Pet Battle Guides: The Basics (33 replies to this topic)

Over the next few weeks I plan on making a number of simple guides on the upcoming Pet battles.  If you have any comments / suggestions / corrections then feel free to post below or message me

Getting Started:

There are a number of basics that need to be outlined before you begin:

• You need at least one companion pet to begin your pet battle journey.

• Your character needs to be a minimum of level 5 and pay 100g to learn pet battle training. I believe this is a one off payment (so once paid all of your alts can train pets as long as they are Level 5 or above).

• All of your companions are now shared across all characters and any pets that you train and level are available on each of them.  Therefore if you level a pet to level 5 on one character it will still be level 5 on an alt etc.

• Currently pets can be levelled / traded / sold on the auction house between players.  This will open a market for people who enjoy the pet battles to train pets to resell for those that don’t have the time.

• Please note that this INCLUDES all pets / companions at this current time with the exception of TCG pets and Special Edition pets. This includes any that were previously Bind on Pickup!

E.g – On the beta there is a Darkmoon Turtle that has been purchased by a player for darkmoon tokens (currently BoP) and has since been boxed and placed onto the AH.  You may find this VERY useful in preparation for MoP with any usual BoP pets becoming available for resale!



As you can see from the photo you can purchase Mr.Chilly (pet earned for merging your battle.net account back in 2009) and a Core Hound Pup (for owning an authenticator).  This allows players to collect pets they previously couldn’t!

• You can capture and own more than one creature at the same time. E.g – It is possible to have both a level 3 Fawn and a level 5 Fawn in your companion journal.

• Pets now are a particular quality – therefore it is possible to stumble upon a poor / uncommon /rare etc critter.  Currently the only way to determine its quality before you capture is to see how its health points compare with other ones you have found (the rarer the quality the higher the initial health).  At this time I am unsure of the implications of the quality of pets, but I think it can be assumed that they will probably have more health and deal more damage at a similar level compared to poorer quality pets.

Edited by Peelyon, 18 July 2012 - 06:51 PM.

Training and the Pet / Companion Menu

(Apologies to horde hopefully I can copy a toon over and do a similar setup there as well).

To begin you need to train pet battles.  This is done by Audrey Burnhep who is based just to the north east of Dwarven District.  It is here that you will pay 100g to begin pet training and receive your first quest.



Audrey also has an option to sell you some rare pets, however at the current time I am yet to see any available and it is just a blank vendor screen.  I am assuming over time she may sell some pets to help you get started on your quest to become the best Pokemon trainer in Azeroth.

Shift+P (default key bind) now brings up your mount and pet menu.  There is also an icon on the micro menu.  It is here where you will find a list of all of your companions, their current level, skills etc.  Also you can change your current pet battle team.



Although I am yet to actually fight any battles on my hunter you can see that my current team / pets that I have used already on my priest are available.  Also note that you can't fight with every companion (sadly no mass balloon attack is allowed!)

Along the bottom there is two options, one allows you to summon your companions as normal, and also the Find Battle tool (which is just like the LFD / LFR queue system) is accessible from here as well.

Edited by Peelyon, 18 July 2012 - 06:51 PM.

Learning How to Fight

To begin with you will need to find wild critters / beasts to fight with.  After you train pet battles you can track pets on your minimap.  Just fly around your starting zone (I used Elywnn Forest) until you find a pet.



To engage a pet hover your mouse over and right click.  This can be done mounted but you must be on the ground.  When you enter combat you will enter your own little "phase" and the battle begins.

The fight is turn based so there is no rush / need to hurry when fighting.



This is the main fight window. There is a lot of information on this screen that tells you about the fight. By hovering over your pet / your enemy you can learn certain things about them.  For an example I have made a picture that shows some of the information available when you hover over them.



You can see your creature type, what it is strong / weak against in its attacks, and also what creatures your enemy is strong and weak against. This will either increase or reduce the damage you deal.




The above screenshot is a close up of the fight bar.  Each pet can use up to a number of 3 attacks / abilities. As you can see my pet is a low level therefore only has one attack available.  As your pets become stronger more abilities are available to you.  You can then change in your pet team menu to suit each encounter!

No. 4 on the action bar allows you to swap your current pet for another. Note this is the same as taking a turn.  

No.5 allows you to trap the current wild pet you are fighting.  To make this active the pet must be below 35% health.  It is not a guaranteed capture, however at lower levels it is generally successful.

The last option is Forfeit that allows you to flee the current battle to fight another day!

At low level where you only have one pet and one ability to use, its pretty straight forward, keep selecting your attack each turn and hit that little critter!

With any luck you will be victorious!

Edited by Peelyon, 18 July 2012 - 06:52 PM.

Choosing your pet, levelling and experience!

At the moment it isn't that hard to level up your pets.  Although you may want to concentrate on a single pet to begin with, you will eventually want to play with a number of pets of each particular type.  This will help to limit your own weaknesses against certain NPC / PvP battles (and ofc increase your strengths).

I think that it will be viable to play with almost any pet in the beginning if you have a particular favourite.  In the next section I will be giving a quick run through of the NPC fights and what creatures you will be fighting against.  This may lead you to level a few creatures that are strong for these fights but I dont think it will be essential!

Obviously when you can use more than one pet at a time, it makes sense to choose something different to your original pet (e.g It wouldnt make much sense to use a Albino Snake if your first pet is a Crimson Snake).

I have found currently that moths like the Blue Moth are quite strong and elementals such as Phoenix Hatchling are good as they can heal themselves up.

The choice is yours though and I think any pet will be a viable companion in the right situation!

Edited by Peelyon, 24 July 2012 - 09:03 AM.

The Quests

The majority of the starter quests just hand hold you through a few of the basics such as fighting, healing your pets, catching wild beasts etc.

The first quest you receive is Learning the Ropes.  You pick this up right after learning pet battles on your first character, or by visiting the pet trainer on an alt.

It requires you to go and win a pet battle.  Just fly to the starter zones and find a wild pet to fight, win and hand-in!

On The Mend is the second quest you receive.  This is a bread crumb to show you how to heal your pets.  Although some pets have healing abilities it is one of the few ways you can fully heal your pets.  There are stable masters outside most (if not all) inns and the price to heal them up is a whopping 10silver!

Level Up! is fairly simple - just keep fighting until you acquire a level 3 pet!

Got one! - this quest encourages you to capture a pet.  Remember to catch one you need to damage the enemy below 35% health.  When this happens the (No.5) spell activates on your action bar and you use this as you would any normal attacking move.  Cue the dropping crate and "Voila!" you have tamed your first pet! (Who said this was like Pokemon? )

So with the basics over and done with you should now have your first quest to fight a NPC!

Julia, The Pet Tamer is at the Maclure Vineyard in Elwynn Forest and she controls 2 level 2 snakes (both beasts).  For this fight I had my Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot go out first as mechanical abilities hit harder against beasts.  As long as you have two companions and are both at full health before you start (stable master at Goldshire Inn) then you should be fine.

Without going into too much detail the snakes just tend to do normal attacks and it isnt really that hard a fight! However if you do lose its not a big deal, just heal up and try again (or level up a little more).




Old MacDonald is the 2nd encounter and you receive this quest straight after beating Julia.  Currently on the beta he controls 3 level 4 pets.  A Tiny Harvester a Westfall Chicken and a mouse (sorry cant seem to find a link for this last one).

Again this is quite an easy encounter, with the NPCs pets basically using normal attacks.  Hopefully it shouldnt prove much trouble.

I'm unsure to exactly how the quests seem to work after that (in terms of having them available) both myself and Damien seem to have differing results.  An NPC in Redridge seems to be another given fight Lindsay (for some reason I received this before I completed Old MacDonald on both my 2nd and 3rd run throughs).

I have also received Bill Buckler to fight in Stranglethorn after defeating Old MacDonald as well.

On one run through I got the quest to fight Eric Davidson after beating Lindsay, on another (and Damiens run through) it seemed to be unlocked after taming a rare wild pet!

Obviously this could be a few teething problems on the beta, and I expect it to be a little bit more linear by the time MoP goes live.

Ultimately the NPC fights arent that difficult, especially if you level up a little against wild critters in between fights.

Hopefully this starter quest guide for those on alliance helps you a little, I don't see too much difficulties in the fights themselves at this early level, I am hoping as MoP goes live that there will be a few more challenging high level NPC encounters that will require more analysis including things such as specific pet abilities etc!

Edited by Peelyon, 24 July 2012 - 09:36 AM.

"Advanced tactics" -  A few extra things you should know about

Your pet team

As you level up you increase your number of pet slots upto a team of 3 pets. To change your pet team you must do this in your pet menu BEFORE you engage in a battle.  Once the battle has started you can only change between the pets in your current pet team.  If one of your pets "die" then another can be summoned to continue in the fight.

Higher level wild pets

Note it is possible even when fighting wild pets, that you can come up against more than one creature (although this is very unlikely until you reach higher zones!).  This means you can fight against what seems to be an easy fight but you could come up against 3 wild pets to fight at once, so ensure you are always prepared!

One thing to take into account is that you can only capture on pet in any fight, even if there are more than one wild pets against you.

*MORE TO FOLLOW*

Edited by Peelyon, 18 July 2012 - 06:23 PM.

Pet types and information

*MORE TO FOLLOW*

Edited by Peelyon, 18 July 2012 - 06:23 PM.

On my way to get a few screenshots from my Horde Warlock on the beta

Here's the screenshot of the trainer in Orgrimmar. His name is Varzok.

The quests are the same on the Horde side.

Are there other pet trainers to defeat after the one in Redridge Mountains for the alliance? I didn't get a follow-up quest after beating that one.

Also, I managed to get my hands on two rare-quality pets, so I'm wondering if anyone has seen epic quality pets

Yes there a fight in Duskwood and also a quest you can pick up randomly fighting wild pets that leads to a NPC fight in Stanglethorn Vale. I'm hoping to complete the quests up to this stage as I've found by this point you should feel comfortable with the basics at the very least

After capturing a rare-quality pet in Duskwood, I got a quest to go fight against local tamer: Eric Davidson.

Damien, on 20 July 2012 - 10:56 AM, said:

Ah great. My battles kind of just led on from each other and wasn't long before I was in Stranglethorn. I'll try and get some more information and continue the guide when aim back at home on Monday

After beating up Eric Davidson in Duskwood, I get a quest to fight another trainer in Northern Stranglethorn: Steven Lisbane.

Also, while fighting pets in The Cape of Stranglethorn, I received a new quest to defeat the local trainer: Bill Buckler. Then, I got a follow-up quest that lead me back to Stormwind City: A Tamer's Homecoming, which I cannot find on wowhead. There was no follow-up.

Damien, on 24 July 2012 - 11:26 AM, said:

See thats really odd, I never got Steven Lisbane first time round I just got sent straight to Bill Buckler instead.  However I did get it today (maybe its been updated).

I'm assuming come live it will be all linear and easy to follow come live .

Did you struggle with any Damien?

Yeah, with Steven Lisbane, somehow his pets were level 12 and 13 I still managed to beat him with my level 11 pets because they are of rare quality and they own.

By the way, I've changed strategy for leveling up my pets, I just capture whatever is higher level than my current pets. Keeping the same pets and leveling them up is too long. Therefore, I'll start collecting rare quality pets at level 25

Damien, on 24 July 2012 - 01:02 PM, said:

Yeah currently I've kept the same 3 pets.  Good thing is you can perhaps level a few to say level 10, swap them out and sell them on the AH, I'm sure some starting off would enjoy some level 10 pets etc.

I can see it being a great way of making some easy cash!

Looks like the pet trading just stopped.

"We just finished a pass making all pets that are caught via pet battles in the world non-tradeable.  This means these pets cannot be put in cages for trading or posting on the AH.  We felt that the option to buy these pets on the AH would take away from the exploration/collection gameplay of the system.

This could always change in a future patch, but this is how it will go out with MoP.  You should see the change in our next build."

Source:
http://us.battle.net...ic/6148555633#8

Edited by Vladamyr, 24 July 2012 - 03:00 PM.

Vladamyr, on 24 July 2012 - 02:58 PM, said:

Cheers Vladamyr!  I might have missed that as its on the US forums!  I think its a good rule overall.  I'll have to stick with my professions for making mass amounts of cash

Plus it keeps the rare pets you capture that little bit more rare and special I guess.  Rather than just doing what I said above which is selling pets on!

Just thought I'd note that you can still level your own pets and companions that you dont catch from the wild and sell those on   You just cant resell any you catch from the wild.

Also.....

Many changes have been ongoing with the quests. Our next build should have significant updates.

A few highlights on what we have been working on:

• Unique Tamer emotes
  
• Unique Tamer pets
  
• Tamer battles have been tuned up in difficulty
  
• One Grand Master Tamer per continent. Defeating him/her will unlock all the daily's on that continent.
  
• The flow has been consolidated to work though our two main trainers in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
  
• We have implemented more than 40 Tamer fights across the entire game. This does not include the boss fights!
  
• Daily quests on Grand Master Tamers offer the Sack of Pet Supplies as a reward.
  
• A new achievement reward for defeating all the Tamers. A "Tamer" title.
  
• All of the quests to fight Tamers are now account-wide. This means that the one-shot quests can only be completed by one character on your account. The daily's can be completed by any character, once per day. Account wide quests are denoted in the quest log.

I went through the quests a few different times on different characters on the beta buyt the above suggests you will only do the normal questline and NPC fights once.  I suppose it makes sense seeing as you can use the same pets on any chracter and they dont ant you just farming the quests for easy exp etc.

Edited by Peelyon, 24 July 2012 - 05:00 PM.