Pet Battle Addict? Just Maybe!

In my previous post, I explained how Rez has been almost solely responsible for getting me addicted to pet battles! Yes, I'd already had a dabble before but I found the long slow way to level pets kind of boring so had walked away from it. When he talked about the speed leveling post, I just had to give it another try didn't I?

So here's a summary of my game time this last week!

Monday - not shown as a screenshot is the achievement for Zen Pet Hunter which is for capturing 200 pets in battles. I finally managed to finish the speed leveling method and got a level 25 Dragonbone Hatching. It took me ages until I finally realised that I didn't have to keep my pets alive as the trainer was nearby. I'd been playing tactically - swapping them in & out depending on their health so the XP was being spread between all three pets & slowing me down! But in the slow process, I did manage to pick up some rare quality pets of level 22 so I have a fair few high level rares to play with now.

After a random comment from Cold on Twitter, I also realised I didn't have to level specific pets to beat the final Pet Tamer - just use my high level ones & blast her down! I tend to get a bit too focused sometimes & miss the obvious shortcuts!

Tuesday - I decided I only needed a few more pets to capture in various zones across Eastern Kingdoms to finish the Eastern Kingdom Tamer achievement - to capture a pet in every zone. In doing so, I finally hit the magical total of 250 unique pets so I got my Feral Vermling pet too!

Wednesday - I woke up about 40 mins before my alarm went off and as I had so much time & it was so early, I thought I'd try my luck with the seasonal Qiraji Guardling. I'd left my hunter in Uldum the night before so it was just a short flight across to An'Qiraj & there they were! I was surprised to be the only player there too but it worked out well & I got my Guardling really easily - just a grey but I can fix that later! 

What I hadn't realised though is that I only needed to capture a humanoid pet to get my Family Reunion achievement and of course, the Qiraji Guardling is humanoid! It was so early, I was slow & didn't get a screenshot for that achievement though!

Thursday - I set out to complete my Kalimdor Tamer - I only needed to capture a pet in about 5 different zones so that was easy but slow - I used my hearthstone & portals in Stormwind to move across the continent but it was still slow!

Friday - I spent a little while flying around Kalimdor again - I'd forgotten to battle the 5 pet tamers for the quest so that was frustrating but I did it eventually and got my final achievement for this week!

To Do List - So now I have to capture pets in every zone in Outland, Northrend & Pandaria and fight the pet tamers there too. I'll undoubtedly be adding more pets to my collection towards the 400 pets achievement and each unique pet I capture will also count towards the Safari achievements. Each rare I manage to capture will count towards the 50 rares achievement too.

Now that I have a better understanding of the speed leveling process, I might try it again with a fresh set of pets & time myself this time - the claim for a level 25 in one hour seems impossible to me but I'll let you know how that goes!

Also this week, Liopleurodon wrote a great post about Pet Battle PvP 101 - I'm resisting so far but as my stable of level 25 pets increases, I'm sure I'll get sucked in there too!

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Level a Pet to 25 Quickly? Yes Please!

Pet Dragon? Yes please!

Hmmm so I promised myself more WoW time & somehow I managed to spend about 4 hours in game yesterday & lost most of this morning there too! Yesterday was spent sorting out banks and crafting lots of things to sell after I bought a whole bunch of stuff of the Auction House but that's a story for my other blog AH Addict!

Today I popped in to just do my auctions & use my cooldowns on my various alts. I had no intention of really playing anything as I have a long list of stuff I should be doing. But when I logged my Hunter to make my living steel for today, she was over in Deadwind Pass & there was an Arcane Eye pet just in front of me so I just had to try to get it!

I was a guest on EGP about 3 weeks ago but it seems like much longer (sad face here) and Rez is just a wee bit addicted to pet battles. One of the subjects he talked about in that episode is how to level a pet to 25 quickly. By capturing level 16-18 Arcane Eyes with lowish level mechanical team then jumping to Dragonblight with the Arcane Eyes team to get the level 21-22 Condors, you can skip a lot of the in-between leveling. The forum post that explains it in more detail reckons you can do it in an hour but it's taken me much longer just to get 2 uncommon (green) quality Arcane Eyes and just as I was getting fed up & had promised myself just one more, I snagged a rare (blue) quality one too!

So that kind of got me buzzing again but I couldn't be bothered to drag an alt all the way over to Dragonblight. I had my DK over there just 3 days ago but had decided I wasn't going to need her for a while so hearthed her back to Half Hill just yesterday! I decided to try for the Eastern Kingdom Trainers quest - the one where you have to beat 5 trainers? Yeah that one! My Clockwork Robot is level 16 now because it took me so long to get those Arcance Eyes & I have a level 17 rare Arcane Eye and my Mr Grubbs is level 14ish and I thought I could do it. I did manage to get the first 4 done but that nasty dwarf Durin Darkhammer has some horrible tricks up his sleeve!

I've found a helpful bit on Wowhead in the comments though and apparently I need a level 17 magic/aquatic/beast combo so I guess I need to do some more leveling before I can tackle him & his pets! I think I'll focus on getting at least one to level 25 first though - that will let me capture some higher level wild pets & hopefully that will make fighting him easier! Guess I'm off to Dragonblight after all then!

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This Week's To Do List - Pre Xmas Panic!

Last week's To Do List was a bit of a hit here at Casa Nev so I'm going to make another for this week. I do spend a lot of time in game just mooching around from one alt to another, doing stuff as it strikes me. This means that things do get done - eventually but by making a list last week, I found that I really focused on those things more than all the other stuff I usually do.

I think that having written it down in a public place made me want to get that stuff done & not let my readers think badly of me. I know no-one really cares if I get it done or not, it just feels more important in my head so I knuckled down & did it - well most of it anyway.

The only thing that didn't get done was leveling my DK a bit more. I did get my warrior to 87 & with a big Thank You to Soco for giving me a lift to the Shrine of Seven Stars to get my Blacksmith recipe, I managed to max my Blacksmithing too.

I was pretty good at getting my Golden Lotus dailies done & finally hit Revered with them on Sunday evening. I bought the Grand Commendation straight away and last night I got to around 6k/21k so just another 3 or 4 days to get to Exalted I reckon.

My biggest time sink this week has been pet collecting though - not only did I get to the 200 unique pets target I set myself, I actually made it to 206. I think I have most of the wild pets below level 12 now so I need to level up my team a bit more before I tackle the next zones & the next Pet Trainer Battle. I'm going to add that to this week's list I think!

One thing I did do this week that wasn't on my list was to take my US Hunter into a Heroic dungeon - we actually did a couple although that last boss in Shado-Pan Monastery kicked my butt at 2am! Cold popped his Blingtron 4000 to cheer me up - I didn't know I could party with it & I didn't know it would transform me into a human either. I did a couple of screenshots just for fun & managed to catch Cold in his John Travolta impersonation! He's gonna kill me for this one I think!

Cold Goes Disco!

The one thing I didn't put on the list was Winter Veil - I'd forgotten that it was starting so I added that in to my list. I only needed 5 of the smaller achievements to get the title, Merrymaker & so far I think I've managed to get 2 of them. I'm still kissing Revellers to get a Handful of Snowflakes, I need to make the Winter Clothes for myself (or find them in my alts banks of course!) & the dreaded PvP one - 50 honorable kills doesn't sound too bad but I have no PvP gear & I don't want to spend out on a set. I can see a frustrating evening in my near future!

So the list for this week isn't that long, just a few bits left over from last week & a couple of new bits.

• Level the DK to 89 (I will get this one done this week, I am determined!)
• Raise Unique Pet count to 225 or more
• Get Exalted with Golden Lotus on Paladin (will give me 40 Exalted reps & a title too!)
• Finish the Winter Veil achievements on Paladin
• Finish the Dread Wastes quests - not only reputation points but I want to get my Pandarian Loremaster finished too. That will be my 1 year anniversary since I completed the old Loremaster title.
• Take Paladin into a Heroic dungeon - I must do this one - It's bugging me now.

Can I do all this by Xmas Eve? Maybe! I hope so anyway because I'm off on my travels again just after Xmas & I possibly won't have access to my EU account although I'm working on that. I miss my girls and all my professions, gold & heirlooms when I'm on my US account but my Hunter there is coming along nicely so that will keep me busy if I can't access my EU account.

My other big thing this week is my 2nd birthday on my goldmaking blog. If you haven't popped over, I'm running a little giveaway to celebrate & it's really easy to enter. All the details are in my Happy Birthday AH Addict post over there so if you'd like a Blizzard Store pet, go have a look & leave a comment to enter. I look forward to seeing you there.

Winter's Veil Is Here

When I wrote my to-do list for this week, I totally forgot to add in the few remaining achievements I need to complete the Winter's Veil meta-achieve & title of Merrymaker. I only need 5 more so this morning, once I realised the holiday had begun, off I went to get my achieves.

• 'Tis the Season - eat Graccu's Minced Meat Fruitcake whilst wearing 3 items of holiday clothing - great, got all the plans to make the clothes but no Fruitcake - apparently it turns up in the mail after you complete one of the other holiday quests. Finish that tomorrow then
• Let It Snow - sprinkle various race/class combinations with a Handful of Snowflakes - knew I should have kept them from last year - now I need to keep kissing Revellers to get them then I have to find alts for all the various race/class combos - also not getting done today then.
• Fa-la-la Ogri'la - complete the Bomb Them Again daily quest whilst mounted on a reindeer - ok - off to Blades Edge Mountains - where's the quest giver? Took me 10 mins to find her but yay! one achievement completed today!
• Bros Before Ho-ho-ho's - need mistletoe for this one - back to kissing Revellers everywhere again! With a 1 hour cooldown, this could take a while.
• & my most hated one - With a Little Helper from My Friends -  get 50 honorable kills whilst dressed as a Little Helper. I'm not a big fan of pvp so this one will be done with gritted teeth & probably lots of swearing!

So this morning has been a bit of a non starter to be honest. I did go to Hillsbrad to kill the Greench but he was already dead so all I had to do was pick up a Stolen Present & free Metzen the Reindeer. Judging by all the skeletons laying around in the snow, that Greench puts up a heck of a fight! I'm almost glad I missed it!

Luckily I had been looking at which pets I was missing so as I was in Arathi Highlands for the flightpath anyway, I popped over to the Wind Elemental Circle there & found not 1 but 2 Tiny Twister battle pets - I managed to trap an uncommon one so yay! another pet for my ever increasing collection.

Once I got back to Ironforge to hand in the Greench quest I got lucky again! I had a Clockwork Rocket Bot in my Stolen Present & when I learnt it, I got the Feat of Strength achievement too. Maybe this morning hasn't been so bad after all but I still haven't touched my DK or Warrior this week so that's my task for the rest of today & probably most of tomorrow - get them leveled!