Mania’s Arcania

[UPDATE: As of 01/14/2008, Blizzard has announced that this creature can no longer be tamed. This reverses their previous comments on the matter.]

According to a post by Issuntril, a Blizzard Poster, on the European In-Game Customer Support forum, the Ghost Wolf is here to stay:

While this feature of the Grimtotem Spirit Guide wasn’t exactly intended, it was agreed by the development team that this is a fun use of in-game mechanics, and we therefore have no plans to address this issue - it will still be possible in future for everyone who wishes to tame this NPC to do so. :)

I hope this alleviates your concerns!

I haven’t seen anything on the US forums yet, but I don’t believe that it’s even feasible to leave this is Europe and fix it in the US. So yes, that alleviates many of my concerns! Now I just have to find time today to get the wolf added to Petopia.

My thanks to the legions of people who immediately let me know about this, here and in e-mail.

I played Kaet just a bit after Patch 2.3 came out — she picked up a few levels and learned Claw 6 — but now I’ve put her on ice temporarily. The problem: with the increased quest XP for mid-levels, she’s outpacing her pets much too quickly. Oh, I can keep one pet more or less even with me — except that in the past few levels I let them drop behind as I learned new skills and whatnot. But even concentrating on just one crab I can’t catch it up even with me. And the other two are falling further and further behind.

The next minor patch, 2.3.2, will fix this problem by requiring less experience for pets per level. But in the meantime it’s better if I don’t exacerbate the situation by playing. So what have I been doing instead?

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For a variety of reasons, I have a list of posts I wanted to highlight from as far back as Halloween that I just never got around to mentioning. Since it looks like this week is going to be unfortunately quite busy and stressful for me, I’m going to dig back into my old list and use them as cheap filler content. *grin*

Lassirra at The Hunter’s Mark posted Part 2 of her article on Hunter Gear Enhancements, which includes enchants and faction inscriptions.

Faeldray at Petoholics Anonymous added to her work on A Newbie’s Life with Levels 6-10.

Brehm from Bremm’s Musings posted a whole bunch of useful lists — enough to bump him up into my short list of really useful blogs. Much of his advice is general or touches on multiple classes: for instance, a post on glyphs, or a checlist for well-prepared raiders. Some posts are more hunter-centric, however, such as a short list of how blogging is like playing a hunter.

Pike at Aspect of the Hare posted a two-part series on A Newbie’s Guide to Battlegrounds.

Unfortunately that doesn’t even begin to clear out my backlog of cool posts I wanted to highlight. On the other hand, I have another four days of stress and pain to get through, so you may see more of these posts this week!

Final name: Precious

Kat from Liquid Silver was the first person to take up the Name That Pet challenge and send me info about a pet that needs a name!

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I spent some time this evening on the PTR checking out the new increased pet leveling speed. This is a summary of what I found, in case you don’t want to read the long liveblogged post about it. :>

• The XP that pets need to level has been reduced — from 25% to 16.75% of the XP that a player of the same level requires. In other words, pets require 33% less XP to level on the PTR.
• Pets still do not earn XP when the hunter completes a quest.
• Pets still do not earn XP from kills that are grey to the hunter.
• The XP-per-kill that a pet receives shows no changes between the PTR and the live realms.

Looks like the Patch 2.3.2 PTR is finally up! Time to check out this so-called faster pet leveling and see if it lives up to expectations. As a fun experiment, I’m going to try ‘liveblogging’ my experiences — that is, adding bits to this post as I go. I’ll use timestamps to keep the bits organized.

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After reading the long, long comment thread about everyone’s pets, I realized that we have some really talented pet-namers hereabouts. So I thought of a way to put them to work for us. *grin*

Here’s the deal: If you have a nameless pet or you are thinking of taming a new pet and you want help picking a name, drop me an e-mail. Include a picture of your character (with the pet if you’ve already tamed it). Also include — and this is important — a sentence or two on:

• why you choose this partcular pet,
• what kind of name you are looking for: silly, romantic, mythological, etc.,
• and a bit about your character’s personality. (It’s okay if you’re not a role-player, but we need to know a little about how you play.)

I’ll pick a submission (assuming I get more than one!) and post the pic and description text here. Then all the great pet-namers in the audience can comment and suggest a great name for your pet! Sounds like fun, right? If it works out okay, maybe we’ll make this a regular feature.

(And by the way: Happy Thanksgiving for those that celebrate the holiday!)

When I made a pass over dungeon pets the other day, to see what changes Patch 2.3 brought, I skipped Dustwallow Marsh because I thought that the pre-existing creatures there were unchanged. But I was wrong — there were some interesting changes to pets in the Marsh.

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I just ran across this post from Eyonix on the WoW Hunter forum:

I wanted to share with you some changes affecting hunters that are coming in a small patch. The effect of aspect of the viper is being increased. Pet leveling speed will be substantially increased. Lastly, it will once again be possible for two freezing traps to be in place at the same time.

Let me repeat the really important part of this: Pet leveling speed will be substantially increased.

To which I can only say: YES! And I’m interested in the phrase “coming in a small patch” — that would seem to imply a fairly quick turn-around, that we won’t have to wait for Patch 2.4 for this.

[Edit: This change is in patch 2.3.2 which is going on the PTR tonight. I'll have more info about the numbers up in a separate post as soon as I learn something.]

It used to take a bit of time to get used to hunting with a windserpent. Because Lightning Breath is a ranged attack, it would pull your enemies closer than you might want. So you had to get in the habit of giving yourself a little more space, sending your windserpent in when you were a little further away than you might with some other pet.

With the dead zone changes, however, you no longer need to think about this nearly so much. Unless you are dead on top of the enemy when you attack, you’ll usually end up with plenty of space even after your windserpent pulls your enemy over. Just another really minor little pleasant change in Patch 2.3 …