While queueing for some BGs last week, I decided to head over to Vash’jir to see if I could spot the new crustaceanal apparition variety Spirit Beast, ie: Ghostcrawler.
Now being level 85, I was kind of excited over the prospect of adding this new beastie to my stable. Oddly enough, I’ve seen very few hunters running around with Ghostcrawler since I’ve been active in Cataclysm. maybe they’re out murdering him, I dunno… 😉
At any rate, I figured that searching for him in between BGs while waiting for queues to pop was a good strategy. My days of marathon camps are very far behind me. Nowadays, if they happen to be around great… if not, well I can just come back another time.
Alright, so I portal into Vashj’ir, then hop my sea-horsey and head to the Abyssal Depths. As soon as I entered the Abandoned Reef I began tapping my rare pet target macro. Must’ve been my lucky day because lo and behold, his portrait popped up — he was there waiting for me!
Now one thing that’s a little bit tricky about this guy is the fact that he phases in and out of view. As he’s patrolling he will occasionally disappear from view, then reappear in another spot somewhere further down his path. This is just an FYI for those of you who may decide to set out after him. You’ll find that one minute you have him targeted, then the next second you don’t. Just wait a few seconds and he’ll pop back out.
It took me several seconds to find him due to this phasing thing that he does, but after cruising around for a bit I happened upon him.
One thing I found amusing is that Ghostcrawler is quite tiny. I was expecting a great big Spirit Beast, but instead he’s like critter size. This makes for an even bigger funny when he starts lumping you up with his Nerfbat. Which by the way, does a decent amount of damage!
Traps won’t work on GC either, so no CC’ing him beforehand. You must eat every harsh serving of his Nerfbat before you can add him to your stable. I was unaware of this, but quickly learned as he charged right through my Freezing Trap and started knee-capping me.
[click images to embiggen]
For you hunters out there who wish to add Ghostcrawler to your stable, here’s a current map with taming locations:
He basically just patrols all throughout the Abandoned Reef. When you go there, just be sure to continually tap your Ghostcrawler target macro or wait for NPCScan to go off. Since there are so many of the new Cataclysm pets running around these days, I mainly just rely on using a macro since NPCScan requires that you continually clear your cache (an unnecessary pain in the ass).
I have one macro that I use whenever I’m making my way through an area that rare spawns are known to inhabit.
/tar Ghostcrawler
/tar Grubthor
/tar Gondria
/tar Time
/tar Aotona
/tar Loque
/tar King Krush
/tar Oozeworm
/tar Arash
/tar Sewer
/tar Shadowclaw
/tar Terrorpene
/tar Madexx
/tar Sambas
/tar Aeonaxx
You can swap out, remove, and add different mob names as desired.
And just to be sure… know that you must be level 85 to tame him and in your Beast Mastery spec when you do. 😉
Anyhow… Good luck with the GC, and be prepared to feel the sting of his Nerfbat. 😉
I have a question: do you have to do the quests in Vashj’ir to tame Ghostcrawler?
Well I got lucky today. Decided to take a look for ghostcrawler , got in the area and not more than a minute i found him. Npcscan did not alert me until i was right on him even though he showed up inside my npcscan ring. First attempt to tame got to 4 percent then he phased. searched another 2min found him and booooooom! My new pet.
took about 3 hours farming i went out side had a smoke came back in on the firts run he was there about 330 to
Gar
Picked up Takk the Leaper just now at about 62,20 in the Northern Barrens. I was up on a ridge mashing the macro for 30 min and just decided to come down and run around the extremes of the points shown on Petopia and there he was! The cool part was that all three of my sons were looking over my shoulder as I went through the taming process!
Grimreaver
Grats Grim!
Takk’s a pretty cool pet. My 19 hunter uses him from time to time.
Grats to making a new home for Ghostcrawler ;] I’m surprised you don’t have Jadefang added to that macro though. While your in Deepholm, peek if shes there ;P She can become your protector or even drop a little friend for you if you decide to kill her ^.^ She became my protecter. Working on the mini-pet hehe.
Well i decided i wanted to tame this pet after researching him, i was almost ready to give up after 9 hours of hunting in between dungeons and battlegrounds, i decided i would try to kill the mob with 6.2m hp that would patrol by, just as i got it to 3m hp left npc scan went off and nearly gave me a heart attack, i popped my corehounds bloodlust and went to tame, but he dissapeared, franticly searching for him i shot a flare which made him visible, by then my bloodlust had worn off and i had no other haste boots, that was it all or nothing so i started taming him, barely hurt me and im still wearing greens only got me down to about 50k hp, so if he stealthes on you make sure to use your flare
I’m not going to quit until I can get the NPC Scan working.
Part of the problme is the difficulty in using using explorer in Windows 7. I can’t figure out how to just open, click on files, target and a folder and drag the files right where you want them like I was used to doing in WindowsXP. I have no idea where the files end up and you have to do a search from the start menu without the visual.
I guess I’m not only a Huntard but a Windtard as well.
Grim
Have you tried NPCscan overlay yet?
I really like it, so when I’m flying around doing my business, I can clearly see on the map when I’m crossing the patrol path of a rare, and can tap my target macro.
I had it loaded once, but I didn’t like all the highlighting it put on my world map. I can definitely see its usefulness, but if it’s a mob I know I want, I always find out its specific spawn areas anyway.
Anj I actually have two of the NPC scan folders in my addons folder now and I unzipped twice. It’s in the same place as my Carbonite add-on is but does not show up in the addons list when I am WOW when you seen your character.
I downloaded it directly from the web site using the “manual” method as when I clicked to use their own install procedure nothing would happen.
Gar, one other question, I was able to create a macro with a ton of target rare or elite pets but what is supposed to happen when I click the macro? I was clicking al the while as I quested Stranglethorn but is it supposed to be able to tell me when Echeyakee, Bjarn or Snort the Heckler spawn all the way across the continent or ocean or do I need to be close to their spawn point.
Just want to know what message or “trigger” I should expect I if get a “hit” after hitting the macro.
thanks
Grim
Grats on the tame Gar!
Grimreaver…I had trouble with the NPCScan when I downloaded the newest version. When I unzipped there was a folder named NPCScan with a date after it. I opened that folder and NPCScan was inside. I put the folder just named NPCScan in the AddOns location and it worked after that. I did the same with NPCScanOverlay.
~not sure if I’m supposed to answer questions, but I had a similar problem and thought I could offer some help. Hope you get it working Grimreaver.
The macro works like any of the rare detection addons — it only targets them if they are within your area, ie: about a 160-200yd radius (guess). The beauty of it is that it will pick up mobs that haven’t actually loaded visually on your screen, or mobs you can’t see because of line of sight.
But no… it won’t pick up mobs in other zones or continents, and sure as heck won’t detect mobs that spawn in Outland while you’re in the Eastern Kingdoms. 😉
Best Ghostcrawler pic I’ve EVER seen! (the nerf bat is a brilliant touch)
When I was out camping him on KT, there was hardly ever any competition. Part of the reason has to be the dull scenery. My mind would wander to thoughts of sipping tea with Ghostcrawler. A plus side was being able to report some underground miners.
What a nice post Garwulf…you really made laugh with the funtastic balloons in the pictures. And gratz m8.
Gratz on your tame 🙂 And funny post 😛 I got my Ghostcrawler around the bottom left area. I logged in after din, and decided to do a quick skin since I had logged out in that area. I didn’t really think I would see him but then BAM NPC Scan and Silver Dragon alerted me. I didnt read up on him much besides spawn points, so when he disappeared when I got closer I was thinking “NO NO NO” (my wow mate was telling me that rare spawns despawn after awhile – though I’m not entirely sure about that) – but it popped up and did a quick tame. Though sad that his nerfbat ability is changed to a buff. Now I just have to level it so I can use it in PVP QQ Do you know what’s a quick alternative to leveling pets in dungeons?
I also managed to nab Samba, Karoma and Terrorpene. Now i just need Ashtail and Ainamiss the Hive Queen (I have their blue husband, but everything is better in pink!).
Also about NPC Scan and cache, if you use CCleaner, you can set it to empty/delete the cache folder every time you PC starts. Though that doesn’t help when you get cached in game by someones pet. Which is why I also use SilverDragon – even if its cached the alert can pop up again a few seconds later (you have to adjust a few of its settings so it alerts more frequently) – plus it spots around 400 or so rares. Makes travelling around Azeroth more fun ^^
Alternatively…
http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=138475/clearing-cache-on-npcscan I should really do that actually – it’s more geeky.
Ancksanura,
I replied to your email but it bounced back. If you see this, please try me again with a different reply to address.
Send me the info while you’re at it. And yes, screenshots are a plus.
Grats on the tame, Gar! Yeah, that Nerfbat was the first thing that worried me when I first tamed Ghostcrawler! Scary.
I agree too, I haven’t seen Ghostcrawler nor Karoma … mostly Samba. Then again, maybe most hunters are taking advantage of the current SV dps…
I’m sure that’s a huge reason for it, but still… no GC in towns, BGs, anywhere…
I see Sambas a lot myself, so much so that I’m not all that driven to get him anymore. I’ll still tame him at some point, but I’d rather nab Madexx first. He seems to be a lot more uncommon, plus I don’t have a scorpid.
Right now I’m using Rak’shiri as my heroic cat.
Great choices! My suggestion is to mine/herb/fish at Uldum. Multiple chances of getting gold, a camel mount, and Madexx him/themselves (cough, got green and blue, cough).
Is there a limit to the number of rare pets you can add to that macro and does it only work on rares or will it work on Elite pets that are also named? I’m considering using that macro to replace installing NPC Scan.
For some reason I cannot get NPC scan to work on on PC even after manually installing it 4-5 times. It just never appears in the “addons” folder at character startup.
thanks
Grimreaver
You’re only limited by the amount of characters you can include in the macro. That’s why I use /tar as opposed to /target. I believe that macro will allow for a few more lines.
You can also abbreviate some of the names to get even more mobs in there. I imagine you could get about 20 mobs or more in there.
grimreaver, do you get the folder “_NPCScan” when you uncompress the .zip file? I haven’t encountered any problems with it, it always works. Also, I only download from here: http://sites.google.com/site/wowsaiket/Add-Ons/NPCScan
Hope that helps.