WoW Petopia Community

What are they?

http://www.wowhead.com/npc=62258/silithid-hatchling

Silithid Hatchlings are weather dependent critters that can only be found in a sandstorm in Tanaris. This makes them a very rare and tricky pet to get.

Where are they?

If you take a peek at the wowhead page above, you can see their spawn locations on the map -- the Gaping Chasm and Noxious Lair.

However, despite the small number of yellow spawn dots on that map, I can confirm they spawn all over the place in great numbers, not just the top bits.

They DO NOT spawn underground. Any person that's hunted Shadelings can confirm that underground pet icons are a bit washed out on the map to indicate so -- none were tracked as such.

What's the deal with sandstorms?

You can tell if you're in a sandstorm by the puffs sand that look a bit like fog that flies at you repeatedly. You also get a bit of a 'warp speed' effect from smaller grains of sand whizzing by you. The graphic is very obvious, but if you're unsure, turn your computer graphics up to good or higher to double-check.

Like all WoW weather, sandstorms cannot be predicted and are based on RNG. No time or guide can help you guess when they'll appear.

Commonly-asked questions

As I was typing this guide, a sandstorm spawned under my main. The hatchlings appeared within a few seconds of the start.

You can log in to a sandstorm. You do not need to swap areas and come back to make them appear. They are still in the coding, if you have not found any, you are simply unlucky.

Hatchlings DO RESPAWN. I cleared out the Chasm in full, headed to the Lair, and returned after getting my blue to check -- about 7 more had spawned in my absence.

Some servers ARE unlucky. I logged into a sandstorm on my alt, confirmed I was the only person on my horde and alliance in the zone, but there were still none to be found in either area. A comment on wowhead indicated that some servers have very low spawn rates, as they only found 2 that respawned during a 45 minute waiting period. As some servers also have troubles with Blood Knight having obstruction areas, I'm inclined to believe coding can differ server to server.

The server I was on that had plenty was Coilfang.

Best methods

Alts. Lots of them on low population non-PVP servers. Just log in and out from time to time -- sandstorms last a while, so don't feel pressured to check every 10 minutes.

If you're antsy, try leveling some of your 13-16 critters in Tanaris while you wait.. but nothing will probably happen.

If you have a loyal and very bored friend, server hop. Have them invite you to different servers to see if anything is up.

BE PATIENT.

When they do pop out, gun it for your rare AFTER you've caught the first one you find to add to your logbook. Don't be distracted by that rare seagull, you can farm him anytime. Forfeit and move on.

Extra

In my farming, I've discovered:

Uncommon is the most common type to find.

There are 3 types of Hatchlings, tanks with high hp and lower speed+atk, warriors with lower hp and higher atk and regular speed, and speedsters.. well, you've gotten the pattern by now.

Get the rare finding addon! Saves a ton of time.

Thanks for this. I seem to be one of the people on a problematic server. On Uldaman (which is not high-population), I've hunted them twice in a sandstorm, both times looking for over an hour, and haven't seen any. Maybe I'll try using an alt on another server.

Personal update: I've now experienced sandstorms on three different servers, two with the bugged spawns, and Zangarmarsh which had plenty of Hatchlings.

I wouldn't get my hopes up that it is 'server by server' on this. After all, Cross-realm Zones aren't any 'specific server'. They are just 'cross-realm zones'. To whit, on Emerald Dream, my first sandstorm happened to net me tons of spawns and my rare. The next sandstorm, I was flying around the nests just because I was in the area, and not one, single spawn. So giving server names probably won't help.

I was leveling my team when a sandstorm hit me in the face. Right off I flew over and the area was crawling with the little guys! I nabbed my first one to add to my total then started rare hunting.

98% of all of the ones I found were poor. I ran into one common, and two uncommon, and everything else was poor. After several mins of running into poor after poor I finally smacked into a rare 'war'type and nabbed it. Happy I resumed my leveling of my team and after two more ran into another rare that I nabbed as well, it was the high hp 'tank'. I may try for a 3rd to make a full team out of them, but the sandstorm ended.

Thanks for this post - I applied it to my camp for a Baby Ape as well. So instead of leaving my main to wait for hours like I originally planned (which would've been awful boring), I simply sent an alt to sit in Tanaris and checked in every once in a while. At one point I got bored with whatever I was doing in another window and decided to organize my collection a bit and as soon as I opened the pet tab, boom, sandstorm!

There were dozens of hatchlings about and only one other person in the area so I decided to go for a rare. Overwhelmingly I ran into uncommons... I trapped one and killed about a dozen. Only saw 1 common and 1 poor. Did 1 lap of Gaping Chasm and it was still sandstorming, so I went to Noxious Lair and picked up a rare there pretty quickly.