Us ‘Arrow throwers’ get a new page of stable slots with BfA which is nice, there are a ton of new pets to tame but we can effectively only have space for a small percentage of them. We should have more slots than they currently give us, especially since they have introduced new pet families and all the colour variants that they contain but we have 65 (including your poke-wow-balls) to fill thanks to the extra ten slots they have given us.
This got me thinking, if I want to collect some of the new ones, or I have to collect some of the old ones purely for the specific buff and such forth due to that’s what I am going to be expected to bring with me to raids and dungeons. How much space do I actually have?
I cleared out a load already for when Legion hit and I haven’t found that many from that expansion that I actually liked (that were able to be tamed at the time anyway…). So I had space to spare even before the extension to the stable block was completed by the Stormwind lackeys.
I currently have 39 inactive pets, ones that are frolicking in the sun back home at Stormwind but if I want twenty bees or crabs, where the hell am I going to put them? Are there any other pets I could release back into the wild? Or abandon as Blizz likes to tell me.
Images of my pet looking at me with sad eyes after leaving it in a field as I fly off with a new pet… fuck you Blizz, fuck you. I released it! Not abandoned it!
So, are you ready for the long haul? This is my Hunter nostalgia post of my favorite pets and how I got them or why they have certain names. Anyone who has camped a pet, stumbled across something they thought was truly magical at the time and snared it or developed some great memories attached to a particular pet, hopefully will enjoy. Everyone else, read about a Hunter doing just Hunter things…
I already posted about the contents of my poke-wow-balls in a previous post.
Anyway, this is a long one so I’ll hide it under the ‘read more’ line so it doesnt look like it’s taking over my site!
This little lovely came from the rare bird in Sholazar Basin with the same name, so this bugger still has loot in it… I was hunting around and questing when I came across her (it’s a ‘her’ to me!). I’d heard about people taming the leopard thing in that area but so many people had it, it kinda put me off. I used to love using her when we did the PvP shit in guild because of her ability ‘snatch’ where she disarmed my opponents, it was fucking hilarious. I also had the companion pet to match her which I got while I was levelling in Stranglethorn Vale, so it was kinda a must to get this bugger to go with it.
Barney came from Kalimdor and I wanted him purely because he was a big pink dinosaur. He was a running mate for a lot of those levels out there and then my go to pet in raids before I swapped to BM. I loved him and I am still surprised that I don’t see more of them running around, let alone called Barney. Although that might be me bringing comedy pets rather than serious aesthetic pets/ones who actually do something worthwhile.
Colour me surprised!
I saw this last night in Dalaran….
So this little bugger was another rare, so he still has loot on him. He got his name because I was desperately begging RNJesus for the bow to drop in SoO from Galakras and once it did, I was challenged to call this one ‘Beau’ which I promptly did. Naturally, I had a companion pet to match it that was then named Lil Beau. He ran with me while I was doing SoO while as SV.
Got this purely to troll people in Eye of Azshara. Everyone knows that the seagulls spell trouble so I got one of them to use in there ensuring that anyone who wasn’t truly paying attention would think that we were just about to get screwed by one of our feathered friends. Really should have renamed it to the actual mob name but literally didn’t have him out for that long for it to be worthwhile as I might have another use for him later under a different name.
Oooh I bet you can guess what happened that made me get this one?!?! Yeah, I had just learnt how to tame mechanical pets and thought it would be fucking hilarious to run into a raid and have a bloody tiny chicken scratching and pecking at the bosses toes. Cheeky Nandos complemented the Westfall Chicken pet that I have called KFC.
This is kinda a bummer tame. I was out in Winterspring and I saw a white Chimera rare. Super excited I had a look at my poke-wow-balls and realised that I had all five of them full and I didn’t want to release any of them back into the wild. I found a stable master to drop one of them off and went back to find the rare to tame but I couldn’t see it anywhere, the fucker had gone. Either into another hunters collection or some other players pockets as loot. I was gutted. This mother-fucker came from somewhere just because I was sad I didn’t get the one I wanted.
This is also the reason I always have one poke-wow-ball empty!
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL fuck you guys who spent ages taming that shitty stealthed one in Valley of the Four Winds! (I am joking) This was a hilarious troll on Blizzards part. So I did spend time trying to find that fucking crane rare because it was pink and I wanted the pink things. I’d seen Portents footprints but hadn’t managed to find that dude so my hopes weren’t that high but I kept checking.
Anyway… Then the Timeless Isle opened up and lo and behold who was there? A million pink fucking cranes. First thing I did, tame one of those suckers and parade around with it as though I had actually put time and effort into finding the rare one. Did I feel like a fraud? Nope, Blizz took a giant shit on those poor Hunters who did sink time into it not me. Much like being able to tame the first boss in Mogu’shan Vaults instead of having to track down Portent. Anyway, it was pink, I wanted it and fuck everyone else essentially.
Fuckin’ Thok. I don’t think I really need to say much more than that. He still has my loot and it’s probably the bit that I really really wanted in SoO when I was raiding that. I wanted to tame him and turn Hati into him. But mainly, I wanted to tame him for revenge for being A HUGE ASSHAT and this was how I would get one over on him. What levels have I sunk to….?
I’d just learnt the book thingy to be able to tame these and went to the Isle of Giants to get one. Back then people were still trying to kill Oondasta and Hordies were everywhere. This brown/red one if the first colourway you see when you get to the flightpoint on the beach, therefore I tamed it and fucked off quickly. Called it Earwig as it was pretty big and cumbersome, not small and sneaky like the bugs. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, did you see what I did there?
So this matched a mount I had to rep grind for so naturally I had to get a pet to match. Rode the mount for ages in WoD, used the pet not so much. Called it Fakehorse because at the time I was still pretty salty that we couldn’t tame the actual horses that roam around. Much like how Hunters as a whole were salty about the unicorns being untameable but in a more condensed version. This dude was Bach’lor in Outland version of Nagrand, where he wanders ahead of his gaggle of females. The stud.
Got this one because I was too lazy to get the rep for ages to buy the Water Strider mount. Served me well in WoD and was easier to use than the bloody fishing raft for getting about. People didn’t snigger too much even when something broke water walking and I dropped into the pond I was going over. I saved my gold and still got the benefit, ish without being left feeling like a scrublord compared to everyone else who did have the Water Strider mount. I keep him around even though I now do have the mount. Was aiming for the rare one but I got fed up camping and just picked off a straggler instead.
That fucking quest line…. Sweet Jesus, never getting rid of this one just because of the quest line. Ran with this for quite some time. Called it Francis so I could take the piss out of my boyfriend and yell (along with the rest of the raid) ‘for fuck sakes Francis!’ whenever he ran off and pulled the room. Lulz.
Another piss take raiding pet. Along with looking ‘magnificent’ riding off into the sunset on my goat mount, I now had an equally ridiculous pet to headbutt the bosses shins. Especially effective when I was running in some badass looking armor myself and then I pull this thing out and he trots off towards the boss.
Lil Juggers was one of those pets where you have to collect his parts and put him back together again. There were different variants depending on what paint you picked up from SoO but I wanted black so that when I was out killing big Juggers, he would be there killing his Daddy. Plus, he gives me very good memories of raiding that boss…
This one was a fun catch. I didn’t want the silver or bronze ones, I wanted the gold one. I recruited a helping hand to help me tame it and had to navigate my way through Alcaz Island where I was the only one out of the two of us who could see the landmines. We did watch a monk trying to make their way over there (Horde) and fail spectacularly and they tried to torpedo their way over the bombs but just ended up with their corpse flying back over our heads as we stood on the dock. Again, its not one that I have used much but the achievement of getting it and the funny memories make it one of my better ones.
First rare I ever tamed while I was out and about. Saw this wandering past me in Stranglethorn Vale and fell in love with it. It was shiny and had glowing eyes! Had this one for a while as MM and only swapped it out once I got something else that caught my eye.
This one I ran with for quite a while, I was still MM and had the Winterspring Cub and was planning on getting the mount (I still have three whiskers in my bank!) although I never quite got there. Liked the colour and I used to run with this and the companion pet version out at the same time.
First pet I actively sought out after finding Petopia and loving the colour of it. Shat myself going into the raid and seeing a place where the mobs were vastly higher than I was used to and hoping that I didn’t die or pull anythign I should have. I was so happy when I did tame this eventually. Had him around for ages, the original RaidWiper, even though I didn’t raid I knew about the stereotype of Hunter pets! Both him and the matching companion pet used to be paraded around. Just need the
This is my first ever pet. The one you start with. Named him Raider as I liked the idea of Tusken Raiders from Star Wars. His name caused me confusion in the area with training dummies as I thought the ‘Raiders Training Dummy’ was one just for him (at the time I thought dungeons were what you did at max level and didn’t even know raids existed) and it took me a while to work it out, namely in the next expansion when I went to ‘Raiders Training Dummy’ to actively engage it to test some sims and I wondered why it still said ‘Raiders’ when I didn’t have that pet out… anyway…. Love the fact that I couldn’t control him until lvl 10 and having to hope and pray I wouldn’t die to the stream of mobs he would pull from all courners of the kingdom… Bless him. Literally never getting rid of him.
SoS all-star right here! My glorious sporebat that I got to get the Haste buff for raids. Picked this one from looking at the selection on Petopia due to his pink balls, which swing round when he throws his ass in a circle when moving. Looks fucking stupid while raiding and gave him a stupid name to go with it. ‘Shall I get Snuggles out?’ was a regular question along with ‘Can we have Snuggles please?’ for which I loved him all the more. Again, great raiding memories attached to this little fucker. Never getting rid of him.
Thoughts?
After going through this and seeing how much attachment I have to some of my pets there’s a fair amount I could release and I wouldn’t kick myself. I fancy charging into battle with a bumble bee, or a toad, or even a hermit crab, or a cyborg prairie dog… and currently I have space for them and more. I like the idea of utterly stupid pets being used for battle. The more unlikely the better. But I also do enjoy the attachment I get to certain pets like my first wolf. The only issue is now that those pets we like the look of are not going to be used much if the expectation that we raid with the ‘top pet’ that has been allocated due to Blizzard changing the actions and buffs that the pet families do. Apparently selecting a tank pet to tank of you was so outdated. Yeah maybe but it enabled us Hunters to showcase all the wild and wonderful pets we had amassed during our time playing the game.
There are lots of hunters who are collecting for the sake of collecting and that’s all well and good but currently, the space we have been given dictates that we should be keeping those pets who we have an attachment to only. Until Blizz lets us collect pets like mounts and battle/companion pets we are at the mercy of our ‘Zoo keeper overlords’.
All I know is, I’m getting me a unicorn and then I have to wait until the next expansion to be able to tame me an alpaca…. Hopefully.
Zionxi 