Thoughts on the new Gnomeregan pet dungeon?

Gameplay Pet Battles
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First off, love that we can cage and sell pets won in the dungeon now. Gives us a reason to keep doing them even after we buy all we want from the vendor.

The fact that it’s difficult to access for Horde players the first time around is annoying of course, but there is a decent enough workaround, thankfully.

Thematically it makes sense that one of the recipes is an engineering schematic. A little disappointed, since I only have one 120 character, who is not an engineer. And the realm is so small that it will probably be a while until I find someone who can make it for me. Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one on the Alliance side who cares about pet battles.

Now as for the contents itself…

Overall the dungeon feels very grindy. The first time through I took notes on planning out teams for the challenge mode. Second time through, with those prepared teams, it took well over 30 minutes to clear. It feels like this wasn’t just a matter of there being a lot of fights, but rather that a lot of the boss fights favour stall teams.

On that note, really wish I had a 110 druid to grab myself a Broot. It seems like the kind of pet that is perfect for the aforementioned stall teams. I suppose I could just buy a Blossoming Ancient from the pet store, but that feels kind of… yeah. Not a fan of the pet store. It can probably also do a real number on the mechanical back line pets.

The Annoy-O-Tron seems like a perfect example of the kind of overly long battle that ends up way too grindy.

The elementals and the door console are easy enough, with striders, toads/frogs and snails all being aquatics with enough self healing to cruise through the fights fairly easily. I did the console with snails, which made it another overly long fight.

The cockroach gave me another one of those moments where poorly programmed pet AI really shines. The cockroach itself is easy enough, but the 20 round countdown on Apocalypse can actually be felt in this fight… unless there’s another cockroach in the backline that gormlessly resets it.

Not much to say about the rat. Good to know that there will always be a niche for the Val’kyr + Anklerender/Ikky combo to fill.

The Gnomish defence force… this one is easy enough to brute force with any number of Immolate/Conflagrate elementals.

The final boss… Jackhammer is a spectacular weakness in its design. Three pets with Lightning Shield or Fire Shield and another strong elemental offensive ability walk all over it. I’m tempted to make a triple Tinytron team just for giggles, since it’s the only pet that can learn both, as far as I know.

Finally, the backline… I love that there’s a lot more variation there than there is in the previous two dungeons, especially Wailing Caverns. However, with five out of seven being mechanical (which makes sense, of course), it feels like you’re once again entirely dependant on Broot or the Blossoming Ancient.

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Mechantula is cageable, and its price will bottom out quickly, because its mats are cheap and it’s a great way for Engineers to skill up, so they’ll be making lots of them. And even on a small realm, people will be caging and selling pets they got from larger ones.

The battles do seem easy but long and grindy in general. But I never felt the need to resort anywhere near to Broot or BA.

I have instability problems since 8.1, but I finally got through Normal without having to reboot. Autumnal Sprouting and Conflag pets were my MVPs. Lazey has a series on Xu-Fu’s using Soul of the Forge and Emperor Crab repeatedly in several battles; with their heals, they just keep on ticking.

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The last boss pet was pretty cool the first time I beat it, I made it with just a few hp left on my last pet.

Second time I did that boss, I used lil’ bling for inflation (stampede) and a stormstruck beaver with lightning shield (deals 270 damage on receving direct hit) and the boss killed himself like …lol.

All in all, not my kind of content, but it was ok. I liked it.

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The hardest pets imho was the console pets, nasty triple elementals.

A single tinytron can steamroll last boss. start out with a stampede cast on a mob fast enough to go first. Get punted to backrow. Make sure your tinytron has highest health. Cast fire shield and lightning shield, and you win.

Also, all of the buyable pets can be caged, unlike the deadmines ones.

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I like the fact the pets are cageable. That being said…

  • No Sparklematic cameo, but we’ve got something similar, I guess. :woman_shrugging:
  • This dungeon feels way longer than two others. I suppose it makes sense that guaranteed, tradeable pets need to be ground harder to delay the devaluation. Backliners are stronger and occur at every encounter except three bosses. Also, the Shadowy Figure, which should be skippable, is not (and he stuns you -.-); I feel the passageway should be skipped too, but don’t mind it that much personally.
  • It’s very clear to me that backline pets were designed around our attempts to overcome them. There are a couple of Mechs, but we also’ve got a Cockroach that is resistant to elementals, aswell as Leper Rat and Automatic Robot Tank with aquatic abilities. The Great Apocalypse is a little “take that” to our stallers, huh?
    There are some hybrid pets which can be handy, such as Trunks or Electrified Razortooth, but each still has certain weaknesses, and will be used only once or twice.
    I like this face of difficulty myself, but can’t speak for the others.
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Yeah, like I said, the Apocalypse on the cockroach boss actually feels like a challenge. Unless there’s another cockroach in the backline to reset it.

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Anyone else not getting the “Pet Battle Challenge: Gnomeregan” quest after completing the “Gnomeregan’s New Guardians” quest?

I completed “Gnomeregn’s New Guardians”, got the reward and can now teleport back to dungeon entrance but Micro Zoox isn’t offering the follow up quest for the challenge mode.

I’ve never done pet battles before but wanted the engineering schematic from Micro Zoox so bought a load of level 25 pets just to complete this and now it seems it doesn’t even work.

I’ve opened a ticket but no response yet. Is there maybe some other requirement to getting the follow up challenge mode quest?

Thanks.

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I believe you must have levelled 15 pets to 25 to qualify. That is, you need the “Rookie Pet Group” achievement to do the challenge mode. According to your armoury, you have levelled 8 pets to 25. I am not certain of this, but it would be similar to the requirements for the CT and other pet scenarios.

https://www.wowhead.com/quest=54186/pet-battle-challenge-gnomeregan does not specify the requirement, but I’m sure I read it somewhere.

Pets you bought at 25 do not count for this, but if you bought a pet at 24 and levelled it to 25, that pet does.

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The blizzard post over here: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/news/22808930

just says you need to have 15 level 25 pets, not that you need to have levelled 15 pets to 25, but you might be right on that.

“For those daring to push your team, you can take on the Challenge Mode version of the dungeon, which requires you to have at least 15 maximum-level battle pets. This will open an account-wide weekly quest that you can pick up from Micro Zoox, who’s waiting outside the Gnomeregan instance portal.”

I’ll try levelling some more to 25 and let you know how it goes, thanks for the suggestion anyway. :slight_smile:

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Hmm. Yeah.

I do remember the “you must have levelled 15 pets” was a FAQ back in the CT days. I suspect the wording Blizzard used here is probably loose.

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You were right! :smiley:

I captured a few pets at level 23 and levelled them to 25 with the cheap battle training stone. That gave me the “Pro pet group” (Raise 15 pets to level 25) achievement, then I went back to Micro Zoox and the quest for challenge mode is now appearing!

I’m glad you know more about the game than whoever made that Blizzard post about the new pet dungeon does, hehe.

Now to go try the challenge mode… will be nice to get that engineering plan as it’s the last one I need to have every possible one again. :slight_smile:

Thanks!

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