Argent Gruntling Get! ...Finally!

FINALLY! After how many patches since the Argent Tournament was released, I finally collected the Argent Gruntling this past weekend. About time, huh?

The main obstacle that I took my damn time in overcoming was getting a horde character up to the appropriate level. The Argent Tournie quests can be started at level 77, but for the longest time, I didn't have it in me to level a toon that high. I did manage to make a horde DK and get her out of the starting zone, but up until about a month or so ago, I hadn't touched her (as evident by her heirloom and starter-zone gear XD).

Recently, I decided to tunnel vision my collection and finally reach that milestone of getting all pets to max level, so I figured why not kill two birds with one stone. I used my lowbie DK and took her out to Uldum (since she didn't have access to any other high level pet zone) where the pet level was high enough for her to earn decent pet experience as well as player experience. She battled like mad until she was eligible for the tournie.

It was a long grindy process, filled with danger (yikes at being really low level in a high level zone on a PVP server), but completely worth it in the end. I managed to level MANY pets up, even duplicates, got a few battlestones for my trouble, and was finally able to start the Argent Tournie quests.

Now I can finally check off another pet from my list, so even though it took me AGES to do it, I feel pretty satisfied with this accomplishment.

Next on the to-do list... "PVP" (but it's really just killing one person over and over) for the Vengeful Porcupette? lol

You Do Not Meet The Requirement

Khorah from WarcraftPets asked a really good question about the vanity pets that have unique functionality that will be accessible to all toons in MoP. Namely the Argent Squire and Gruntling as well as the Guild Herald and Page. Will these companions behave the same way regardless of the toon you summon them on?

The simple answer: Nope!

Currently you can summon these pets on any toon (regardless of faction), but unless you've purchased the Argent Pony Bridle for the Argent Squire/Gruntling on the toon you're summoning the "pet" on, you won't have access to his additional mail, vendor, and banking features.

The Guild Herald and Page are in the same boat as the Argent companion. Unless you're on a toon that's in a guild, the vendoring aspect of these two pets won't be available to that particular toon. You can still summon them, but they will just be humanoid companions without any additional vendoring ability.

Side note: I'm still not sure if we'll actually be able to summon cross faction pets once MoP goes live. At the moment, I can summon my Argent Squire just fine while on a horde character on the beta. This might be changed in a future build, though. We'll see.

I'm also unsure if you'll be able to "use" these companions' additional features if you DO meet the requirement(s) but they're of the opposite faction. Asking an alliance Guild Page to sell stuff to your horde character seems kind of strange. And how on earth do you coax an Argent Gruntling to accept a Pony Bridle that was purchased from and meant for alliance lol?


Fun fact: If you do summon a cross faction pet and try to talk to him, the speech will be jumbled jargon. Very fitting and amusing!

I'm not sure whether or not I'm for or against being able to summon a horde pet while on an alliance character or vice versa. I think it's pretty interesting for RP purposes (I'm thinking something like, "I captured this alliance and now he's my prisoner of war!" lol), but it does feel a bit out of place at the same time.

It also puts pressure on collectors to create toons for the "other side" just to collect a companion. Not everyone is against jumping through hoops for their collections, but some might feel disgruntled about having to level up to the appropriate level for the Argent pet and reputation grinding with a second guild to acquire the Herald and Page.

But to each their own! Personally, I'll be working on my alts to gather as many pets as I can, regardless of faction.

PS: For those who already completed the pet collecting achievements on one toon, you'll be able to summon the reward pets (such as Nuts) on all toons in MoP. This is due to the fact that the completion of these achievements will be cumulative across all your characters.