Thursday, August 29, 2013

Current Collection Goals: Grinding Levels

I haven't quite collected all the 5.3 pets yet (still missing Viscous Horror and Stunted Direhorn). The horror refuses to drop in normal ToT and is going for more than I'm willing to spend on the AH, and I'm still not into the pet PVP thing (even if it's for a pet). Even though there are still pets to collect, I've shifted my priorities elsewhere for the time being.

These days I've been focusing on leveling all my pets to 25. It's no easy task, and it's definitely grindy. I'm inching closer and closer, and I only have 99 more pets to level to max. I doubt I'll be able to reach my goal of all level 25 pets before 5.4 is released, but I'm going to do my damned best to get as many up as possible.

This last batch of pets has been the most challenging. Not because they're difficult pets to battle with, but because they're not very interesting. Many share similar attacks/abilities and they're somewhat boring overall. I adore them to bits, but after the 5th snake, 7th rat, or 3rd cockroach, it starts to get old.

Even the pet leveling support group that I occasionally take part in isn't enough to make it extraordinarily exciting. Sure, adding other players into the mix adds a level of freshness to the leveling process, but it's still quite tedious.

So after some thinking, I've decided to approach it differently. Rather than just trying to level random pets or every pet to 25 all at once, I've set mini-milestones.

Tiggindy from WarcraftPets had some good advice regarding pet leveling (in Pandaria):
"Assuming you always wear your safari hat, there's certain points for efficient use of the Pandaria tamer XP. Level 10, level 15, level 19, level 21 and level 23.5. Each tamer fight will get you to the next point, and of course, a 23.5 pet will jump to 25 after a single fight. Aim to get your low level pets to one of those targets using the wild fights. You can level a 1 to 10 in 5 or 6 wild fights in Pandaria."
With this in mind, I've made it a goal to get each pet to a "breakpoint" level. 15, 19, 21, or 23.5. This way when I do the Tamer dailies each day, I can maximize the gain without wasting any experience earned. So rather than attempting to level one pet to 25 in one sitting, I've been spreading out my time getting each group of certain leveled pets to the next critical level.

I don't know if this is more or less efficient/effective than simply power leveling, but it shakes things up and makes the process a little less same-old-same-old. It also provides more incentive to do dailies each day since I know I'm guaranteed the correct amount of experience gain each time. It's like pre-planning to make things easier and go more smoothly.

With 30+ pets coming in the next patch, I'd be happy if I could get 40-50 pets of my current 99 to max level. If I can mange at least that, once 5.4 is released and I've collected all the new ones, I'll only have less than 100 pets to level still.

Guess I should get back to it!

4 comments:

  1. Your dedication is inspiring. I became burned out with pet battling several months ago after getting the achieve w/ the Qiraji Guardling. I'm still missing several of the dungeon drops and trainer drops because, while I don't mind grinding in general, I really really don't like spending large amounts of time just getting to the battle with one chance of a drop, then being locked out of another chance. All the time needed to travel/clear dungeons is just very off-putting to me. I've been recently energized over the last week or so when I downloaded the pet breed ID addon (late to the party, yeah!). I suddenly became obsessed all over again with the need to find the right breed of every rare pet (or type of pet) I have. The addon allowed me to keep collecting in the way I find most enoyable: constant battling with little downtime. Made a huge difference to me.

    I'm saying all this because I very much appreciate you sharing this information. I'm still missing the red cricket(?) for 75 pets to 25 and this bit of info may make that easier.

    TLDR: It's so refreshing to get a bit of information that can change your perspective and snap you out of a rut. Thank you, Quint!

    Sylthren- Muradin

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    1. @Anonymous: I'm glad some of the info helped you a little! The road to 75 or even all max level pets is long and grindy, so good luck and keep at it. :)

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  2. don't forget, you can also use the pet treat that you get as a reward from the fable beasts dailies for an extra 25% boost to your pet xp for an hour too - it's a big help :}

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    Replies
    1. @Anonymous: Yea, I used to do that, but I'm finding less and less time to do a full tour of all the Pandaria dailies. These days I mainly battle the original Pandaria trainers, and only do the BoF every once in a while. At this point I've run out of the experience buff food, but no biggie. :)

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