A typical start to the expansion

It was a typical start to an expansion for me, meaning after the first two quests off the boat, I was leveling fishing, herbalism, alchemy, cooking, tilling, and archaeology.

Then something very very bad happened. I met someone very dangerous. The introduction went like this:

Blizzard: Hi K, this is pet battles... pet battles, this is K.
Pet Battles: Hai K! /cue cute critter wave
K: ZOMG I am done for. Just done for.

I can not even express the danger that is pet battles. But let me try with the following jumbled list of suggestions and random thoughts and observations.

1. It is random whether a pet you catch will turn out to be a poor, common, uncommon, or rare quality pet. I think I caught a fawn 3 times and it ended up being poor twice and rare once. So even if you've caught a pet, I would try catching more if you want to try to get a higher quality pet.

2. Try to level your 3 pets together. At one point I had two pets that were level 6 and 7 and my third was level 1. The poor level 1 got his ass handed to him when I got into a bit of trouble and my level 6 and 7 pet died. It was ugly.

3. Consider leveling more than your 3 pets together. In preparation for No Favorites as well as having a team pets to switch in and out depending on the zone and type of pets I expect to encounter, I am leveling more than 3 pets at once. I figure while I'm in the starter zones, I might as well do it now. So I think I currently have maybe 6 or 7 pets in the level 5-7 range.

I don't think you need to level all 10 types of pets from 1 because for this achievement you can catch a level 9 pet, level it to 10 and have it count. But I like the variety in knowing I have 6 or 7 classes of pets to swap in and out.

4. Speaking of achievements, be afraid. Be very afraid. As an achievement addict, the achieves to catch every pet on the continents just make me twitch. For example, Kalimdor Safari requires something like 90 pets to be captured. And that's just Kalimdor. Are you twitching as well?

5. This could be a serious threat to raiding. At one point last night the four of us guildies that were online were all pet battling. No questing, no doing the dungeons, no leveling up professions, but pet battling.

6. You will start thinking of cute little critters like bosses. So we were on vent last night and it was funny to hear the commentary as each of us went up against critters that we used to think of as just cute little critters. There was boasting, there was swearing, there was crying after losses and celebration after wins. If you didn't know any better, you'd think you were hearing us fight some dungeon or raid boss.

(And can I just say its total bullshit when you think you're going to fight one pet then it turns out to be two? Bullshit!)

7. Don't forget that your pets don't have to die to swap another pet in. So my pet Sebastian (my Magical Crawdad pet who I've always called Seb after the crab in the Little Mermaid) has a healing ability called Renewing Mists that looks like it persists for 5 rounds. My other pets have damage abilities that stack for a couple rounds as well. So play around with swapping pets in and out to take advantage of all abilities that stack through subsequent rounds.

8. Use the resources that have already been compiled. Two from Wowhead are helpful. The pet database lists every pet, showing images, stats, abilities, and location. Their map allows you to see all the pets that are in a particular zone.

9. As Lorosia mentioned in the comments, some addons to help you! Pet Journal Enchanced which helps you sort and filter your pets, Battle Pet Count which shows you the quality of battle pets you already own of that species, Pet Battle Teams which allows you to save up to 60 team pet combinations.

Anyways, here is Mini K:



Apparently I'm not the only one using a tree. My ever loving and supportive holy pally guildie Lorosia shared a while ago that he would use a tree pet to battle as well. Why? Because it would be the only time that he could tell a tree what to do and the tree would listen.

Anyways. Eventually I tore myself away from pet battles and when Jess logged, we did what has been tradition for several expansions now and did some quests together. Though it was a bit nontypical in that I did actually help instead of herbing or fishing on the side, the vent conversation was typical in that I said things like "Jess!!! Five mobs are on me!" in a very irritated voice.

I am also continuing my tradition of leveling in my resto spec. And I was surprised with how much more dmg I did! This is not going to be as painful as it was in past expansions. Woot!

Ok that's enough of a jumbled post on what my first day of the expansion was like. Hope everyone is having fun!