MoP Pet Vendor!

A new pet vendor was discovered in panda-land! The vendor's name is Bubblemaker Ashji, and in the screenshot you can see fishes in bubbles and a water-strider hanging about the vendor, so hopefully this NPC has more water-type companions for sale.

Also note that the NPC looks like the fish-people race of the Jinyu faction (allied with the alliance). The horde version of the Jinyu is the Hozen. This makes me wonder if there's another vendor in Pandaria specifically for horde that sells the same pets or the horde equivalent. Or maybe this particular NPC is neutral? According to Idoru, the vendor wouldn't speak with them although they're neutral. Faction reputation grinding, anyone? Heh. :P

Preview of Pet Combat Abilities

Some of the pets now have their combat abilities listed in the Pet Journal now! Most of them are still lacking their skills and there aren't any tooltips for any of them, but it's interesting to take a look at. Here's some video I took of it:


I had a go at adding voice over. Please excuse my lack of practice and skill when it comes to narrating stuff. x_x

For a bigger preview of some of the skills and abilities found in the Pet Journal so far, check out Evilgnomey's thread on WarcraftPets Forums.

Pet Battles still hasn't been fully implemented, so while we can take a look at their skills and stuff, we can't use them just yet. Also, remember it's still the beta so the abilities and types could change at any moment's notice (and my video may end up being outdated sooner rather than later! lol :P)

Account Wide vs. Individual Collection

During last year's Feast of Winter Veil, Lumpy dropped for my non-collector hunter rather than my collecting toon. I never learned that pet, and I still had the item sitting in my bags. Because account wide collections were still unconfirmed at the time, I held off using it in hopes that Blizzard would either guarantee the new feature or make pets Bind on Account.

Well, now that account wide collections seems like it's here to stay, I decided to test it out. I copied my hunter alt onto the beta and learned Lumpy. It was added into her personal collection as well as the Pet Journal.

After switching to my druid (main collector), I found that although Lumpy was not found in my personal spellbook companion tab, it was accessible through the Pet Journal. Yay! :)

I'm not sure if the spellbook companion tab will continue to exist once the Pet Journal is fully implemented, as it seems a bit redundant to me. Then again, it does serve as a useful tracking tool if you plan on keeping track of separate collections on different toons. We'll see what Blizzard decides to do.

Keeping both the new Pet Journal and companion tab in game does present a new issue though, which collection should you refer to as your "main" collection? The one exclusive to each character? Or the Pet Journal that acts like a stable for all your pets from every toon that you have? It's hard to say, and I guess it will be up to the individual to decide.

Anyway, I can finally breathe a little easier now that I know I'll be able to use Lumpy on my alt and then summon it on my main. I just have to remember that this is the beta still, so things could change. Hopefully for the better and not for the worst!

Quality Over Quantity In MoP?

The preview of the Pet Journal on the beta and account wide collections being tested got me thinking: how will these things impact the pet collecting community? There's no doubt that both features will make it somewhat easier on collectors individually, but what about the community as a whole?

At first glace these new features seem as though they will help take some strain off pet collectors (especially newer players). And in terms of newer collectors vs. more seasoned collectors, I think the journal, wild pets, and account wide collections will help bring everyone closer together and remove/prevent some of the elitism in pet collecting.

Pet Journal Preview & Account Wide Collection

UPDATE: For a FULL LIST (it's huge!) of all the pets listed in the Pet Journal, check out this post here. Remember it's the beta, things could change, not all pets will make the cut, etc.

I feel like I'm having a companion pet overdose! The Pet Journal is on the beta, and account wide pets is also available for testing too. PLUS the Kalimdor wild pets have been implemented in many of the zones (not all yet).

I plan on getting some video of the Pet Journal since there's quite a lot to take in. Don't think a few screenshots will do it justice!

Some details on the Pet Journal so far:

- It lists all of your currently owned pets plus all the pets you do not have (greyed out).

- Wild pets are listed and you can preview their models. There's a button for "Info" on the wild pets, but so far it doesn't do anything.

- You can add three pets to your battle team, and it will show what abilities each of the pets have as well as their level.

- There's a filter to help sort your pets by class/category and collected/not collected/favorites.

- There's a summon random pet button, but it currently doesn't work.

Here's a video preview of the Pet Journal! Best viewed in HD and with annotations (chat bubbles) turned on.


For account wide pets:

- Cross faction pets DO work! Gnomes with Horde Balloons, anyone? :D

- However, you must have already collected the faction specific pet in order to access it. (Example: My alliance druid's Alliance Balloon doesn't become a Horde Balloon when I look at my collection on a horde alt. I have to go out and collect the horde version to add it to my collection.)

- Atm, duplicate pets are combined into one that's available to all toons on your account. (Example: I have a Perky Pug on my druid and a Perky Pug on my shaman. I don't get two Perky Pugs. Instead they're combined and I only have access to one through the Pet Journal.)

Things are still being worked on, and the Pet Journal isn't entirely functional yet. So keep in mind that many things could change as more beta testing occurs. Also remember that there's a chance that some companions listed will not make it into the MoP release.

Beta Update: O. M. G.

*Insert delighted squee here* Southern Barrens!

Unfortunately, it looks like the gazelles and zebras are still out of reach as I haven't been able to find any that are tagged as Wild Battle Pets.

Edit: Spoke too soon! Gazelles in Mulgore! And apparently gazelles and gazelle fawns are two separate types of critter. Cuuuu~ute.

For more new wild pets, check out the Kalimdor thread on WarcraftPets!

New Beta Build - 2 New Pets

According to Wowhead the latest beta build yielded two new pets:

- Sapphire Cub
- Jade Owl

Both are Bind On Pick Up and are of "rare" quality. No clue how we'll obtain these pets, but they almost sound like Jewelcrafting companions since they both have gemstones in their names. Everyone's best guess is as good as mine!

For a full list of the pets that have been datamined from the beta so far, check out the unlisted pets page on WarcraftPets!

Five New Pets and Pet Battle Classes

Wowhead's done some digging and they found 5 new possible pets!

- Beaver Yearling
- Porcupette
- Raccoon Kit
- Tiny Water Strider
- Otter Pup

These are so new, not even their public MoP database or even MMO-Champion's MoP database has them listed yet.

So far it looks like there are only spells for these pets at the moment. We'll have to wait and see if actual item IDs will be added for each of them. Remember though, even some pets that have both a spell and item ID still don't make it into the release.

Wowhead also followed WarcraftPets lead and sorted out all the currently known Wild Battle Pets.

I'm sure there are still tons more to discover, but it's a good start! Not to mention there's still Kalimdor to comb through. :D

Speaking of wild pets, Wowhead has sorted and listed the datamined pet abilities and classes for Pet Battles.

The categories for companions (there are 10 so far):

- Beasts (Beast attacks deal bonus damage to Critter companions and less damage to Humanoid and Flying companions.)

- Critters (Critter attacks deal bonus damage to Humanoid companions and less damage to Beast and Flying companions.)

- Dragons (Dragon attacks deal bonus damage to Flying companions and less damage to Water and Dragon companions.)

- Flying (Flying attacks deal bonus damage to Mythical companions and less damage to Dragon and Flying companions.)

- Mechanical (Mechanical attacks deal bonus damage to Humanoid companions and less damage to Mechanical and Water companions.)

- Mythical (Mystical attacks deal bonus damage to Dragons and less damage to Animal and Mechanical companions.)

- Water (Water attacks deal bonus damage to Mechanical and Dragon companions and less damage to Water and Humanoid companions.)

- Elemental

- Humanoid

- Undead

It'll be interesting to see what other possible pet abilities the developers implement, but this is already a large selection!

Datamined Pet Battle Abilities

There's a giant list of datamined companion abilities on the WarcraftPets forums. I'm sure there will be many more to come, but here's just as taste of the types of spells and abilities you'll encounter when pet battling!

I'm wondering if all of them relate to Pet Battles, though. Some of them are obviously linked to certain companions, but others seem more like new hunter pet skills than a minipet ability. We'll see, I guess!

MoP Beta: Wild Pet Tracking

Rhapture pointed out a thread on the Petopia forums about a new feature on the beta - tracking wild pets! So of course I had to log into the beta and see for myself. :P


Sure enough, there's a new tracking feature for "Wild Battle Pets" that's available on your mini-map. If you can't tell from the screenshot, it's an orange bunny icon.

In the case of the screenshot above, I was standing next to the new Black Sheep critter in Elwynn Forest. This critter also happens to have the new crosshair cursor, so it's looking more and more like the new cursor icon is indeed related to Pet Battles and wild pet collecting! How exciting!

So now I'm making it my mission to scan over all zones in the beta to see if there are more possible wild pets that are in the works. The lovely people over at Petopia's thread have already found a couple new critters: Polly and the Tiny Bog Beast.

UPDATE: Tiny Harvesters in Westfall. :)


Although a lot of the critters are showing up as Wild Battle Pets, we still don't know if we'll be able to collect these wild babies or not. They may simply be critters that our current companions can battle against to gain levels from. We'll have to wait for Blizzard to fully implement Pet Battles and wild pets to find out more.

UPDATE #2: Doobjanka has created a large list of all the critters that he's discovered on the Eastern Kingdoms continent so far. Kalmidor currently doesn't have any of its critters flagged as a Wild Battle Pet yet.