(You can read all of Kaet’s adventures by checking out the series Table of Contents at the end of this post.)
Last time I went off on a little design diatribe about fishing and quests that make you run too far. But what I didn’t notice was that while killing all those murlocs, I picked up the quest for Captain Sander’s Hidden Treasure. So tonight I headed off to find the treasure!
Since I was testing how Scorpid Poison scales with a hunter’s Ranged Attack Power recently, I decided to extend those tests and see what other pet skills scale with RAP. My results were … mixed.
Pet skills that appear to scale with the hunter’s RAP include:
The Hunter’s Mark has a great series of articles in progress on how to find the info you need. It’s a great rundown of general and specific resources for WoW knowledge — and I’m not just saying that because she mentions Petopia!
Edit: The Hunter’s Mark has just moved to a new domain, so I’ve updated these links to point there.
There have been a number of information tidbits circulating since BlizzCon about how Blizzard intends to increase the pace of leveling from 1-58 so that new characters can get to the upper levels faster. In recent days, we’ve seen more official information about this.
First, Drysc said on the WoW forums that there will be a change to the experience curve and gain before the WotLK expansion. More interesting, however, is what the MMO site Curse learned in an interview with Tigole, a developer, at the Leipzig Games Convention:
Levels between 20 and 60 are going to have the experience required per-level reduced. Not only that, though - the experience rewarded by quests is being increased by around 30%.
This is interesting news on its own, but I admit to being somewhat concerned about how this might affect pet leveling. There are two possible difficulties here.
I finally got the page for pets with special behaviors up on Petopia. You can find it, as you might expect, under the Special Pets menu. Let me know if I missed anything!
A couple days ago I issued a challenge to serious pet tamers on the Alliance side to infiltrate Shadowmoon Village and tame Detrafila, the stable master’s pet wolf. I certainly wasn’t able to do it — the Horde NPCs kept walloping me. But two brave souls did, and sent me the screenshots to prove it!
First was Dezar, a Night Elf hunter from the Black Dragonflight realm. Dezar didn’t give much commentary — he went in, got the job done, sent me pics. I get the feeling that this is all in a day’s work for this intrepid hunter. That’s him, to the right. He also sent shots of the tame in progress (with an elite guard beating on his head) and the tame just completed (as Detrafila turns on his old master).
I also received a note from Gettokiwi of the Stormreaver realm this morning that he too had tamed Detrafila. He included some useful advice along with his screenshots:
So it seems that taming Detrafila is possible, altho sadly after tame, he doesn’t hold any “special” property such as a bark or special dismiss/call back feature. To solo tame this beast, you must fly to the back of the Stables area. Then simply shoot and kite the Stable master away from the base. This will pull the pet, stable master, and one other guard. if you do not shoot the guard, he will De-aggo after you kite the other two away. Kill the stable master and take your prize!
You can see the shots of Gettokiwi’s tame in progress and the tame completed tame completed.
I just want to say thank you to both of these fine hunters for accepting and defeating my challenge — and also for helping me out by verifying that this little wolf can be tamed. Thank you!
Petopia now has a page on Feeding Your Pet for younger hunters or hunters that were curious about the mechanics of Feed Pet. This is the first new guide on a new page called Fundamentals of Pet Care which I hope will eventually have a number of extensive guides. For right now, though, there’s just the feeding guide, the old skill training guide, and some handy links to other sites with more information.
Check it out and let me know what you think!
The generically-named Someone, a hunter from Wildhammer EU, has a nice series of posts up on his blog about how to solo instances. Now, I’ve done a lot of instance soloing myself — because I don’t like to group but I still want to see the content — but I generally attempt instances when I am a good 20+ levels above them. Someone’s advice, on the other hand, is for hunters who want to solo instances and still get experience!
Check it out:
While running around Shadowmoon Village today I noticed a big black Snarler-like wolf named Detrafila over by the Stable Master. Detrafila is level 60 and friendly to the Horde. Beast Lore says he can be tamed (although he has no skills), but since he displays as Gedrah’s Pet I assumed he probably couldn’t. But I am slowly adding untameable beasts to Petopia, so I logged my level 70 pre-made Alliance hunter into the PTR to check.
And lo and behold, I was able to start a tame! So this looks like another case of creature with a <Pet> title who isn’t truly the summoned pet of an NPC. Except … well, I died before the tame completed. Detrafila is surrounded by level 70 Horde NPCs, after all, and attacking them tends to bring the players to their rescue. And I’m just no good at that sort of thing.
So my challenge to you is this: If you tame Detrafila and send me a screenshot either confirming that he can be tamed, or showing the error message you get when it fails, I will be exceedingly thankful for your help. If you are the first person to send me a screenshot, I will make a big deal about it and post your screenshot on this blog with many accolades. *grin*
Edit: Two brave and intrepid hunters have completed this challenge! Check out the pics!
We recently found out that Scorpid Poison will be changing in Patch 2.2.0. I spent some time Tuesday and Wednesday while this blog was down gathering data on how Scorpid Poison scales with the hunter’s RAP on both the live worlds and on the Public Test Realms. I haven’t seen much yet on the specific changes to SP scaling, so I’d like to share the data I gathered. I’m not 100% certain that I am interpreting the data correctly, however, so please keep that in mind as you read this. Also, it is possible that the situation on the PTR will change again before it goes live.
