Well, ah huv tae admit.. ah’m fond o’ havin’ a wee critter or two aroon’ the hoose.  Especially mah wee dragon - it’s like a part o’ the family, ken?  Still, seems some types are goin’  a wee bit overboard - the headquarters here is overflowin’ wi’ a’ sorts o’ critters!

Things have been a bit quiet around here, I apologise.  Between a bad cold and some in-game activities (like running all over the world in search of pets) I’ve not had time to post.  Hopefully things should return to normal some time next week when my cold will hopefully subsided and I’ll have oh-so-much I want to talk about!

So - pets! I’m a bit mad about them - maybe not so much as some but I likes to hoard and napture any I can get my paws on.  Each of my characters has a signature pet or one which means something particular to them, or is special to them even if only by virtue of being ‘first’.  Mharai had her [Magical Crawdad Box],  Avarix has his [Scorched Stone], Jhai has her [Captured Flame] and Aurik has his [Sprite Darter Egg].

Overachieving

Any others who are pet mad will know of the new achievement in Wrath which requires you to collect 50 pets.  But what about those who like pets and maybe have a few stashed here or there and maybe want to quickly make up the difference, or those over-achieving completionists who must have every achievement available but have never really been into pets before?

I just thought I’d post some quick resources and tips for those who don’t already have vast collections, much as I did not before last week.

Two of the best places to get pet information are, undoubtedly, warcraftpets and the wowwiki page on small pets.  Both have comprehensive lists of the available pets and their relative rarity.

You best ’starter set’ will come from getting all faction starter pets - they require no rep, only the time to go and grab them from whichever hermit, crazy lady, random vendor or emo undead guy happens to ‘breed’ them.  A trip to your own or the neutral auction house means you may also be able to grab some cross-faction pets and if you have no luck with this then you might consider a post on your realm forum asking some people from the other faction to list them.

Most of the rest of the pets available, though, require rep, grinding, or quests.  Some simple ones would be the chicken quest in Westfall (available to horde with some alliance help), and going to The Deadmines for a green wing macaw.  Harder quests include the Lower Blackrock Spire Worg pup / Spiderling quests (soloable as a stealth class or those classes with some form of survivability - I did it as a resto shaman, aggroing only three groups and each time using an elemental to save my rear) and rep grinds such as Sha’tari Skyguard (which has very few dailies and only small increments from mob kills.  Getting a firefly, hyacinth macaw or any of the dragons will take some considerable grinding unless you’re lucky.

Reputation / Skills

Now is a good time to do some dual purpose grinding - Exalted with Sporeggar and Sha’tari Skyguard both give access to pets (plus tabards) and hunting whelps has such a wide level range that you can almost always be skilling up skinning.  Want that white kitten from Lil’ Timmy?  Get your fishing pole out and get some skill points whilst you wait for him to spawn!

Gaining fishing skill means you can have a shot, eventually, at catching Mr. Pinchy and you might as well do the Crocolisks in the City fishing daily if it pops up as that gives you yet another chance at a pet which you cannot get from any other source.

I’ve gained almost 200 skill points in skinning, 50-60 in fishing and gotten a faction exalted just whilst going for this achievement and I expect to get another faction soon - I’ve also seen bits of the world I’ve not seen for ages.

Cross Faction Sales

This is the time for many enterprising individuals to make a pretty penny by grabbing some pets and travelling to their local cross-faction Auction House.  Even better if you are able to get a hold of them and sell them at an even higher price on your faction auction houses to avid collecters!

Critter Collections

I know a lot of people recently have been posting their various hoards of ore or herbs and the like so here I offer my hoard: pets! I have two sets - pets for my druid and pets for my shaman - and this screenshot is now a few days old so I’ve added some engineering pets to it as well as a white kitten carrier.  This of course does not include the around 12 or so pets each character has in their bags / banks so both characters are well on their way to the achievement come patch day.  You don’t even want to see our guild bank after three of us decided to put some ’spares’ in for other guild members, hehehe.

Only a few days left until the patch, though, so you better be fast if you haven’t started your collection!  Wrath should make it a lot easier to meet the 50 pets needed, though, so if you don’t want to run all over the world doing silly quests and sillier grinds then you might want to hold off.  Happy hunting!