Mania’s Arcania

Okay, so they aren’t real pets, but don’t your pets deserve their own little ‘pets’? From the patch notes:

Characters can now speak with Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath City during Children’s Week to mentor a draenei (Alliance) or blood elf (Horde) orphan. Shattrath orphans have a whole new line of sight-seeing requests across both Outland and Azeroth and three new pets to offer to their mentors.

I nearly missed this in all the patch hubbub, so I thought I’d call it out.

The live realms are down for maintenance and I just downloaded a whopping big patch on live — so it looks like Patch 2.1.0 goes live today! Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the final patch notes are up on the WoW site yet and the servers are still down. I’ll be spending most of today updating Petopia and posting interesting tidbits here as I get the chance. Stay tuned!

I said in a post a bit ago that diversity and complexity of WoW pets are one reason I like my hunter way more than I like pet classes in other games. But as I mentioned, there is another reason also: underlying playstyle. In short, the hunter class allows for both simple, uncomplicated play or complex, skillful play, depending on what floats your boat.

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I’m looking for info on a rare spawn crocolisk in Nagrand named Goretooth. According to Thottbot he occurs in a couple of spots, but I’m not having any luck finding him.

I’d also like to know if the Phoenix-Hawk Hatchlings in Tempest Keep can be tamed — and for that matter, what they look like. :> And similarly, can the Rabid Warhound of Shattered Halls be tamed?

If you know anything, drop me a line!

Edit: In addition to the comments below, Darsh of Garona let me know that Rabid Warhounds cannot be tamed. Thanks, Darsh!

After the PTR patch today, the lion model appears to be perfectly normal again. Comparing the Live and PTR data in a model viewer, I don’t see any differences at all. Crabs, however, continue to lack their hairy spines, and sporebats still have brighter particles. So I guess we can assume those changes are intended.

I haven’t gotten to the Ghost Saber screenshots or the new nether ray on the PTR yet this weekend. I had some unfortunate news about my mother, who has just recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I’ll probably work on the screenshots today, though — they should prove a nice distraction.

Rhye, a level  70 hunter, just sent me a note that there are two new pets on the PTR: Netherwing Rays (69-70) and  some sort of ravagers (68-70), both in Netherwing Ledge (the big floating island in the southeast of Shadowmoon Valley). The rays are purple (I think the Count Ungula skin) and look to be casters, unfortunately, and I can’t get into the mine to see the ravagers. I am frantically flying around there now, looking for a way in, so I should have more info up on Petopia shortly.

Edit: The only ravagers I have found in the mine so far cannot be tamed, but I am checking to see if there are others in here as well.

A big thank you to everyone who has sent me screenshots of their Ghost Sabers in action! I’ve gotten a lot of really excellent pictures that I need to sort through now and get up on the site. If you have shots in progress and just haven’t sent them to me yet, please try to send them by tomorrow – I plan to start getting them up this weekend. I’m really pleased with how many people sent in screenshots and the quality of those shots. This may be something that we should do more of with other pets (although I should probably see how much work getting the pics organized and posted is first). 

Remember to trim the overly long and sharp toenails of your bearded dragon before you put said dragon into a stressful situation and she tears your hands to pieces trying to get away. Otherwise you may have difficulty both posting on your blog and playing WoW for the rest of the afternoon.

This round of PTR testing looks like it’s going to go one for awhile. The PTR updated again yesterday, and reports are that massive numbers of items have been tweaked and (largely) buffed. Apparently there is another round of item changes coming, as well.

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