As the title implies, my little dwarf hunter Kaet has just hit level 66. I’ve been playing her lackadaisically — an hour here, two hours there — but rested XP plus the tight quest design in Outland has really made the levels fly. I’m out of rested XP now, though, so I figure it’s time for a report and then a short vacation.
Recently I’ve been getting a lot of reports about really big hunter pets — pets that are much larger than a tamed pet of their level should be. A lot of people have written in to ask me how they can get a such huge, huge pet.
The short answer is: You can’t.
The long answer is: Sometimes other people will see your pet as huge, but unfortunately it’s not real and it’s not permanent.
I’ve continued playing my dwarven lass Kaet as much as I can between tasks over the past few weeks, and slowly but surely she’s continued to progress. Then somehow, suddenly, I realized today that she’s level 60!
There have been some setbacks over the past 10 levels, to be sure. The saddest is that I have given up one of my three lovely crabs. At level 56 I decided that I could no longer do without upgrades to Claw, so I released Niffis (the white crab) back into the wild.
I spent some time today on the Tournament Test Realm, which was … interesting, to say the least. You make a character like normal, but when you log in the character is level 70 with some very basic equipment (like Primal Mooncloth bags, a mount, and 5000 gold). You buy your weapons and armor and gems and enchantments and whatnot from vendors (which takes an awful lot of time because they are all lagging like crazy), and if you run short of cash you can go to the Paymaster NPC to get more.
Then, assuming you are a hunter, you go to the Beastmaster NPC and pick out a pet. The Beastmaster stocks 15 pet families (out of 23), and when you choose one a happy level 70 loyalty 6 pet of that family appears next to you. There is no choice in terms of looks, but you can teach your pet whatever skills you like — all hunters automatically know the top rank of all the pet skills.
When we last left Kaet I was slowly, oh so slowly, picking up the scattered threads of her life again. Since then, I’ve power-leveled her to level 50, more or less against my will.
Wait a second!, you exclaim. How can you level against your will? Well, as I mentioned in my last Kaet post, I am not shy about taking breaks from active playing if I’m just not into it. And I never force myself to play … well, not unless I have a very good reason. *grin*
It’s been a really long time since I’ve played my little dwarf hunter, Kaet. Two months or more, in fact. I was initially waiting for Patch 2.3.2 to come out with it’s faster pet leveling — Kaet was having a heck of a time keeping her three beloved crabs leveled up with her. But even after Patch 2.3.2 I have found myself disinclined to log her in.
The Lunar Festival has begun! As with most seasonal events, it’s only as fun as you make it — so go out and make it fun!
Lunar Festival Tip: This event allows you to get your low-level alts and bank mules the flight points in all the (non-BC) capital cities. Each capital city has an extremely short quest to light off some rockets that rewards you with a Lunar Festival Invitation; the Invitation allows you to teleport from your capital to Moonglade, and from Moonglade to the other two capitals. (Silvermoon City and the Exodar not included.)
Mania, my main character, has spent most of her hunting life with Cloud, a Twilight Runner from Stonetalon Peak. But around about level 60 Mania tamed a Ghost Saber and named her Banshee. I leveled Banshee to 48 before Burning Crusade launched, primarily on the beach full o’ naga in Azshara. But there the poor cat languished … until last night, when for some unknown reason I decided it was time to get her up to level 70 — or at least level 49!
After months of lackadaisically completing daily quests, Mania has finally saved up enough cash for a fast flying mount.
(The entire process sped up a bit when I realized that if I wasn’t going to use all those flower bits to make potions, I should probably just sell them on the Auction House. It hadn’t really occurred to me to do that … but it worked wonderfully.)
While I was waiting on Patch 2.3.2 with its faster pet leveling, I spent a lot of time with my newest hunter, Maja. About a week ago she hit level 40 and promptly bought a black hawkstrider. (The original plan had been to purchase an skeletal horse instead, but try as I might I am still 5500 reputation short of Exalted with Undercity. So it’s a chicken for now!) But level 40 seems like a good time to pause and take a comparitive look at the stats and utility of her two pets: Sarcasm the tallstrider and Scorn the hyena.
