The summer season is fully upon us, so while the entire pet-hunting population of cross-folded servers descends like locusts upon Silithis in search of their Qiraji Guardling, I decided to take advantage of this vacuum in the seeker continuum and hunt for an Unborn Val’kyr.

Much is made of MMO Champion, WoW Insider and various bloggers concerning their helpfulness.

To me, the true heroes on the front lines of information warfare are the commentators on Wowhead.

MMO Champion tells us what is coming and dutifully keeps us informed as to the latest gossip, but when I want to know the facts, I go to Wowhead. There, I am sure to find someone that has worked their ass off to anticipate questions, gather information and post the latest facts and info at the nitty-gritty level.

The hunt for the Unborn Val’kyr is no exception.

Visiting Wowhead revealed current and updated comments by Nalain, Ozlem and Alisonder giving plenty of information, everything I needed to know.

Now, here’s the only reason I post any of this instead of assuming the links to Wowhead are enough for you. I wasted a lot of time figuring things out myself, because I’ve never used TomTom before, and I wanted it to do things it ain’t designed to.

The key points I learned from Wowhead were that the Unborn Val’kyr can spawn in any zone in Northrend, and each zone has three potential spawn points.

This tells me that, to seek the Unborn Val’kyr, I will want a route to follow that spans the entire continent.

Normally, when farming Ore or Herbs, I use the Routes addon in conjunction with Gathermate 2. Routes takes provided x,y data points and crunches the numbers to provide a least-time graphical route displayed on minimap and main map for you to follow to hit them all.

The problem? Routes crunches numbers for data points within only one zone, it doesn’t have a setting to let you provide points for a route spanning multiple zones. The reason is clear, it takes a lot of processor power to compute least-time intercepts for a zone with over a thousand potential mining nodes, and if someone were careless enough to try and run such a process for all the mining nodes of, say, Eastern Kingdoms… well, computer say bye-bye for a while and take a nap.

I believe that it is potentially possible to input data points into Routes using the Handynotes addon, and then manually configure a single-zone map route to also include points outside one zone. I spent over an hour testing this hypothesis, because why the hell not. Um, fail.

After wasting some time, I asked myself anew what my objective was, reminded myself that I didn’t need to have a route hold my damn hand to find a single pet, and dropped the project. Maybe it can be done, but I wasn’t willing to invest the time needed to figure it out. There was mindless farming to be done!

So, TomTom.

It takes provided data points, and puts them up on your screen and map as waypoints, along with a ‘crazy taxi’ style arrow to lead the way.

I’ve never used it before.

After installing it, I took the list of coordinates provided by Alisander, popped it into Notepad to strip any hidden HTML tags, and copy/pasted it all into multiple macros. I didn’t know why I needed permanent macros, until I saw that there wasn’t a way to just type in coords directly into a TomTom text window. You use line commands, so each individual line command adds a single active waypoint into TomTom.

An active waypoint. Not a stored waypoint you can refresh anytime you like. You add a waypoint, and once you reach it, it’s gone. Because, hell, you reached it, so why the hell would you want to keep it?

That’s the point of the macros. To store your waypoints and keep them handy to refresh TomTom once you’ve hit them all and cleared them on one pass.

I still didn’t really get it. I had to try it in the game before I understood, waypoints are markers drawn on a whiteboard, with the eraser riding hard on your ass.

I put in my macros, 5 of them, to cover all the potential spawnpoints in Northrend.

I tried to input the coordinates in a specific order, sorted so that the waypoints went in the order I wanted to follow on the map. My own redneck route.

It took me a while to figure this out. TomTom does not work like that. But I thought it did, which is why I laid my coordinate list out in the pattern that I did.

I sorted the coordinates as follows into 5 macros to create a route of links in the sequence I hoped to follow;

/way Dragonblight 64.4, 43.7
/way Dragonblight 82, 66
/way Grizzly Hills 26, 57
/way Howling Fjord 45, 43
/way Howling Fjord 68.10, 67.63
/way Howling Fjord 71.91, 43.39

/way Grizzly Hills 79.60, 50.79
/way Grizzly Hills 61, 18
/way Zul’Drak 75, 22
/way Zul’Drak 57.0, 39.8
/way Zul’Drak 24.3, 63.7
/way Crystalsong Forest 67.8, 49.5

/way Crystalsong Forest 18.6,57.0
/way Crystalsong Forest 43.3, 44.0
/way Storm Peaks 42.5, 78.5
/way Storm Peaks 65, 41
/way Storm Peaks 29.0, 50.0
/way Icecrown 73.8, 64.5

/way Icecrown 47.9, 86.6
/way Icecrown 43, 33
/way Sholazar Basin 58.5, 22.0
/way Sholazar Basin 36.8, 19.4
/way Sholazar Basin 44.47, 69.59
/way Borean Tundra 48, 8

/way Borean Tundra 32.7, 60.1
/way Borean Tundra 80, 48
/way Dragonblight 26.9, 54.1

I organized it to sync with this excellent map that Myzou provided, as follows;

I printed out a rough black and white copy of the map, and figured that the start point I’d circled, having been the first of the waypoints I uploaded with my macro, would obviously be the first point that the addon would direct me to.

Lols. Um, no. TomTom does NOT follow some kind of pattern. It’s all about proximity.

TomTom sends you to the nearest waypoint, or one you specify, and even then by default only on waypoints within your current zone. It does NOT create a sequential route. Ever.

So. Ah well. This is both good and bad.

The good part is, when you fly over a waypoint, that point vanishes from your list. You only see the points you have yet to visit.

Also, you can use your macros to refresh/reload your waypoints whenever you want. Any waypoints you load that are already active are ignored, they don’t stack up, cluttering up your list.

So, all I needed to do was change the default setting to allow the closest waypoints outside of my current zone would be used too.

With this all set up, a map printed and the macros for the TomTom waypoints, the easiest way to use them seemed to be to follow the waypoints as long as they pointed to the next point on the printed map I wanted to go, and when they didn’t point that way on their own, I would head off in the direction I knew was correct myself, and once I got close enough use a macro of “/cway” to reset the arrow to the new closest waypoint. Generally, I had to use that most often in Howling Fjord and Storm Peaks, and of course in Crystalsong Forest when the path I wanted to follow doubled up on itself.

As the waypoints were reached, they’d drop off the list and no longer interfere with ‘closest waypoint’ indicators.

If I logged off, got into a LFR, or otherwise went off to do something, I could come back anytime and hit all 5 macros to refresh the route and pick it up from wherever I wanted.

If it weren’t for the people who work so hard to gather this information and post it on Wowhead, there is no way I’d have had a chance to get the pet. It’s that simple. I’d know it was in Northrend somewhere, because MMO Champion told me so, but I would have had no idea where to go or what to do to be able to seek it out, and beyond all of that, Cladhaire, the author/programmer of the TomTom addon is the one that makes such a waypoint system possible. Without that, the best bet for me would have been to just camp one spawn point for the next week and hope for the best.

Now, I don’t use SilverDragon or NPCScan to tell me when I have found a rare, but a lot of people love them for the alerts so you know there is a pet around to search for. Me, I don’t spend near enough time hunting rares to make it worthwhile to clear the cache constantly. Also, players who keep their pets out to spoof your tracker give me heart failure. They are cool, so don’t overlook them if you want that extra edge, but I didn’t use one and I did all right.

After I got everything set up based on the info from the fine folks at Wowhead, it took me about 3 hours of flying around to have an Unborn Val’kyr appear. It was a poor, but that is fine by me since I can buy a Polished Battlestone for 1000 Justice Points to bring it up to uncommon, and trust that I’ll find an Undead Battlestone somewhere along the line.

Good luck to all of you in your hunt for one, grats to all those who already have one, and a heartfelt thank you to Nalain, Ozlem, Alisonder, Cladhaire and everyone else who did so much hard work to gather the information and publish it to allow me to follow along their hard-won path to find my own.

I was listening to the Group Quest podcast earlier, and I heard my buddy DeGei say that he knew the Elemental Spirits were good to level pets against, but he wasn’t sure how you actually did it with only two level 25 pets carrying the fight.

DeGei, this one is for you, man.

We are going to level a pet from 1 to 25, in exactly nine fights. Ready? Let’s go!

First, we pick our team.

To level pets from 1 to 25, I use three specific level 25 pets as the carrying team.

The three pets are the Anubisath Idol, the Emperor Crab, and the Ash Spiderling.

The Anubisath Idol is picked due to having the Sandstorm ability and a very strong humanoid Crush, and the Emperor Crab is chosen because it’s got a ‘always goes first’ aquatic Surge, a Renewing Mist and a Shell Shield, making it one whopper of an endurance pet.

The Ash Spiderling is simply my crutch when leveling pets at low levels. By Applying Brittle Webbing first, every time an enemy hits you, it hurts itself. Also, by being webbed, every time you hit the enemy with Leach Life, you get twice the healing. On enemies that Swarm, Brittle Webbing makes them darn near kill themselves. It’s wonderful. But your third pet can be whatever you like, the two absolute key pets are the Anubisath Idol and a crab.

How I Prepare

The first step is to get your pet high enough level to survive a few hits from the Burning Pandaren Spirit team. I usually level my pets to 8 somewhere else, then bring them to the trainer in Townlong Steppes.

I use an addon called PetBattle Teams to allow me to make premade teams with selected abilities.

Lots and lots of teams.

In fact, as you can see here, I originally made about 75 teams of level 1 pets at one time, went to my starting zone, and just started leveling them up to around 6 – 8 to prepare them for the big leagues. As a pet reached 25, I delete the team.

I’m in absolutely no rush to reach some leveling achievement, but I like playing with a wide variety of pets at max level, so I figured might as well be organized for those times I feel like doing a leveling binge.

Right?

Or maybe that’s just me.

Anyway, to begin our leveling journey, we take our level 1 pet and the Spider/Crab combo to Un’goro Crater.

I like Un’goro Crater, because the pets average level 16, high enough to score some decent XP but low enough not to one shot a level 1.

Usually.

Your mileage may vary.

My advice to you?

Avoid the moths, they’re a royal pain in the ass.

Stick with Diametrodons, they’re cute and fun.

We will open each fight with the pet we’re leveling, let it survive just one round, getting a hit off before switching. It does NOT matter if you hit or miss, taking an action counts as being in the battle. Swap the pet out, bring in the Spider, and Brittle Webbing/Leach Life your way to a cheesy victory against the level 16 pets in the crater.

Within four battles, you will go from level 1 to level 8. Your first battle gets you to 5, then to 6, to 7 and to 8.

Congratulations, you’re ready for stage two. Prime time, baby! Bright lights, big city, strong winds and brutal fire.

Time to swap the spider out for the Anubisath Idol as your second pet in the lineup.

This process is a pretty interesting dance. The fun thing is, you can go a few different ways. All lead to victory, but one way plays it safe while the other risks all…

You always open with your leveling pet. Get off an attack, whatever you want to do. It truly doesn’t matter, so long as you DO NOT STUN THE ENEMY. If the enemy pet gets stunned, it gets swapped out, screwing over your planning.

The Dragonling will always go first in the enemy lineup, it will always attack you first, and it will ALWAYS cast Cyclone first. This means that the enemy spends it’s first turn casting a spell that will NOT do direct damage to your starting pet.

As soon as you get the chance, rotate out the leveling pet, bring in the Anubisath Idol.

Tornado? Phah. I got this.

Idol up!

The second attack the Dragon makes is always Lift-Off. The Dragon takes off, and hovers while you wait out your “I just got here” delay of turn.

On your next move, you can cast Deflection. It always goes before the enemy, so you can avoid the big hit he’s about to perform.

OR… you can cast Sandstorm.

The cautious way to play it, and the smart way when your leveling pet is only 8, is to cast Sandstorm.

What Sandstorm will do is seriously reduce the amount of damage Cyclone will do to your backline pets, which is critical when you’ve got the leveling pet back there and you’re praying it will survive. In fact, if your leveling pet is weak against Flying attacks, you might want to level to 10 to be safe before coming here.

The downside is… Sandstorm reduces everyone’s hit chance, and your Idol’s heavy hitting attack, Crush, is already an 80% chance to hit ability. This means with Sandstorm up, you miss. A lot. And if you don’t kill the Dragon fast enough, it WILL get off a second Cyclone, which is a real pain in the ass and increases the overall damage your leveling pet might take. Oh, and the Crab is weak to Flying damage.

In the screenshot above, eyeball the two cooldowns on the Dragon, the pet on the upper right. Those timers show you that the Dragon will only perform a simple breath weapon for at least the next few rounds. So hammer him hard.

As you can see, in this fight I did as an example, I had the crappiest luck ever, and missed something like 4 rounds in a row. So, a new Cyclone got cast, and he went into Lift-Off again… but my shield is up and I’m still in this for the long term.

Still, the many misses with Sandstorm meant my Idol died before finishing off the Dragon. Oh noes, right?

Not so much. You see, the Crab comes up next, and the Dragon was low enough I could use my Surge, which goes first, to finish it off.

Now, the Fire Pet comes up next. And it ALWAYS opens with the heavy-hitting Conflagrate. Big badaboom. Since I’m out of sequence, all I can do is eat it.

But now, it’s all going to go my way.

You see, the Crab is powerful against the Fire Pet with Surge, and the Fire Pet is about to go on a long break from doing damage.

The second thing the Fire Pet does is cast Cauterize, the self-heal. Well, that’s fine, we didn’t do any damage to the damn thing yet, you just go ahead and waste that turn.

Then it casts Immolate on it’s next round, to set you burning.

So a quick Shell Shield to protect from periodic damage, a Renewing Mists to start building my health back, and look at that… once it has cast Immolate, it does nothing, nothing whatsoever for a couple turns, because it has to wait for the cooldowns on Conflagrate and Cauterize, and once you’re burning, it doesn’t cast Immolate again!

You have plenty of time for your Crab to build up health before the next Conflagrate, and your Surges do silly badass damage to him. Piece of cake.

But here comes the wasp!

The wasp… is a joke to the Crab. The first two turns, the wasp drops poisons on you… and so long as your Shell Shield is active, they are meaningless. Always cast Shell Shield when the duration is down to one round, and you’re golden.

Get your Renewing Mists up to build your health back to safe levels, but honestly. The only attack it has which can do damage to you is Swarm… and since the damage of Swarm is spread out into small chunks, your Shell Shield damage mitigation reduces it so many times over that you almost take no damage at all the entire fight.

I’m serious. I have had shitty Cyclone runs before where my Crab came into this fight with 80 health, and still won. Easily. You get your Shell Shield up FIRST, get Renewing Mists up to cover the small damage you do take, and it’s in the bag.

Only downside? Surge does minimal damage to a wasp, so it takes many rounds to burn it down. But hey, it’s a sure thing.

Our fifth fight, and our leveling pet goes from level 8 to 14 in one shot!

Okay, so what now?

Your leveling pet is 14. He’s got the health to survive some Cyclones, so long as he’s not weak against flying.

Why not go for a fast kill?

Take a look at this next screenshot. Anubisath is still alive with over 500 health, the Dragon is dead, and I’ve popped my shield in preparation for the heavy-hitting Conflagration I know is coming.

What was different?

In this battle, I never cast Sandstorm.

Instead, my leveling pet fired off a cheap shot and ran for it, my Anubisath Idol came in, popped up the Shield, and then went straight to hammering the Dragon with Crush. I ignored the Cyclone, let it do it’s thing, and counted on my hit chance being high enough to finish off the Dragon before he could cast a second Cyclone.

It worked. Cyclone had one turn left to go when the Dragon died. When the Fire Pet came up, I knew he would cast Conflagrate, so I cast my Deflection Shield.

Then I knew he would cast Cauterize to heal the damage he hadn’t taken yet (um, what?) and so again, I hammered the shit out of him with Crush.

Think back to what I said about the Fire Pet. He casts Conflagrate, which does a shit-load of damage. Well, we Deflected that. Then he healed himself, we got a free shot at him. Then he cast a measly little Immolate on us to set us on fire. Another shot at him.

Then he sits there doing nothing for at least two turns, waiting for those cooldowns to end! We get two more free shots before he is ready to Conflagrate, and if you watch his cooldown timers, you know when it’s coming and can cast your Deflection again. That is, if he ain’t dead already.

One last note… nine fights, level 1 to 25. Once my leveling pet was above level 14, I never used Sandstorm again, and I destroyed the opponents by using Deflection at the correct times to avoid Lift-Off and Conflagrate.

And I did NOT use, at any time, the BOA pith helmet reward that gives pet trainers improved XP. I felt it wasn’t fair to do so, since many folks starting out might not have one yet because they hadn’t gotten the achievements.

There you go, DeGei. A step by step breakdown of how to take the Burning Pandaren Spirit with a leveling pet and two 25’s, on time every time, and make it look easy.

The down side to this is, from what I know, once you have actually completed the Elemental Grand Master Pet Tamer questline, you can’t just fight the Burning Pandaren Spirit over and over again, endlessly. You only get one shot a day.

I don’t know, I refuse to complete the quest until all 400 pets of mine are level 25. 🙂

So DeGei… any questions?

As a side note…

The only other Pet Battle addons I use are; Battle Pet Count, Battle Pets List, PetJournal Enhanced and Pokemon Trainer, which is the nice addon that shows me the enemy cooldowns, and the little up and down arrows. I mostly use it for cooldown timers, though.

I hope this helps someone, because leveling lots and lots of pets can be such a pain in the butt if you don’t find a good system like this.

Last night, I was called off the bench to join Team Wanda in their first serious attempt at Iron Qon normal 10, and in the process we killed both Iron Qon AND The Twin Consorts.

I then had the pleasure of dying at the hands of Lei Shen.

I can’t wait to see these released on LFR. I think they’re going to be fun for 25 people, but easier to grasp than Drurumoomoo.

Of course, I might also be huffing paint, so we’ll see tomorrow.

This post isn’t about that. 🙂

Instead, I am just gushing to talk about PET BATTLES!!!

I did get a team to level 25 a while back, got a bunch of achievements, I even added several more pets up to 25 so as to have some variety.

What I didn’t do was ever finish the Pandaren Spirit Tamer quests, the elementals.

Seemed to be tough, legendary pets, you know. Something to save for when I had some free time. Something to look forward to.

This last weekend, my son saw the Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer sitting on an island as I flew past to collect ore, and asked me if I could fight him.

Picture by Cymre and posted on Wowhead!

Well, okay. Sure, I guess.

I checked on Wowhead to see what kinds of pets he had, and they recommended a Humanoid, specifically the Anubisath Idol that drops from Twin Emperors in AQ40 to go after the Dragonkin, a pet with Aquatic attacks that wasn’t actually water for the Fire Elemental (like the Rapana Whelk), and then whatevers to take on the flying one.

Huh.

I have an Anubisath Idol, I got it from the AH. Still level 1, though. And I have a Rapana Whelk, but it’s only level 24. My go-to Aquatic pet is the Emperor Crab, with the instant Aquatic attack, Shell Shield and Healing Mists.

I do have a Humanoid, though… the Kun Lai Runt. He was an easy humanoid to ge to 25 late in the leveling game, because you can capture one at about level 22 in the Kun Lai Summit area.

Meh, a humanoid is a humanoid, an aquatic is an aquatic, let’s kick this pig.

So, smash the humanoid attack over and over, Dragonkin dies. Elemental insta-kills my Kun Lai Runt, then my Emperor Crab soloes both of the last two pets easily with Shell Shield and Healing Mists keeping me at full the entire time. Not even remotely a chance of losing.

Hmmm.

So, I won! The elemental fire spirit is cute. I’d like one of those. I should finish that quest someday

Something about that made me remember, back in the day, people were talking about this tamer being an easy faceroll to use to quickly level pets. I can see what they meant, I didn’t even have an Anubisath Idol and it was easy.

That made me wonder, just how fast could you level a pet that way? Was it nerfed?

I took my Kun Lai Runt and Emperor Crab, plus the level 1 Anubisath Idol, to Terokkar Forest and fought a Skunk. Anubisath Idol dinged level 4. You’d expect that, with a level 1 pet getting XP from some level 20’s.

Okay, so then I took the Anubisath Idol as first pet, Kun Lai Runt as second and Emperor Crab as third to the Burning Pandaren Spirit Tamer.

The first pet he uses is always the Dragonkin, and the first attack the Dragonkin uses is ALWAYS the Tornado, which calls up the whirlwind but doesn’t actually do any damage in that first round. Low level pet is assured to survive that round.

So, level 4 pet, Dragonkin summons a whirlwind, my Idol walks up and punches the Dragonkin on the snout and bravely runs away.

Swap in the Kun Lai Runt, and proceed to spam my humanoid ‘punch in nose HARD’ ability.

The whirlwind did a lot of damage to the overall team, but nobody died, not even the level 4 Idol. I can see why people say the Anubisath Idol at 25 is good for this, because that sandstorm ability nefs the damage done by the whirlwind to the ground, preventing your cowering low level beasties in the back row from taking too much damage.

Can we get through this round?

YES!

Dragonkin died, Kun Lai Runt died, Emperor Crab finished off the last two same as before.

Anubisath Idol dinged level 11.

Really? Level 11? One fight?

Wow.

Okay, try a second fight.

Wait, level 16?

Holy crap.

My Anubisath Idol was level 25 in about a half hour to an hour of fighting… because I don’t have any bandages, I didn’t look up where the nearest Stable Master was for quick heals, and my Kun Lai Runt died every time so I had to wait out the 8 minute rez timer.

I had pets go from level 23 to 25 in one fight. Pets need about 2000 xp to go from level 24 to 25, and you get around 3000xp or more for beating the Spirit Tamer. One fight, and you ding from 24 to 25. That’s pretty nice.

So, sure I swapped some of my other ‘almost but not quite’ 23s and 24s in to top them off.

The thing is, I never finished the original quest. I was lazy, so I’d do it ‘someday’.

So, now I can go up and fight him over and over in a chain, instead of him being a daily quest giver.

I am so late to the party on this it’s not funny, but all I can do is make sure to share this with you now.

If you have at least three 25’s, and you haven’t completed the quest for the Pandaren Elemental Tamers yet, you can go grab a high level Emperor Crab from the Dread Wastes water area where the Saurok hang out, you can grab a Kun Lai Runt from the Kun Lai Summit, and they’re already pretty close to 25. It shouldn’t take too long to finish them off.

Then, once you level those two to full, you can take them and level ALL of your other pets from 1 to 25 pretty darn quick.

If you were the early bird that got the worm, already did the quest and have been doing the dailies, then it’s too late…

But, well, sometimes it pays to be the procrastinating buzzard that eats the roadkill.

On the positive side, doing the dailies got you lots of chances to get those awesome Pandaren elemental pets! So it all works out. Right?

Right?!?

Be warned, in this post I do not keep it classy. Profanity ahead, read at your own risk!

Once I got my own pet team to level 25, I was free to roam about the world, smacking down Master Pet Tamers, capturing any dang old pet I happened to run across, and generally having a grand old time.

I got a max level team by picking three pets early on that worked well together, and then I went out and took on all comers, fighting and capturing and taking ’em down, all over the world.

I ground those levels out, one fight at a time, and I cherished the locations within my range where the spawns were fast and focused, especially if they were near a Stable Master for a fast recharge of the health meters.

Cassie did somewhat the same thing, with a different group of pets, but still the same concept; heading out into the world, fighting everything she could to level her favorite team.

Alex has stood by watching our success, and he wants to get in on the action. There is one very simple catch.

We don’t let our son spend nearly as much time as we do on the computer playing video games. We get most of our playtime in while he’s in bed asleep, or taking a bath, that kind of thing.

He’s done very well on his own, he really loves his Lil’ Ragnaros and Cinder Kitten, although he would probably KILL for a Lil’ Deathy. Well, he isn’t going to get one. There are over 400 pets in the game, he can just get by with a Personal World Destroyer that ain’t Deathwing. If he likes, he can take his Cinder Kitten and Lil’ Ragnaros and go torch Stormwind in Deathys honor! 🙂

He had managed to get his team to level 10 by spending some of his time each night fighting his way along just like us.

Well, I talked to him about it last night, because yes, he does feel left out, and I can’t blame him. It’s no different than when your friends would be max level and raiding, and you’re still trying to level your first character. You see the grand fun they’re having, but the bigger part is feeling excluded from the discussion because they’re talking about what they’re doing, and you’re not a part of it yet. Being on the outside looking in sucks.

The problem is, I am limited as to what I can do to help.

I had originally thought I could just get myself to max, level up a Terrible Turnip, and give it to him as the seed he could use to grow his own strong team. 

Well, you can’t. You cannot learn a pet that is higher level than your own highest level pet. You have to, yourself, have a pet of the same level or higher already in your journal before anyone can give you one of that level.

It makes perfect sense with the PvP aspect of the game, and the competition between players. You can’t just BUY your way into Pet Battles. You’ve got to get there yourself by leveling a team.

Okay, fine. We work within the limitations of the system.

So, do I want my son to level his own favorite team himself? Yes, absolutely. I want him to level Lil’ Ragnaros himself. It wouldn’t be the same if I did it for him.

But… I also don’t see any reason why he couldn’t benefit from having a max level team, so he could have two powerhouse hitters to backup whatever pet he wanted to level, and so he could go tame new exciting pets too.

Last night I decided I would try to help him, not by leveling his pets, but by taking down and taming new pets for him. New, higher level pets.

The first thing I was going to do was cheat. Just, flat-out try to cheat.

I mentioned it yesterday, but when I was in Deadwind Pass around Karazhan, there were lots of level 17 and 18 Arcane Eyes. And when I fought them, they were solo pets. They did NOT bring a team.

I figured it likely I could take down and tame a single level 18 Arcane Eye with a team of three level 10 pets. That would give me an instant level 17 pet to join my sons team.

I had Alex fly out to Deadwind Pass…. no Arcane Eyes. I looked them up on Wowhead… they were rare spawns. As in, they just suddenly spawn a bunch, and then when they’re gone, they’re gone for a while, totally random, can be a long ass time between.

Again, I had just been really lucky when I got mine.

Well, shoot. Okay. That is what I get for trying to cheat.

Alex was disappointed, but he was excited at the idea of having help getting his pets higher level, and off he went to bed.

Me? I had my latest obsession to take on. How to level a team for my son as fast as possible?

I sent a quick question out to Josh Augustine on Twitter, he’s started up a Pet Battles podcast recently and was very nice about answering questions for me yesterday. My question was, “are there any other pets besides the Arcane Eye that is relatively high level, but doesn’t bring buddies?” Sadly, Josh focuses more on the PvP aspect of Pet Battles, so he didn’t have any more suggestions for me.

Damnit. So much for cheating my way to a team. So, what to do?

I decided to take a completely different approach than what I did for my team.

Instead of taking one team and grinding out the levels, what if I start with his team of 10s and try and leapfrog my way with new pets each time?

What I did was check out the maps of Azeroth, looking for where Alex’s team of level 10s could take down and add some 12s to his roster, to form a new team.

I flew up to Eastern Plaguelands, home of slugs and bats and poor, sad looking little infested deer. And I beat the crap out of them, tamed them and made a new team of level 12s.

Then I flew down to Badlands, and used my new team of 12s to take on and tame the level 14 Scorpids and such.

With my new 14s, I headed down to Burning Steppes in search of 16s to tame.

I wasn’t looking for quality at all. I was looking for levels. If I captured a poor, so be it. An uncommon was sybaritic luxury. A rare? Let’s not get crazy.

One thing that made it smoother was that as soon as you tame a pet, it increases in power. If you notice, the health, speed and power a pet has increases as soon as it’s in your stable, even though it retains the same level and quality. I would tame an uncommon with 600 health, and watch it join my team with 750. That always meant that my uncommon had the edge over the wild pets of the same rarity. It’s a help, make no mistake.

I found it easy going until I hit the 16s.

All pets from the 12 to 15 range only brought one friend, and when they were tamed, they stayed the level I fought. So, I could take on a 15, he’d bring one friend, I’d win and add a 15 to my team.

As soon as I started taking on the level 16 pets in Burning Steppes, they brought two friends along with, AND once I was lucky enough to win… the 16 got dropped to a 15 anyway!

Grrr.

Okay, time to kick it up a notch. If it’s going to drop a level, I need to get my level 15 pets and take on 17s and 18s to make it worth while.

I was lucky enough to take down some 17s, and add the 16s to my stable, but it was damn hard. And, I was getting really sick of all the pet types in Burning Steppes. Alex was going to log in to find an ugly assortment of poor, common and uncommon bats, black rats, slugs and scorpions. There have to be some cute pets somewhere, damnit!

After another check of the map, off I went to Un’goro Crater, to try my hand at capturing a Diametrodon Hatchling. Oh c’mon, pet dinosaurs, how could he fail to love that?

I did manage to grab a poor quality Diametrodon, but they were kinda light on the ground. I checked the map again, and Winterspring caught my eye.

There is a Stable Master in Winterspring. There are a ton of pets in Winterspring.

And there is a chance I could get my son a Robo-Chick, an Anodized Robo-Cub (robot bears! HELL YES!) and even a Robot Squirrel.

The bonus for me would be getting a Crystal Spider, which has my favorite Brittle Webbing/Leech Life combo move. that would be nice for the next step in my master plan, taking on the Azeroth Pet Tamers for XP.

Yeah, this is all last night. I was at this until 1 AM. I was by God going to get my son a nice jump on some levels, and leave him with a team ready to take on some starter tamers.

My plan ran right smack against the wall of Winterspring.

I couldn’t capture a pet there to save my ass.

Oh, I got some level 16 Arctic Hares, and a bunch of Robot Squirrels.

Thing is, those damn Chipmunks would kick my ass every. single. damn. time.

Fuck a bunch of nut barrages anyway. You know what you can do with your nuts, you can take them and shove them right up your motherfucking ass, and then you’ll have a nice snack once winter is over, you little chipfuck.

Sorry, I think I was channeling some Lewis Black there for a moment. I feel better now. Wait, no I don’t. Not even close.

Fuck you and the nut you rode in on, you little furry pricks. Fuck a bunch of chipmunks, anyway.

Oh, and the Crystal Spiders! Oooh! There is a reason I love using them, and they used it against me on every fight. They soloed my team every time, my whole team would die just trying to get a Crystal Spider below half.

I spent hours in Winterspring, and that Stable Master? That’s not a benefit, that’s a curse. All having an instant heal available did for me was let me lose my fights that much faster.

I just got butt-surfed by Winterspring, and I didn’t even get the common courtesy of a reach around.

I even got a rare Arctic Hare, not that it did me a lick of good against the Chipfucks or Crystal Spiders.

So, I gave up.

I made some progress, don’t get me wrong. I got a mixed level 15 and 16 team for my son, which would get us a lot closer to being able to take on the starter tamers, who give tons of XP. Maybe my plan of leapfrogging up the levels would take a lot more careful thought to match pet types against the opponent type, bouncing zone to zone.

Still, I felt like I was giving up. I wanted to get him a team that he could then use to do some serious ass kicking. And what I had to hand him was a ragtag band of poor and common misfits that couldn’t take down a rabid chipfuck. Aside from the Arctic Hare, they weren’t even cute. I had a Fire Beetle and a Lava Beetle that were pretty, but they couldn’t fight their way out of a bag of nuts.

Not good.

I logged off, stretched, and looked at the time.

Holy crap, 12:30! I have to get up at 5:30 to go to the gym! Oh, this is gonna suck… hey, wait a minute.

It’s really early in the morning… isn’t that when those Restless Shadeling undeads can show up?

Hmmm. What the hell, I’m already screwed on sleep, let’s go check it out.

I flew into Deadwind Pass, and the area around Karazhan was a sea of green. Not only were there dozens of Restless Shadelings, but the Arcane Eyes were up too!

And thus, I get the karma I rightly deserve for trying to cheat. Here we are, back where I wanted to begin in the first place hours earlier… with level 17 and 18 Arcane Eyes and Restless Shadelings in abundance.

Ah, but if they had been there before, I would have missed out on the heavenly glory that is Winterpsring!

I went after the Arcane Eyes first, and yes, they still only came alone to the fights. About 5 fights in and I had Alex a rare level 17 Arcane Eye to add to his team.

Then I went gunning for the Restless Shadelings, and found out those suckers are badasses. They have an attack that heals them for half the damage they do, and it’s not on a cooldown. You can use it every turn. plus, undead, so you get that second wind for a round even if you lose.

Yeah, I think I could have taken the Arcane Eyes with my team of three level 10s, but I don’t think I would have had a hope in hell of taking a Restless Shadeling, so maybe it all worked out after all.

I went crazy on the Restless Shadelings. The first one I killed was uncommon, and it came solo, so you can swarm them with your pets. And there were just so many of them!

I kept taking the Shadelings down, over and over, until by 1:00 AM I had three Restless Shadelings, two of them rares, a 17 and a 16, with a 17 uncommon for backup.

A team of two rare Restless Shadeling undeads with strong self-heal attacks, backed up by a rare Arcane Eye magic pet. Now THAT feels like a team I could hand over to my son with pride in a good nights work.

Just… y’know, we’ll not tell him about the pain that is Winterpring. Let’s just let that one slide on by, all right? 

Fuck chipmunks.

Tonight, I think I’m going to see if Alex can take this new team, and start going after the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor Master Pet Tamers. I think the team just might be strong enough to do it, unless some of the tamers have pets that are really going to eat undead and magic alive. They might be good ones to level to 20.

Or maybe he’ll decide he’d rather go out taming more of the pets in the wide world that his new team gives him access to. Totally his decision. It’s not like his team is going away any time soon. I’m curious to see if he wants to keep leveling, go after Tamers, or find some more new pets.

Anyway… I gave it my best shot. I thought the level leaping idea was worth pursuing, and I certainly got very far, very fast. The original rush from a level 10 team to a level 15 took about half an hour.

It just needs a lot of tweaking when it comes to picking what to fight.

Just, fucking nuts.

And I want to know who the hell came up with Nut Barrage, because I want to string them up BY their nuts and express a little direct feedback bypassing the forums.

Could’ve been worse. Coul’ve been chickens. I’d rather take a nut to the face than have egg all over it. Wait, that ain’t right. Lemme re-think that one a bit.

Maybe when I’ve had some sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream… of nuts. Giant nuts flying at my face, over and over and over… /cries.

Hey, I WARNED you about the profanity. Don’t give me that!

A more accurate title would be “confessions of a pet battle noob”, because that is what I am, and what these are.

After all of my initial gushing over pet battles when Mists of Pandaria released, I didn’t actually do any pet battles.

I meant to. It was fun, it was an exciting concept. Leveling pets! NAMING pets! Capturing NEW pets! Woohoo!

What happened to me was that I hit a patch where I wanted to level my team higher, but I couldn’t find any level appropriate pets to fight. I got to about level 14 to 15 with my one core group, struggled to keep going and got to about 16, and then just stalled out.

I felt stupid, too, because my big thing was, all I wanted was to get a team high enough I could capture a raccoon. And yes, name it Socks. KISS MY ASS, I don’t care how cheesy that is. Yes, I know they’re called bandicoons, they’re freaking raccoons. And they are just so cute, and I wanted one, and…

I needed to level a pet team to max to do it. And to level, well, I need enough pets out there in the world to fight that I can get some XP, damnit!

So I quit. Just walked away, man. Just walked away.

I can’t remember what drove me to come back and take another swing at it.

Oh wait, yes I do! Cassie was doing pet battles, and she was taking on the Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms Master Pet Tamers, and winning with a team lower level than mine. So her bravery spurred me on to think I could try fighting the Master Pet Tamers, too!

So that is just what I did, I began travelling all over Azeroth fighting pet tamers, and learned what so many before me have… Master Pet Tamers give BIG XP rewards to your team!

By fighting and winning against all of those tamers, I finally got high level enough that I thought I could get to Outlands and start capturing some of those pets, maybe even take on that first Tamer in Hellfire Peninsula. Lot fewer zones than in Azeroth, yep. Ought to be able to focus a little clearer on each zone to max it out, right? Lots less distractions to send me off scurrying for shinies.

What I found out by flying around in Outlands collecting pets was that there is an area of Flayer Younglings up there on the border between Hellfire Ramparts and Terokkar Forest. The Flayer Younglings were in vast quantities, and finally I had an area where I could fight und fight und fight, getting fast XP, yahoo!

I quickly got the whole team up to 18, even 19. This was a marvelous, nay a WONDROUS thing!

Now that my team had some XP and had a chance to win consistently, I moved on to other areas in Outlands, searching for pets. I camped out for a while in Blades Edge Mountains. There are these super cute Cogblade Raptors that have a chance to spawn around the gnome basecamp of Toshley Station, especially during and after the station is assaulted by waves of raptors.

I flew around Toshley Station for a while, but while waiting for spawns, I checked out the rest of the zone for more leveling spots. And guess what! I found one, and happy times were had chain battling flaming pets in the little lava area due East of Gruul’s Lair (just on the other side of the spine mountains ridge from Gruul’s).

It was something of a major breakthrough for me. Finding spots in the world where I could hang out, and always have plenty of pets to fight so I didn’t have any downtime (except for healing, of course) was wonderful.

My core team consisted of the Ash Spiderling, the Darkmoon Zeppelin, and the Phoenix Hatchling.

The Ash Spiderling, with it’s Brittle Webbing and Leach Life abilities and being super strong against Critters is great as a soloing pet in the wild. With so many Critters out there, on many fights the Ash Spiderling could kill an entire team, and end the fight still almost at full health.

With the Phoenix Hatchling in the team, he heals everyone in your party a little after every fight, so that is even more uptime between bandage/healing. And the Zeppelin? He’s my glass hammer. No self healing, but damn does he pound hard when I have to pull him out.

This was the team I was traveling with, so I didn’t have much downtime between fights even with the 8 minute healing cooldown.

I was fortunate enough to finally find an uncommon quality Cogblade Raptor, so I took my level 21ish team to Northrend, to go get even more pets.

What should I find there? A beautiful spot in Dragonblight, just a few seconds flight East of Wyrmrest Temple, where there were a never ending supply of pets to fight. And this spot was even crazier… there is a Stable Master standing on the East side of Wyrmrest Temple, within sight of the pet fight area.

I am a pure noob at this, I don’t have guides, for some reason I never see people posting tips on where to level or what to do, most everything I see posted supposes everyone has a full set of level 25 pets. So this place came as a shock to me.

I was able to fight a grueling battle against these Dragonkin things, with penguins and stuff as adds, and so long as one of my pets survived I could pop over to the Temple, get fully healed in a second, and fly right back.

By relying strongly on my Ash Spiderling and the self-healing, many fights I was able to solo, and that meant all the XP for each fight went to one pet.

Oh, hell yes!

I sat there and fought for probably two solid hours, and got my full team to 25. HAH! I WIN! Once the first pet got to max, he didn’t count for XP gains, so then I always had him to rely on to pound the snot out of the opponents first, soften them up.

Wait, I’m max level? Oh shit, time for the real Pet Battle thing to start. I am so totally unprepared.

Ah, but now I can finally tame a PANDARIAN RACCOON!

That was what it took for me to finally break through. With a team of full 25 pets, I could take full advantage of the fact max level pets don’t suck XP out of the team when leveling new ones.

Queue the list of pets to level up… and to pop into my groups as dead weight when I can get away with it.

Also queue the beginning of fighting the Master Pet Tamers. Those things give massive XP gains, and if you can take one down with a low level pet in your group, it’s a bonanza of bonus xp.

I should note that Cassie also leveled her pet teams, using a completely different set of pets she likes that use this synergy shit, where one pet drops a molten lava environment thing, and then other pets use boosted powers in lava, and all that stuff. Frankly, I am impressed at that level of play, but I was grateful just to luck into my Ash Spiderling self-healer. Crutch, thy name is Brittle Webbing and Leech Life.

Huh, when I get home I’m renaming my Ash Spiderling “Crutch”. No, not crotch, CRUTCH.

When Cassie reached Northrend, she didn’t like the damn penguin adds at my spot, so she went to the troll zone of Zul’drak, and camped the billions of Water Wavelings that spawn there. Apparently, there is a Stable Master near there as well, if not quite as close as the one at Wyrmrest, and her team was slaughtering the poor little Aquatics in droves.

Fine, be that way. Escape the two hours of misery fighting penguins to smack Water Wavelings around, see if I care. If people wanted to find out the smart way to do things, they wouldn’t be reading this in the first place.

Ever since hitting max level on my team, I’ve been having fun chasing various pets that could give me some variety against these bastard Master Pet Tamers.

My team was kicking ass, right up to the point where I had to face the Northrend boss with all of the flying pets in the Fjord.

That little son of a bitch kicked my ass up one side and down the other, forcing me to think about matching pets to opponents.

So, what is powerful against Flying?

Oh shit… MAGIC? I don’t have any magic pets leveled!

So, hello Wowhead… ooh, Mount Hyjal has a Nordrassil Wisp, a Magic pet that can spawn right there around the Nordrassil Inn around the lake. And it’s got a nice mix of abilities!

I took my team to Mount Hyjal. I was determined to camp there, get myself a rare Wisp, and then level it to max just to kill that Master Pet Tamer.

I know, it’s stupid to go overboard that way, insisting on a rare, but I somehow got it stuck in my head that I needed to first find the perfect pet, and then level it to max before going back for a retry.

I spent, and I’m not kidding, over three hours just killing pets around the Nordrassil Inn, trying to get a rare quality Wisp.

Never saw one. I ended up with rares of every other possible pet that spawns in the area, but not that one. Got two Uncommon Wisps, though, and leveled my Terrible Turnip to 25, one of the uncommon Wisps to 25, and a couple other things too, like an Arctic Hare and something else.

At some point, I stopped expecting to find a rare quality Wisp, and instead started using the area around the lake to level pets. There are ALWAYS pets to fight there.

I finally did something that may surprise you. I used my brain. There is a rumor that this is a bear of very small brain, but it’s just weak from lack of use.

Since I couldn’t find a rare Magic pet to kill Flyers, I decided to go to Warcraftpets.com to find out what pets are super tough in defense AGAINST flyers.

That’s right, I decided to find a tanking pet against the Flyers. It takes me a while, but I get there eventually.

What should I discover, but that Dragonkin are strong in defense against Flyers.

Do I have a Dragonkin?

Yes I do! A level 1 Celestial Dragon.

Umm….

Okay, so in order for a pet to get XP from a fight, it has to actually be active in at least one round, and do something in that round. Even if it’s just to stand there, tap it on the chest with a foam sword and then run away, it’s got to stand and risk death.

So, a level 1 Celestial Dragon active in a round versus level 24s. Can it work?

Yes!

I started a fight with the Celestial Dragon as the first pet in my rotation, and the opponent cast one of those “Speed boost increase” things that don’t do damage. I quickly popped off my lone little attack and swapped pets.

When the battle was over, boom! Instant level 6! At that point, I had enough health to survive a single hit, and I was able to keep leveling from there without the fear of a one-shot.

Other lesson learned, Magic pets can’t take more than half of their total health in one shot, so a level 1 Magic pet could easily survive the first round of a fight against 24s in that way, if you have one to powerlevel.

I leveled, and fought, and leveled so hard and diligently. I was going to field a max level team of a Celestial Dragon, a Nordrassil Wisp, and my Phoenix Hatchling against the damn chicken, turkey and penguin ‘flyers’ of Northrend. Those flightless f’ers were going down! Pitched off the edge of the cliff, if I had my way. That Master Pet Tamer may be trying to get them to run off the cliff to learn how to fly, but I have a more… brief flight in mind for them. Something involving cement overshoes.

I got bored. I went with my Celestial Dragon at something like 19. I just didn’t have it in me to keep going, so, yeah, what the heck,  right? What’s the worst that can happen, I die? Brrr, scary.

So a level 19 Celestial Dragon, a 25 uncommon Nordrassil Wisp and my rare Phoenix Hatchling.

Yeah, so after I totally obliterated the opposing force, without evening needing the damn Phoenix, I became a big believer in matching pet strengths to the opponent.

Pet proliferation, that’s what we need!

After all that work, all those fights, and my complete failure of getting a rare Wisp, I went to kill a few of the daily Master Pet Tamers, to get some more of that tasty XP for my dragon. Fights against Tamers net far more XP than a normal fight, and hey, maybe a Flawless Stone might drop!

I headed for the Master Pet Tamer outside Karazhan, late at night and tired as heck… only to find the area saturated with pets.

And no, not the undead ghosts underground, these were pets new to me, called the Arcane Eye.

Arcane Eyes, everywhere, level 17 and 18 pets… and all Magic pets.

WTF!?! I spent how many hours trying to catch elusive Magic pet spawns in Nordrassil, and here there are dozens of the damn things? KHAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!

The first one I pulled was a second shocker… only one pet comes, it doesn’t bring any friends! Heck, you could grab this guy with a team of three 10s, probably!

Grr.

It probably only took 8 kills in a row, super-quick, got a rare, and I could have had it with me hours before, without any of that messing around with Wisps!

Err, except that I think the Arcane Eyes only spawn late at night. Or maybe when the moon is full. Or only when someone has spent hours farming magic pets in other zones, and need to be taunted.

Ah well…. live and learn. The hard way, as usual.

Now that I’ve got a full grown team, I’m having fun, I’m getting lots of new, cool, cute looking pets, and I’m working my way slowly but surely through the Master Pet Tamer quests.

It feels good to have a seat at the adult table now. I can read the experiences of master tamers like Cymre and Navimie, and apply lessons learned from them today, not ‘someday’.

When I stalled out the first time, I never imagined I would be able to someday have not just one team at max, but now a bunch of max pets to choose from. It’s so cool to have all the wild pets out there be available to me, it’s an itch I can finally scratch. Every time I see a Golden Civet in Pandaria, I can actually capture it, rather than just look wistfully and wonder about the pet not traveled.

I hope that, if you’re in the same boat I was in and wanting to get cranking, knowing these spots are out there is of some help to you. I couldn’t have done it without a ready source of opponents to take on one after another. And once I was ablt to take on Master Pet Tamers in Kalimdor and Easter Kingdoms around level 15 and 16, it got even better.

I’m really glad I’ve been able to use my core team for most fights, and look foward to expanding my roster as I need to, without just starting over with some ‘trick of the patch’ team. I’ve read some about stuff like the Fluxfire Feline overpower problems, and I just don’t think it would be all that fun to have to rely on a trick like that to win.

the way the system is designed right now, I get to use a completely different team than Cassie does, and while mine might not be as destructive, I trade that off by have a lot of self-healing and going for the long haul. I like it. it’s cool to be able to make that choice, and have that playstyle difference.

As long as, you know… I slip in at least one ringer in my team to take thos bastards down!