Patch 5.3 PTR: New Pet, Achievement, and Battle-Stone

A new pet and achievement was datamined in the latest 5.3 PTR build. And a new type of battle-stone?

The newest pet is called the Blossoming Ancient, and according to the Pet Journal on the PTR it's from the Blizzard Pet Store is not cageable. This can/may change in the future.

From the image on MMO-Champion, it looks very much like a mini Ancient that roams around the druid-y, forest areas of Azeroth. But this not your ordinary Ancient. No, according to MMO-Champion and Wowhead, this pet actually changes colors depending on the Season! That being said, four color variations have been datamined to showcase its shift in foliage.

That's going to be such an awesome pet, and I've been waiting for a new pet with a neat animation for a while! Glad to see they implemented one that sounds so awesome.

Now if only we could decorate it for Winter Veil. ;P

New Achievement + Battle-Stone
Another new achievement was also datamined, and this may bring an extra perk to traveling around and doing Pet Battle dailies. The achievement, appropriately named The Longest Day, requires you to complete all the Pet Battle dailies listed. Currently, there are only three in the criteria, and they're low level, but this could change over the course of the PTR.

The reward for completing this achievement is a Marked Flawless Battle-Stone. This is new, BoA, but can be applied to any pet family type. It should not be confused with the already existing BoE, generic Flawless Battle-Stone.

My question is if this achievement will be tiered, progressively listing more dailies as the tiers get higher and higher, and rewarding a Marked Flawless Battle-Stone for each tier completed.

I think it would be neat to reward those that go out of their way to complete many dailies per day, but having just one achievement and one rewarded Marked Flawless Battle-Stone doesn't seem to fit well. There are so many Pet Battle dailies, and I'm sure there are many who actually do the majority of them on a daily basis. To credit only a few of the quests and not the rest seems stingy.

Plus what will the impact be of having only one Marked Flawless Battle-Stone? Since it's new and so unique compared to the existing stones, will players feel like they need to hang onto it and "save" it? If there were more available (through the achievement), will players feel less likely to hoard the Marked Battle-Stone?

Well, we'll see. The PTR is still up and running, so changes can occur at any time. I'm pretty excited for this new pet and achievement, though!