Tag Archives: vanity pets

03/08-10/08 in WoW

Priest

The big news of the week is my Priest’s successful faction change and transfer to Human and Ghostlands. I was terrified after some bad race change experiences in the past and what with Seithir being the character I’m most attached to but in the end I adored it. I spent ages squeeing over my changed mounts and getting on with Darkmoon Faire dailies and doing a couple of instances. I didn’t realise she could still benefit from Valor Point gear!

I also finally got the Sea Pony on her and the Darkmoon Turtle. Decided to speed up the DMF pet gaining process by also doing the dailies on my Mage and Death Knight though I’ve been slacking with Soup. My Mage, however, got the Darkmoon Cub so that’s 3 more down and I might be able to get one more tomorrow. I’m still undecided between the monkey and the balloon.. I’m not a big monkey fan.

Mage

Well we’ve really done well with our levelling in the past week! (SPEED LEVELLING! WOO!) We were just starting Wrath content this time last week but at the time of writing this post we’re very close to 83 which is amazing. I can’t wait to finally be 85 and able to get on with working on the LFR Time Lord set for transmog in the future. Any help obtaining that one appreciated!

Professions

I’ve worked on Jaedia’s professions as much as I’ve had time for. The economy on Ghostlands is a bit worse for wear but I’m struggling along. Enchanting is up to 382, just hoping Infinite Dust becomes less than 12g a piece soon. Starting to regret snubbing it at 9g a piece on Twitter earlier. And Jewelcrafting is up to 100 which allowed me to do the Darkmoon Faire Jewelcrafting quest. Okay, so 105 then. I don’t believe I’ve touched Soupy’s professions the past week but there’s a bit of ore and dust floating around after all of the transfers recently.

Gold

Brought over 50k and a few bits to sell when I transferred! So this is on the rise though I’m no where near ready to start getting back into the market properly. Having close to 60k gold is nice though.

Guild

Dan’s transferred his Paladin over and a mutual friend seems to be planning to bring his over as well. Also, Reliq seems to be a little scared of poor little Soupy. She only wanted a hug!

A Sidenote

I just found my bucket list summary from just before Cataclysm hit and it made me a little sad. I had achieved so much at this point and I was so very excited for the prospect of Cataclysm and I ended up so disappointed that I don’t think I hit many of the new goals I had set at all. It’s a shame but I’d like to keep my goals realistic and maintain a calm enjoyment of Mists with an awesome group of people. That is, after all, my main goal in this game.

Screenshot of the Week: Here… Doggy?

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Baradin Fox Kit

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I discovered this pet over on Warcraft Pets, I discover pretty much every pet over there really but still, I hadn’t noticed it before. It’s a rare drop from the foxes on the Tol Barad Peninsula, it’s also Bind on Pickup, so if you want it – you’ll have to farm it. You might get lucky and get it after just a couple of kills, it happens, or you might end up tearing your hair out as it seems to have the same drop rate as any of the Whelplings.

I decided the best time to farm was about 10am (or before) until I started getting ganked (I’m not so into PvP, I hear you don’t get flagged on PvE servers on the Peninsula though), which was usually about 11.30am ish. Overall, I think I farmed foxes for about 5 or 6 hours over the space of 3 days, but I’m glad I did because it’s absolutely worth it. It’s very, very small, but I love the fox model, and it’s idle animation is the fox/shaman wolf dance, which is brilliant.

I put together this map to show the patrol path I took and roughly where the foxes spawn. It’s a nice smooth run around really and you don’t miss any mobs. Watch out as well for instantly respawning foxes, that sometimes happens and you don’t want to miss the extra chance of a drop.

Good luck!

A Very Disappointing Release Day

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I spent my birthday waiting for a knock on the door that never came. While everybody else was talking about the realm first level 85s and nearing the max level, I was running around the house like this:

Okay, maybe I was watching TV and creating my pre-raid gear list, but inside, I was most definitely flailing.

What’s worse is the news on the City Link website that our parcel was put in transit at about 12.30 midday in a place that’s a half an hour drive from here. If there was any way of knowing, I could have arranged a pick up. My car might be broked but my dad was around. And I live in the middle of England, we aren’t having the road problems that Scotland are getting. Lucky for us he went out later on so we could steal the living room to eat pizza and watch How To Train Your Dragon (which is still awesome).

I’ve told myself I won’t spend today listening for the knock on the door, but I can’t help it. I don’t like that I’ve missed out on that first day awesomeness, when everybody is running around going, “OMG SO AWESOME LETS DO INSTANCE.” My only real comforts are the ability to wave Little Deathwing in people’s faces when I finally get my sodding game, and that Dan was kind enough to actually wait for me. We don’t level together as such, but it’s nice to be able to do group quests and instances at the same level.

Oh, yeah, I also bought the Moonkin Hatchling to cheer myself up. Couldn’t exactly afford it, but I had a little birthday money so why not. It was so worth it, it worked. He’s so darn cute!

Horde moonkin is better but that's the only screenshot I took yesterday

20 Days of Warcraft – Vanity Pets

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Day 7 – Favourite companion non-combat pet?

Oh this is an easy one! Or.. is it. Hmm. I’ve been a big pet collector for quite a long time and you would think I had a favourite wouldn’t you?

Well, generally speaking, my favourite vanity pet varies. You’ve seen my collection haven’t you? I’ve worked damn hard on it and I love a lot of my pets, so much that I went and named my blog after my pet collecting .. thing. I do believe I wrote a post about my vanity pets around the same time last year, when Tam offered around a bit of syphilis. Here if you’re interested in my thoughts on the appeal of vanity pets, though I would change my top 3 now, in this order:

Phoenix Hatchling
Wind Rider Cub
Baby Blizzard Bear

Though, bare in mind, there will be a bunch of new pets coming up soon and that might very well change in the next year.. again.

You know what guys, it’s not easy to beef up a post answering a question that you know the answer to!

Plants vs. Zombies

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I was going to write my 20 Days of Warcraft (which I’ll try and get back to later if I have time), and I was also going to squee a lot about all of the things that appeared yesterday: The Orgrimmer changes, the sight of the Barrens from the air, the new pets, my new favourite NPC the Psylosopher (which I can neither spell nor say), and so on.. but I started doing a quest yesterday evening. The first couple were easy enough but later on it gets quite difficult. There’s a brilliant comment on WoWhead that really helped me but I think a blog post would be helpful too.

You'll want to have something like this, perhaps a few more spitters and rocks.

Start by putting down 3 Sunflowers. These give you the sunpower you need to put stuff down. When you have 3 of these, you’ll want to start blocking off the approaching zombies. The rocks you see above only cost 15 sunpower and them them busy for a little bit while you gather more sunpower to put down spitters to kill them off.

Next, you will want to work on building your defenses. To do so, you’re going to need a lot of sunflowers, at least 2 rows. Inbetween putting down spitters and a row of freezyas, perhaps with the odd rock thingy thrown in to hold them back. Once you have enough down, you have to build your sunpower to use the pumpkin bombs to defeat the larger mobs or heavy groups of zombies.

If you get overwhelmed, the green trucks to the left of the sunflowers will zoom forward, if mobs get that far, and clear everything in its path – including any sunflowers you might put down before it goes. It is only useable once and if mobs breach that part of the field again, they will enter the house “eating your brains”, so do watch out, it’s best to not have to use those.

It’s a difficult quest, but very fun, and as far as I can work out, you can do it from about level 20ish, after that the money rewards scale with level. I got 30g for the final quest at level 80, and of course:

Day Of Much Squee

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I’m going to start with my second Violet Proto Drake. For me, it really HAS been a long strange trip, as I started Fae’s achievements alongside everybody else. I rerolled to my Priest in the first January, in which time I started them all on her, and then rerolled back to Fae in, I guess it was August or September, in which time I started doing them on Fae again. I kept doing my Priest’s so that I wouldn’t have the hassle of, “oh I wish I’d kept doing them” and I’m damn glad I thought that way now I’m back on her, but Fae had to wait until this Midsummer for her Violet Proto and I finally completed my goal today. Hooray!

My next priority was to knock out some raids on my Priest. I need a short WoW break, I cancelled my account the other night after getting a bit ragey because I didn’t want to be getting ragey, so I just stopped my account to take a breather. I might play a little Aion again, try out some things I didn’t get chance to, see what the new patch is like, or maybe I’ll just watch a bunch of anime, either way I’ll try to keep blogging while I’m on a break. My account time runs out on Sunday, so I gave myself a few priorities, and today I’ve managed to meet them. Fae’s achievements, and Seithir’s 4 set. I did a VoA25, then found an “8+ bosses, HC Gunship” group, figured I need to do ICC, what’s the worst that can happen? We cleared everything but Sindragosa and Lich King. After Dreamwalker the raid leader decided to leave it at that and honestly, I couldn’t care less that was an awesome pug! Heroic Festergut, Professor Putricide, all one shot? I’m still just a little in awe, and my measly 7-8k dps made me look like such a terrible player against these people! However, not only did it get my Ashen Verdict rep upto 9,000/21,000, it netted me enough emblems to complete my Tier 10 4 set, and I also managed to grab a token!! Squee. So that was nice, got a VoA10 out of the way too.

After the ICC, I found this little guy in my mailbox:

I’d been waiting all day for him to arrive, and if I could be bothered I’d show you the picture I took of the battered box and the ‘Please handle with care, fragile’ notice on it. My God they were lucky it was a plush toy. Anyway, once I got him ingame, I decided his name is Bertie. Yes, he’s a cuddly toy, so he needs a name. I spent a while playing with him, watching him run about and fly around. Bought a pet leesh and ran around a bit, then played some fetch. MY GOD this is the cutest thing since the Polar Bear Cub with a little red ball on his nose.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m gonna go with: SQUEE!!

Gryphon & Windrider Pets

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So, I’d heard they were releasing the Gryphon and Windrider pets in the pet store and I was a little miffed, hoping maybe they’d be achievement rewards or something, but oh well, £10 per pet is okay I guess. I’d also heard they were releasing plushie versions with the vanity pets. I thought well that’s cool for people who want the plushies. I do like plushies, don’t get me wrong, I have a few dotted around the place, but I don’t particularly like these ones. They don’t look very soft, big, I don’t really care too much about them. Not to worry I don’t need to buy them right?

When I went to log in last night to check my auctions, on the news page I saw they were now available from the EU Blizzard store. I clicked the link and had a look and.. OH WTF. The plushies are there… the pets aren’t. Looks like if you want to buy the ingame vanity pets, you have to buy the plushies. I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t particularly care about the plushies but would love the vanity pets, or can’t afford them for that matter! In doing this, I’m pretty sure Blizzard have lost a few sales /golfclap. Not impressed, Blizzard.

Of Vanity Pets and Syphilis

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So I’ve been told the syphilis party is still ongoing and got me in on some of that action (I’m hoping this link works, for me it’s broken but I seem to be the only one). You know, after his blog deciding that it simply hated me and wouldn’t let me access it! So, we have:

“Okay … your topic … from your blog, it has to be: vanity pets. Truthfully, I’ve never quite ‘got’ them – what’s the appeal? If you could only keep three, which three would it be, and why? And, finally, which were the most exciting to acquire?”

The Appeal

I want to go off on a tangent and talk about my first vanity pets actually because I suppose this is where the appeal begins for me. When I first started playing I didn’t have a clue what they were or the point in them. I should think my first pet was Peanut on my warlock, the first week of Children’s Week in TBC. I loved that little elephant, it was ridiculously cute and I could have it by my side whenever because it didn’t affect dps or anything like that, it was purely cosmetic and I liked that.

The first pet I got on the character I first started collecting on would have probably been the Bombay Cat. I used to have a black cat in real life called Sooty which I loved to bits, so my boyfriend gave me a black cat ingame when he went on a cat sale spree on horde side, which I also called Sooty. Of course, I did farm a while for the Dark Whelpling, so I had one of those thinking it was just the cutest thing. I also had a Snarly, which I did Crocolisks in the City for months for. Originally, the crocs had a much lower drop rate in the fishing bags, so when I finally saw the little blue outlined bucket it was awesome.

I didn’t start collecting however until pets became learnable, attached to your character. This was where the appeal really started because I didn’t have to worry about bag/bank space. That and the 50 pets achievement. There’s something oddly comforting about having a small vanity pet following you around, and some of them are so awesome looking, with interesting animations such as Lil KT, which kills critters. I have been known to sit there and watch their animations when I’ve been particularly bored.

I have 3 characters with collections, my main, Fae, having 95 pets. This I guess is purely from rerolling a lot, as both hunters and my priest have been considered my main in Wrath. In fact, my paladin has 15 purely by accident, pets which have dropped, like Mojo, the account-wide pets like the Monk, or even random pets like the Spirit of Competition, which I wish I had on my hunter instead but she won’t have been max level when these were being given out.

Just Three

The Baby Polar Bear and the Turkey are 2 pets I’ve wanted since I saw their respective models in Dragonblight and Howling Fjord. The Polar Bear itself is so cute I think I would have whined at Blizzard until we got one! I did miss that one when I played on Terenas quite a bit, in fact Zal bought me a Dun Morogh Cub because I wouldn’t stop complaining about my lack of a bear, ha. I still use that when I log into my draenei, I just love bears, ingame and also in real life.

The Turkey, I’m not actually sure where my strange attachment for this pet came from. Everytime I take an alt to Howling Fjord, I have a tendency to find the group of turkeys and kill every single one of them for the achievement. If anything you’d think I’d be happy with their suicidal tendencies, instead you’ll find me threatening to kill whoever put a basic campfire next to my turkey!

The Core Hound Pup is a much much more recent addition, but it has already made itself up to being my favourite vanity pet. To start with, it’s a corehound, it’s going to have an awesome model. It’s cute, and the animations just add to this. I love how it rolls around and jumps about, it’s one of those I can sit there and watch when I’m bored, maybe even a little therapeutic when I’m in a terrible mood.

Exciting..?

I don’t want to admit to being geeky enough to be excited by vanity pets but, being a lover of cute fluffy things I have been known to squeal on occasion when acquiring a particularly cute or interesting pet. The first rare pet I got my hands on was… I think the Dark Whelpling. Do you remember the Whelpling Orbs you could get in Blade’s Edge? There was a quest to disguise yourself as a cultist and they had a vendor, which sold a quest item and these orbs. An old guildy was sat in Shattrath as a whelpling and I exploded. When Dan tried to quiet me by telling me there was a pet version I ran off to farm it. I think after a few nights of several hours of farming, one finally dropped and I loved it to bits. These days I think I prefer the Blue Whelpling though.

Next I’d have to say the Hyacinth Macaw, purely because I died inside trying to farm this one. You know the level 40ish pirates just outside of Booty Bay? On the boats and along the beach? Yeah, they have a 1/5000 chance to drop it. I farmed these several hours a day for about 2 months, sometimes with help, and often with comments of, “Still farming that bird?” And yes I gave up, I lost all hope. I kept checking the auction houses though, on the off chance an alt found it and thought it might be worth 50g, and one day I found it for 3000g on the neutral auction house! That made my day, really did.

vanitypets

As usual, I’ve rambled on for long enough. I have 2 more topics to write up and some link love on Sunday, before we go away for the week, 21st-28th. If it snows too hard (which I bloody hope not..) or I can ninja some internet access I might pop on and write a little or at least say hello to twitter, though that’s unlikely I think and I plan to take a few books.