Saturday (23 Feb) - Fist Fixes Things, Sort Of

Saturday (23 Feb) - Fist Fixes Things, Sort Of

Before the fixing, though, Fist and Sin brought their arsenal of battle pets to Halfill in the Valley of the Four Winds on Saturday.

Sin has accumulated more level 25s than Fist, and introduced some cool new pets to challenge Fist's team. The Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot did some awesome damage, and he also surprised Fist's team when he resurrected after being killed, with a large reserve of health that allowed the Bot to keep fighting.

Sin's Creepy Crate was pretty creepy. The Crate's Creep of Doom one shot a pet of Fist's in stunning fashion. Among Sin's favorites, the Fel Flame and Pandaren Fire Spirit were tough to battle.

Fist's team began with her favorite big hitters, Fluxfire Feline and Lil' Deathwing, backed by the high health Softshell Snapling. Fist's favorite team, though, is loaded with Aquatics with good healing and/or high health with a big bang type attack: the aforementioned Softshell Snapling, the  Strand Crawler, and the fast Eternal Strider. Fist wants to add a Dancing Water Skimmer, Spiny Terrapin, and Emerald Turtle to the list of Aquatics she wants to get to 25.

The series of pet battles were pretty exciting for Fist's team, particularly since her team had been slaughtered in prior battles. The two teams fought to a 2-2 tie in wins. The rubber match went to Fist as well. Sin wanted a chance to get even, and one more battle went down to final wire, with two barely alive pets hammering each other. Fist was lucky to win that one as well, finishing with a 4-2 record on the night.

Fist added two more level 25 rares on Sunday morning: Perky Pug (Critter) and Infinite Whelpling (Dragonkin). Both looked very good in the computer competition, but how they fare against a live opponent or Tamer remains to be seen.

In terms of total numbers, here is a pet comparison between Fist and Sin:

Total Pets (total level 25 pets)
Sin - 175 out of 359 with 175 unique pets (23)
Fist - 198 out of 373 with 136 unique pets (15)

In other pet battle news, the problem with the Tamers has still not been fixed. I reported the problem on 12 Feb, 11 days ago as of Saturday. The next maintenance day on Tuesday would make it two seeks since I reported the problem. It's starting to look like patch 5.2 might be my next best bet for a fix, but the patch notes do not mention fixing the Tamer issue. I have not heard of anyone else having the problem I'm having, and found no mention of it in the Bug Fix forum. If it is only me, I wonder if it will ever be fixed.

On Saturday I decided to retrace pet Tamer quests and see I could jolt the process back into alignment. Note that I have completed the Kalimdor and Outland quests, plus the Master Tamers that follow those quests, which is verified in my Achievements. Also note that these Tamer quests are meant to be completed only once, and the fact that I could get them more than once is a bug in and of itself. I also checked with the Horde Pet npc, Varzok, and he did not offer any quests (he is the npc that gives out the pet quests).

Step 1 - I logged every character in game on both accounts, one after the other. With each account, I checked the Tamer quests to see if there was anything different about them. The bottom line - they all showed the same thing. There were three quests, a Kalimdor one that showed one Tamer killed, an Outland one with no Tamers killed, and the problematic Northrend which I could not finish and couldn't abandon.

Step 2 - The Northrend and Kalimdor quests could not be abandoned, but the Outland one could be. I removed it, since I had already completed the quest.

Step 3 - Since the Kalimdor quest was still hanging, I went through and completed the quest a second time, as well as killing the Master Tamer for it. I got credit with quest completions and even got my goody bags from the quests (Fist was delighted to get a Flawless Dragonkin Stone from it - which I used on my Infinite Whelpling). Varzok still offered no quest after completing the Kalimdor quest again (supposedly he would have offered Outland).

Step 4 - Since Varzok wasn't offering any new quests, I sent Sista to see the Alliance Pet battle npc, Audrey Burnhep, to find out what she offered. She offered Outland and Northrend. I added them to the quest log. Now there were two duplicate Northrend quests, the bugged one and the new one. 

Step 5 - I don't have an alliance toon at a high enough level to do the Northrend quests, but since the Alliance npc was nice enough to give me that second Northrend quest, I sent Fist try to do the new Northrend quest to see if that untangled things.

And oboy did it! Fist did Okrut first. Fist's team knocked him off on the first try, and I was stunned to get a congratulation on completing the Northrend quests! The defeat of one Tamer somehow caused the bugged Northrend quest to complete itself. And I still have the other Northrend quest with one tamer defeated. How weird is that?

Step 6 - Now I had to see if the master Tamer quest was available, and yes, Fist picked up the quest and Master Tamer Payne was waiting for Fist when she arrived at the Argent Grounds in Icecrown, Northrend. On the first attempt, Fist followed the rules, using the proper pets for each of Payne's three pets. It was a disaster, and the team was badly defeated. So I then switched to another set of pets I thought could overcome a miss-matched combination. That, too, failed, but it was closer, and Fluxfire Feline earned a chance to stay in for the third fight. For attempt #3 Fist started with the expected Effervescent Glowfly, followed with Lil' Deathwing, and ended with the Fluxfire. Master Tamer Payne went down.

Step 7 - Fist went back to the Org Pet npc, Varzok, and it was nice to see that he offered the next quest in the series, this one for Cataclysm. It appears that Fist is back on track in his trek to complete all of the Tamer quests.

Step ? - Fist's quest log not only shows the Cata quest and the duplicate Northrend one - Outland once again shows up. It seems I can do these Tamer quests endlessly. I'm not going to risk messing things up, though. I will follow the expected quest thread to completion: Cata, then Pandaria. After that, if the pet battle gods want to keep giving me the quests over and over, I'll be happy to accept any new flawless stones they want to give me.  :)

PS - I'm not going to say anything to Blizzard. Let's see how long it takes them to get back to me.