Random Pet Challenge [v3.0]

[Cialbi]

Siliverin, it's worth mentioning that the old world wind serpents have a different idle animation that you may find less irritating. Also, wind serpents are best appreciated when playing as a SV hunter (when it affects everything except auto shots and pet damage).

Oh, and the wind serpent you tamed is going to have a skin change come 4.0.6, fyi.

[Serendipity82]

I haven't gone and tamed the Blue Nether ray on Myriana yet, but here is Elsi's Green Scorpid Report.


So...I logged in on Elsi my (then) level 47 hunter (she is now level49 woot!). Didn't think about anything, just flew right to Thousand Needles and Hey look! Green Scorpids not far from the Flight Path! I proceed to lay my trap and tame the pet..WTF it's not letting me tame it? Turns out I had to put one of my pets in the stable before I could tame another. OOPS! So, I fly to Gadget, put Cringer away and fly back to TN. The tame proceeded to go off without a hitch.

WoWScrnShot_012711_192957.jpg (285.8 KiB) Viewed 4017 times

We hearth back to Felwood to do some questing. Before finally heading out on our adventure I really take a look at her. She's a very pretty mint green color with dark chocolate spots and accents. I immediately thought Thinmint cookies and Mint Chocolate chip icecream. And thus she has been dubbed Thinmint (ok..last to pets have been named after food. I think I have a problem). It really seems to fit her..she's a very cheerful Scorpid and extremely cute. I love the little clicking she made while walking next to me.

WoWScrnShot_012711_193555.jpg (247.33 KiB) Viewed 4017 times

WoWScrnShot_012711_193542.jpg (249.19 KiB) Viewed 4017 times

Diet wise she is very easy to feed- Scorpids eat meat, which is everywhere, so no problems there.

After distributing her talent points for more tankage than dpsage, I noticed one big thing: she had about 1k more health than Elsi. SWEET! We proceed to do a lot of quests with mobs being right at level with her. She had absolutely no problem tanking more than one mob and I hardly had to cast mend pet at all. I didn't really find the dis-arm that useful. It's definitely more for pvp, but honestly, it didn't really matter to me. This pet is a lot of fun and definitely a keeper!

Not going to request anymore til I get caught up with Myri.

[TygerDarkstorm]

All right, sorry for the long wait on getting this done.

Got this time.

I decided that I'd go pay my buddy Snort the Heckler a visit as I've seen him up just about everytime I go near his spawn points. The first really interesting thing I noticed about him was that he roams around in the giant ditch that Deathwing created in the Barrens. Seems like a bug to me, but at least he's reachable and tamable down there.

As has been my style with these past few challenges, I gave him his given name. I've always admired hyenas and wanted to re-add one to my stables once we got the expanded slots, but I was disappointed that their hamstring ability was taken away. Recently I've been redebating them after I saw the hyena thread, but couldn't decide on color.

First thing I thought after taming this guy was "wow."

The color is rather stunning to look at, and, surprisingly, looks good next to my hunter.

There are a few issues with these guys that many people are on the fence about. I wasn't around for before the hyenas got thrown on the coyote model, but I know there's people who miss their old stance. After seeing it in the other thread, I feel that the hyenas should probably have their head lifted up to at least the level of their withers (top of the shoulders).


The other big issue with them on the coyote model is that their back breaks when they run, I tried getting a screen of it, as it's pretty noticeable.


Their swim animation is cute, a basic doggy paddle, and doesn't seem to share the back breaking motions that running gives them.


Other than those couple of things, these guys are really adorable. I think they actually look really cute using the coyote model's animations, and I LOVE their little noises they make in combat. ^_^

I personally don't have much use for their bleed increase so this poor guy might either get released or sit in my stables for a while which is sad because he was doing quite well killing Cultists with me.

With a single MD he was able to tank two mobs and keep aggro the whole time, pretty impressive as I was in SV spec.

For now, I think I'll keep him around, his emotes are cute and I finally found a hyena color I really love. These guys would probably do really well with a MM hunter that groups with rogues, arms warriors, and feral druids frequently; something I don't usually have around.

Another please.
Name: Vitani
Level: 84 (I know, she's been that way for a while now. Being pushed to get my death knight raid ready.)
Exotics: Yes
No Restrictions

[enylia]

I got the Orange Hyena. They only exist in Tanaris, so I jumped on a wyvern and after a long, long flight.. I took off to search for one. After a few minutes of passing over basilisks and rocs, I finally came across a small group of them. One of them stood out to me:


I named him "Marmalade".

After taming him I decided to give him a look over (I've never really paid too much attention to hyenas):


This is one of those times where WoW shows it age, unfortunately. His head was very block and reminded me of a gnoll's. I wasn't found of how his lip was stretched back over his gums. But what bothered me most about the model was the texture on his legs. It almost looked like he had been partly skinned or burned--horrifying, to say the least. Ignoring his freaky legs, what I did like about this little guy was his cute, stubby little tail and round little ears.

I'm not 85 on my hunter yet, so instead I took him to Mt. Hyjal to do a little questing with me:


All in all he did well. He could keep threat and rarely needed healing, despite being only level 78 (I'm sure BM and KC spam helps with that, though!) After I got tired of questing, I decided to return to Orgrimmar and show the little guy around:


I also really like how his colors matched the rustic colors of Org/Durotar. I don't think I'll be holding on to Marmalade, but I think he'll be just fine out here in Durotar.



This was a TON of fun! I had been thinking about trying out a hyena but I could never find the motivation to do so. May I have another pet to try out?

Name: Aelann
Level: 81
Exotics: Sure
Restrictions: No cats/spirit beasts/devilsaurs

[Pawtrack]

I decided to go after the Strider Clutchmother, and found her almost imediately.


After taming her, she seemed to me as more of a he then a she, and named her him Cyclone

He liked to talk. A lot.

But after a while he got tired of jabbering and decided to take a nap.

As far as animations/model/sounds -- I liked him a lot. The swimming animation was kind of weird, but the other animations where okay. His model was very bright and I loved the colors. The sounds didn't bother me much, and his idle animations weren't much -- just cawing and preening himself.

Overall, I liked his model and most of his animations; not sure if I'll keep him or not, but I had fun with him!



I'll never learn my lesson, will I?
Name: Velyana (forum name: Pawtrack)
Level: 15
Exotics: too low
Restrictions: no more hard to get pets! (just kidding, it's a fun chalenge! )

[Xelophant82]

http://www.wow-petopia.com/look/seaturtleskinred.html

So this is what I got. I wasn't to fond of the idea of a turtle but I decided to give it a shot. I have Terrorpene already and just leveled him up today finally and started to think, I should try a different turtle out and see what they can do.

So what did I do? I decided to solo two instances and try and see how effective hunters can be at it. But first the tame.

I was going to go for the rare spawn but after a sweep of the area Cranky Benj is supposed to be I remembered that he probably wasn't in the game right now and that I should just get one of the regular ones. So since I was so close to the Hinterlands I jetted on over there.

Hey look there is a nice one...

Let's tame this guy...wait who is that on the side of the screen?


Needless to say I didn't aggro that guy and got my new turtle. I decided to name him Mikey because he was orange...and a turtle...seemed to fit right?



So what did I decide to solo? Well I wanted to make it worth my time so I took him to Magister's Terrace to try for the mount. Had to run it twice, once to unlock heroic second time to try for mount. Needless to say it went pretty smoothly.



Saving room for the post but that was from the heroic kill. No mount or pet from either run sadly... oh well try again another day.

Next instance I decided to try was one I had been doing on my Warlock. Heroic UP was up next for a shot at the mount!



I learned a few things about soloing in here. Crowd control is my friend and also I have Camouflage now so I can bypass a few pulls if I'd like.

I forgot to take a shot of the gauntlet before Skadi but it took me a few attempts to realize that I need to take it slower. But I finally managed to take him down.



No mount again sadly but I gave it my best. Afterwards I took him for a swim and as many may know, turtles just kind float through the water waggling their feet for propulsion.


In the end I found him to be very useful. I like the turtles damage reduction ability and it makes them great tanks. Even though he was only 82, he did a fine job with everything I put him through. I'm really not sure if I will keep him because my stable is pretty packed and I might just use his spot for random tames. I will always remember my time with him though with my screenshots.

[Siliverin]

hmm ill try a old world one out at some point in time xD ahh yeah im only bm xD lol always have been always will xD oo they are how interesting

[Tydarus]

I need a reroll! I tried to get the beige moth but they're only in Terokkar (too high) or Azuremyst Isle, which I can't get to since I don't have a flying mount. I tried! I will tame one when I get to Terokkar.

Tydarus, lvl 61, no exotics

[TygerDarkstorm]

You can't fly on (or to I believe) Azuremyst. It's easy enough to get to from the boat in Rut'theran Village.

[Tydarus]

You can't fly on (or to I believe) Azuremyst. It's easy enough to get to from the boat in Rut'theran Village.

True, but there's no boat to Rut'theran anymore, so I have no way to get from Darkshore to Teldrassil. Can't swim that far, and I'm not running to Stormwind Harbor!

[TygerDarkstorm]

You can actually swim from Darkshore to Rut'Theran with swim speed potions and health pots. The easier alternative is to have a death knight go with you for path of frost, or make friends with someone who has a rocket mount. But if you really feel it's impossible, then you'll have to wait for Kormai to re-roll you a new one in the morning.

[Pawtrack]

After taming him I decided to give him a look over (I've never really paid too much attention to hyenas):


This is one of those times where WoW shows it age, unfortunately. His head was very block and reminded me of a gnoll's. I wasn't found of how his lip was stretched back over his gums. But what bothered me most about the model was the texture on his legs. It almost looked like he had been partly skinned or burned--horrifying, to say the least. Ignoring his freaky legs, what I did like about this little guy was his cute, stubby little tail and round little ears.

Creepy! Now I will never be able to look at a hyena without noticing those weird legs...

[Zercon]

I've loved the idea of this for awhile but never really posted for some unknown reason… Nonetheless I'm interested what will get thrown out here for my Worgen, he needs nice variations for forever pets.

I don’t mind if something is one or two levels above me, it'll give me incentive to level, but too far ahead of me and I'll just cry.

Name: Zerö
Level: 42
Exotics: Not high enough level.
Restrictions: I own a purple glowy bear, midget seagull, and the undead hawk.

[Ziarre]

Some time ago, my budding survivalist Tufani was assigned the orange dragonhawk.



As the skin was only found on the Feral Dragonhawk Hatchling of Eversong Woods, I prepared for a challenging journey. Having made a similar run in reverse pre-Shattering to attain Timber for a hordlet, I noticed a definite difference in difficulty--scaling upward gradually as I progressed north. It wasn't until Hinterlands that the mobs began regularly chowing down on my poor worgen (forcing me to strip to my skivvies)...but the true challenge was EPL. It was in those plagued woods that I realized that Disengage could fling me away from my corpse, giving me at least 10-20 yards of guaranteed progress. I needed every inch as I approached the pass into Ghostlands, for the remaining Scourge had no intention of allowing easy passage for the living. Racing through the portal, I heaved a sigh of relief and jogged the rest of the way with little trouble, proceeding to tame the first Feral hatchling I saw (and putting my clothes back on!).



Returning to Stormwind, I examined him at leisure. The first thing that struck me was the coloring. He was a lovely bright flame-orange color, with softly glowing blue eyes for contrast. It didn't take long for me to choose a name for my new companion--Aedan, a Gaelic name meaning 'little fire.'



A name decided, I returned to battling the Defias in Westfall to get a feel for--Aedan, what are you doing with that Flame Breath before 20?!



Sure enough, Flame Breath was in his spellbook. It refused to stay on his action bars, and I presume this will be the case until he reaches the appropriate level, but that was no barrier to his helpful, albeit early, boost to my damage (and threat, oops). Following this discovery, I was distracted for a while with gearing Ziarre and leveling a warrior, until I had the sudden urge to give Tufani a makeover--something about her current look just didn't seem right yet. After much fussing around in the salon, I posed for a picture with Aedan and my new look.



Having tamed a Eclipse dragonhawk some time in the past and a Sunblade for Ziarre recently, I knew that I enjoyed the delicate, butterfly-esque model. The skin was surprisingly lovely, one that I hadn't given much thought due to its commonplace nature to blood elves...yet it's as rare as the others on Alliance, due to the long trek to find it. The animations are smooth and graceful, although I admit I giggle a little when Aedan smacks things with his tail in combat--it doesn't look like something that'd hurt much! His sound effects are nice overall, a peaceful rustling flap for idling and movement, and a squawk-ish thing in combat. Food requirements are easily met, for fish and meat are common, and fruit isn't terribly hard to find.

Overall, I think I'll be keeping Tufani's Aedan.

[Carnifex]

I finally had time this evening to do my random pet challenge! My assignment was to tame a Black Monkey.

My Tauren hunter journeyed far south, down to the cape of Stranglethorn Vale, in search of her target: a Skymane Bonobo. As far as I'm aware this is the only non-color-changing black monkey available. Eventually, on the small island of Jaguaro, she located the native habitat of her prey. It was actually sort of hard to find one alive because a Goblin shaman and Worgen rogue were grinding there and killing everything. Eventually, I caught a respawn.



He didn't like Eiderdown very much at first, but with a banana and a little coaxing, he eventually came around!



In terms of appearance the black monkey looks OK, but I'm not a fan. I just don't think monkeys are a very cute or appealing animal, so there was no real draw. I gave him a fair chance though. His color seems more of a dark ashen-grey rather than true black. I didn't have much to complain about with the skin, except that the whiskers are that type of rigid-looking, "flattened" hair you see on old-world lions' manes.

He has two idle animations, which occur often. He scratches his butt...



And he rears up and beats his chest.



It was hard to get clear screenshots of my monkey in motion, but his swimming animation is a loose butterfly stroke, which I liked. The walking animation is fine--he paces slowly with knuckles on the ground--but you'll hardly ever see it. His running animation is a quick lope on all fours, which I thought looked pretty bad. He runs with a sloped posture that looks like he's about to lose his balance and topple over on his side. The speed also seemed like a poor match for his actual running speed, even without any speed-increasing talents. Because of this hunched running posture, I decided to name him Igor. The attack animations are pretty simple. He hops and smacks the enemy with his fists or lunges forward and punches.

Igor's former buddies didn't approve of his change of heart and reacted with hostility.



As you can see in this comparison, the Skymane Bonobos shrink considerably after taming. For some pet families, I find their midget size really annoying, but it fit with Igor; I wouldn't expect a monkey to be very large anyway. (Almost every pet looks small next to a Tauren, though, so it may feel different for shorter hunters.) I'd expect that being a small target would help a monkey survive better in PvP.

In combat the monkey chattering noises weren't as loud as I had expected. They have a lot of different sounds but are actually a fairly quiet pet.

Together Igor and his new master said goodbye to Jaguaro Isle and set off for new lands.



Eiderdown spent the day adventuring with Igor, showing him sights and experiences he had never imagined before during his simple simian life in the jungle. Together they encountered many strange and hostile creatures...



Visited mysterious places far from home...



And even met some new people!



Igor held aggro about as well as any other cunning pet I've tried. Kill Command and Growl was generally enough for weak single targets, maybe an occasional Intimidate. That said, he was not great at it. Igor was bad at tanking multiple mobs, or any mobs that hit unusually hard. He took damage very quickly and I had to use Mend Pet often to keep him alive. I would definitely not recommend a monkey for tanking anything difficult. Bad Manner is currently fuctioning as a stun, not a blind, so it did not break on damage. That made it useful enough to leave on auto-cast. When Bad Manner gets changed in the next patch to correctly break on damage, I suspect it will only be helpful in PvP.

In the end, a travelling life wasn't suited for Igor. Adventuring was fun, but in the end he wanted to settle down and live peacefully at home. Knowing that Igor was no longer welcome at home, Eiderdown brought him to a new jungle, Sholazar Basin, where he could feel comfortable and fit in with the locals. At level 83 he had become significantly more powerful than he started out back in Stranglethorn, so she knew he could protect himself and his new neighbors.



My conclusions: Igor was certainly not a bad pet, but he didn't significantly stand out. I seriously disliked his running animation, and he was at best a mediocre tank, and his DPS was lower than some of my other pets with more beneficial abilities. Bad Manner was OK, but not a big bonus in PvE. So overall I'd choose my awesome serpent over Igor (or another monkey) in basically any situation requiring a cunning pet. PvP is where a monkey would really shine... but I don't PvP much at all on my hunter, so that wasn't enough of a benefit to me to want to keep a monkey around long-term. It was fun to try out a new pet family, though.

[Juxia]

I was given the green firefly model:



I wasn't overjoyed, I'm generally not a bug person but I took my little hunter Hoatzin over to Loch Modan to tame one of the Marsh Hornets there.

They were plentiful around the eastern side of what remains of the Loch. I was wandering around trying to pick one to tame when all of a sudden one flies up behind me and starts stinging me. Well, I couldn't resist such a feisty little bug so I hit tame beast and with a bit of coaxing he was mine.



The first thing that struck me was his size, he was a lot bigger once tames that I was anticipating and even at this level (I was 21, he hit 18 upon taming) he's a good size next to my human. I named him Strobe, it was the first thing I thought of looking at those wings!!!



Once he was tamed and named we headed down to Duskwood to do some quests. He was as good as I'd expect any ferocity pet to be at this level, he held aggro fine and put out a good amount of DPS. Whilst running around I noticed that he leaves a green glowing trail behind him as he flies. I also found his combat noises surprisingly endearing, he didn't sound chittery like spiders as I was expecting. I can only describe it as an oddly cute little buggy growl He jumped in to save me when we were randomly set upon by none other than Lupos whilst wandering around Duskwood.



Once he dinged 20 and got his new skill (Sting, a 2 second stun) I decided to try him out in a battleground. I did have some issues with the sting ability, it never triggered off the first button press. I always had to press the hotkey twice or sometimes three times before it would actually trigger the ability. I noticed it also didn't always show as being on cooldown even when it was. Once I'd got used to the first issue I was able to judge when to start hitting the button to get the ability to trigger correctly but it wasn't as reliable as I would like. That said, when the ability did work it was incredibly useful, especially when used in conjunction with Intimidation.



All in all, I was surprised by how much I liked the little chap. Without the Sting issues (which may have been a latency problem, I'm not sure) he'd be a great PvP pet and I'm sure the ability would come in handy either soloing or in instances.

I could be tempted to keep him if it wasn't for one thing......... Those wings!!! The constant flickering is really off putting. I'm not sure I could play with one long term without getting a headache!!! I could be tempted to try a standard wasp model as I think the main issue is the glow coupled with the really fast movement.

This is fun I'd like another please!!!

Name: Hoatzin (Juxia on forums)
Level: 22 (but rapidly rising, include pets up to 25, I'll be there quickly enough)
Exotics: too low
Restriction: wasps and spiders

[Ceravan]

I'll give it a shot...

Name: Ceravan
Level: 85
Exotics: Yes
Restrictions: No Warpstalkers, Classic Silithud Beetles (i'll do the uldum ones), Sabre Wolves, or Silithid Wasps, or Monkeys



Name: Nügget
Level: 24
Exotics: Not Possible
Restrictions: None as of now

[Raloth]

Am I too late to give this a try?

Name: Raloth
Level: 85
Exotics: I can tame 'em..and love doing so when I can
Restrictions: Nothing pink, and no northrend sabre worg models, as I really don't like how they look personally. Everything else is good!

[Samarachan]

I was assigned the Purple Parrot skin, aka the only Brilliant Macaw. Since I already had it, I decided to do a review anyway.

The taming:
I managed to dig out an old screenshot of the finding and taming her, dating to Nov 29th. It took me about 30 runs if i remember correctly before NPCScan finally picked it up. Yay!

The naming:
Naming it was easier than I thought. Plain and simple: Megawing. Get it? Yes. I already had the Miniwing companion, so this just fit. They have the same model and skin, so if you do decide to get this pet, the mini-pet is a must have (Minipet is obtained by a quest from Skywing in Terrokar)

The skin:
I have been inlove with the skin ever since I first saw Skywing. Have loved the minipet aswell, and I was super excited when I found out it will be a pet. It was one of the first pets I tamed came the Shattering. I also love parrots, this skin is deffo in my top 3 parrot skins. I had Aotona before this, and now I have 5 parrots in total on all my hunters. Love them.

Here's a front and upper pic of how the model and skin looks.

The combat:
I find birds of pray to be great dps to be honest. They have some very nice damage, and I simply love the Claw animation. Those strikes of red scratches? Amazing. Maybe because I was autoshooting in order to get the screenshots I wanted, she seemed to hold on aggro rather well. Being a dps, I couldnt really do a dungeon with her because the queues are over 40 mins, so instead I went to get revenge on one Nexus Watcher. You know the ones, we've all died to them. A baby drake aggroed aswell, but both were dead in no time. You can even see the Claw animation, teehee!

While I was there I saw someone on general ask for help for Last Rites. Aha! My time to shine. I quickly invited the druid, cute kitty, and headed there. She said her main was a hunter, so we chatted about pets. When I landed and dismounted my pet showed up and the druid knew who it was "Yay you got the rare biiiiird!"

Must admit, made me smile. She also liked the name I gave her, said it was clever

Anyway, Megawing held amazing aggro against the Prince, he was dead in seconds.

The PvP:
As you know, this pretty parrot disarms the target for 10 seconds. Very, very usefull in PvP. I did a bg even though I barely have any gear or my pet spec isn't pvp at all, but it was still fun watching her disarm this poor warrior:

No worries, I survived the Chains as I got insta rejuve from a fellow druid. The warrior however died. Disarm can be usefull in alot of boss fights aswell, given if the boss isn't immune. Skadi comes to mind?

The overall:
All in all, I love this pet. Skin, colors, model, abilities, everything seems to fit. Has been with me for a long time now, and I dont plan on letting her go ever. Already tamed another Brill Macaw on another hunter, and I dont think ill ever resist the temptation of finding one in the DM and not taming it

In the end, I decided to pay old Skywing a visit, here's me with all 3 birdies.

Hope this inspires people to go get her, there's no other pet like her. Also hope this review was okay, first time doing this D:

--------

I'd like another go:

Samarayan, lvl 27, No exotics yet, Willing to travel long distances and camp pets.

[Siliverin]

@samarachan- OMG i <3 your review makes me sad i let my birdy go... * plays epic music and heads off into the deadmines*