I stopped playing at the end of Cataclysm before all of this pet battle stuff. I started back up Dragonflight, and am interested in this minigame, but am having a hard time with the posted strategies. They all require pets that I don’t have, and have no idea how to substitute. I try to wing the fights the best I can, but quickly get my butt handed to me. Is there a way to work with what I have? Or the best way to get pets that are better?
There seems to be two different types of fights:
Need to have pets that are the same level or higher of the pet trainer. For example, the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor quest fights.
So I started to level all my pets, in an excruciatingly slow and painful way, by fighting wild pets in the appropriate level zones. It is way too slow. And then I run into…
Pet battles that require level 1 pets, or a lineup of the lowest level pets you can find that counter the trainer.
So now I can’t use the pets I leveled up, and have a mess of pets of different levels. I can use some for some fights, and some for other fights. It is so confusing that I would need to start a spreadsheet to keep track of it all.
Is there an easier way to do this? I am probably missing a whole bunch of content that might help, but have no idea how to find it.
I would love to be able to start doing the pet dungeons, but they seem to require level 25, and it is way too boring to spend whole days leveling up all the pets I have.
There is a really good pet battle resource here:
htt ps://www.wow-petguide.com/
In particular you may want to check out the getting started guide:
htt ps://www.wow-petguide.com/Guide/45/Getting_Started_on_Pet_Battling
I’m not allowed to post external links still because I don’t spam up the forums enough I guess but just delete the spaces in https.
At least one of the major contributors to that site is a regular here and it really does raise your pet battle knowledge through the roof.
[edit] Actually if Amayita sees this, I was just glancing through the guide and it should be updated to reflect that Ultimate Stones are only 35 charms now not 60. Less intimidating for new battlers!
The hardest part of pet battles is getting started. I’d definitely stop leveling pets on wild fights as soon as you can. Once you have a solid lineup of level 25s you should be able to swiftly power level anything else off of trainers. I use the Pandaria trainers to level mine virtually all of which can be be smashed using Anubisath Idol and P/P Dream Whelpling. You can also do the WQs for pet charms to buy Ultimate stones.
I would focus on using only your highest levels to cut down on the confusion as well as the time spent grinding. Relying on level 1 strategies to trivialize battles will only limit your progression as the dungeons do require building up your roster.
One of the best tips I can give is getting your garrison built up in WoD content, little late to help you now, but when Squirt is at the Pet Menagerie in your Garrison it is a repeatable fight with a good amount of XP for leveling pets (although I think you need at least one 25 to start the menagerie) The next Super Squirt event is in ~60 days, this is when she is at the garrison and pet battle bonus week is going on, you can easily level a pet from 1 to 25 in 3 fights with her, time consuming yes, but better than running around the world and Fiona is right there to heal pets for free.
XuFu’s guides as linked above are some of the best out there.
You can also do the quest chain for Jyhanna in Valdrakken at /way #2112 10.58 58.25
You get 2 purple stones from the chain, and you don’t have to use them on Lubbins or Mister Toots.
Super Squirt is great, but you can also keep an eye out for repeatable Legion tamers in our power leveling guide on Xu-Fu’s:
The only caveat is that the Legion ones will need bandages, whereas Squirt will not. Squirt (in the garrison) is also good on non-bonus days because they rebalanced the xp we get from fights outside of pet battle bonus week.
The Garrison was a great addition to the game back in the Draenor expansion, for first time could get a level 25 pet without slowly grinding through leveling one of your pets with pet battles. Once you have that first 25, game gets a lot easier. Downside is that it’ll take a few weeks to build up to the 3rd level Garrison you’d need.
Wondering what’s the highest level pet you currently have in your Pet Journal. Checking your pet collection out on The Armory, shows you have a 23 Shyfly. Is this actually in your Pet Journal or just waiting in your bags?
That is correct currently. It wasn’t an intentional acquiration, but it is in my Pet Journal.
Currently working on my Garrion. Neat little minigame thing. I did some research and found that I can farm resources from the rare mobs and chests scattered around. Hopefully that speeds things up a bit, unless they gated it somehow.
Reason I asked, that’s great. If you have a 23, means close to getting that first 25, with or without Garrison Menagerie. And as mentioned, pet battles become lot easier once you can work with level 25’s.
The easiest Draenor pet trainer is Ashleigh, who you should see on the Shadowmoon Valley map. These trainers don’t scale but I had no problem beating her 25 team with 23’s. My Azshara alt mailed you a couple 23’s and a strategy; give it a try. A few days of this will get a Shyfly up to 25.
If they got the Shyfly from the quest chain they should have a 25 (you get an ultimate stone from the 4th quest in the chain, as well as the 8th). If they got it off the AH because for some weird reason they made a wild pet cageable, then yes, I suppose they’re close, heh.
I’m still a little baffled about this. Armory says his next highest pets are 18’s so not sure how he could have a 23 in Journal, that being lowest level the Shyfly is available in. But I’m still learning about DF pets and unannounced changes
A while back, I made this thread here, and the forum group added SO MUCH great advice and lovely suggestions. For someone just trying to get started in pet battling, a list like this can be very helpful…and don’t just stop with my OP on this one. The advice in this thread for “first pets you should level” is pretty great.
I also found this thread exceptional. I wrote down my WoD circuit for daily leveling in a step-by-step way that you can use to start building up your pet collection of 25’s and rare pets for battling without the long, grindy method of pet leveling. Amayita also put in a link to the wowpets power-level guide and several people gave excellent advice.
I cannot stress enough how wonderful the following links will be for helping you when you hit questions.
I highly recommend getting familiar with both sites and joining the WarcraftPets Discord server which has pet battle people discussing things and very helpful tips and daily notifications you can choose to sign up for.
Pet battling for achievements and collections is a massive new world to add in the WoW experience, especially if it’s still brand new to you. Don’t get overwhelmed or discouraged. There is enough pet content and there are enough pet goals out there to keep you happily engaged for a long, long time…and if you hit something that seems too grindy to be real, there is probably a better or shorter way to get it done or a strategy that will make it easier or more fun, and someone on this forum will likely have a suggestion for you.
Pet tamer “Squirt” (in your Garrison) is a good place to level pets when she is available. However, my personal favorite place to level battle pets is Valley of the Four Winds, in Pandaria. Specifically, the fields west of the town called Halfhill. Reason = there are a lot of wild “critter” pets that area, and if you use a “beast” as your main pet they will go down very easy, with each battle taking about a minute.
My main pet for battling critters is a level 25, rare quality, Twilight Spider beast pet
with skills [Poison Spit] + [Brittle Webbing] + [Leech Life] enabled. With those 3 skills you can both heal yourself and kill the Critter opponents at the same time - its very efficient. My other 2 pets are two “level pets” that I swap in & out so they get the experience.
In the same area there are also a lot of aquatic wild pets, and I have a separate team for them. I lead with a level 25, rare, Royal Peachick with [Savage Talon] + [Arcane Storm] + [Rain Dance] enabled. Just like the spider group, these spells will both heal my pet and dispatch the opposing pet.
One last thing, there are a lot of very good add-ons you can use to help manage your teams and opponents. These are the add-ons I use every day:
The last one (Rematch) is an essential for organizing your teams, and it allows you to actually save a team for each opponent. This is VERY helpful when doing world quests, or training your pets in other zones.
Just to address the question that I didn’t see anyone directly answer, yes, you can still create a Garrison. I did it last month.
Given your level, I assume that money is not an issue. You can shell out the 1K or so it takes to buy blueprints and level your Garrison to level 3. The problem here is collecting the Garrison resources required to build your Garrison (and your Menagerie) to level 3. There’s no fast track to getting Garrison resources. They come with time. Some quests and mobs reward them. But I’m afraid it’s the waiting game.
Needless to say, you will effortlessly plow through all mob on Draenor. I just spam and AoE as I run around, which kills everything close to me, including rares and elites.
If you build your Garrison, go to Highmaul (in west Nagrand). There are three ogre rares who drop Garrison Resouces. That should help. They are Rukdug, Pugg and Guk. If they’re spawned as rares (NOT elites), they will drop 100+ Garrison Resources.
By the way, I hope you did Draenor Pathfinder. If not, you’re going to be walking everywhere.
Apparently flying in Draenor is free now. I was able to fly there as soon as I arrived. Thank goodness. If it was anything like how bad BfA Pathfinder is, I wouldn’t even bother.
