Weekend (2 Feb) - The Pet Battles Obsession Continues

Weekend (2 Feb) - The Pet Battles Obsession Continues

I love my battle pets. They try so hard and they never give up. I don't like to see them die, so I try to save them by swapping in some other pet if they get into too much trouble. Even dying, though, is only temporary. They'll be back for more as soon as the healing cooldown ticks past it's eight minute wait.

The giant in my stable is still the Strand Crawler. The crab is now level 18 and quite difficult to defeat. I use him at the start of almost every high end battle, and when victory is assured I let lower level pets take a turn to finish off the last opponent to get experience. That is how it works. The big guns soften up the competition while the lower levels get credit for the kills, which help speed up the leveling.

I'm told that the best leveling strategy is to kill the Tamers, which are special quests with tough pets to defeat. The problem is that the Tamers are scattered all over the world with no clear idea where to find them. It's pretty frustrating, to tell the truth.

Anyway, my personal Top Four on my team is:

18 - Strand Crawler
16 - Spirit of Competition
16 - Strand Crab
15 - 'Lil Deathwing

I have some rare pets which I've captured at level 15 - a Tainted Moth and a Tainted Cockroach. They're not all that powerful, though, and are used mostly as fodder to save the health of better pets.

At the lower level of competition I have some other favorites that I need to find time to level.

12 - Bat. A captured wild pet, I'm grooming this one because it can heal itself. Spirit and Deathwing have been hogging the experience, but I do need to test this bat to see if he's worth spending time on.

9 - Fluxfire Feline (FFF). This is a mechanical cat that is quite powerful. As mentioned in an earlier post, this is a very hard to get pet that took me hours of effort to acquire as a level 1. I was hoping to catch a rare one, but I had to settle for a lesser uncommon one. Well, I had some amazing luck on Saturday morning. Winning battles sometimes drop goodies that can be used to improve your pets. In this case, a [Flawless Battle Stone] dropped. This special stone can be used to upgrade the quality of ANY pet to rare quality. Yes, I used the stone to upgrade my uncommon FFF to rare quality. I am going to put my FFF on the fast track for leveling.

8 - Core Hound Pup. I've been neglecting this poor fellow; however, I'll combine him with the FFF to help with leveling them both.

Finally, I have a several low level pets (level 3-6) that I also want to groom. In particular there is the Ghostly Skull (level 3) that can be bought in Dalaran. I had a stone that would upgrade it to rare, and it is supposed to be quite deadly - once I give it some leveling time.

The rest of the low levels in my stables (that I want to level) are: A second Strand Crawler (8), Crimson Lasher (6), Dark Phoenix Hatchling (6), Frosty (6), and Mr. Grubbs (6).

One last note. There is an option to name your pet. The name has to be unique (when I tested it with a low level pet I kept getting - cannot use, name reserved). I finally got a name accepted. My concern was that the new name would replace the pet's title, but it doesn't. The new name appears at the top, with the original name underneath. So, if I want to name my Fluxfire Feline "Bad Kitty" I can do that and still see the Fluxfire Feline name beneath it. Bad Kitty likes her new name.

Update on Tamers: If I had bothered to read the quests I had received, I would have figured out where the Tamers were. Now that I can at least see what zone they are in, I will be able to go after them.

Part 2 - My pets have been very busy, and the Tamers are beginning to take my pets seriously, as well.

Here are my new rankings as of Saturday night:

20 - Strand Crawler
19 - Spirit of Competition
17 - Fluxfire Feline (Bad Kitty)
17 - Strand Crab
16 - 'Lil Deathwing

I figured out how to locate and engage the Tamers. I defeated all five Tamers on the continent of Kalimdor, then defeated the five Tamers on the Eastern Continent. Two Master Tamers, one for each continent, then became available. Those two were a bit tougher battles, but my team of pets hung in and defeated them. With all of that done, the Master Tamers were available a second time, now as a Daily quest. Their pets perished a second time.

Of course, it's still not over. Pet battle quests are now available in Outlands. Looks like I'll need to park somebody there to do the quests.

So, what did I learn from all these battles? Here goes:

1 - As hard as it was to acquire and level my Bad Kitty, and as much as I love that mechanical cat, unfortunately it is a glass cannon. Yes, when it works it is a devastating attacker. However, it takes three rounds of winding up that big gun, during which the pet is taking heavy damage. On that third round, though, if the attack hits it pretty much kills in one shot. The problem is that it misses about a third of the time, leaving an opponent still at full health and my Bad Kitty looking pretty tattered. What makes this situation even sadder is that I captured another Fluxfire Feline, a level 1 of course, but of rare quality. So now I have two rare FFFs, just when I started wondering whether Bad Kitty was really worth the effort.

2 - My level 20 Strand Crawler will reach 21 in another battle or two. It's just about impossible to kill, since it has a shell for additional defense and can heal itself. During the Master Tamer fights, though, at least two of the six pets the Crawler faced had special attacks that nullified those advantages. The Crawler survived, but it was a wake up call that there are meaner things out there to watch out for.