Elite Battle Pet on 5.2 PTR: Details about Dos-Ryga

As I was playing around on the 5.2 PTR, I discovered what looks to be one of the new elite battle pets. A golden paw appeared on my minimap on the western edge of the water around Binan Village in Kun-Lai Summit. Upon landing, I found a goldfish named Dos-Ryga.

Unfortunately, pets are not transferring with characters to the PTR, so I wasn’t able to engage in a full pet battle with this cute little guy. I did take a stab at him with a level 1 pet, which obviously ended very quickly.

Dos-Ryga is a level 25 legendary aquatic pet with 4207 health. His speed is 287 and power is 446. His three abilities are Frost Breath, Whirlpool, and Healing Wave. Keep in mind that this is the test realm, and everything is subject to change.

Here is the information about elite battle pets from the 5.2 PTR patch notes:

“Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. A new quest has been added to track progress as these new pets are hunted down, and completing that quest will award the new Red Panda pet.”

I’m going to hunt for more of these epic battle pets and hope that a future build of the PTR allows for the transfer of pets. I would love to have an actual battle with Dos-Ryga!

Pet leveling, XP, and earning new abilities

I was able to play around with pet battles quite a bit yesterday before they were pulled from the Mists of Pandaria beta. At first, the content was limited because the pets weren’t able to level. But at some point in the afternoon . . . the pets could level!

Leveling and XP

I found two ways to get XP for your pet. You can fight critters in the wild or challenge other players to a pet battle duel. The “Find Battle” queue is not active yet. Each pet that is active in the fight earns XP. So if your first pet takes out the critter, that pet gets all of the XP for the fight. If you use all three pets in the fight, they split the XP for the win.

New level glow!

The XP required to level:

• Level 2: 250 XP
• Level 3: 550 XP
• Level 4: 900 XP
• Level 5: 975 XP
• Level 6: 1400 XP

I was able to get two pets to level 5 and one to level 4 in a couple hours by fighting critters. The critters that can be fought are higher level than your typical level 1 critter. In Northern Barrens, critters were level 5-9. They were level 12-14 in Thousand Needles. A high-level pet probably won’t earn XP against a low-level critter.

My guess is that leveling will be much faster when the queuing system is implemented.

Earning new abilities

Each pet has six unique abilities and three of these can be used during a fight. These abilities are unlocked as the pet levels. As an example, I’ll show the abilities of the Fox Kit.

• Ability 1: Level 1 *Bite*
• Ability 2: Level 3 *Crouch*
• Ability 3: Level 5 *Leap*
• Ability 4: Level 10  *Flurry* (Can be swapped with ability 1)
• Ability 5: Level 15 *Howl* (Can be swapped with ability 2)
• Ability 6: Level 20 *Dazzling Dance* (Can be swapped with ability 3)

    

Looking forward to more

As I mentioned, the pet battles are no longer available to test. Blizzard tweeted that they shouldn’t have been included for testing yet. I’m looking forward to more pet battling because I’m hooked. I just gained 160 new alts that I need to level!

Pet battles – First look at fighting critters in the wild

Parts of the pet battle system  are now open for testing in the Mists of Pandaria beta. You can form your pet team and fight critters in the wild for XP. Unfortunately, pets are not able to level yet. But it’s been fun to fly around and check out some of the critters up for fights and see some of the first abilities in action.

To start, you need to find a Battle Pet Trainer (located near Goldshire and Razor Hill) to learn the Battle Pet Training ability and the pet tracking ability. Pet tracking shows a yellow dot on your minimap for critters that can be battled. Wild animals that can be captured show up as a green paw print on the minimap. These animals are showing up but aren’t capturable yet.

Once you find a critter to fight, you just click on it to start the battle. The battle UI is pretty straightforward. You can use all of your pet’s abilities, switch to another pet on your team, trap/capture the opponent, or forfeit. All of my pets are level 1 (since they can’t be leveled yet), so they each had just one ability to use in the battle. The videos below show the fights in action and the more interesting abilities that are available now.

Albino Snake and Mana Wyrmling vs. Small Frog

Blue Moth, Enchanted Broom and Ammen Vale Lashling vs. Adder

Festival Lantern, Mini Diablo and Onyxian Whelpling vs. Prairie Dog

Willy, Tranquil Mechanical Yeti and Strand Crawler vs. Adder

First abilities for pet battles added to beta

I’m happy to announce that in today’s update of the Mists of Pandaria beta, the updated pet journal is showing many pets with their own special abilities for pet battles. From the early information, it sounded like each class of pets would have a group of shared abilities. To find out that they have their own pet-specific abilities is a lovely icing on the cake!

For example, Nuts has an ability called Nut Barrage (“Hurls nuts at the enemy, dealing 20 Critter damage. Nuts continue to fall on the enemy team dealing 5 Critter damage each turn for 3 turns.”) This is great news for those of us who are looking forward to pet battles. It looks like Blizzard is taking a great deal of time from the start to make this feature fun and interesting.

Since there are only a few pets who have abilities listed now, it is quite possible that some of these abilities might be duplicated in pets of the same type. As you’ll see below, the Jubling has some of the most fun abilities. These will probably be the same abilities that are found in Mojo and the Tree Frog. Still cool, in my opinion!

Here are some screenshots of the most fun abilities that I found so far. Zergling and Jubling are my early favorites. Enjoy!

Zergling

Nuts

Tranquil Mechanical Yeti

Onyxian Whelpling

Archaeology in Pandaria – Early observations

Archaeology isn’t in the category of “ready to test” in the Mists of Pandaria beta yet, but I couldn’t resist checking out a couple dig sites when the level 85 content opened for testing today. I agree with most WoW players who find archaeology mind-numbingly boring. I differ from many players in that I have pushed past the dullness and spent quite a bit of time working on this profession (always with Netflix open on the second monitor). I leveled it up in early Cataclysm on my holy paladin main and then worked to get the Intellect trinket, ring, and all the achievements. Then I actually leveled it on a second character (my mage alchemist) to try for the Vial of the Sands, but that still eludes me.

Anyway, I’m excited to see how archaeology will improve in this expansion (it can’t get worse, right?). From what I found on Pandaria, things are headed in the right direction. Currently there is only one zone open on the new continent, The Jade Forest. I found one dig site there on my pally and one on my mage. Instead of the three digs per site that has been the standard, these sites each gave NINE digs per site! And each dig in Pandaria is dropping between 5 – 9 fragments. This is a huge improvement over Cataclysm!

I was able to solve two artifacts from one digsite (the Pandaren common artifacts require 32 fragments). They weren’t anything exciting, just common items that sell for one gold. Looks like the graphics and price for the artifacts aren’t finalized yet though. I read something about being able to teleport between dig sites, but didn’t see anything like that yet. I’ll post an update once the archaeology becomes more finalized.

    

YouTubers, any requests from the Beta?

Hello and welcome to everyone who is visiting from YouTube (and everywhere else)! As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been posting videos of some of the new animations, glyphs and talents from the Mists of Pandaria beta on my YouTube channel.

I’d love to hear more feedback about what else you would like to see. I’ll try to fulfill as many of your requests as I can. I currently have level 85 paladin, mage and druid and a level 12 monk on the beta servers. I’ll transfer more as soon as the character transfer process opens again.

Please send me your requests. Thanks for watching and visiting!

Review of Pandaren Starting Zone

I finished leveling my new Pandaren monk through the Wandering Isle starting zone yesterday. The graphics throughout the entire area are very beautiful. At some points, I felt like a tourist on vacation and needed to stop and photograph the breathtaking scenery. These are two of my favorite shots, and you can find many more in the Mists of Pandaria screenshot gallery:

    

As for questing, there are several unique quests, but the majority of the quests are basically the same as we have seen in the past (with a slight panda spin). You know the drill: collect 8 of X, kill 12 of Y, and rescue 5 of Z. It got slightly tedious, and the story didn’t really hold my attention. I am not very into the lore of Warcraft, but I enjoy a good questing storyline (e.g., worgen starting zone).

The flow from one area of the island to the next is extremely smooth. The last quest in a hub usually ends with some form of transportation to move you quickly to the next area, which is nice. While the island seems quite large, you don’t feel like you are running all of the time.

As of this writing, there are no profession trainers anywhere on the starting island. Hopefully, this is something that will be addressed before release. It’s nice to learn your professions early, so that you don’t have to spend too much time catching up before moving to the next zone.

Overall, I really enjoyed the scenery and newness of the area. Oh, the music is lovely also! The questing and storyline were just kind of meh for me. I don’t think that this zone holds up to the goblin (in terms of quests) or worgen (in terms of story) starting zones from Cataclysm. Wandering Isle is a nice introduction to the Pandaren though, and I enjoyed it.

Paladin class changes – initial beta observations

I played around with my level 85 paladin in the beta today. He’s not a copy of my main because I’m playing on my hubby’s beta account (I wasn’t lucky enough to be invited yet). So this premade pally is obviously not as amazing as my beautiful, butt-kicking blood elf . . . but he’ll have to do for now.

Apart from the obvious inadequacies of this premade, I realized a few distinct changes in this paladin. The following list is not meant to be all-inclusive, but merely a few initial observations of changes to the paladin class in the beta.

1. Many spells are now available for only one spec, instead being usable by all three. Here is the breakdown of those spells:
   • Divine Plea – Holy
   • Exorcism, Hammer of Wrath, and Inquisition – Retribution
   • Consecration, Holy Wrath – Protection
2. Seals are now activated and remain as a buff until clicked off. No more worrying about your seal falling off after 30 minutes!
3. Denounce is a new spell for holy paladins. It is a DPS spell. My guess is that this is to replace the void made by removing exorcism, holy shock, and consecration from the holy spell book.
4. Divine Shield has a lovely new animation. It is holy and glowing and, well, divine!
   

I’ll discuss the new talent tree and glyphs in detail soon. Let me know if there is anything that you’d like me to check out in the beta.