However, wild pets are not tradeable.

So good luck, happy battling and catch them all… :)