You don’t need to really play on them, just always do the 2000g emissary on them to have gold on hand for good deals 
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The cool part is: The realms I don’t play on are realms I used to play on, so I still have bank alts with all my money from back in the day. I should have plenty to buy pets with, and it’s actually good b/c it’s something to use it for on my abandoned realms.
Edited to add: This is amazing. There are a LOT for like 1g or 5g. Nice.
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Nice, you’re all set then lol.
Only other thing I’d suggest is https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/rematch It does a lot, you’ll love it.
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No, I was a normal child. 
I loved Pokemon as a 10 year old and I love Pokemon as a 31 year old. No shame in my game. I also started collecting pets before they were battle pets. Always had more luck with those than mounts.
ah, you discovered the pet battle addiction; too late for you now, you’re one of us. one of us. one of us. bwahahaha
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I wanted to get into it. I’m a former competitive Pokemon player and still dabble in older gen stuff here and there. (Also started collecting retro pokemon merch again…)
Pet Battles just aren’t for me. It’s just way too “you need x to do y”.
I want to play with my favorite pets, not copy paste stuff from WoWhead, but with how things are tuned in these things you practically have to. Other pet battling games are way more lenient for PvE, and I’ve even say for PvP. (I was known for running “weak” bug Pokemon to sweep because it was funny.)
Also the breed system made it dead on arrival for me and I haven’t really looked at it much since. Even Pokemon’s done away with forced natures/IV’s lately since most people were just hacking to get around them. It’s not fun and just adds unnecessary grinding that takes away from actually doing content.
I feel if they retuned it to be more open-ended I’d be into it, but there’s only so much wild pet grinding I can do before it gets insanely boring. Seeing that I don’t have x or y to go clear the dungeons, and having absolutely no chance again them with what I decided to level? No thanks.
Congrats and awesome! My wife is still pestering me to play Pokemon considering my love for Battle Pets. I’m up to over 1,100 max level pets myself.
You’ll definitely want to get yourself 1 of each type of pet for battling. FYI, check the Auction House for ALL the cheap tradeable ones to start, Lil Bling and whelplings are incredibly useful, along with the Zandalari. The Feline Familiar is also extremely good for soloing to carry 2 lowbie pets against critters. The Terrible Turnip is also ESSENTIAL for capturing as it cannot kill its opponents with its primary attack. The Safari Hat from the achievement is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME, so that should be one of your first goals to work towards. You get a free pet heal from your menu, but you can also heal any battle pets from a stable master for 10s as needed.
The Polished Pet Charms are definitely something you want to start working on, and can also be done on ANY character as they are BoA. So fire up that mission table and work on the daily quests once you have the pets available to fight. You’re definitely going to want to run around collecting all the random ones in the zones. Personally, I focus more on getting them and then going back to farm for specific breed types if needed. Some, like the Unborn Val’kyr, you’re going to want to snag NO MATTER WHAT type pops up. Keep in mind there are also environmental considerations (daylight, nighttime, summer, fall, etc) that may keep you from capturing certain pets right away.
Lastly, once you get a decent stable of level 25 pets, definitely work on the pet trainers around the world and the pet dungeons. They are good sources for extra pets, supplies, etc that will help you out. Things like pet bandages and XP food are BoA also, so you can farm on multiple character and stack up as needed. Keep in mind that your pets ARE linked across account, so you are limited for a few minutes when you swap back and forth.
I highly recommend the PetJournal Enhanced and PetBattle Teams addons as well. Good luck!
50 years old and I collect the battle pets. I also play pokemon with my adult kids. My son has been playing Pokemon since he was three.
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Welcome to the dark side 
I’ve loved pet battles since they came out in MoP, and there is even a whole forum dedicated to them with super helpful people (incase you haven’t been there yet) https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/c/gameplay/pet-battles/39
I love the whole pet battle system, and I think its one of the best designs of the game. I truly hope you continue to enjoy doing pet battles 
Some of my favorite websites for information:
For managing my collection I use: hhttps://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pets/index/
You can see what pets you have/need, and how you rank on your server. I’m personally #15 on my main server, Aerie Peak, with 1,161 unique pets.
Guides at hhttps://www.wow-petguide.com and WowHead are a great timesavers, and addons like Battle Pet Binds, Battle Pet BreedID, and Rematch are a must for me.
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Yeah, I love the pet battles feature. It’s a great distraction!
Read up on Squirt, one of the garrison pet battles, for super leveling. You can go from level 1 to 25 in two battles!
Most challenging pet for me so far was Larva. Totally unremarkable pet in every way, but you can only get it in ghostlands, and typically only shows up as a secondary. Took me months of farming ghost crabs to finally find a rare Larva secondary on one.