Mania’s Arcania

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 …

The comment thread for the last Petopia update and my GMail inbox were both filled with reports of a new ghostly wolf in Dustwallow Marsh yesterday. I haven’t been able to get down there yet myself, but apparently this ghost wolf is summoned by one of the Grimtotems — but is not classed as an NPC’s pet and so you can start the process of taming it. The problem? It dies after just a handful of seconds regardless of damage, and since Tame Beast lasts 20 seconds you can’t finish taming it before it dies.

[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.]

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Hortus has posted a 2.3 Known Issues list on the WoW Bug Report Forum. As he says:

This is a list of issues that have been reported to us and will be fixed in upcoming patches. This is not a complete list of all reported issues. Issues that are still being researched are not included in this list.

So if you have run into an issue that’s not on this list, post it to the Bug Report forum and let Blizzard know!

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Petopia was updated today for the following Patch 2.3 changes:

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Mugungo from Dunemaul wrote to me this week to let me know about another good spot for level 70s who are trying to bring up a low-level pet.

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