Yesterday I received a fascinating e-mail from Hydrax, a hunter on Hellscream (EU). Hydrax has found a new pet — and a very odd one at that!
Check out the image on the right. See the weirdness?
I’ll let Hydrax tell the story:
While I was getting my reputation up with the Sha’tari Skyguard, I was doing the quest Adversarial Blood, the same quest for Gezzarak.
I summoned Darkscreecher Akkarai. Now he has an ability called Flock Call. This summons some owls called Akkarai Hatchlings that have the dark brown appearance. They looked as if they had a sort of shadowform on them.
Wowhead has a nice screenshot of these birds in their shadowy form. But that’s not the fascinating part …
Now when I saw them I threw Beast Lore on them and they were tamable! So I summoned Akkarai again so I could tame the owl. I killed Akkarai, let his owls live, abandoned my pet, and started taming one.
The Akkarai Hatchlings were all level 70, had very little health (about 350) and did little damage, an easy tame.
The owl did NOT retain his shadowform, but here’s the catch! It wasn’t classified as a Bird of Prey but to my surprise as a CARRION BIRD!!!
And indeed, as you can see in the screenshots above and to the right, the Akkarai Hatchling is convinced that it’s a Carrion Bird and not a Bird of Prey.
His family skill is Demoralizing Screech instead of Snatch and he uses the Ferocity talent tree instead of the Cunning talent tree.
He behaves normally as far as I can tell, he attacks, eats his food, and has all of his animations. There is one thing though. Shortly after I tamed him, I ran to Sethekk halls, to tame a Bird of Prey with the same appearance to compare them. My ”Carrion Owl” was bigger then the other regular owl!
Now it’s possible that this a bug and that it will sooner or later be corrected. On the other hand, it is also possible that this owl is a conceptual counterpart to the Fjord Hawk and his ilk.
Fjord Hawks, after all, bear a striking resemblance to certain ravens and crows, but the former is a Bird of Prey and the latter is a Carrion Bird.
In either case, if you find yourself in the market for a unique Carrion Bird in the near future, you may want to consider an Akkarai Hatchling.
This is an aside, but the Rogue Q&A is up, and if you were disappointed in what hunters got, well, the rogues got it worse. Talk about non-informative. Of course, in my opinion anyway, rogues don’t really need a ton of help.
@ Palla: I love how they said they were so squishy and easy to kill.
I mean, have they ever fought a rogue as another class? XD
Anyway, thanks for the guide, I’ll check it out in a bit :3
And now the priest Q&A is up. As a holy paladin, don’t talk to me about this.
lol Palla. Kinda weird how dodgy a few of the Q&As have been.
Man this owl is fun. I forgot about the cute chirpy sounds they make when they aggro. I feel like I have a muppet dive-bombing everything, awesome!
Not that I don’t love Stormcrows, but I kinda roleplayed my old Crow in the 60s more or less as my Parrot now. I’d rather save the crow for when I eventually roll another baby hunter. Also neat how hawks kinda went cross families with the oil-covered ones being BoP. Heh, wonder if we’ll ever find a buzzard that can snatch… Most likely not but it would be funny.
They are rushing the Q&As along now, since Blizzcon is coming up. That being said, they aren’t…..really telling people anything in them. I’ve read them all so far, and about the most we’re getting is the standard Blizzard “Well we’d like to do this, and we intend to fix that, and we’re looking into that.” Nothing concrete, nothing substantial, and certainly not what people want to hear. Every now and then you’ll hear a brown noser go “Hey, good job with the Q&A’s Blizz!” but in reality, I think they’ve only addressed one or two concerns per community, and sometimes not even that. *Shrugs*
Oh! My second. Mania, if you read this and if that spirit beast wolf is still tameable come 3.2, make sure you add him to petopia!
@Palla: I’m still waiting for the worgen to be added to the Retired Pets section XD
The Akkarai Owl hasn’t been added either. It’s typically updated in certain intervals, at least from what I’ve seen.
“It”? *grin*
I’ll update Petopia as soon as I’ve had some sleep. I’ve been up all night nurse-maiding Warcraft Mounts (which, to be fair, I *did* break) and I’m so tired I’m fairly certain I’d end up deleting major swatchs of the site or something.
But soon, I promise.
Oh, shiny. Now, I love my cunning pets but the Birds of Pray have never really been high on my list, but this little one… To bad the hunter I’m leveling now already has two ferocity pets (love Meza my scarlet tracking hound, and have Humar just because I found him). But if I role another…
Your health comes first, Mania! Make sure your well rested.
*Grits his teeth* If I hear one more “WAGH! WE GOT NERFED TO THE GROUND! I QUIT!” from another retribution paladin, I am going to punch something.
Crossing fingers to find that once I log in:
Coyote still noisy,
Muppet Owl not replaced with Winterskorn Worg.
Heh one can hope some old untameables have been reversed…
@ Hydrax: kudos man, and woot for a horde player finding this! On another note, i wonder how Hydrax would have told all these awsome hunters without Mania’s site here,you rock Mania! Here’s to more discoveries from cool players like Hydrax.
I just got this pet – even after the patch it has not been “fixed”. I had my 80 who was revered and had done the quest summon at one of the blue circles with skulls in it (not the one in the middle of the lake) and after a few moments, the boss had called his pets – and my husband tamed his. The time lost scrolls are NOT soulbound, so I gave them to his 80 and he summoned the boss and I got my owl – er, carrion bird. It is dark brown with green in there.
Very cool indeed. An owl that acts “old school”.
XD Even after I got the guide, and was ready to grind the perilous annoyance of shadow dust, quests, and then time lost scrolls, I got there only to see a shaman. I ask if by chance she’s killing Darkscreecher Akkarai to tell me. Amazingly, she was about to kill it in a couple minutes. So she invited me, and summoned. I told her to make sure not to kill her until she summoned the flock. She summoned, boss died. I told her not to kill the birds til I tamed. She said ok. I drained my mana trying to tame, but it kept failing didn’t know why. Then I remembered: Crap, it has to be attacking me. Distracting Shot, and thankfully, auto shot didnt go off. Froze it, and tamed. Then the other 2 were dead.
A few minutes later, my owl despawned. It hasn’t despawned since then, but I’ve been warned it might.
Anyone have any issues regarding it despawning after a set amount of time?
I have to admit I was very excited about this… An owl has always been my pet of choice, but I of course needed a good ferocity for raiding so my owl was quietly replaced.
I jumped on this as soon as i read about it… loved the owl… loved it’s look… loved having a Nicodemus by my side again… however… he doesn’t last very long. I’m having a hell of a time with survivability of this pet. I have dismissed and respecced him twice thinking it was probably a glitch from taming a “non-standard” pet… but no change… he’s specced identically to my raiding wolf, but appears to take massive AoE damage (I assume he’s dying from AoE. I’ve had great tanks and i have double checked to make sure threat generating skills are off, so I can’t imagine he’s pulling mobs) It’s almost like ‘Avoidance’ isn’t active even though maxed. Once i got him to 80, I tried running him in a H AZN… I had to swap to my wolf before the first boss fight after 4 deaths on trash. Tried in a H ToC and had to swap out as well. Once my wolf was in play… there were no survivability issues.
Has anyone had similar experiences? I hate to think the bird is broken… but experience, for me anyway, is leaning that way.
whats this guys dps like?
Great find. Thank you SO much! I leveled to 70 with an owl, and I loved my AoE aggro magnet DPSer. I had to go gorilla for 70 to 80 thanks to owls becoming cunning pet suckage in Wrath. This is exactly what I wanted; a ferocity owl. As it used to be. As it should be. It’s nice to have Gwythaint back by my side. Thanks again.
Don’t know if there was a change in this guy or not… but recently he holds his own just fine. All my issues in comment 66 are non existent now. This bird is great…