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Intro To Pet Battles In World of Warcraft

December 26, 2012 1 Comment

Introduction to Pet Battles in World of Warcraft

pettypes Intro To Pet Battles In World of Warcraft
 
This post and more can be found at View From Darnassus (viewfromdarnassus.wordpress.com).
 
View From Darnassus is a rarely updated World of Warcraft blog run by Ryan. You can follow him on Twitter @GamingSavant or you can send him an email GamingSavant [at] yahoo [dot] com.
 
Lately, most of my time spent in game has consisted of leveling up battle pets. It’s something I was intrigued by when it was first announced as part of Mists of Pandaria. I haven’t spend a ton of time playing, since release, but I still have noticed a few things that might help anyone who hasn’t tried it yet.
 

Beginners

  • Do the trainer quests. At your battle pet trainer in each faction’s main city, you can start a chain quest to beat pet trainers throughout the world. Not only do these quests offer more experience than regular battles, but they also reward you with pet related items that might help you level up faster or cosmetically alter your pets when outside of battle.
  • Level more than 3 pets at a time. When you start out, you’re only offered the option to fight one pet at a time. As you level, you unlock the ability to use up to three in each battle. I suggest leveling 5-6 at a time. Your cooldown for healing and resurrecting them is 8 minutes, unless you’re near a stable master. When you level multiple pets, you can continue to do battles if one or two pets die before the 8 minute cooldown is up. It might also be smart to pick pets from different classifications.
  • Capture one of every pet you encounter, especially if they’re rare quality. While leveling you’ll encounter a bunch of different pets. I felt it helped me level faster if I captured them and tryed using some of them. Some of these pets have nice abilities that you might never discover otherwise.
  • Learn your pet’s strengths and weaknesses. Each class’s attacks have another class they are strong and weak against. The problem is that each pet doesn’t only have attacks from their class. So sometimes choosing the right attacks could mean all the difference in battle. I recommend finding a chart that shows all this information and print it out for easy access. The one I’m using doesn’t appear on that site anymore, but this (http://www.wowjuju.com/uploads/gallery/album_12/med_gallery_2_12_95535.jpg) one is similar.

Advanced

  • Play around with different pet combinations. Some pets have abilities that deal more damage if an enemy is “burning” or “chilled”. Unfortunately, I haven’t come across any pets that will both chill an enemy and cause more damage when they’re chilled. They may be some, but I don’t know about them. That’s why playing around with pet combinations can come in handy. Also, there are abilities that will increase damage by any upcoming attacks. Try pairing those with the most powerful attacks from other pets.
  • Take advantage of your pet’s passive class ability. Every pet class has a special passive ability. These abilities can help you map out a strategy for how to advanced in battle. For example, Mechanical units come back to life with 25% health once per battle, meaning you can wait until you’re one attack away from dying to cast a healing spell, knowing that you can benefit from that additional 25%.
  • Level in a zone higher than you’re current pet’s level. This will grant you more experience and help your pets level faster. When leveling from 1-15, you only face one or two pets at a time. It’s very easy to kill two level 13 pets with three level 11s. Plus, when you capture pets at a higher level, you can throw the newly added ones into battle and they’ll already be the same level as the ones you’re currently using.

Expert

  • Get some more pets!!! There are a ton of pets out there and it’s your job to find them. Searching through past expansion dungeons, reputations and vendors might reward some hidden gem pets that would otherwise go untouched.
  • Let your pets die. When leveling multiple pets at once, it’s sometimes a good idea to let one pet die in battle. If you have a higher level pet, and you let it get killed,all  the experience will instead be granted to another pet. Meaning you can do all the grunt work with a more powerful pet, only to have a weaker pet jump in for the final attack and benefit as if it killed all the enemies.

Recommended Add-ons

  • PetTracker (http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/pettracker) – displays, on your main map, the location of either any pets in the zone, any pet you don’t own a rare version of, or any pets missing from your collection. It’ll also display what your opponent’s abilities are, enabling you to switch to another pet when facing something that’s strong against your current pet.
  • BattlePetCount (http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/battlepetcount) – displays how many of each pet you have, they’re level and quality, both in battle and before you start a fight.

Resources

  • WarcraftPets.com (http://www.warcraftpets.com/) – They were the #1 source for companion pets even before pet battles were introduced. Now they’ve outdone themselves. They include information on every pet in game and they allow users to upload their collections to compare them to other members.
  • Global Pet Battle League (http://gpbl.gkick.net/) – Want to try out your skills against other players in a bracket style tournament? Now you can!

 

Thanks for the guest post, Ryan!  The goblin students appreciate it! 

-Goldgrub

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Do You Need Anonymity While Banking?

June 28, 2011 3 Comments

Today at Goldgrub’s Goblin Academy we present to you a Guest Post, submitted by Xsinthis of the US-Shadowmoon (A) World of Warcraft Server.  Xsinthis is a freelance writer without a blog to call home.  I hope you enjoy his great article.  If you are interested in guest posting or joining the staff here at Goldgrub’s, please review the earlier post on Guest Posting and Joining The Staff.


Do You Need Anonymity While Banking?

One of the biggest draws for me to having a bank alt was the fact that I could operate completely separate of my other ingame activities, keeping my friends and fellow aaguildies (and those unsavoury souls who populate troll chat as well) unaware of my economic activities. There are many reasons someone would choose to operate anonymously on the AH, and some reasons you might want to avoid it.

Ski mask+over+counter+3 31 10 Do You Need Anonymity While Banking?

Why Would You Want To?

* Repercussion Free Auctioneering One of the biggest draws for many ‘goblins’ (got to put that in quotes now since we actually have a goblin race) is that no matter what you do on your banker to reach your gold making gold, any negative actions won’t tarnish your reputation in the rest of the World of Warcraft. No matter how cut throat you get you can return to your regular toons and no one’s the wiser, and you’re still the same old loved you, with no feelings hurt if you stepped on the toes of any friends or guildies.

* Free of Begging This is apparently a very big issue for some people. If other’s don’t know who you are (your friends, guildies, arena team members etc) there is no way for them to know that you’re rolling in it, unless you let it slip, and they won’t bester you for hand outs. This might not be a problem for some people, but could be extremely problematic if you hang out online with the wrong kind of people.

* Guild Bank Remaining anonymous and keeping your toon separated from your regular guild not only aids in keeping it anonymous, but also frees up your banker to have a guild of its own for storage usage

* No Interruptions Some people lead more demanding online lifestyles than others, and are constantly being bombarded with messages and queries (such as guild officers). For people like this remaining anonymous keeps you off the grid and prevents others from pestering you while you focus on your gold making activities

Why Wouldn’t You Want To?

* Banker Is Also a Crafter If your banking toon is levelled and doubles as a crafter, being part of a high level guild can give a significant advantage to the professions on that toon such as extra yield from disenchanting or cheaper vendor mats. Although I do suggest moving your banking operations to one or more insignificant alts, if you do need this setup for whatever reason, anonymity might be hard or impossible to achieve

* You Need To Be Contactable Ingame If you are in a position that you need to be able to be contacted ingame whenever possible trying to remain anonymous would not be a good idea, because then no one could contact you!

* You Want Your Fame (good or ill) Attached To The Rest of Your WoW Life If you want to be known on your main as the goblin you are, keeping your banker anonymous would be very counter-productive don’t you think?

Tips For Remaining Anonymous

* Be stingy with your Real-ID friends list, people on that list can see every character you log into, so only add people you trust not to blow your secret

* Avoid mentioning your gold making activities on your other characters as this not only lets others in on the secret that you are a goblin, but also makes it easier for them to match patterns and possibly catch your banker

* Never acknowledge guildies or friends from your banker, it’ll make them suspicious as too how you know them!

* Don’t talk about things only people in your guild or social circle would know

* Don’t do your crafting when grouped, this will not only put them onto the fact you are producing mass amounts of goods, but which ones and depending on how often you do it in what quantity

* Don’t inform others when you are going to your bank alt

* If you have a second account, stick your banker on it, and make sure to be logged in on both for overlapping periods, but don’t log in and out at the same time with both accounts!

* If you don’t have a second account, avoid switching directly to and from it, instead once you’ve logged a character out take the time to go get a drink, food, a bio break, chores etc so you don’t do the switch immediately. This will go a long way to keeping people off your trail who are trying to track you down.

* Keep your gold quantities on the down low, if people know how much gold you have, it makes it easier to find out who your banker is (again, if they are searching)

* Break naming conventions for your banker(s) and their guild(s). And not just from your main characters, but from each other too, it helps prevent a chain reaction of finding all your characters.

* Start with fresh characters, don’t just drop an unused alt from an active guild to turn into your banker

* When you log out of your main characters to go about your gold making tasks, make sure to exit from any third party communications outlets such as Vent or the guild site to make it look like you’ve stepped away from the computer. This is mostly just to help keep your identity in the air when someone is tracking you

Recommendations?

I would highly recommend you remain anonymous through your banking empire. It saves a lot of social hassle and once you’ve got your toons setup you won’t really feel any inconvenience. Of course many of the tips are more extreme than others, and it’s up to your discretion which ones you feel you need to employ, as many of them are for keeping people from finding out who you are once they’ve started looking. And remember, it’s much easier to go from anonymous operations to out in the open, then it is to start in the open and withdraw from the public.

Do you try to remain completely anonymous on your banker toon?

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Join The Goldgrub’s Staff or Guest Post

June 17, 2011 2 Comments

Team Huddle3298 Join The Goldgrubs Staff or Guest Post

Looking For More

Unfortunately, a couple of our staff writers have had to resign due to personal issues.  We at Goldgrub’s Goblin Academy wish them the best of luck.  It is unfortunate to see them go, but the situation presents us with a couple of oppurtunities here at this new World of Warcraft teaching site. 

We are looking for a couple more writers, as I believe 7 regular authors is the perfect number for the site.  Having 7 regular writers allows us each to have a dedicated day of the week for our original posts.

What We Are Looking For

We are looking for 2 regular authors (staffers) and we are also looking for guest posters.  I will break down the different benefits of both as the rewards are slightly different. 

As you should already know, Goldgrub’s is dedicated to serving the needs of the new World of Warcraft players, both brand new players and players new to the gold making game.  We focus on making gold and efficient leveling here.  All posts are writted with the new players in mind.  We like to try to cover basic concepts and create guides that any player can understand regardless of how long that player has been playing WoW.  So all guest post submissions and regular weekly posts are to be easier to understand and geared towards the newer players or young goblins.

2 Open Staff Positions:  Goldgrub’s Faculty Weekly Writers

Currently we are posting once per week on scheduled post days.  If you join the team here as a faculty member, you get the following benefits:

  • A dedicated weekly posting slot.  Reap the benefits of our traffic from 7 posts a week, while only contributing 1 post per week.
  • A personal “About (You)” section at the bottom of each of your posts.  Linking to your blog or podcast is encouraged.  See mine at the bottom of this post.
  • Your own personal staff page under “The Staff” tab. Again, linking to your site, podcast, or other projects is encouraged.
  • Promotion (with an affiliate link) in “The Shop” of any original guides written by you. (Only authors and contributors are promoted.)
  • Your main site’s inclusion into the Goldgrub’s Blogroll.  The blogroll at Goldgrub’s is only for authors and site contributors.
  • Potential for a co-hosting slot in the Goldgrub’s Weekly Podcast (under development currently).
  • A share of site earnings, once we monetize the site in the future (T-shirts, counseling sessions, etc).
  • Networking with some of the top bloggers in the World of Warcraft gold making niche.
  • A chance to be a part of something special, growing from the early days with us as we help new players and young goblins.

How to Apply to Join the Staff:

Email Cold at SSmith0911 (at) live (dot) com with a sample post geared towards helping the young goblins make gold or level efficiently.  Having your own established WoW blog is a bonus, but not a requirement.  You don’t have to be a gold blogger.  We are looking for at least 1 Leveling Specialist, someone who can write about grinding spots, quest chains, farming mobs, leveling tips, etc.  Also someone who is on a roleplaying or PvP server who can incorporate those RP or PvP niches into their writing would be an excellent addition as well.

Open Writing Opportunities:  Guest Posts

Guest posting works the same as any other site, but there are additional benefits for posting here at Goldgrub’s Goblin Academy.  Submitting a guest post that is accepted and published will also earn your main site a slot on the Goldgrub’s Blogroll, which is only for Staff and Contributors.   This is a great bonus in addition to the added exposure that you will receive from visitors to this site.  The best thing about Goldgrub’s traffic is that it is catered to the newer players and most of them aren’t already reading your site.  We are aiming to pull in new traffic here, not recycle the same old readers.  So if you give to the site, we give back by linking you with the new community of young WoW goblins.

Guest posts will be used to help fill slots when Staff authors are unable to post (due to emergencies or resignations) and if enough are submitted, we may open up a day of the week for only featuring guest posters.

Email Cold at SSmith0911 (at) live (dot) com with your finished post geared towards helping the young goblins make gold or level efficiently.  Only top quality posts will be accepted, so as with any other guest posting, always submit your best content to be featured on other site.

We look forward to the submissions and the potential to work alongside some more great bloggers, podcasters, and writers.

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