Random Pet Challenge [v4.0]

[Kurasu]

This has always been my favorite color: silver and aqua. I already know I desparately want a minipet scorpid of this color, so when I was given the chance to make a full-size one to try out, I was very happy and eager for it. But... which one should it be?

Why, the rare, of course. After all, memory-wise, when I started my Cataclysm rare-hunting, it was actually Vile Sting who was my very first 'official' discovery. And it was Vile Sting who made sure my NPC Scan was working to be able to seek out the rares of Cata. Therefore, it seemed only right that it should be Vile Sting whom I took with me on my journey. That decided, I swept my way into Uldum and flew to Thousand Needles. Looking down at the water, I remembered it as I always remember it: a desert valley, rocky and sandy, where the Tauren held sway and the racers... raced. Now, forever, flooded. A testament to Deathwing's power.

... but this was no time for woolgathering. I was here for a scorpid.

I flew over the plateaus until I arrived at his haunt.



From a distance, he didn't look much different than the cliffcrawlers he lived among. It was only up close that it showed.



As I tried to get a closeup from the ground, he swiftly showed his displeasure, stinging and poisoning my dragon.



Such a brave and dangerous creature couldn't just be tamed; who knows how much damage he might inflict upon my level 85 self with such terrible venom! So it was with great caution that I did the only thing I could and trapped him for my own safety before taming.





Such a terrible creature, I couldn't come up with a name right away. However, I could appreciate his coloring.




As I said, I have always loved this shade. A gorgeous light blue aqua on a silver-white body. The small details on the model were also something I had never appreciated before. While an old model, and low-res in some areas (especially here on the face, where his 'moustache' looks pasted on)...



... the lines are fairly crisp, and to me look to be very smooth for it. There's even little barbs or hairs along the tail that I'd never noticed before until taking this up-close look.



As I tried to take screenshots, I kept being enchanted by his claw-waving idle animation.



Normally, to me, it looks like scorpids are cheering ("Wave your claws in the air like you just don't care!"). However, for this deadly beauty, it looked to me more as if he was menacing everything in sight. Beautiful. Deadly. I was having more and more trouble seeing him as a 'him', and more and more as a 'her'. A Cadillac of a woman. Something like....



.... that'll do nicely. Marvel geekery, hooooo!

The first thing that Moonstone and I did was to take a walk over to the cliffside to prepare to have a swim. And already, I was loving the soft clicking sounds that her feet made. The undulating walk when she moved was also amazingly graceful for the fact that as a scorpid, she was supposed to be a tenacity pet.




In the water, it was no different. Smooth. Graceful. The movement was like that of a lobster, only in great sweeping motions rather than jerky tail-flicks.




Kurasu had promised his sister, Cristy, that he was going to pick up a couple things in Outland, so Moonstone was to travel with him to do some 'shopping' in Outland dungeons. Finding some quests in Mana Tombs Heroic, I decided that we might as well do them together. With the difference in levels, getting a feel for how good she is at attacking was hard, but the soft chittering sounds she made were really surprisingly soothing for the fact that she was tearing apart groups of enemies.

That done (and with no joy in the dropping), it was time to do Kura's weekly raid-farming. It felt strange not to have my usual 'friends' along, but Moonstone did a great job. Albeit by pulling more trash than I'm used to! ... and being especially lucky: I managed to pick up no less than two random blue drops, and one random world drop epic.

(no pictures here for some reason; apparently while doing the dungeons I stupidly forgot to take any; been distracted lately and it shows!)

By the end of my Molten Core run, I'd pretty much decided: Moonstone was a beauty, but there just wasn't a full-on 'bond' forming that could take away my beloved Dai. So I returned to Thousand Needles to return her to the wild.



As she skittered away, I knew that I would see her again. And one day, when minipets become capturable, I shall make sure to hunt up a beautiful silver-aqua Stripe-tail or Leopard Scorpid to name Moonstone.

[Ana]

I was giving the white crab - a skin i have yet to seen on any high lvl hunters

And as i´m currently doing dailyes in Northrend to up my rep i tamed one of the Fjord crawlers.




I had no real name for it - so i named it Palido - spanish for pale.




The coloration are more beige then white imo. Without highlight the crab looks a dull gold color with seagreene markings. The idle animation of the crab is that it looks from side to side, and moves around. I could hardly get it to stand still












It was hard to get a close shot of the jaw part area - but the under body of the crab is white and there re some red/pink outlines around the mouth




I quite like its swimming animation. The crab shoots its claw infront of it, and pushes itselfs forward.






In camo





The crabs speciall attack is the pin down attack which hold the target in place for 4 sec which i guess is usefull for PvP - i had it turned off during my daileys - and i´m not sure if i think its a good ability in PvE - might be for preventing mobs to come to you...

It´s a good thing u can change your pets spec, and during all my daileys Palido was ferocity and it worked out good.

I think this skin is a bit underappriciated due to it being a bit to dull? As i mentioned i havent seen any crab of this color with a hunter.

Its coloration is a bit to dull for me - and i adventually let him go, but it was a fun challenge.

[Finduilas]

Quite a while ago, I was assigned the red fox. I checked with petopia and found there were tameable foxes in western plaguelands. So Emerwen got on a zeppelin and flew to untercity. There she headed out to the plaguelands, that don't look so plagued anymore. In a nice green forest she found a lot of foxes AND mean alliance fox hunters with evil dogs. The first fox she wanted to rescue was already badly wounded by one of the hunters and his dog. Emerwen killed the man and his beast and with tears in her eyes she released the fox of his pain. Mad and angry she went to finish the other hunters lurking around in the bushes. Then she found him, a fox near the path, alone, it seemed like he was the brother of the one the alliance hunter had killed. With a few treats, gentle words and lots of love Emerwen convinced the poor animal to follow. He seemed very happy with his new mistress. Before he had howled out the pain of his loss to the skies, now he was eagerly sniffing the ground and scratching his ears. Always standing or sitting next to Emmi, panting happily with the beginning of a happy grin showing.

Emerwen decided to name her new friend Donates and he didn't seem to mind. Knowing that he was in safety now he started to develop a friendly and very active personality. Hardly sitting still, always eager to help Emerwen Donates accompanied her to Orgrimmar.
His pretty reddish coat shone in the setting sun as they were on a trip to the Barrens. Donates has a very pretty color, black legs, a white tailtip and his white belly. He looks like you imagine a fox to look. His green eyes are always on the lookout for any dangers that might come to hurt Emerwen. During their adventures in the Barrens he even did a happy little dance. Emerwen and Donates also went to take a refreshing little swim in one of the oasis lakes. Donates was paddling along the side of Emerwen with a cute dog paddle.

After all the fun Emerwen had more serious buisiness to do. First she went into Karazhan, hoping like all the weeks before for her shoulders to drop of the Kurator, but she didn't get lucky. Still Donates was having lots of fun tanking the level 70 mobs with his tailspin and good placed bites and growls. Toghether Donni and Emmi made quick work of all the ghosts that wanted to protect their dead world. After Kara they got called into a dungeon, Emerwen and her groupmates diguised themselves as nightelves and giggled at their funny haircolors. Well the bilgewater cartell tabard gave Emerwen away, but it still was funny.
A few boring weeks without much work for the two of them [and lots of work for me, so no time for Wow...] Emerwen went back to Thunderbluff to find it crowded with lowbies of different servers and so much population she hadn't seen in one year there. She decided to show off with Donates a little bit and gave him a toy target to play with. The spinning wooden target was very interesting for Donates and he played with it like a puppy with a ball. Crouching, then jumping at the target, spinning his tail and reducing the attack speed of the dummy, biting at it. I neve had noticed how far a fox could open his jaw His smooth playful movements were pleasant to watch and the little yelps and growls he let out during fighting were cute to listen to.

Emerwen and Donates match. Emerwen has an other fox called Socks, a pretty blueish grey one from Loch Modan and she's torn if she can let Socks or Donates go. Two foxes are just one too much. Donates matches her current transmog, but Socks has been with her since a very long time already and they are very attached to each other. Donates is happy, loves to fight and is always eager to help, while Socks loves to play and do silly things. For now both foxes are staying, but I can't tell which one will have to leave if I should need more stable places with Pandaria. I love them both.


May I ask for a new roll, even if it might take some time for me to get it finished?
Name: Merowen
Level: 80 (and for now it stays that way)
Exotics: yes
Restrictions: no diseased pets, no cats/spirit beasts, because they don't provide any useful buffs for her at level 80 and I would be very sad to bond with an other creature I can't use (already have two spirit beasts and two cats sitting in the stables inactively since the patch )

[Azunara]

Tyger: Currently I actually named it Kozri because of head canon, although it's still a bit weird to me so I may just rename warp stalker into Tirrae. Or something. I'm realizing I named it awkwardly, though I still like the warp stalker being Tirrae's kid at some point (long story) but yes Warp Stalker is Sol's bro, but I want another pet for instances or something. XD

---

I was assigned the "tan bat", a peculiar name as it seems more of a dusky grey than tan. Regardless, the closest destination I could find was Blasted Lands (RFK was just too much.) Tan bats aren't exactly my favorite color to begin with. I prefer the white or the dark brown and red bats. Still, the dice had chosen.

Thus, Zarigosa the Albino Dragon and I set out.

The bat of choice was a happy little Tainted Screecher. These bats are infamous for their ability, Feltaint. They were noted to, through the pet taming exploit, retain this ability. It was commonly exploited by people who wanted more than a shiny look, and eventually it lead to the taming of pets downfall. I noticed after Bat was tamed he remained the Feltaint up until it expired.

WoWScrnShot_092212_100545.jpg (279.94 KiB) Viewed 3405 times

Lacking a name, I decided that Feltaint was as good a name as any.

WoWScrnShot_092212_101004.jpg (346.23 KiB) Viewed 3405 times

Already I had low hopes for Feltaint. I'm not exactly a huge fan of bats as a rule, so regardless to say it wasn't an auspicious start. Bats inherently are a low res model, and they aren't exactly famous for being known for their prettiness already. Bats also have another strike against them. As a flying pet, I'm not exactly comfortable with bringing it into dungeons as a rule--flappy things in the faces of tanks and melee is something I usually want to avoid, out of a courtesy.

That said, their wings are very pretty. They start as a deep rosy pink and slow descend in shades of pink up until they're a paler pink--even white at the edges of their wings. It's a very nice look. That said, their wing tip-claw things are fairly flat and fairly ugly looking, a noticeable downside to their very pretty wings.

WoWScrnShot_092212_101323.jpg (190.14 KiB) Viewed 3405 times

Feltaint also has another unfortunate strike against him when it comes to model. His face is not the prettiest thing in the world. It's rather bugged out and low res, making it look unfortunately unattractive and rather unlike real life bats. (I guess if you like squishy nosed monster faces then more power to you.) Their bodies are also rather irksome in the fact that they don't seem very...realistic. Despite it being a video game, the way the wings are built is extremely bothersome for me to look at. (Wings don't work like thaaaat. D: )

Feltaint doesn't have much of a swim animation--it isn't even a slowed down version of his flight animation. With his model poked at, I figured it was time to give Feltaint a shot at combat. Maybe he would redeem himself in that regard. We hearthed back to HFP to take care of a couple of quests.

He's a quiet pet to start with, just a soft little flap of wings as he moves. Attacking, he makes a loud shrieking "Reeech!" sound at me when he goes out or when he's attacking. It's not enough to bother me, as I'm not one to play with sound, but if you do, the sound could probably get annoying very quickly. For his attack, he sort of swoops down and it looks like uses his jaws and or claws to attack. Otherwise, his attack animations are rather lackluster. He doesn't exactly do much beyond flap and occasionally twitch his wings forward.

Overall, Feltaint isn't really a pet meant for me. His combined shrieks, poor model, and overall unexciting personality proves to be a rather disappointing pet. Good on you if you like bats, but they are not the species for me.

Name: Solaira
Level: 62
Exotics: Not yet.
Restrictions: I'd rather pass up warp stalkers. And if I get rolled a bat again, I'd appreciate a reroll.
Rares I Have: None.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Fin: Don't worry about taking your time for these. I understand that sometimes real life gets in the way.
Azu: Ah, I think I remember you saying something about naming a warpy Kozri. Tirrae's kid for a warp stalker would be neat too.

Lovely reports from everyone; nice to see activity in this thread again.

Finduilas(Merowen):
Red Spiked Raptor


Azunara(Solaira):
Brown Monkey


And throwing up a roll for myself since it's been a long time since I did one of these.

Tyger(Tsara):
Black Raptor

[Azunara]

So in other news I have very little to do today.

The dice, unsurprisingly, are proving themselves once again how much they hate me. Monkeys, gorillas, and bats are the top three pets I dislike the most. So of course bats and monkeys are more first selections. Fine then.

This time around, I got the brown monkey. They're only found at the Deadmines, so Ophelia (My newly renamed Tirrae-child) and I headed off to Westfall. Needless to say, I don't have high hopes for this future pet, but I'm always willing to give things a try.

Getting into Deadmines wasn't that difficult. Mobs that did aggro were fairly easily killed by Ophelia, so it wasn't long before we reached the monkeys. We had to flip flop all over trying to find said skin, which proved to be rather annoying. Finally, monkey was tamed and thus dubbed Loathing, in the spirit of my dad's monkey back in Beta, who broke the world. (The name itself comes from Fear and Loathing in Vegas, according to him.)

In proper Stich-esque style, Loathing says "haaaai"

WoWScrnShot_092212_145034.jpg (211.04 KiB) Viewed 3405 times

Monkeys themselves aren't inherently bad pets. While standing, their model is pretty well done. Their fur isn't too blocky or awkward, likewise their feet, hands, and face isn't bad on its own. This isn't surprising, as monkeys are Cata models and thereby still relatively recent. However, their tails are relatively awkward--as opposed to naturally hanging low when at rest, it remains at a constant and rather stiff curled position.

WoWScrnShot_092212_145357.jpg (101.08 KiB) Viewed 3405 times

There wasn't exactly any puddles here in HFP, which I hearthed back to, so I can't speak much of the monkey swim animation. Walking animation is a bit...awkward. They don't quite run properly, running at a peculiar diagonal shift. It looks fairly painful, and I imagine it stems from the even length of their limbs. (Generally, or at least with gorillas, their forearms are longer than the legs.)

Another thing--monkeys are TINY pets.

WoWScrnShot_092212_145655.jpg (385.22 KiB) Viewed 3405 times

Their ability is rather interesting, blinding the target. It has its uses for multi-tasking targets, but with one it seems rather useless. That said, Loathing seemed pretty good on his own at beating the crap out of things. He was able to more or less tank things by himself while I watched his animations. His attack animations is much like the gorillas. They rear up and smack or they slap the foe. (It should be noted their idle animations also match gorillas).

Overall, I knew off the bat Loathing and I were not for each other. I ended up giving him over to Thrallmar--they're dealing with him now.

Another, please?

Name: Solaira
Level: 62
Exotics: Not yet
Restrictions: Not really. No warp stalkers, and no more bats or monkeys for a bit please.

[TygerDarkstorm]

You're not the only one with nothing better to do today, Azu. xD

The RNG for this Challenge has a really cruel sense of humor, and I swear that it does certain things on purpose (like rolling Azu bats and monkeys). As some of you may have seen in the raptor appreciation thread, Tsara has recently acquired a raptor that presented herself with an instant bond.

So with a small groan I summoned my temporary second account (I'm RaFing myself to boost some levels on my alts and get the shiny mount ) to portal me out to Theramore.


Once there I flew out to Goreclaw's location, landed and started to encourage him to come join my side for a little bit.

He's quite a bit larger in the wild than his fellow red raptors.

I had a moment of heartrending terror after the tame as I realized just how gorgeous he looked next to Tsara (and how pretty his colors are in general). I named him Goreclaw for the purposes of this challenge and out of respect to him. But, after I named him that, I realized that I had no real connection to him and that he certainly would not be fighting Lucy for a place in my stables.


Time for the nitty gritty details. Looks wise, I've always held a fondness for the old world raptors as their models have really stood the test of time.

The colors for this skin are really something special. The teal stripes stand out nicely on the black and tan skin and the blood red feathers add a nice touch. The stripe that runs over the shoulders blurs really weird though, like it didn't map over the arm right or something. I think it would have been nice if the beads on his necklace had been the blood red color as well; the teal seems to blend too much into the stripes, but that's a minor nitpick. One thing that I had hoped to capture better is the top of the raptor's head. When they go to open their mouths in their idle animation, the top part of their head (behind the eye where the sort of stripe looking things start) just caves in like part of the model is collapsing or something. It's really weird to look at once you see it.

And the other major disconcerting thing about raptors can be viewed from their front.

I'm not entirely sure what Blizzard was thinking when they made raptor eyes bulge like that, but it's really creepy on all but one or two of the old skins. Predators have forward facing eyes that don't bug out of their skull (the green raptor skin has nice looking eyes). Other than that, really solid model and skin.

Raptors also have some of the smoothest animations in the game. Both their run and swim is pretty seamless and their swim is one of my favorite swim animations. They use those long, powerful back legs to propel themselves in the water--not as hilarious as a devilsaur, but I still enjoy watching it.






Also worth including in their animations I suppose is cower (which is really just the pet playing dead). I didn't realize they did the death animation until recently.


One of my favorite things to do with raptors is watch them fight. Blizzard actually did a pretty damn good job of capturing what these guys might have actually fought like when they were alive. In game they mostly just do jump kicks and bites, and the animations are so fast they're hard to catch. xD

(jump kick start)


(jump kick finish)


(lunge + bite attack)

As much as I enjoyed having Goreclaw tag along with Tsara for a little while, I knew he belonged over in the original place I had tamed him with his fellow raptor buddies. Lucy is to be my raptor and she prefers to keep it that way. I'll definitely probably pick up this skin on a black and white panda hunter though.




Name: Tsara
Level: 68
Exotics: Yes. I'm almost at 69
Restrictions: None
Rares I Have: None that are hard to get.

[TygerDarkstorm]

Azunara(Solaira):
Brown Sporebat


Tyger(Tsara):
Two-Headed White Vulture

[Kalhoun]

This time I was assigned the purple hyena: ,
or the black cat:

I noticed that the only purple hyena of the appropriate level was the rare spawn, Snort the Heckler. So of course I had to try to get him first.

Upon arriving to his spawn area, I noticed quite a few people around, as well as many dead mobs. I then realized that I was in a Cross Realm Zone. Poop! That was going to make finding Snort alive very hard! Feeling a bit disappointed, I tamed the closest alive hyena. I was leaving with a hyena, dammit!

His name is Scruffy.



Scruffy clicked instantly with Kaeshen. He's adorable with his little stubby tail, cute fighting noises, round little ears, and the way he eagerly bounds along beside his new master. There's problems with his model, sure, but I've found it easy to over look. The last time I tamed a hyena (on Kalhoun) I just couldn't bond with it, so this time was really surprising!

But this story isn't about Scruffy, though he helped me look for Snort several times that evening, and then throughout the next day. I think we checked for him at least 10 times in total, and never saw hide nor hair of him - just a lot of people from other servers, and dead beasties. We even checked at 6 am! Nothing!

Where are yooooou, Snort?



I took that as a sign - Scruffy is Kaeshen's hyena.

So we traveled over to Stranglethorn to pick out a black cat. They were easy to find, numerous, and unmolested by questers.



His name is Shade. He matched Kaeshen's quest reward gear at the time, and that was cool.



I pretty much like every cat model in the game... EXCEPT this type. I don't outright hate it, but I think the face is really boxy and the proportions a bit odd. I dislike how the bridge of the nose starts off narrow, and then ends extremely wide. HUUUUGE NOSE.



And the lower teeth. They aren't "cut out." They're just a block or something.



Shade came along with me while I quested in Thousand Needles that evening. All of his animations are nice, and I like the graceful way cats run. His buff isn't one that works the best on a soloing, questing pet, but that's not something that would completely stop me from using any pet. I was even able to ignore the things I disliked about his model because there's many things I did like.





However, I don't feel I will keep him in my Stable. If I'm going to have a cat, it's going to be one of the models I prefer. I just dislike the boxy cats.

I did get a random hyena out of this assignment, though!

=============================

I'd like to go again, please!

Name: Kaeshen (Kalhoun)
lvl: 45
Exotics: Nope
Restrictions: Raptors

[Akycha]

Scruffy clicked instantly with Kaeshen. He's adorable with his little stubby tail, cute fighting noises, round little ears, and the way he eagerly bounds along beside his new master. There's problems with his model, sure, but I've found it easy to over look. The last time I tamed a hyena (on Kalhoun) I just couldn't bond with it, so this time was really surprising!

But this story isn't about Scruffy, though he helped me look for Snort several times that evening, and then throughout the next day. I think we checked for him at least 10 times in total, and never saw hide nor hair of him - just a lot of people from other servers, and dead beasties. We even checked at 6 am! Nothing!

Where are yooooou, Snort?



I took that as a sign - Scruffy is Kaeshen's hyena.

That is an awesome picture of you and Scruffy. You can really see his personality.

[TygerDarkstorm]

I agree, Akycha.
I'm glad you managed to find a new friend after Snort decided to be a no-show.

Kalhoun(Kaeshen):
Brown Tallstrider

[Ana]

Name: Tårnfalk
Lvl: 85
Exotics: yes
restrictions: No rare

Name Abricot
lvl: 60
Exotics: cant yet
restrictions: no rare

[TygerDarkstorm]

Tårnfalk:
Pink Scorpid


Tårnfalk(Abricot):
Grey Hyena

[Ana]

Abricot got the grey hyena - havent got around to do Tårnfalks yet

I took the portal to blasted lands and tame a white hyena. I named it Jicama - to stay with the fruit/veggie theme.

The taming was kinda fun.. it looks like it is going to eat me on the last scrennie!






But adventually he caved in I quite like hyenas. They are sturdy and got tons of personality. Their indle animation are that they sniff the ground and from time to time sit and scratch their ear











I took him with me to quest in Hellfire and he had no problem holding agro and killing pets - eventhough he was specced dps. He did an exellent job!






I even took him with me to a run to hellfire ramparts. He did very well indeed and his special ability is very usefull in grps. I accually like the way the hyena runs






I absolutly adore hyenas but i had no real bond with him and in the end i let him go - but i can recommend a hyena

[Eternallylostx]

Name: Lasgif
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: none

I still need to do the Scorpid on Hokousha >.<
Apologies it's takin so long :<

[TygerDarkstorm]

No worries.

Eternallylostx(Lasgif):
Seagull

[Ana]

Tårnfalk was giving the pink scorpid to tame.

I headed to terrokar to tame one







I really really like the coloration of these

they have a shade pink color on their shell and darkblue lighting under and between its carapace. It has deep purple "fur" on its claws and tail and deep blue and green markings on the shade pink carapace. The screenies does not give this beauty justice at all








Its idle animation is to rize its claws in a form of vitcory V - AND if u look from infront it looks like it keeps munching on something.. adorable cute little munching mouth - hard to get a screenie but i think its cute.






I was a bit disapointed by its swimming animation.. had imagined it would use its claws.. but it only use the legs and tip the tail up and down - remided me of a shrimp for some reason






The scorpic ability is a disarm -main hand and ranged weapons for 10 sec. - i guess this is most usefull in PvP`- havent encountered it being usefull in PvE so i usually just keept it off.

This beauty will be relocated to marcipans stable - but Tårnfalk alrdy have her scorpid so for now he will go home and wait til Marcipan comes around and tame him

[Akycha]

I was assigned the Purple Demon Dog:


I immediately decided I was going to go get Bayne. By the time I finished up helping various people and finishing out some stuff I wanted to do, I was about falling asleep. I wearily mount up on my drake though and flew up north to Trisfel Glades to camp out there. Blurry eyed, I almost flew out to sea and died before I caught myself and turned around. Npc_scan didn't go off; so, I landed to camp for the night.

Who should start wandering up to the hill towards me as I was camping out? Bayne. Bayne is huge! Like the size of a kodo. I quickly started taming him and then blinked when he shrunk to this tiny little version of himself. I promptly hearthed, camped out and went to bed.

The next day, I realized I forgotten to take a screen shot during the tame. *facepalm* Some guildies wanted company doing the TB dailies, so me and my new dog head out to Tol Barad. I quickly came to the realization that my new dog was small, very small. Later, I took him back to Trisfel Glade and compared him size wise to the lvl 6 dogs around where I caught him.

I seriously wonder how small he'd be as a level 10 tame. At anyrate, I took to thinking of him as Tiny rather quickly. Since I was growing attached and thought I might keep him, I had to find a different name before that one become permanent and ended up with Tonraq which means tiny man or spirit. Over the next week, I compared him to the size of various pets. Can you tell the size thing was boggling my mind?

Next to a Worg


Next to a Cat


Next to a Seagull


Seriously, look at how big the seagull looks next to him! The thing that really got to me about all of this is I have a friend who regularly ran with the red rune dog all through Wrath and I never noticed his pet being small. He wasn't around though, being on vacation; however, I have another friend with the green rune dog so we met up in Stormwind for some pictures.

The two of them side by side.

Looking at them like this they look the same size, which the are. In the game with the effects active and in motion, the runed dogs actually seem bigger with the flame and smoke coming of them from variety of places.

Here are the two of them in BW as a bonus. My friend tamed his based on how he looked in BW.


So, enough about talking about how small he is.
Let's talk about how fiesty he is. Like all the demon dogs he has the bouncey idle motion which just doesn't translate will into screenshots. When attack well he look cute for a better word. Everything is bigger than him.

His main attack animation is swatting his paw at the enemy. It also was hard to capture but I think I got a good screenshot of it despite this.


His other attack is a bite. He sorta crouches down then jumps up and snaps at the enemy.


The one thing I did love with him was using blink strike.

He's a cool blink dog. You blink and bam he's behind you hamstring you. The unsuspecting better watch out. I derived a lot of amusement form him teleporting behind people and kill them.

The swim animation was nothing really to write home about, but it had nothing bad to talk about either. He just did a little dog paddle.


He does seem to bark a lot in combat. I found it got a bit on my nerves, unlike my wolf's growl or my hyena's cackle. It probably didn't help that it seemed inconsistent. Sometimes he barked a lot; sometimes infrequently. I couldn't really find a rhyme or reason behind it.

As we did the dailies though, I became quite enamored by his color and the concept of this little blink dog taking down big enemies. The violet and the turquoise looks surprisingly good together and almost glows with the new lighting. Especially when I was running around in TB. When we went to Uldum, where I normally take my pets profile shots, his pretty violet pelt seemed more pinkish, but still looked good. I also made a startling discovery about his mane. When running around in TB I thought it was this big bushy mane.

Like you see in this side view


In actuality it is all an illusion, take a look at this front view.


His mane is a flat texture on his back that looks like a fin. If you look at this slightly angled back view, you can see it does a really good job of blending in and not looking obvious.


From the top it just disappears.


The unfortunately thing about this photo shoot with me and Tonraq it set the seeds that eventually lead to our parting. I really got a good close up look at his face and didn't like it at all. It seems to frozen and stiff to me and didn't match his personality in my head at all. Also,well, I'm willing to admit it, his face is ugly. I felt guilty and rather shallow about it really. My bond with him was broken due to his terrible face. I didn't feel right releasing him back in the wild since he loved being a pet so much. Especially not in Horde territory or any of the other places where he's fine dog friends.

The solution came one day when I was in Dalaran. I was picking up balls for fetch and Breanni took me aside and asked me why I was looking so down. I confessed to her all about Tonraq. She laughed at me and told me not to worry. She's really good at getting good homes for pets.

So I left Tonraq there, knowing she'd take care of him and find his forever home. They seemed to get along great as I left. I wonder if it is because Tonraq isn't taller than her like the yeti.

[Kalhoun]

Kaeshen and Scruffy headed back to the Barrens once again to tame a brown tallstrider:

I admit we stopped at Snort the Heckler's spawn point once again out of curiousity. Still nothing!

Anyways, the brown tallstrider was easy to find; lots of them out there.



Upon taming, I named him Dusty, after both his coloration and his special ability.



I haven't run with a tallstrider in a very long time, and I am used to their old, bouncy run. The new, Hawkstrider Mount-like run took some getting used to, but it's grown on me.



Dusty is a happy guy! He's also got some nice, subtle coloration to him. I like his blue eyes. The blockiness of the older model doesn't really bother me, as I have some nostalgia for these guys (I once had a female dwarf hunter, waaaay back in Vanilla, who ran with a pink tallstrider named Gertie for a very long name). Plus they remind me of the prehistoric Terror Birds, so that's just awesome.



Well, we did the usual thing - quested. Dusty did well, and I can't complain about his sunder armor skill. Things died fast, and I think his animations and vocalizations are amusing. By the end of the evening, I found myself quite fond of him.





But I admit to being a bit shallow and preferring to have a tallstrider with prettier plumage. So off to Darkshore Kaeshen went, where he found and tamed the Strider Clutchmother. Because tallstriders share the same skill as raptors, I think I may trade out using tallstriders instead of raptors from now on.

Kaeshen's new bird is still unnamed, but it accompanied him during questing last night! Now to find one for Kalhoun!

[TygerDarkstorm]

So yeah... I should totally throw up my report for . xD

There is only one tamable bird of this color and that's Trachela out in the Auchindoun area of Terokkar. She is easy enough to find and get to, hovering above a little hill in the midst of other carrion birds.


She's level 65 and Tsara's 69 so the tame wasn't too hard, either. She's also apparently immune to freeze trap (yes, silly me, I did not know this).


My first thought when I saw this bird tamed at Tsara's side is that she is beautiful! But then I looked at her a little closer...


Oh no, poor thing suffers from that goofy lighting bug. It just immediately killed my attraction to her because of all the weird blockyness.

Still, I took her out to Howling Fjord to run some quests with me and see if maybe I would notice the bug less. On closer inspection out there, she didn't seem to suffer the bug as badly, but it's still there.


And more in depth about her looks: She really is a beautiful model/skin. All birds in this game fly weird thanks to Blizz's awkward designing of wings. But the feather design and detail is well done and those eyes are lovely. The weird, fleshy, feathery tails on carrion birds seem awful strange, but it's easy enough to look over once you fall in love with one of these guys.

Despite their weird wing formations when they fly, I love the bird flying animations, though I wish sometimes they wouldn't always flap by your shoulder when you're idle (I'm looking at you GW2 birds that land when still).


Her swim is either a dramatically slowed down version of her flight or an actual swim, I have trouble telling which, all I know is that whichever it is, it's actually really pretty to watch and not at all captured well in screenshots.



Capturing birds in action while you're out questing proved to be a little more difficult than I had thought. Her attack animations happened extremely quickly and had a tendency to cause her to get lost inside the mob. However, the attacks do look very neat and smooth; she slashes with those dangerous talons and, I think, attacks with her beak(s).



The carrion bird special is Demoralizing Screech, which reduces the physical damage caused by all enemies within 5 yards by 10% for 10 sec. I am undecided if this is actually useful or not. Theoretically, if you're in a group where all other buffs are covered, this could help a tank in PvE by reducing how hard the tank will be getting hit, but that's such a minor thing anymore, and doesn't help against casters. It could be somewhat beneficial in PvP, especially now that we can fire from melee range. I can see this being most useful while you're out soloing and taking the carrion bird to tenacity as their screech will provide them with some AoE aggro as well as helping them keep from getting hit as hard.

(Visual of the screech.)

In the end I just couldn't get over how wonky that lighting bug was and it irritated me enough to let this pretty bird go. Plus, I didn't really have the stable space for her to stay. She decided that the feeding opportunities were better in Howling Fjord and wanted to stay there to have her fill.