exotic pets

Ghostcrawler

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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!

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King Krush Solo-Tame Made Easy

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King KrushWith all of this Shattering business going on in the old world, now’s the ideal time to go after some of the once hard-to-get pets from the WotLK expansion. Northrend is fairly quiet these days compared to how it was just a few weeks ago, so it’s time to get while the gettin’s good.

Just to give you an idea of how ripe the pickins’ are these days, HuntsmansLodge muse, Celika, tamed all four Spirit Beasts within a sixteen hour period this past week. Now granted she was pretty lucky, but still… all four in less than a day..?!

At any rate, the pet I want to talk about this evening is King Krush. For those of you who don’t know who King Krush is, well… he’s a rare green Devilsaur who lurks in Sholazar Basin. He’s been a prized trophy sought by hunters due to his unique skin, along with the sense of accomplishment that a hunter can derive from successfully solo-taming him.

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Hunters: The true pet class

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Lisselis, Night Elf Hunter with King Bangalash

Once upon a time, there was a young hunter questing in Azeroth. It wasn’t long, though, before she became very lonely. She wanted a companion, a partner to help her defeat her foes. She began searching for a pet, but it had to be the perfect pet.

Finally, she found it, stalking its prey on the other side of some bushes. She approached the beast slowly, not wanting to startle it. It saw her, and she began speaking to it calmly, trying to coax it toward her. The beast attacked her, but the hunter continued speaking to it in a calm and soothing voice, willing it to yield. Finally, the beast lay down in the grass, rested its head on its front paws, and looked up at her with big, apologetic eyes.

From that point on, the hunter and her pet were inseparable. She gave him a name, after thinking long and hard about it, fed him, and bound his wounds. In return, he accompanied her on all her missions, taking many a blow for her. They quested into the sunset and lived happily ever after.

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More Stable Slots..?

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Gotta catch em allPerhaps.

In the Blizz Developer’s Blizzchat on Twitter today, one of the questions raised was the ever so popular topic of adding more stable slots. The response was both interesting and favorable.

Q. Are hunters likely to see more stable slots for their pets in the future? With the current variety of pets, the amount they have right now seems too small.
A. Arm-waving here, but a model I would love to see is dramatically expanded slots (so you can store all those Spirit Beasts) but have a smaller number of “active” pets, like 3. You could summon an active pet from anywhere in the world, when outside of combat. You would swap a pet from active to the stable at the Stable Masters.

I like this concept. BM Hunters will be allowed to “collect” more pets (ie: Spirit Beasts), yet there will be a practical convenience limiting factor in place for all hunters. Pet happy hunters won’t be capped to how many they can acquire, with the only trade-off being that Call Stabled Pet may be limited to 3 choices, down from the 5 we have now. I’m liking this direction.

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