So somehow, even though i’ve been in and out of WoW since it’s very first week - i’ve never had any interactions with battle pets. I went through the pokemon go phase and enjoyed that while it lasted and i’m told battle pets are something similar?
I just wondered if there are any kind of leagues or ranks in which to fight against, or is it just a case of enjoying the process? (catching /finding, leveling up / fighting trainers?). I guess most importantly, how do i even start? I assume I have a few battle pets as i’ve had loads of little pets through the years
I have tried to research some of this but the posts seem incredibly wordy so i’m assuming there’s a lot of complexity here that did not exist in pokemon go
Thank you and apologies for my ignorance on the topic!
Hello!
From the ingame’s perspective, there are various ways to get started, the most conservative one being a big quest chain from Mists of Pandaria.
If you don’t mind, I would like to know more about your pets and achievements so we can see what you can start from and avoid Yet Another Wall of Text. ^^
Post on your Retail character, or give us its name and realm. We can then look your pet achievements and roster up.
At its most simple, just visit the pet trainer in Stormwind or Orgrimmar. There you will get a quest to defeat a tamer in Durotar or Ellwyn. Once you have done that, you can challenge the next one in Westfall or Barrens. And so on, in a chain.
Here is the set of tamers for Alliance:
Once you have done that, you can start the next chain in Outland, then Northrend, Cata, Pandaria.
By the time you have completed Pandaria, you should have built up a strong enough roster to find the rest very easy. Pandaria was the peak. Though you will need to collect lots more specialist pets!
Between challenging tamers, you will engage in battles with wild pets, to tame them for your roster, and to level your pets to beat the next tamer.
Most of the pet game, especially up to Pandaria, is about being out in the world searching for and capturing pets. If you like that, it will be great fun!
OK, so you are starting from pretty close to scratch, with a few level 1 pets and no tamers done yet.
You can level your first team starting with ANYTHING, but some pets will be better than others.
The rock-paper-scissors of the game is Family. Each Family has some advantage over two others - takes weaker damage from, or does extra damage to.
And some pets are specialists, and some are generalists. When starting, you want generalists, that will be useful in almost every situation, because you won’t have hundreds of specialists to call on.
You can tame pets, of course, but you can also farm them as drops in old raids. There are achievements for farming all pets from all expansions, called Raiding With Leashes:
Since you have a 120, you might find that pleasant, and save you some cash at the AH!
Now, here are some pets that are particularly good all-rounders that you can farm or buy at level 1 and that would be amazing on your early roster:
For a beginner’s first team:
I’d go with Anubisath Idol, no question. Complete no-brainer.
My second pick would be Chrominius.
These first two pets are tanky all-rounders you can rely on to hammer at any opponent.
My third would be a really tough choice between Teroclaw Hatchling, Iron Starlette, and Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling (though you want an MPD that has been upgraded to Rate (Blue) quality). Pets can be upgraded with Stones you earn from battling.
That third slot is more interesting. They’re all first-rate pets in their different fields. For a more experienced battler, I’d rank the Teroclaw higher; the other two are more straightworward to use.
Now, as a beginner, my advice for what to do is:
Follow the Taming Outland, Northrend, etc chains up through Taming Pandaria and then Pandaria Spirit Tamers and Beasts of Fable. These are really well-constructed battle chains that will teach you a lot about the pets you use, which to choose, how to use them.
Use the pets you have to do World Quests in Legion, and the Pet Tamers in Draenor, to get Pet Charms. Pet Charms will let you buy stones to upgrade pets.
You can only learn caged pets up to the level you already have, so you can’t just buy your way to your first level 25 team. There is a way, though, to get ONE level 25 Stone from your Draenor Garrison, so if you want to shortcut, you can do that and then splurge on 25s at the Auction House. Ask if you want to know more.
One last word: get the addons
Battle Pet Breed ID
Rematch
Pet Tracker
You can thank me later!
That is absolutely remarkable, thank you so much for taking the time to share all that with me!!! I’ve been considering making an alt to see all the zones again, perhaps i can get 2 birds with 1 stone
Sounds good, although your pets will level much laster than your character. Still, pet battling gives acceptable XP, about on the same level as questing in higher expansions, so if you want to do the tour, it could work.
I would also want to add that sometimes on weekly reset there are specific bonuses for whole week which give 50% reputation from world quests, or 50% honor or triple exp gained by battle pets, i advise you to boost any useful battle pet to level 25 in that time window.
As much is already covered I’d like to enclose some wild pet clusters to battle when you get some more pets and the tamers are out of reach:
Arcane Eyes near Karazhan. These are single magic pets and so they give less exp than full teams, but you’ve got almost full control of what happens. Use an MPD/Cinder Pup/a Dragonhawk to deal with them. As the area is phased out of Legion there are several versions of it and some may not contain them, though.
Dragonbone Hatchlings in Dragonblight, around the giant bones. A mix of beast and flying attacks, with aquatics and critters in the backline. A couple of flying pets with a bit of magic should dispatch them all.
Striders and Golden Civets in Vale of Eternal Blossoms: A healthy number of aquatics spread around the zone, with some beast and flying damage otherwise. The requirements are similar to these above with less focus on speed. The final Pandaria tamer, Aki the Chosen, is there aswell.
A whole lot of critters in Halfhill, Valley of the Four Winds. Anything with Devour and Ravage will enjoy this place, from Teroclaw Hatchling to a cat. The former is more effective against powerball users. Another tamer, Farmer Nishi, awaits a challenge nearby.
Against all but Halfhill ones, you can also use a turkey with Food Coma to secure swapping in your levelling pet. Fast blinds will work just as good, even on critters.
