Help please with my Hunter. 9 year hiatus!

Back…befuddled…looking for wisdom
I was a two-boxer last time around. I hear you can have more characters now and trying to decide whether to continue that. Opinions welcome. Both accounts are up, characters renamed, highest chars are 85: all my specs are gone and my gear is trashed, my Hunter has a two handed staff and all her pets are level 1, my Warlock is wearing some funky mask which I have no clue how to take off, my Paladin acquired a green monocle from somewhere and I’m ashamed to say it took me a good 90 seconds to figure out how to dismount my DK. I suppose my first question now that I’ve stumbled out of the gate is… can someone help me understand how to get my Hunters pets lined out. Do I have to retrain them all? Also what’s a level boost?i see these packages for sale that include boosts. OMG. I’m a noob again. tyvm in advance.

Hunter pets now are just whatever level your hunter is. There’s no more leveling them. You can go tame a level 5 animal on your 120, and as soon as it’s tamed it’s magically 120!

When you say your pets are level one, are you looking at your battle pets instead? In Mists of Pandaria, they added a pokemon-style mini-game using what used to be called non-combat pets, which is a whole different thing than hunter pets.

There’s also no training hunter pets now. Whatever a specific pet type has as abilities is what it has. There are 3 main categories: tenacity, cunning, and ferocity. The main difference between the three is each one has it’s own special passive and special on use ability. (For example, ferocity pets give you and your pet a passive leech bonus, and an on-use bloodlust ability.) Pet families generally also have a special ability for that family. (Things like shell shield on turtles and such.)

Here’s a more in-depth guide:

Level boosts are a way to instantly level a character to the level of the boost. There are also generally some quests flagged as complete on the character to help them jump right into the content for the expansion the boost is from. The 110 boost has some Leigon content done, and the 120 has some BfA stuff done. If you’re just getting back, boosted characters can be super overwhelming. (Especially the 120 as there are so many end game systems that get tossed at you all at once on the boost. When you level naturally to 120, you have to clear through a decent chunk of content before you start locking most of the end-game systems.) So, I wouldn’t worry about them now. If you get a bundle that has one, it will sit on your account until you want to use it. They don’t expire.

Just in case you are referring to actual hunter pets as opposed to battle/vanity pet critters, try putting them in your stable and pulling them back out again.

Now is a pretty good time to level up, blizzard has implemented double xp for the past couple of months, you will level quickly.

  1. wow-petopia.com is the goto site for hunter pet info.
  2. icy-veins.com for class/spec guides including talent choices, rotations, etc…
  3. wowhead.com for quest info, guides, and just about everything else.