Lately I’ve been swimming in charms so I’ve just been stoning all my new pets. But now I’m dangerously low on charms and need to level some more pets for a couple remaining family achievements. For example, I have practically no critters for some reason and need some for Creepy Critters.
I haven’t leveled a pet the manual way in MANY YEARS. Just wondering if anyone can share any tips, tricks, and routes to quickly leveling pets from 1 to 25.
Thanks!
Here’s our Powerleveling Guide over at Xu-Fu’s. It offers multiple avenues of leveling, and I hope it helps!
I go to Pandaria. Right outside the shrine(if you use the portal to get there) is a pond with Water Skimmers, Otters, and something else Flying IIRC. They are level 23-25. I just use my leveling pet 1st and 2 Flying behind. I use P/P Eagle Chick from Grizzly Hills. It uses Cyclone, Critical Strite increase and than it’s Flying move that hits 1-3 times. It can usually sweep the team with ease.
Thanks all, I will check out the guide and the pond in Pandaria.
Just a hint about Pandaria.
If your character did the legendary cloak / N’Zoth quests during BFA, you may need to talk to Zidormi (she is marked on map as a little white chat icon 
) to have her phase the Vale back to its pre-N’Zoth state.
I do the WoD rotation to level 2 pets from 1-25 every day. On days I want to spend more time, I add the MoP rotation to level more pets in that same time.
When I want to mass-level pets, I find out when the next Sir Galveston or Super Squirt event is coming during a pet week so that I can knock out 30-50 pets at a time.
It depends on what you’re looking to do.
I will happily write a step-by-step for ANY of that. Just let us know exactly what you hope to achieve and/or how much you want to do each day or…if it’s just a thing you want to do now and again, etc.
I’d definitely like to know more about your WoD strategy. 2 pets a day sounds good.
And the Galveston/Squirt thing. I’ve never heard about that but sounds interesting.
Thanks!
Working the Draenor pet trainers even more worthwhile if they’re being done with alts who are also leveling. Both pets and alts get decent XP from it since the 9.1 Patch un-nerfed what Shadowlands had done with XP for the alts.
Even with the Safari Hat, don’t think the six trainers can completely do all the way to 25 for two pets but it’s close. Spending some Polished Pet Charms for Pet Treats may be necessary.
My pets for five of the trainers (I skip Cymre as for me it’s too RNG dependent and takes too long):
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling
Chrominius
Sprite Darter
Warbot
Spectral Spinner
Creepy Crate
Cogblade Raptor (S/S for this one, otherwise depends on RNG)
Cool. Let’s start with the WoD thing. You have quite a few level 25 pets, so it’s possible you don’t need all of this, but I’m gonna just lay it out as though you have never done anything, so that we don’t miss any steps. It might be helpful for someone else later on, so just skip what you don’t need and find the part that applies to you. I do this rotation in about 30 minutes (but that’s because I know the fights by heart & have all the teams saved after doing it a bajillion times).
I also generally do three pets with this circuit and finish them off with stones, but if you don’t have a lot of stones, you can get two pets to 25 with 6 battles (3 battles for each pet).
START AT THE BEGINNING
This will sound like a LOT, but I promise, it will become the hub of everything pet-related, and the effort to get this set up will make EVERYTHING battle pet related much, much easier. And…it won’t take as long as you might think. It’s 100% worth it in the end, so just work on it little by little until you’re there.
1.) Get a Rank 3 Garrison Town Hall
You must do this first. Pick the character you think you’ll be doing pet battles on the most, and do it on that one. Hopefully, you’ve already got a Rank 3 Town Hall. If you don’t…this might take a while.
2.) Open the Menagerie
Once you have a rank 3 town hall, a building called the Menagerie will become available. To open it, you need to speak with your Menagerie worker (Lio the Lioness for Alliance/Serr’ah for Horde) and accept the quest called “Unearthed Magic.” This is a quick quest that has you go to your garrison mine and retrieve a special stone. It takes like 30 seconds. Completing this will get you a purple stone that you can use to level any pet from level 1 to 25.
After completing this quest, you’ll have a new quest available called “Pets vs. Pests.” This will require you to defeat 3 level 25 pet battles inside your garrison. I saw your pet collection, so this should not be an issue for you at all. Do these three pet battles, turn in the quest, and your Rank 1 Menagerie is open for business and you will now have access to the WoD pet battle dailies.
3.) Get a Safari Hat.
I took the liberty of looking at your profile, Ariesmet, and you’ve already completed this bit. I’m putting it here for the sake of being thorough for anyone else reading this thread later.
You CAN do your WoD dailies without a Sarari Hat, but if you get one, you will be able to level 2 pets from 1-25 every day.
The Safari Hat is a toy reward for the achievement called “Taming the World,” and the reason it’s important is that it gives you a 10% boost to pet experience. You will use this in tandem with other items (discussed below) when power leveling any battle pet.
Begin in Orgrimmar (near the flight master) or Stormwind (chick under a tree near the Cata portals). Go see the relevant pet master for your faction capital and pick up the quest. Each battle you complete will send you to the next. Follow the pet battle quest chain until you’ve done all 40 battles.
I know. It sounds HORRID. It’s not. You’ll end up leveling pets along the way, and it’s much faster than it sounds. Again, like the Menagerie, the Safari Hat is worth the effort. Unlike the Menagerie, it’s NOT required to unlock the WoD dailies, but without it, you’ll have less bonus xp per battle when trying to power level.
4.) Get the Addon Rematch
This battle pet addon will allow you to manage teams for each battle master so you can save your team and strategy for each daily battle. This makes life much easier, and will make the process of doing the WoD daily circuit (and every other WQ, daily, etc…battle) much, much faster.
5.) Get the Addon PetJournal Enhanced
This battle pet addon will make it easier to filter your pets, find the ones you want to use, etc., and it integrates extremely well with Rematch. You can put the pets you want to level in a queue and they will pop up in the order you want them to. It’s magical.
6.) Get the Addons Battle PetBreed ID & PetTracker (optional)
These are the other pet addons I use. They identify your pets’ breed (as well as your opponents’ breeds)…and they have options for displaying wild capture spawn locations as well as pet battle master locations (very helpful while you’re learning the WoD daily circuit.
7.) Buy one “Pet Treat” for 10 coins and one “Lesser Pet Treat” for 5 coins.
These are available from Lio/Sarr’ah. Don’t use them, yet. Put on your Safari hat, make sure both treats are in your bag. While you’re learning, you might need two of each (they only last one hour), but once you have the circuit down and can complete it swiftly, one of each is plenty.
8.) Pick up the weekly quest, “Battle Pet Tamers: Warlords,” if available
Once you’ve got the quest (the reward is 10 yellow leveling stones), fly to Exile’s Rise in Shadowmoon Valley and get to the battle master, Ashlei.
Before you accept her quest and start the pet battle, summon the first leveling pet you’re going to use today. Feed it both pet treats and make sure you can see both buffs active on yourself. Yes, you feed the treats to the pet, but the buffs go on YOU. Double check that you also have your Safari Hat on. This first battle will get your pet from level 1 to level 14 if all three buffs are active.
I will give you my personal pet teams, but there are many options for all 6 of these. Look at my advice alongside any other 2-pet strategies you want to test with your own pet collection. Find pets with similar abilities or play trial and error if you like. Just have a plan before you start b/c the buffs from the treats will only last one hour. You can buy more if your first trip through the circuit takes too long and you lose the buff. Make SURE that you have both pet treat buffs AND the safari hat on before you enter any battle.
All of your pets should be level 25 and rare except for the leveling pet, which can be anything.
ASHLEI - WoD Daily Battle #1
Make sure you have loaded your team up and that the desired leveling pet is active before you start the battle.
Anubisath Idol - 1/1/1
Leveling Pet (can be level 1) - anything
Parasitic Boarfly - 1/1/1
Using the Anubisath idol, kill the first pet, Pixiebell. Ashlei will bring out her 2nd pet, Doodle. This pet will do zero damage. Bring out your leveling pet and hit Doodle with any ability one time. Immediately rotate the leveling pet back out and complete the battle. This will get your first leveling pet to level 14 or 15. This pet battle is very straightforward, so I leave it to you to find a team and strat that works. The next one…is more particular.
Go back to the flight path and take the flight taxi to Veil Terrok in Spires of Arak.
VESHARR - WoD Daily Battle #2
Vesharr is located right below the flight point for Veil Terrokk. I recommend swapping out your previous pet (now level 14-15 for your 2nd leveling pet if it is level 1).
Stormborne Whelpling (P/S) - 1/2/2
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling - 1/2/1
Leveling Pet (can be level 1) - anything
The Great Kaliri will die after the 2nd Mana Surge and the Apexis Guardian will come out, taking the third Mana Surge Hit.
After this turn, your Stormborne Whelpling will be defeated. IF the Apexis Guardian gets a super big crit on you and your whelpling is defeated BEFORE you can tail sweep and Arcane Storm (it happens on occasion), forfeit and start over. Bring in the MPD.
The final opponent, Darkwing, should have fewer than 560 hit points at this point.
Your leveling pet, being the only survivor, will get all the xp. This will raise a level 1 pet to 14. Fly to Retribution Point in Talador and ride to Taralune’s location.
TERALUNE - WoD Daily Battle #3
Chrominius - 2/2/2
Leveling Pet (canNOT be level 1) - needs to have at least 800 hp
Stormborne Whelpling (P/S) - 1/2/2
Put up whichever of your pets is least weak to flying pet damage and here’s how the fight goes (and you MUST do it exactly like this):
Bring in the leveling pet, and let it take one hit. Use any ability that will not force the pet to stay in front for more than this one turn…then swap it out for the Stormborne Whelpling.
This will defeat Taralune, and your pet will reach level 21 or 22. Go back to the FP and fly to Rilzit’s Holdfast in Nagrand. Ride to Tarr the Terrible’s location.
TARR THE TERRIBLE - WoD Daily Battle #4
Leveling Pet (canNOT be level 1) - needs to have around 850+ HP
Shimmershell Snail (H/H) - 2/2/1 - almost any snail will do. Pick the one with the most HP.
Mr. Grubbs (H/P) - 2/1/1 - any maggot will do.
This strategy is not mine, but Hazelnutty’s. You can watch the fight here:
This will get your level 20-21 pet to 24-25. If you have flight, leave Tarr’s hut, mount up, and fly straight toward Gargra’s location to the Northeast. If you have the recommended PetTracker app, you will see her on the Frostfire Ridge map. Don’t worry, the fatigue won’t get you before you make landfall. If you don’t have Draenor flight, just reverse the order of these last two fights and use the taxi to fly to Gorgrond. Do fight #6 first and then fight #5.
GARGRA - WoD Daily Battle #5
Iron Starlette (P/P) - 1/1/1
Leveling Pet (can be level 1) - anything
Parasitic Boarfly - 1/1/1
-IF your leveling pet is a level 1, bring in the Boarfly and defeat Fangra with any ability you like. Wolfgar will be brought out. Swap in the leveling pet.
-IF your leveling pet is a 14/15, just defeat Fangra with the leveling pet and continue with the following:
Wolfgar will Howl. Let your leveling pet get hit with the debuff and then swap in the Boarfly.
Slicing Wind
Drain Blood
Slicing Wind
Lift-Off
Slicing Wind - Wolfgar is defeated.
Your level 14/15 leveling pet will now be 20/21. Go to the last battle in Gorgrond. If you have flight, just mount up and head straight over.
CYMRE BRIGHTBLADE- WoD Daily Battle #6
Anubisath Idol - 1/1/1
Leveling Pet (can be level 1) - anything
Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling - 1/2/2
Again, the strat I use here is not mine. This strat comes from Lapz Gaming, and I’ve never had this fail unless I did the swaps wrong. If it fails, heal up and start over. Honestly, once you understand how the swaps work and why, this is practically a 100% success rate. The only issue is if the leveling pet is weak to undead damage. In that case, you’ll want one with a few hundred HP…but everything else, a level 1 is fine.
And that’s it. Use your garrison hearth to go back, turn in your weekly quest for the stones, and if you have a bank in your garrison like I do, it’s a really handy place to go store your stones and handle any other pet-leveling business before returning to whatever else it is you do in the game.
Hope this was helpful. Once you get cozy with this rotation and can do it easily in about 30 minutes, consider adding in the MoP bosses so you can power-level more pets, taking advantage of the full hour on your buffs. I often level 5-6 pets from 1-25 off one set of the treats by going through all of the WoD fights and then move to the Panda ones to finish out my buff timers. Best wishes!
Nice writeup!
Interesting Ashlei strat. I use the Xu-Fu strat for Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling. The strat uses the Dragonling self destruct to kill the Dragonling, so all pet exp is split between the two leveling pets. It is pretty simple to remember and seems to work pretty well for me.
I have been using the WoD pet battle trainers to level chars from 50 to ~56/57 or so before going to SL. Makes the intro quest line for SL go faster. (I think.) With the Safari Hat, the WoD trainer battles and a few random wild pet battles on the way… I think I’m getting a character level about every 4 or 5 days.
Thank you for the excellent guide, Meriweather! A route like that is exactly what I was looking for. I have a handful of critters I need to get leveled so I can finish Creepy Critters (last thing I need for the meta).
Thankfully I do have a garrison rank 3, pet menagerie, and the safari hat. Plus I have rank 3 tower for quick portal access to all zones + garrison hearth + shipyard recall. Makes zooming around Draenor a breeze. I’ve also done all the WoD/Pandaria trainers back in the day but don’t remember any of it of course.
I used to be into pet battles, but stopped doing them around the time Legion came out and just now getting back into them. Seems like some of the strats have changed over the years (RIP old school chrominius + pandaren water spirit strat lol).
Thanks again!
I apologize for nitpicking such an excellent and comprehensive guide. Ordinarily I don’t correct this common misconception since I never want to discourage anyone from using other addons, but PetJournal Enhanced is not integrated or involved in Rematch at all. If you use Rematch in the “journal” mode (from the Pet Journal tab of the Collections window), absolutely all functionality of PetJournal Enhanced is hidden behind Rematch. Favorite filters, script filters, strong vs, tough vs, leveling queue, etc. are all being done by Rematch. There is still addon integration going on, like with breeds and breed addons, or td scripts, etc. But I’m afraid there’s no integration with PetJournal Enhanced and Rematch.
Never apologize for giving good information, Gello.
You’re a good gnome. /grin
Another thing i’d like to mention is a certain Calling in Shadowlands (the Training one that has a a follower from your Cov) also has a chance at giving us Pet stones (both the yellow leveling ones & the blue upgrade ones) when you loot the Dirty Glinting Object the trainee drops. I generally take some time when I realize whichever toon has this particular calling up since the Dirty Glinting Object can also give you pocket portals for each zone in Shadowlands. I’ll link Hazelnutty’s video since she better articulates how it works.
Since we’ve had a new-to-pet battles person posting, I thought I’d bump this so that the information is available near the top again.
So many excellent ideas! While there is nothing I can offer that has not already been suggested, there is one thought I would like to share. There are so many wonderful peeps in all the battle pets forums across the web, never hesitate to ask for ideas on any related topic. Sometimes is is natural to feel a bit of frustration - if this happens to you, use the community for support & ideas 