Mania’s Arcania

(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.)

Okay! Time to jump back into the swing of things! As I started this session, I was sitting in Westfall at level 18 with a level 15 white crab named Niffis and a number of quests still to do in Westfall and Redridge. The Westfall quests all involved the lighthouse keeper at the Westfall Lighthouse, so I headed towards the coast to deal with the pesky murlocs.

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My apologies to anyone who has tried to access this blog over the past day. We had a hardware failure on the box that hosts Mania’s Arcania and we were offline for a bit over 24 hours. (Thankfully, Petopia is hosted elsewhere so that site wasn’t affected.) The problem has been resolved now and we should be fine, but if you notice anything odd — broken links or missing comments or posts or what have you — please let me know.

I’ve leveled an awful lot of hunters to 10 – almost 20 of them at last count! (Sadly, many of these characters don’t make it past level 10. I am easily distracted.) Generally speaking, I really enjoy the very directed feel of the first nine levels: at this point, the game is very clear about what you should be doing at every step of the way. But I also find these levels somewhat … challenging, because you don’t yet have a pet. And pets make a huge, huge difference in the playstyle of a hunter.

So while I was thinking about this, I wrote up a little guide of tips and tricks that I use during my first nine levels. As always, feedback is very welcome!

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Bulldazhor was kind enough to let us know that this latest update to the PTR has also included some changes to the scorpid skill Scorpid Poison:

1. Scorpid Poison Rank 5 now does 55 damage over 10 seconds (instead of 44 damage over 8 seconds). This will make it easier to keep Scorpid Poison stacked when using Rank 5.
2. However, fewer hunters will be interested in keeping Scorpid Poison stacked since its damage no longer seems to scale with hunter RAP to the same extent that it did before.

In other words, it looks like the days of using the Scorpid Poison stacking trick to inflict massive amounts of damage in a long fight are over … or will be when Patch 2.2 goes live, anyway.

Related article: PTR 2.2.0: Scorpid Poison Scaling Data

When I was checking out my lists of untameable pets recently, I ran across a mention of the Gore-Scythe Ravager. These guys apparently spawn right where the Rip-Blade Ravagers do in Blade’s Edge — which made it very odd that I had never seen one. So I wandered down there to take another look and see if I had missed something.

At first I found nothing out of the ordinary — Rip-Blade Ravagers everywhere and not a Gore-Scythe to be seen. But then, just as I was turning to leave, a horde of Gore-Scythe’s spawned and started attacking Toshley Station!

I quickly verified that these ravagers cannot be tamed (probably because they are heavily scripted to attack the Station). But that leaves me with the question — why do they spawn? Is it part of some Alliance quest? A timed event? Does anyone know what the lore is here?

I had a few moments this evening and a desire to tweak, so I added a shortcut to the Petopia Pet Database that makes it easier to find pets with known skills. Now, when you are using the Pet Database, you can set Known Skills to “Any”. This will show you creatures that know any skill at all when they are tamed.

This is particularly useful when combined with a zone — for instance, you can find any pets in Darkshore that know a skill already so you can see what your young night elf hunter can learn there. Alternatively, if you just hit level 32, you might see what skills are available on level 32 pets.

Eyonix let everyone know on the WoW General forum today that, as of the next major content patch, a number of items are becoming Bind on Pickup (BoP), including:

• Felbane Slugs 
• Hellfire Shot
• Recipe: Elixir of Major Agility 
• Formula: Enchant Bracer - Superior Healing 

If you have one of these on your character already, it will bind to that character — so make sure you shift them around to be on the right character before then.

The Public Test Realms for (what will eventually be) Patch 2.2.0 have updated to a new build again. We are slowly getting closer to Patch 2.2.0 going live (and raptors with Dash, and level 70 ravagers, oh my!). But we’re not there yet.

Once again, Eliah Hecht on WoW Insider has done the hard work for me and distilled out the changes in the patch notes to see exactly what is in this PTR update.

There are two bits of particular interest to hunters:

• User Interface: The Hunter ability Kill Command no longer affects their current target.
• Bug Fixes: Pets no longer follow enemies after being revived.

I’ve mentioned once or twice in the past that I left the hurly-burly world of normal jobs so that my husband and I could try our hand at independent game development. Our first game — a casual puzzle game called Starcrossed, in roughly the same vein as Bejeweled  — has just launched today on the iWin network. If you’ve ever been curious about what I do when I’m not obsessing over hunter pets, then feel free to check it out:

The goddess Ione needs your help to save her friends and rebuild the cosmos! Rescue the celestial spirits and help them complete their mysterious work by manipulating planets, stars and more in this unique tile puzzler.

And be sure to try the Challenge Grid — I spent a lot of time trying to balance the bloody thing. *grin*

I’m having some computer difficulties today, but while I’m dealing with that you should definitely check out Znodis’ latest update to his FAQ for new hunters: Intro to Pets.