Shopping for Rares

I had a day off for a change.  I had planned to run Looking for Loot but since I was waiting for building maintenance people I would have to afk when they showed up, so no LFR for me.

You know the type – gave me a time between 8 am and 5 pm so you’re stuck all day and then they don’t show up until 3:00 pm.  Yeah, thanks…

So I thought what the heck – might as well try replacing some Poor/Common pets I had grabbed with at least an Uncommon, or if lucky – a Rare.

Fledgling Nether Ray

There were a few server restarts, but with the new patch the Minfernal no longer spawns after a restart.  Now apparently it’s completely random.

Thanks Blizz.  First day I’ve ever had off when there is a server restart.  Oh well.

No Minfernal (I kept checking a couple of alts I had parked throughout the day and nothing) but oh boy!  There were a ton of Flayer Younglings running around!  I have a Rare but it’s a poor Breed ID.  No Rares that I found so maybe next time.

Yup, now not only do we have to worry about quality, but now we have to worry about Breed ID.  I’m not even sure what the scoop is on that since there is apparently a bunch of math involved and I don’t want to go there, but take a look at this site if you’re smarter than me and understand Basic Math.

Pet Battle Breed ID

It’s a great website – you can pull all your pets into it for a complete analysis – it even explains the math!  (Lost on me, of course!)

Good news though – with the new Battlestones if you happen to have a “good” Breed ID pet with less than Rare quality now it can be upgraded.

Cogblade Raptor

But I’m not quite there yet.

I got my Safari Hat, then went through my Pet Journal and essentially spent the day running around Kalimdoor/Outland looking for upgrades for my Poors/Commons and looking for Achievement pets I hadn’t picked up yet.

I picked up a few of the 5.1 pets – I admit I don’t know what they all are, but here’s what I got by the end of the day (“new” means “new for me”, not a specifically “new 5.1” pet):

• Twilight Iguana (Rare – replaced Uncommon)
• Fledgling Nether Ray (Rare – replaced Poor)
• Skittering Cavern Crawler (Rare – replaced Uncommon)
• Cogblade Raptor (Uncommon – new)
• Crested Owl (Rare – new)
• Darkshore Cub (Rare – new)
• Shimmershell Snail (Rare – new)
• Harpy Youngling (Rare – new)
• Venonspitter Hatchling (Rare – new)
• Giraffe Calf (Rare – replaced Uncommon)
• Nexus Whelpling (Common – new)
• Anodized Robo Cub (Uncommon – new)
• Death’s Head Cockroach (Rare – new)

Most were fairly easy to get, except the Nexus Whelping.  I wouldn’t have got one at all if a guildie didn’t alert me that there were a few up – thanks guys!

The most strange one was the Giraffe Calf.  I spotted two “walking” together alone without adults with them and grabbed the first one that luckily was a Rare.

Rare Giraffe Calf

I captured it, but when the battle was over there was no usual “You have won/You have captured…” announcement – nothing at all except the text in the chat box.

I could “see” the second Giraffe Calf while battling the first one, but when the battle was over it disappeared.  There was no one else around so it’s unlikely it was picked up by another player.

The Calves were walking fairly close to where a CRZ “boundary” might be, so maybe for once CRZ actually worked in my favor.

It’s still frustrating as hell to be flying over your server, see a ton of rare pets waiting to be captured but when you land you get CRZ’d and…nothing.

I think I’d like to server transfer to whatever server gets CRZ’d with my server.  Yes, I’d pay the money to transfer all my characters to another server so I can play on the server I have all my characters on now.  Ah, the logic of CRZs…

I caught enough “new” pets to get the “That’s a Lot of Pet Food” Achievement and my Venus pet reward, so it turned out to be a productive WoW day.

That’s a Lot of Pet Food

Venus Pet