Hey all! I just recently got into pet battles (literally last night) and am hooked. I genuinely can’t believe I didn’t try this out sooner coz it’s actually quite a lot of fun and a lot more in depth than it looked like on the surface!
A little summary of what I’ve done in the past day of playing -
read a lot of forum posts (but I guess not enough since I’m writing one of my own to ask some questions, oops ). I’ve especially learned a lot from a player called grainne who seems to be super active on these forums. In one such beginner related post they gave a pretty in depth step by step guide of things to do for a beginner tamer and I’ve tried to base most of what I do off that.
Going of the previous point, I’ve downloaded some useful addons as suggested
I’ve gone out and grinded (ground?) my way up to my first 25 pet which is a rare P/P emperor crab. I know I’m not even scratching the surface here but hey we all gotta start somewhere
I’ve bought some recommended pets to do WQ’s with some ease (HH iron starlette, zandalari kneebiter, a green ikky and a stormborne whelpling) though they’re all level 1’s coz I’m too broke to buy the 25’s
Now with all that preamble out of the way, my questions I’d like to ask are:
How exactly do I go about carry leveling? I tried to put a level 1 with my lv25 emperor crab and a random lv23 pet and fight wild battles in the Valley of the Four Winds but I noticed I wasn’t getting any exp at all. How I did it was keep my level 1 at the top of my party and switch out right at the start and finish the rest of the battle with the crab. I even tried to do the same but used the lv23 to finish the battle but no exp then either. What am I doing wrong?
There are some pretty decent WQ’s up right now that award some PPC as well as the stone that turns your pet to a rare (which is why I bought these pets off the AH to begin with). I’d like to know if it is possible to redo all these WQ’s on different alts and still get the rewards or is that a one time reward only?
Honestly any other advice that you would give to someone starting out would be greatly appreciated!
I’m sorry for the length of this post and thank you for reading it all the way through!
I envy you being able to do it all for the first time.
OMG you captured a P/P Nexus Whelpling already?? Wow.
To your questions specifically:
An exact statement is that to qualify for XP, a pet must be in at the end of at least one round. There are three ways you make your level pet eligible for XP:
i). start the bettle with it, and make it use at least one ability.
ii). bring it in second, when your first pet dies, and instantly swap it out again
iii). have it brought in third. automatically, when your second pet has just suicided with Explode or similar, and all opposing pets are dead.
Your current problem is that you are whipping it out before the end of the round. Make it use an ability, then swap it out. Yes, this is dangerous for a level 1, but it’s a risk you have to take. Once it gets above level 1, it can take a hit and you can keep grinding. In Valley, a lot of the Critters start with a heal, which is nice.
Yes, every alt can do the WQ. People with 10 alts can gather Charms very quickly by doing the quests multiple times.
Advice is easy, but there are several different directions you can work on, so you can choose which aspect to work on.
Right now, you are in a very … temporary … place. You have just one (very good!) level 25. Soon you will have half-a-dozen 25s, and your priorities will change.
I might summarise your current priorities as:
Increase the effectiveness of your roster. You need moar good all-rounder Blue 25s to help with capturing and wild levelling.
I have to smile at you talking about buying. Like the city kid who is asked “Where does milk come from?” and says “The shop”. You should establish some pet-farming habits. Like:
Teroclaw Hatchling. This is a guaranteed easy and quick reward from doing a few quests in Talador. GREAT farmer of critters and Aquatics!
Anubisath Idol: 10% drop from AQ40 (Your Void-Scarred Anub may substitute for it sometimes)
Chrominius: 25% drop from Blackwing Lair
This is the last day of the week before reset, so a good evening for running old raids towards getting some drops, and working towards your Raiding with Leashes achievements.
would be a good thing to do tonight. You might get lucky!
When you have half a dozen to a dozen good 25s, you need to establish routines you can do to level pets and earn Charms. While you can complete BfA WQ with Level 1s now, those Level 1s will get XP to become level 2 and 3, and then it won’t work as easily.
You should open Dailies in all the continents up to Pandaria. Your Emperor Crab will easily defeat all of the Kalimdor tamers on its own. When you have done that, each will allow you to do a daily challenge battle that will give good XP to your lower level pets to get them started. When you open Pandaria, you get very good dailies for high leveling XP, and open more. Start here: https://www.wowhead.com/achievement=6602/taming-kalimdor#comments
Keep farming the BfA WQ for Charms, on all your alts. I have a post here about how to do almost all of them with just three Level 25s
You can expand your information sources. Most of the information for battling is focused on people who already have more pets, because having just one or a dozen pets is a stage that doesn’t last long, but no harm to start looking at them:
Both Discords are very friendly places. Pet battlers have the nicest and most helpful communities.
and of course Wowhead.com is as always a fount of information about how and where to acquire pets.
So if I were you right now I would
get my first Raiding with Leashes run-through done,
pick up my Teroclaw
capture an (ideally Blue H/H) Unborn Val’kyr (they’re easy now)
earn as many Charms as possible. First purchases: a few bandages, a Blue stone for Ikky and your White Nexus Whelpling
work on levelling your Starlette and Kneebiter by any means possible for farming Charms from WQ. Teroclaw and Anubisath and Chrominius and Valk would be your next levelling targets).
Oh wow this feels like some kinda honour to have you reply haha! I’ve been reading your forum posts almost religiously trying to make sense of stuff c:
Yess I did get myself some nexus whelplings two of which are P/P (neither Blue unfortunately). The rare I did get was a P/S and I got pretty lucky with it getting it on my 4th catch!
Omg so that’s what I was doing wrong! I guess its all those years of playing pokemon I didn’t realise that its not as simple as show your face in battle then peace out and get exp. Good to know!
Amazing! i currently have only 4 level 50’s but that should be more than enough to get me started Are the PPC and those rare upgrade stones BOA, ie. can I send them all over to one toon I designate as my battle pet character? I guess it shouldn’t matter coz any changes I make to my pets on one alt will carry over to any other alt I use anyway but it would be good to know!
Ok firstly, thank you so much for all the advice and I do use discord so I will be checking those out soon! Raiding with leashes sounds like a lot of fun personally since I’m a relatively new player to the game (started BFA) and one amazing side effect of all the pet shenanigans is to visit places that I’ve never seen before. Really opens my eyes to the scale of this massive world and the brilliance of Blizzard’s art and environment team! Raiding with leashes would scratch that itch to explore older content that I missed out and Im definitely looking forward to it!
So I was doing some reading on forums last night and I have some questions about some of the pets you mentioned. (I do not know how much of this holds true or is factual and was hoping you could shed some light on it!)
Ikky and the Zandalari biter’s are getting nerfed to the point where certain strategies they were known for may/may not work in the prepatch and going into SL? (While I personally don’t care too much about viabilities or tier lists, I would like to know which are the best pets to level up early in order to start grinding out PPC so I can work towards a more balanced roster)
Unborn valkyr received nerfs and are no longer as viable as they once were? Again I’m not sure at all about what the nerfs are or how they affect them or if this is more of a PvP change as opposed to a PvE one, I was just hoping you could enlighten me on these two points. Val was definitely on my list of pets to get so I’ll be spending the time regardless!
Gonna work through the list of things you mentioned at the end of your reply now! Funnily enough 3 of the 5 points you mentioned were on my own list too so yay!
Ty Ty for taking the time out to read and reply! Appreciate ya!
Two P./Ps and a P/S is perfect for Nexus Whelplings. I often throw a team of three NWs at a battle. Arcane Storm->Mana Surge->Tail Sweep or Frost Breath till dead, and repeat, is actually enough to win a lot of WQ battles by itself. Raw power!
Yes, and yes. Everything pet-battle is account-wide/BoA. My Priest is my designated pet battler, and she receives and stores all the various Charms and Stones and dungeon currencies from my other characters.
Old raids and dungeons: yes, a new player should definitely visit those. They are home to some of the greatest ambiance and character work in WoW. They are worth seeing for their own sake, for pets and some mounts, for making gold by selling the loot that drops, for achievements, and for transmog!
Ikky and the Raptors and the Shattered Defenses pets in general did take a nerf in prepatch, but in the end that nerf was not nearly as big as anyone expected. There were a few niche cases where strats depending on them were invalidated, but not many, and they are still among the most reliable fast solutions to battles.
Valks were once rare but are plentiful now. There is always one up in each of the zones they spawn in Northrend, so it only takes 5 minutes to find one - and if you kill it, another will spawn in the same zone immediately. They did take a serious nerf, which however affected PvP a lot more than it did PvE. In PvP, Valks were expected to come back after their initial Haunt and act as a fresh pet; that is no longer viable because they sacrifice half of their health to Haunt. But in PvE, Valks typically Curse of Doom and Haunt, and then are not expected to do anything else, so that Haunt nerf didn’t affect them much.
Awesome! Thank you for clarifying! Will begin hunting them right after I finish doing these WQ’s on my alts! I managed to do the currently active ones with my current pets and it went great! I even had to improvise and use a team of all level 1 elementals to deal with that Eddie Fixit guy (Automated Chaos) and am surprised at how well that worked! The WQ’s really aren’t all that hard if you have a general idea of what you’re doing! c:
Time to do them again on my alts! Thank you once again for all the help!
). I’ve especially learned a lot from a player called grainne who seems to be super active on these forums. In one such beginner related post they gave a pretty in depth step by step guide of things to do for a beginner tamer and I’ve tried to base most of what I do off that.
