Better Than a Green Fire Quest Line!

I got up this morning and found this comment from Ishtla. Eventually I will get the tome; however I think Cat may need to check her mail. Cat wasted no time hurrying to the mailbox. OMG! The Sunreaver Micro-Sentry that Haywire drops! It’s just what she wanted! Thank you! Thank you Ishtla!

He needs a name! I will call him … wait. The mail came from Ravenpayne, the comment from Ishtla and I was going to name him after the person I know is Ishtla. How do I know this? Am I sure? I don’t remember why I’m sure Ishtla is that person. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve always thought they were the same. I need to ask someone.

I’m not sure why the dog would have this information but hey, let’s assume Cat knows what she’s doing.

“Ishtla is Helke of JD’s LBR and Mogolympics fame isn’t she?”

I don’t know what the dog replied but Cat still seemed uncertain so she went to consult with another friend.

“Jogu! Jogu! Wake up! I need to talk!” Yeah, Jogu the Drunk sleeps in Cat’s pond. She couldn’t rouse him. He’s … ah … a heavy sleeper. He was no help.

Yeah. That’s the first thing she did. Farmer Nishi is Cat’s first stop for all her babies. With two good level 25′s she’s a great trainer to get off to a quick start. Cat seldom needs the second level 25 and there’s a lull in there with the  Singing Sunflower when it’s too distracted by all its healing that the baby can safely go in for a round.

Cat sent word to Sasche that she should be on the lookout for another Sealed Tome of the Lost Legion. Try for groups with no other Warlocks so you don’t have to worry about that first click thingy. Come on Sasche, we’ve got this cool pet! Let’s try to help get Ishtla her Tome! Thank you so much!

And the Winner Is …

Well you have to have a master of ceremonies don’t you? So Scotty it is! My dog was going to do the honors but he’s a little under the weather so he’s just spectating and letting Scotty handle the rest. Thanks to Navi for making me aware that Scotty existed!

So first I’d like to thank those of you who took pity on me and fed my desire for more battle pet stories! Thank you so much! We had three competitors and a winner will be selected by /roll because I sure can’t pick one. I decided to roll in alphabetical order so here they are:

Effy of Awaiting the Muse’s Tiny Dreamer

The tale of how Kamalia finally answered the siren’s call of Pet Battles

Saundin the Rescuer from Sohei of Non-Squishy Heals

Cat was on a taxi flying to a spirit tamer do dailies when she decided to roll. Oh Effy! A 65, that’s great! Oh no, Kam rolled a 35. And here’s Sohei’s roll, he’ll have to do well to beat Effy’s roll! Oh my! Sohei knocked it out of the RNG field with an 81! Congratulations Sohei! Saundin’s epic tale of tenacity prevailing won him a Pandaren Earth Spirit. I hope that he plays well with your other pets but tell them to watch out. He’s unfortunately fond of stunning everything he gets near.

I did a quick check and found Saudin on Shadow Council but want to double check before I send off the Earth Spirit, just let me know that’s the correct Saudin and I’ll have it in the mail.

EDIT: I checked your about page to make sure it was you and now Saudin should have a package! I ran all the way to Goldshire and was mauled by wolves before I remembered postage, lol.

Once again thank you so much! You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many battle pet stories!

Bugs and Disatisfaction

First, I TOLD Cat to be more specific when she sat on Greatfather’s lap and told him what she wanted. Saying I want that really cool Tol’vir rare archaeology item just didn’t do it. I mean he’s not a mind-reader Cat, he doesn’t know you’re a big battle pet fan. Be happy with your little bug mount, sheesh, it’s always something.

And then right after that, this … I detect a pattern, not sure where it will end.

Anyway, long, long, ago in the days of yore which would be sometime like about last October I remember Cat and I hunting down our battle pets. Oh! Look! I’ve found a Silky Moth! Isn’t he wonderful! OH! And he’s a common! How lucky are we!

Yeah, you get the picture. We were squeeing in delight over everything we found, didn’t matter what quality it was. YAY! YAY! We found one.

Yeah well that sure has changed. Today I spent … I don’t even want to admit how long … just a really long time trying to replace my rare Whelk with a BETTER RARE Whelk. It’s come to that. Not even satisfied now with a rare, it must be the BEST rare ever. It was a mistake to find out about all the breeds. LOOK! LOOK! Formulas! Computations to be made! Aaarrrggghhh! My rares must be the BEST.

Yes, I really have gone batshit crazy here. Those wonderful carefree days of skipping through Azeroth happy with whatever pets I found are over. History.

Cat and I are dissatisfied now if our rares are not best in slot breeds! I KNOW, it’s all kinds of craziness!

So we took some of our hand picked, really SPECIAL rares and did a few PvP battles and had our hat handed to us more often than not. Hmm … where did we go wrong. I must recalculate. We must look for EVEN BETTER RARES!

OMG! Where will this end?

Okay, got to go. Cat and I must find the VERY BEST Dung Beetle EVER!

EDIT: OMG! Navi just linked me an Emperor Crab with INSANE POWER! Forget bugs, I must own the crab of unending POWER!

Shocking Expose — Scourged Whelpling Cam

I have long had my suspicions. Then I’d tell myself … naw … you’re just being paranoid. But really, the evidence is mounting up to the point that it just can no longer be ignored. Look at the Scourged Whelpling footage taken by our intrepid reporter … yeah okay … it’s just Cat but work with me here. With the modern miracle of stop-action footage obtained at great cost, she’s captured the torment of flying a rental into the Argent Tournament.

Look at all those bloody Scourged Whelplings!!! Do you see how many there are? DO YOU SEE! Of course they aren’t really there once you land and return. You say, “Yeah, that’s just the CRZ craziness, get over it.” WELL I THINK NOT. I see a pattern emerging here. I think there’s something much more sinister going on here.

Navi had a post about WoW Lead Designers engaging in the community and of course I paid special attention to what Cory Stockton had to say. I carefully listened to his interview at Warcraft Pets. Oh yes, very clever. Talking about the elusive and (I think non-existent) very rare Minfernal. Making us want it even more. WHEN IT DOESN’T EXIST!

Oh yeah … people say they’ve captured it … sure. Navi says it’s real but I smell a rat. Look at her collection … she has a Mini Tyrael! That smells like a payoff to me! They roped her into their evil plan to perpetrate the myth of the Minfernal with payment of a Mini Tyrael. I’ll have to get my investigative reporter Ironsally looking into the collections of other defenders of the existence of Minfernal. I’m SURE we’ll see a pattern!

Why must they torment us so Mechanical Yeti, why? What is Blizzard’s evil scheme? Are they in league with the government to create nerdrage for some reason? Do you suppose there’s some possible weapons use for it? I was recently told my usual normal blood pressure was high. Go straight to your doctor. Huh? It wasn’t high before Minfernal, and Scourged Whelplings, and … in league with the drug companies? Could it be?

Ironsally will get to the bottom of their evil scheme! Mark my words! All will be revealed and …

Huh? What’s up you say?

In a further attempt to unhinge me, Blizzard didn’t take down the servers for maintenance today. Rolling restarts. I have work to do. I was depending on their help. I thought pet battles would be inaccessible to me for at least a few hours. Once again … they conspire.

But never fear, I fought the addiction. I have not logged back in to satisfy Cat’s never ending desire to battle, level and collect pets.

See, I resisted. Instead I’M JUST WRITING ABOUT THEM INSTEAD OF DOING WORK … NOOOOOooooooooo

A Cautionary Tale of Battle Pets

Yes, it’s come to this. Cat’s fields lay fallow. She told me it’s a glitch, it’s Blizzard’s fault … some kind of bug, yeah … right. You know I try to give her her space and not interfere but now she’s gone too far. I think she’s hit bottom. Maybe she’ll snap out of it now.

She has been doing nothing but battle tamers and level her pets. She occasionally goes looking for rares to replace poors and commons but that’s it. And I see evidence of the strain. She practically froths at the mouth in fury when she receives another Well-Loved Toy instead of a Battle-Stone. And oh my … the language!

Yes, Den Den took pity on her and gave her a job washing beer mugs. She couldn’t scrap up enough money to pay her bar tab because all she does is level pets. I’m not even hopeful she’ll keep that job long as she’s always late … just one more level … just one more tamer.

Her latest mission is to start leveling the level one greens that can’t be obtained in the wild. Just the special ones, it turns out she thinks they’re all special. I find her optimism that she’ll ever accumulate that many Battle-Stones to upgrade them all a little extreme but I didn’t say anything. Who am I to rain on her parade. But Cat, do something else for a change … something … ANYTHING … but no she doesn’t even hear me. She’s lost in her leveling frenzy.

So if you see someone hunched over the sink in ratty old clothes in the back of the Inn at Halfhill, it’s probably Cat. Learn from her mistake. Be cautious with battle pets, don’t take them lightly, they are DANGEROUS. Don’t let it happen to you.

How to Complete Eastern Kingdoms Safari

The last day of the year was filled with both joy and anguish. It finally rained on Jaguero Isle and the Baby Apes appeared! The final pet to complete Eastern Kingdoms Safari! Yay! Yay … um … it didn’t complete, what the heck?

I wasn’t getting credit for the Wharf Rat or the Crimson Moth. This morning I decided to go to Stranglethorn and try recapturing those two pets. Yay! It works! So if you find yourself in the same situation just try recapturing whatever pet you’re not getting credit for. I had captured those two pre-patch 5.1 so I’m guessing anything you capture after 5.1 won’t have that problem.

So on the first day of the new year Cat is ecstatic! Thank you Mimiyah for hanging out there for me! I hope all that leather you skinned while waiting sells and you make lot’s of money. Hopefully Mimiyah will buy a pet with all her proceeds.

Anyway, public service announcement number one of 2013, I hope it helps someone! Happy pet hunting!

Pro Pet Mob the Insane

Ohai. I’m hoping I can get back to normal now. At some point in the raising of 75 pets to level 25 it became some sort of mental disease. It really reminded me of the old Insane grind, there seems to be a tipping point where I become unhinged on these things. At least the holiday company was gone when it hit. Would have been ugly to see.

So yay! We have a Singing Cricket named Khizz, because Khizz is a singing cricket irl, er, singing human! I thought Khizz might want to see Ironforge at Winter Veil time, so we cruised the town checking out the light displays.

There is no doubt that the grind for the Pro Pet Mob achievement could take less time if you just leveled pets in the 22 to 23 level range instead of ones you like or who have cool animations but where would the fun in that be, so for the most part I leveled favorites. Scorpids, yes! Bandicoons, yuck.

Even aside from the leveling of pets, Cat’s just gone crazy. At some point she’s going to starve because she’s just living off the lousy 11 gold 40 silver the pet tamers give her, because THAT’S ALL SHE DOES. And she’s really becoming a poor winner. I’ll have to have a chat with her about doing that dance after she wins. I don’t think that’s appropriate. Really. Poor losers are bad enough but this taunting the tamers has got to stop.

When I complained about her obsession with pets she quickly pointed out that she’s been taking advantage of the cultural activities available throughout Pandaria. She attended a performance by the famed Drum Master Grohl Grohl. It was good to hear she was doing SOMETHING other than pet battling.

And yes, she’s enlisted the help of her Horde Cenarion sisters. Mimiyah has camouflaged herself and is hiding out on Jaguero Isle hoping she’ll be there when it rains and catch a Baby Ape. I think that’s very nice of her since she’s not that into pets.

Cat seems to have a new favorite pet. She does this a lot but this time it might stick, she’s fascinated by her mechanical kitten and has hope that she will go far.

She has a few complaints. She’s fine with pets losing levels when captured but it is hard to bear when you’re battling a rare with stats something like speed=415, power=378 and yay! Success! And on looking at the stats they’re now speed=260, power=260.

She’s had some good luck, she finally got her Pandaren Fire Spirit and a Porcupette but the Thundering Pandaren Spirit refuses to drop a Pandaren Earth Spirit.

She’s a little worried about the part of the 5.2 patch notes that says:

• Fleeing a pet battle will no longer despawn the pet that was being battled, but doing so will now inflict some damage on the fleeing pet battle team.

I wonder if that counts when forfeiting to Tamers. She’s ashamed to admit that to best the Thundering Tamer she forfeits until he leads with Sludgy the critter. So if it does, taking damage each time is going to eat a hole in her supply of bandages.

There’s no time to waste, we need that Earth Spirit to drop before the patch. That’s her excuse anyway.

/wave! Nice to get to talk to you! Got to go, Cat’s pulling on my sleeve, haven’t beat down that Thundering Tamer yet today. Today might be the day he gets tired of us and gives up that Earth Spirit!

Untamed Hatchling’s Birthday Party

This morning I was somewhat disgruntled. Here it is the week before all the festivities and I got a cold that turned into a sinus infection, so dust bunnies may be staying right here. If you’re so sick what are you doing pet battling? Come on, it’s a perfect activity for playing under the weather. If you sneeze they all wait politely for you to finish, see, perfect.

So I was complaining to Navi that I felt awful. She said she’d cheer me up! Soon she arrived on Fenris bearing a gift! It was the best gift ever! An Untamed Hatchling!

By using the Ratshag Strategy I was able to get him to level 25 in record time. He’d worked so hard I promised him a 25th birthday party. He stomped over and ate all his cake but then I really think he deserved it.

Thank you again Navi, I love him, he’s much better than those stupid old Fire and Earth Spirits. You hear that Pandaren Spirits? I don’t even care about you anymore. Huh, let’s see if reverse psychology works on Pandaren Spirit pets. Now that I don’t care, will they come?

Now I’m off to go terrorize everyone in the Shrine of the Seven Stairs with my Papa Hummel’s Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit enhanced hatchling! Good times!

Pet Battles … The Shocking Truth

… is that I really have an addiction. This from someone who thought … yeah big whoop … about pet battles. I can’t wait to visit the Darkmoon Faire and thrill in the power that is my Lil’ Ragnaros every day. BY FIRE BE BURNED!!! I yell it along with him, works out fine when I’m alone but it’s becoming so ingrained that I hope I don’t start yelling it out on the phone with a client.

Which is another thing I love about pet battles, I can stop in the middle and take a call. No one dies, everything stops just where it was and they all wait for me! Perfect! I have frequently died in the past from phone calls which is fine by me but one reason I didn’t like to group, as I can’t let other people’s characters die for my job, that’s just wrong. So pet battles! Perfect for people who are supposed to be working but aren’t!

I even have a little black book. In it I keep notes on what pets could use an upgrade, who works well against who and a list of my teams because I got a little pet battle dyslexic there for a while. I am very fond of Axel my Clockwork Gnome. I love his ow! ow! ow! and ouch, I became so enamored of Axel that I kept mistaking him for humanoid because come on, he’s Axel my bud! And then he was Axel the dead bud. So now I keep detailed notes in my closely-guarded little black book.Every Battle-Stone I receive is a thrill. It involves hours of study at www.warcraftpets.com and PetBattleArena making sure I upgrade a worthy pet. Do they have the stats I want? Could I use a better flying pet? Or would magic be better? So much to consider. Catwynn’s choice was made easy as the Battle-Stone was for flying. No contest, it’s the Crow. That Cat has no patience, so she figured that the odds of her camping a rare were about zero, so easy Rare Crow!

And that’s another thing, I wonder if anyone else does this. Cat is the pet battler. For some reason I must think that her months of experience at pet battling make her preferable to another character. I noticed the other day I had a character at the correct location but logged out and flew there so Cat could battle the tamer. You never know, best to play it safe.

When I first started pet battles I did it like everything else in-game, quickly. I must hurry to get him before he gets me, aaaahhhhhh! They died a lot. It was a eureka moment when I realized that I could take all the time in the world. I could calmly consider my next move. No one was going to jump me. I’ve done a lot better since. It’s like chess, no really.

I find it interesting that among so many fans of battle pets there are so many different interests. Some love hunting and capturing the rare ones. Some love PvP battles, some battling the tamers, others leveling all the pets.

Look at that! She gave me bandages AND a Pandaren Water Spirit! And here I though she really didn’t like me that much! Who knew! We’re BFFs now!

I told Navi I had an addiction. She asked if I wanted an intervention and I yelled, okay typed, NO NO NO! NEVER!  There is a lot that I love about this expansion. I like the farmers at Halfhill, in fact I like them so much I pay all their debts because I can’t beat them up. I was so touched by Farmer Yoon’s excitement when I bought an “Earth-Slasher” Master Plow for the farm. That Pandaren was giddy with joy over the addition to the farm. I like the beauty of the zones, even the creepy ones are gorgeous.

But I LOVE pet battles. My goal is to level EVERYTHING! I will then have a stable of choices, I can pick and choose. I can try different combinations. Cata lasted Cat about two months and then she had to get creative. Old content, Ironman challenges, making money. This time is different. I HAVE THE PET BATTLES! SQUEEEEEEE! Sorry … and yes, I do actually SQUEE aloud every time I get a Battle-Stone. My husband even now knows to turn to me and inquire, “Battle-Stone squee?” Ah … life is good.

Derp Queen’s Red Letter Day

A kind of funny story, it’s at someone’s expense but since it’s me that’s okay. One day Navi was telling me about a pet battle she had. It was looking really bleak until she called on her Gregarious Grell, who came in and saved the day. And against a team with a crab, I’m very fond of crab battle pets so I was very impressed.

I looked up my Gregarious Grell and told Navi, “Oh, mine’s poor quality.” She of course said, “But they’re rare.” I said I know, geez, why is this happening to me. Navi was wonderful, instead of telling me, “Ancient, you dope, it can’t be poor quality.” She sympathized with me.

So around about this time, yes, my mind takes a while to kick in, I thought, but hey … I don’t remember buying a Grell. Why do I even have one. Yes … well, I don’t. It came up as gray because I don’t have one. I told Navi and we ROTFLMAO for a while.

So today Navi said I should check my email. There in my inbox was the code for a Gregarious Grell!!! SQUEEEE! Of my very own, and RARE QUALITY not poor like my last one.

In six years of playing WoW do you know how many times I’ve walked past Landro Longshot in Booty Bay wishing for a word or a glance. I mean he’s The Black Flame! Nothing, he never knew I existed. UNTIL NOW! We’re like BFFs now! So not only did I get a wonderful pet, I was acknowledged by none other than Landro, finally! I mean is that a red letter day or what!

So today, the Navinator was born. In time, all will fear the Navinator. They will tremble at the sound of the name. They will forfeit at the sight of the Navinator! YES! THERE WILL BE LAMENTATIONS OF THE WOMEN TOO!

So no kissing up to the Shado-Pan or The Klaxxi today, no sir. Navinator’s training will begin. I will use my best coach to guild them. My Emperor Crab. I will have to pick a worthy leveling mate for him. I must speed level him to level 25! Leaving death and destruction in our wake! Beware! We’re coming for you!

Thank you again Navi!