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…  :)