To get to the isle, simply open up your mailbox and open the package sent to you from Watcher Lara. The item inside will teleport you straight to your faction's hub, and you'll be able to pick up the flightpath from there. There's also an inn you can set your hearth to at the main courtyard as well.
Even though the pet stuff isn't ready yet, you can preview the four celestial pets that will be fore sale. They're sold by Master Li and each pet costs 3 Celestial Coins. The coins seem to be a reward from the weekly quest (account-wide), The Celestial Tournament.
To enter the tournament, the only requirement is that you have 30 max level pets. It's likely Master Li will assist in entering you into the event.
So what is the Celestial Tournament? The NPC Oriana gives us some details.
"You cannot heal or revive your pets during the tournament. If you run out of pets to use in battle, you can leave and enter the tournament again.
If you lose to a challenger, you may fight them again.
You cannot attack any challengers in actual combat, even if they belong to the opposing faction."
The first portion of the description plus Master Li's prerequisite makes it sound as if you'll have a pool of 30 pets you can pick from during the event. It will probably still be a challenge, even with so many at your disposal, to defeat all opponents without healing or reviving. Depending on how many people you have to defeat, of course.
With only 30 pets available to you, you'll start out with a max of 10 teams. Of course you can create even more by mixing and matching, that is... if all your pets survive each fight. Pets that have self or group heals will probably be very useful.
The last part of Oriana's description implies that we'll be facing actual players during the tournament, as well as NPCs. If pet PVP is involved, this will be more of a chore than a fun event for me. So I'm pretty anxious to find out just exactly WHO we'll be up against in the tournament.
Other than Master Li and Oriana, that's about it for pet-related stuff on the Timeless Isle. Oh but...
There's a rarespawn vendor NPC named Whizzig that you'll definitely want to find. He rides on a large snail named Slimy and sells Perky Pug vanity items. Yes, you read that right. Vanity items. For your PET. Whizzig currently sells:
- Big Pink BowThey all cost 500 Timeless Coins each and are currently tradeable (this may change). Right now they are still works in progress and don't actually do anything, but it'll be interesting to see what our pug pets look like when fitted with some neat gear!
- "Little Princess" Costume
- "Dapper Gentleman" Costume
- "Pirate Captain" Costume
Some things I'm eager to find out: Are these one-time use items? Will the costumed effect persist through pet swaps and log outs? Will these items remain tradeable? Will everyone see the costume or just the owner/user?
Sidenote: The idea of dressing up your Perky Pug seems REALLY similar to the WarcraftPets 2012 April Fool's gag! Does this mean vanity items for our vanity pets might become a real thing? :P
If 2000 coins for all four pet-vanity items seems like a lot, don't worry. There are many ways to earn coins all over the island. From killing things to looting random chests/boxes/caches, you'll have enough currency in no time.
The part that's actually tough is finding Whizzing. Since he's a rarespawn vendor, he only shows up every now and then and doesn't stick around for very long. According to Perculia on Twitter, Whizzing spawns in various spots on the perimeter of the court. I've seen him show up in two different spots so far.
Just keep an eye out for a giant snail and you're all set!
As for the rest of the pets that might come from the new zone... Until they add more to the Timeless Isle and finish up some things, we'll just have to keep speculating. There are MANY mobs that match or are similar to the 17 newest datamined pets. Since many of these pets are listed as "Timeless Isle" drops and also have items associated, it's likely that they will be drops from their corresponding creature on the island. There are also various moth critters so they might turn out to be new wild pets for us to capture.
So far I've seen the following mobs that are either similar in name or in looks or both. They're all 90-92 elites, hit hard and have some gimicky trick about them:
- Ashleaf Sprite (possible pet drop: Ashleaf Spriteling and/or Dandelion Frolicker)All of the mobs listed above haven't dropped any pets for met yet, so they might not be implemented on the loot tables yet. Or they might not be drops at all. We'll have to wait and see!
- Windfeather Cranes (possible pet drop: Azure Crane Chick)
- Death Adder (possible pet drop: Death Adder Hatchling)
- Ancient Spineclaw (possible pet drop: Spineclaw Crab)
- Mist Dancer (possible pet drop: Jademist Dancer)
- Gulp Frog (possible pet drop: Young Gulp Frog)
I'm actually hoping the detail "You cannot attack any challengers in actual combat, even if they belong to the opposing faction" implies that players participating in tournament are treated like playing against wild pets (or similar) BUT their battle can't be interrupted by engaging the challengers in PvP. I HOPE at least. :)
ReplyDelete@Ryazan: After some testing on the PTR, I think that portion of the description is really unnecessary. They're all NPCs in a somewhat neutral zone, so it's kind of a given that they would be unattackable.
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