Comments on: Community Round-Up: Newb Mistakes, Choosing a Pet and More

By: Maahl

Maahl — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:35:35 +0000

I actually discovered it myself due to my habit of indecision, hehe. Way back when I was a little ickle hunter in Durotar, I wanted to try out everything, and so I would tame random pets and abandon them soon after–and so I realized that different pets carried different skills that I could learn by making them fight.

Of course, until I found Petopia, I had no way of knowing *where* I would find those skills; it was just a case of wandering around, taming everything (or, once I finally had it, casting Beast Lore on everything.)

By: Whosit

Whosit — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:43:05 +0000

I was lucky and had a friend explain “feed pet” and all that to me when I first started out. But she never told me about learning pet skills off of other beasts, and so I learned that ACCIDENTALLY when I first discovered Petopia. My first Hunter was in her 30s before she learned something higher than bite 1 or so. How embarrassing. I’m not sure how you are to discover something like that when there is nothing in game that even hints at it.

By: Maahl

Maahl — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 07:40:03 +0000

All those “choosing the right pet” guides make me so terribly sad… because it reminds me how the “top hunters” are trying to tell everyone “Blizzard’s said we should use 2-3 species of pets only, so throw away your old favorites and get something USEFUL.”

On the one hand, I guess it’s good for those people who are obsessed with maximizing every stat in the game and “beating” it (if you can say such a thing about an MMO) by becoming a legend in whatever their preferred field.

But on the other hand, I can imagine it sometimes makes young hunters feel like they’d better stay well away from that spider or crocolisk, because having the pet that you actually *want* is inferior to having the pet that is “the uber-leet best.”

I used a crab from level 40 to level 70, and I would never say I suffered for it. Not even in PvP, where people say you most need a Dashing/Charging/Warping/Diving pet. I didn’t top the charts. But is topping the charts the only point to playing the game?

By: Siusaidhna

Siusaidhna — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:51:37 +0000

Wow, reminds me of when I started out..*chuckling* I saved like thirty Silver and bought a port to darn, then realized I forgot to do the tame beast quest.

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:25:35 +0000

Aw, that’s a really sweet story on WoWInsider. I also often feel pretty incompetent reading the BRK blog (or Petopia), so it’s nice to know BRK once made newbie mistakes. Course it’s probably a lot easier playing hunter nowadays with resources like the above around. And that story made me glad I was extra-nice to the level-18 hunter whose pet abandoned her at the start of Wailing Caverns and who would not, for reasons that are unclear, let us help her train a nice new deviate pet. (We got through the entire instance and the Murloc of Doom event with the pet-less hunter).