An important page from old Petopia of that era is here. It presents tables of all the families, diets, stat modifiers and skills.
New Families
There are six new pet families (compared to original Classic), bringing the total to 23:
- Dragonhawk (General): Eats Fish, Raw Fish, Fruit, Meat, and Raw Meat. Learnable skills: Bite, Dive, Fire Breath.
- Nether Ray (Defense): Eats Meat and Raw Meat. Learnable skills: Bite, Dive.
- Ravager (Offense): Eats Meat and Raw Meat. Learnable skills: Bite, Dash, Gore.
- Serpent (General): Eats Fish, Raw Fish, Meat, and Raw Meat. Learnable skills: Bite, Poison Spit.
- Sporebat (General): Eats Bread, Cheese, Fruit, and Fungus. Learnable skills: None!
- Warp Stalker (Defense): Eats Fish, Raw Fish, and Fruit. Learnable skills: Bite, Claw, Warp.
New Pets
I haven't added the new pets yet, but I have their data and am working on getting them in shape for addition to the database soon.
Besides all the Outland stuff, BC brought a new tameable "ghost wolf" to Dustwallow Marsh: the Grimtotem Spirit Guide. Blizzard originally said they'd allow it to remain as a pet, but eventually changed their minds and hunters could no longer tame it. It'll be interesting to see what they do this time.
Removed Pets
At least 9 beasts were removed during the Dustwallow revamp that came with Patch 2.3. They'll be missing from the very start of BC Classic:
- Drywallow Vicejaw
- Bloodfen Scytheclaw
- Darkmist Lurker
- Darkfang Spider
- Darkfang Lurker
- Mudrock Tortoise
- Mudrock Burrower
- Mudrock Snapjaw
- Mudrock Borer
Pet Skills & Stats
In BC there were still no official family "specs", as Petopia of that era uses the same same general family roles as it did for Vanilla: Offense, Defense, and "Well-Rounded" (which I've been referring to as "General"). These are based on their stat modifiers for damage, armor and health.
Pet Skills
- New skills (added after Classic): Fire Breath, Gore, Poison Spit, Warp , Avoidance, and Cobra Reflexes. Avoidance and Cobra Reflexes were added in 2.1 but in BC Classic they exist at release.
- Skills were still learnable / teachable from certain beasts you could tame.
- I have a list of all the skills that new pets can teach, which will go up when I add the new pets.
Some existing pets (from Vanilla) gained new teachable skills in BC. I've checked and confirmed many, but not all, of these on the Beta:
- Cobra Reflexes 1: King Bangalash (731)
- Gore 1: Battleboar (2966), Bristleback Battleboar (2954), Dire Mottled Boar (3099), Large Crag Boar (1126), Rockhide Boar (524), Thistle Boar (1985)
- Gore 2: Corrupted Mottled Boar (3225), Elder Mottled Boar (3100), Goretusk (157), Mountain Boar (1190)
- Gore 3: Elder Mountain Boar (1192), Great Goretusk (547)
- Gore 4: Bellygrub (345)
- Gore 7: Ashmane Boar (5992)
- Gore 8: Plagued Swine (16117)
- Bite 5 (not a new skill): Drywallow Snapper (4343) - note that this was a replacement in a later patch of BC, to replace the Claw skill it should never have had
- Bite 6 (not a new skill): Stolid Snapjaw (13599)
- Bite 8 (not a new skill): Razzashi Broodwidow (11370)
- Cower 3 (not a new skill): Blind Hunter (4425)
- Cower 5 (not a new skill): Dark Screecher (8927)
- Dive 1 (not a new skill): Blind Hunter (4425)
- Scorpid Poison 2 (not a new skill): Scorpashi Lasher (4697)
- Shell Shield 1 (not a new skill): Ironback (8213)
- Drywallow Snapper (4343) lost Claw 5 sometime during one of the later BC patches (but gained the Bite skill it was always meant to have)
- Greater Kraul Bat (4539) seems to have lost Cower 3 for some reason
- Prairie Wolf Alpha (2960) seems to have lost Furious Howl 1. Not sure why this would be! I can find no actual reference to it, it just changes in the databases
- Barnabus (2753)'s Bite skill was lowered from rank 6 to rank 5
- Longtooth Howler (5287)'s Furious Howl skill was raised from rank 2 to rank 3
Attack speed
Attack speed was standardised to 2.0 in all pets by the time BC was launched, so I won’t need to record it for individual pets like I did in Original Classic.
"Caster" Pets
Caster pets were still a thing in BC, but as with original Classic it has been fixed and won't be an issue in BCC.
Diet Additions
BC was when "Raw Fish" and "Raw Meat" were added to the possible diet options of pet families. Neither of them made much sense.
Pet Look Changes (compared to original Classic)
Crabs lost their mohawks in BC.
Links to some Mania's Arcania posts that are useful as references:
- 2.3 changes (not much info, just gives a time reference)
- More 2.3 updates (mentions a lot of pet level decreases in Vanilla dungeons)
- Dustwallow Marsh pet changes in 2.3
- Grimtotem Spirit Guide no longer tameable
- Zul'Aman Bear can no longer be tamed (it was only ever tameable on the PTR, so more just an interesting factoid)
Other stuff to research
- stable size and stable management
- known quirks of the era
- anything else of importance
I haven't looked at any of this yet, but will fill in the details above as I do.