Re: Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]
Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:36 pm
My two options were the Saltspray Gull from Thousand Needles and the Rustberg Gull from Tol Barad Peninsula. Because I had never seen Tol Barad before, I elected to go after a Rustberg Gull. Given the name I already had in mind, rather than nabbing the first gull I saw, I let the gull choose me by taming the first one that took off and looped in my direction.
Enter Kehaar! For those of you who don't get the reference, Kehaar is the name of the ill-tempered seagull from the classic book Watership Down. Kehaar was a tiny fellow, as you can see here, and, while some find that charming, for me, this wound up being his first problem. I expected to find his size endearing, but he was so small that I tended to forget that I even had a combat pet, which is definitely something I never like to do.
On top of that, his skin, while smooth and attractive otherwise, had bizarre lighting issues. Whenever his back was to a light source, his tail feathers and tertials were heavily shaded, and when his front was to a light source, they were all lit up. It was very distracting, and I didn't like it at all.
His animations were the same as any other bird's on land. Ordinarily, I have no problem with the bird animations, but the seagull's head didn't move down when he flew forward, instead remaining above yet parallel to his body, and his entire model was tilted backward slightly, making him look very unnatural and not at all pleasant. The only high points were his wings, which folded in only one place instead of the bone-breaking two.
His swimming animations were identical to his hovering and flying ones, with the exception of an occasional glide thrown in for flavor, as seen above. Nothing at all of note here. Kehaar was, however, capable of doing a trick! I didn't know that about seagulls before this assignment, and I amused myself for a fair while with it before continuing on to other things.
Unfortunately, I have no further screenshots, because, as it turned out, I hated this pet. I absolutely could not endure its size, its animations, the way it looked next to my character, anything at all. Still, though we didn't get along, he wasn't a completely useless pet. I didn't test Kehaar out on anything except random mobs, but he functioned as well as any other bird of prey, and I imagine he would have been very helpful in PVP, given his disarming ability and ridiculously small size. I'm sure he'd have been a fine pet for somebody else, just... not for me. He was abandoned by the Steam Pools, where Verdigris, my King Crawler, joined the family, and he and I are much happier together than Kehaar and I ever were.
Sorry that took so long! x_x I would like another roll, if that's all right?
Name: Caelan
Level: 85
Exotics: Yep!
Restrictions: None.
Already tested: Light blue scarab, seagull.
