My mage, Invariant, is a pet collector. I passed the 50 pet mark a while back (I had wanted it to be more meaningful than a random bought pet so I went and did the OOX quests for the mechanical chicken, which I hadn’t gotten around to yet. That was fun)
Recently she’s addded the Mini Thor pet. That one is incredibly cool – it’s as big as she is (she’s a gnome of course) and just spectacular. Blizz outdid themselves on that one)
Anyway this weekend I persuaded Reversion to come help me run Magister’s Terrace to try for the phoenix pet. I’ve done that a handful of times, never religiously. He brought his hunter Approximate since he’d like a shot at the Hawkstrider mount. We had to run it on regular first since Approximate wasn’t attuned for heroic. That was good; it took us that long to get our strategies down. Approximate pet-tanked, I sheeped and tried to keep from pulling aggro, not always successfully, and we killed Kael, jumped out, set it for heroic, and jumped back in.
And what did that silly Blood Elf leave for me?
We’ll go back for the Hawkstrider later, honey.
Psyched up by this awesome pet and the fact that my count was now 67 minipets, I checked out http://warcraftpets.com/ to look for pets I’d missed. Then I remembered the Blackrock Mountain pets… a quest in LBRS for a spider pet and a wolf pet, that I’d never done. Well! Now I had a quest. And while I was at it… The Darkmoon Faire was in Shattrath until midnight that very day, so if I went to the bar in BRD I could grab Dark Iron Ale and get myself a Jubling pet at the Faire!
So I did. Fortunately I have the Shadowforge Key so BRD is an open book to me. I went out of my way to kill the Pyromancer guy by the dwarf statue – he sometimes drops a Fiery Weapon enchant recipe that I want. I’ve been doing some auctioning and some of the low level enchants that you can put on heirlooms sell really well; I’ve made 10g worth of mats into scrolls that I sold for 200, just because apparently nobody else is bothering.
Anyhow, BRD first, I could skip a lot of the trash since they just didn’t notice me. Into the bar, buy the beer, then steal the free ones on the table just for fun, start the bar fight, end the bar fight (hah! Fireball to the face!), and back out, up the chain, and into Blackrock Spire.
I found a guide someone put together on stealthing to do the pet quests as it had great directions and pictures, and as a mage I have invisibility which is like Stealth only even better. Except for the, you know, cooldown. Half an hour later I’ve got a baby spider and a tiny warg cub, and a Jubling egg maturing in my backpack. 70 pets by Friday if I don’t add any more before then!
I could spend ridiculous money on world drops, or quest Argent Tournament, but for the last few I need I’m wanting something more special, so my new quest: fishing. As in leveling it from, um, 10, and doing the Outlands fishing daily and maybe trying to fish up a Mr. Pinchy when I feel like it.
This is what I love about the game. I can spend hours doing stuff like this when I’m bored with heroics. Know what? Analogue went to ICC twice this weekend, and I played the markets (we have alts that need epic fliers; I made about 5k this weekend) and some alts got some levels and I had a blast, because I could switch to something different when I got bored. Best cure for end of expansion blues there is.
Oohhh you totally have to do the Argent Tournament ones, cos nothing beats the tiny tree :D
Plus, you could find a friendly Hordie and perhaps trade the faction pets – the troll Tournament one is awesome.
I’ve been considering buying those ones – they run at 400g Alliance/800 horde – or having my main who has more seals do it, but Analogue the main needs that tiny tree herself. Resto druid, you know.