Kaet: Westfall Interlude
(You can read all of Kaet’s adventures, starting with why I’m doing things this way, by checking out the series Table of Contents at the end of this post. Alternatively, if you are here primarily for juicy pet-related news, feel free to skip these bits — they’re optional.)
It’s been many days since I was last able to spend some time with Kaet, and I’ve pretty much forgotten what I was doing. Thankfully, I have these posts to remind me … But before I jump back in, there were a couple of things I’d been meaning to deal with.
First off, pet names. After agonizing over my favorite 10+ suggestions and trying unsuccessfully to narrow that down to 3, I wandered off and started reading random websites deep in my boomarks … and wandered right across the names I wanted: Frore (blue), Niffis (white), and Tibri (red). (Since I doubt many people here will recognize them, these are names from Asheron’s Call, my first MMO. I miss it terribly, sometimes, but there are a lot of reasons I can’t go back. I very nearly named them Fen, Shen, and Cauln, but I decided that was too subtle. Anyway, I never liked those quests — too hard to solo.) But thank you again for all the great suggestions — they were very inspiring. Too inspiring, since I couldn’t decide. :>
Secondly, a couple of people have asked me how I plan to keep all three crabs and also learn new skills once Patch 2.2 launches and we lose the ability to dismiss-tame pets. After that patch, I’ll have to abandon one of my crabs if I want to tame a new pet to learn new skills. Now crabs only really need one wild-learned skill — Claw — but even so I will need to learn it, and it’s highly unlikely I will make it to level 70 before Patch 2.2!
So here’s my plan: I can replace one or another of my crabs with one the same color all the way up until level 41. (That’s the last blue crab. There are bronze crabs ’til level 44, but I don’t have a bronze crab.) So when I need to learn a new level of Claw, I’ll just pretend that I’ve stabled one of the crabs but actually abandon it, learn the new skill, then tame a new crab the same color as the one I abandoned. Of course, I’ll have to get the crab’s loyalty back up, but that’s not too terrible at those levels.
This will only take me to Claw 6, though. After that, I have to hope that Blizzard has finally implemented a real way to use all three pet slots and still learn new skills. Or … it’s possible that I’ll give up on leveling three pets before then. Right now I can’t keep all three crabs up to my level because I don’t play enough to exhaust the rest bonus. (I’ve taken to logging out just outside the inn to combat this.) I’ve generally got one crab a level below me and two others about three levels below me.
This isn’t impacting my ability to solo at all, but I can see where it would be rougher if I was pushing the envelope on higher level enemies or group quests. So as pet leveling gets slower I may need to permanently abandon one of my beloved crabs and concentrate on the other two. If it comes to that, I’ll let the white crab — sorry, Niffis — go and keep the other two.
And how is fighting going, you ask? How is it to fight with the least popular pet in the game? :> Well, it’s early days yet, but the truth is my little crabs are real troopers. They survive slightly better than other pets I’ve had at this level — even given that I am a terrible pet owner and get all my pets killed way too often. And I’m not having any problems at all with them holding aggro, even though they are generally a few levels below me.
They don’t have Dash, of course (not that any pet would have Dash at level 15) so I usually send them in, wait a beat, then fire at the enemy before they quite get to it. The enemy targets me and starts towards me, then the crab hits it with a Growl and it spins around in confusion while I pot-shot merrily away. If the crab misses the Growl, the enemy might come further towards me, but generally gets distracted by the crab Clawing at his butt before he gets to me. It works pretty well.
I do miss some of the features of other recent pets — like the way a bat can grab aggro from several things at once, or the way a windserpent can pull from a distance — but Claw is a great little focus dump damage generator. (I suspect that Claw is helping quite a bit, but it’s a very subjective feeling. Perhaps next I will try a turtle to compare the influence of Bite and Claw.) But so far, I am perfectly happy with the crabs.
And lastly: I didn’t realize it, but crabs make an odd short hiss when you tell them to attack. It’s nice to have an audible confirmation that they are off and away, but it’s a disconcerting sound — it really sounds like they are in pain. On the other hand, I’m getting used to the click of little claws everywhere I go. It’s quite soothing.
Table of Contents for Series: Kaet
- Introducing: Kaet
- Kaet: Northshire Valley
- Kaet: Goldshire
- Kaet: Level 10!
- Kaet: Taming the Crabs
- Kaet: Finishing Up Elwynn
- Kaet: Westfall
- Kaet: Redridge
- Kaet: Westfall Interlude
- Kaet: Finishing Up Westfall (Mostly)
- Kaet: Back to Redridge
- Kaet: Getting Disgusted
- Kaet: Duskwood
- Kaet: Where the heck am I?
- Kaet: The Post-Brewfest Blues
- Kaet: Eight Levels Later
- Kaet Gets a Pony!
- Kaet: On Hold
- Kaet: Where was I again?
- Kaet: Forced Playtime
- Kaet: Level 60!
- Kaet: Kill Command
- Kaet: A Quick Note From Nagrand
- Kaet: Level 70!
7 Comments
Least popular pet?! I thought that distinction belonged to sporebats with mediocre stats and no abilities at all.
I’ve tried both crocs and turtles before, but the lack of claw, even pre-2.0, was a huge difference for holding agro. Put some Natural Armor on your crabs and they will never die.
/heads out to comfort Frothy… No that’s not a tear in my eye…
I’m a lot like you in that I’ve played many, many hunters and have used pets of most different types. And the lack of a focus dump is always a deciding factor in keeping pets for me. I usually spec BM, and I can’t simply pass up Bestial Discipline, and with a pet with only Bite, Dash, and Growl (I’ve had hyenas, wolves, and tallstriders for many levels) the unused focus/damage is so noticeable that I really can’t use a pet without claw, gore, or LB. Even with MM and GftT there’s a lot of unused focus around 40 or so. It’s a shame Blizz hasn’t added more pet skills.
Znodis,
Perhaps our hostess has some stats up her sleeve she could share with us, but I would believe that crabs are less popular than sporebats. In my 2 years in the game, I think I may have seen one or two crab pets. These days, I occasionally see sporebats around Shattrath; I assume that they are just kept as an around-town fun pet. Or maybe their owners really do use them.
The ‘least popular’ thing is coming from the one statistic I have easy access to: how many people look at the crab family page every day on Petopia as compared to all the other family pages. This doesn’t truly measure popularity, of course, but it is one of the reasons I decided to level with crabs. (And I suspect that that sentence there is another reason why crabs aren’t so common — who wants to level “with crabs”?!)
I got a wild up hair up you know where and decided to create a hunter of each race so that I can tame all the pets I have ever wanted. Of course, my hunters are color coordinated with their assigned pets. =)
Anyway, one such assignment is a blue/purple Draenei and crab from Darkshore. As you said, the crab is a real trooper - I called him KrabbyPatty! And regarding the least popular pet… I think crocs might be less popular than crabs. I don’t ever see them and none of my hunters will be taming one.
“They survive slightly better than other pets I’ve had at this level ”
I think you’re (unwittingly!) lying to yourself and us: it’s not that the pet lasts longer, it’s just that now you already know better how to play a hunter! You don’t hesitate so much, you know what to do, what to be on the lookout for, which abilities and in what order to use them, etc, etc…
I sucked at my previous attempts at hunter, and now I’m having a ball with my (currently) 45 hunter! It’s so much fun to be able to solo elites 3/4 levels higher, something I wasn’t ever able to do on my druid! But I know it’s not all just “Hunter Power”: it’s me also playing a bit better now on my Nth character… :)
BTW: completely off-topic, but I think you should re-do the main page of Petopia: looks a bit “lackluster”, kind of “old-days-low-bandwith-simple-text-page” sort of thing…
Someone: Your theory might be correct — except that this isn’t my second character through these levels. It’s my … (referencing spreadsheets, then adding the deleted characters) … tenth. (I’m not counting the other eight characters that I’ve leveled to 10 or 11, of course.)Mind you, most of them haven’t gotten much above 20 (except for the main and the windserpent draenei), but Kaet is still firmly in the levels I know and love so well.
Most recently (that is, since BC launched) I’ve leveled a windserpent and a bat through these levels, and the crab seems to have better survivability than either of those. I think I’ve picked up a trick or two since I started playing a hunter, but I haven’t learned that much since BC launched. So why it’s quite likely that I am deluding myself, I don’t think it’s because I’ve learned how to play better for this character. *grin*
Re: the front page — I don’t want to go more off-topic here, but why don’t you drop me an e-mail and tell me what sorts of things you are thinking about. I’m not getting a mental image of what you mean.
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