WoW has a pretty cool little time waster called the Battle Pet System. It is an obvious rip off of Pokemon but it apparently hasn’t pissed off Nintendo so all good.
At first I was dismissive of the whole thing. I mean it’s blatantly designed to enhance the already crack-like nature of the game and keep people playing and that annoyed me, and I was never into Pokemon anyway, but now I have a confession to make:
I’m kinda obsessed by Battle Pets.
Like all other aspects of the game, Battle Pets have their own selection of Achievements, and I long ago fell into the trap of seeking out more and more Achievements, so here were a brand new selection for me to obsess over.
They range from ‘Collect X number of Battle Pets‘, to ‘Win X PvP Battle Pet duels‘, and everything in between. I’m not really interested in the PvP ones but the collecting ones are right up my alley.
Most of the Pet collecting achievements are pretty easy, and simply involve capturing pets from scattered around Azeroth & Outland. But a few of the pets are ridiculous to find.
I only have 2 more pets to get to complete the achievement ‘Kalimdor Safari‘, which will in turn then complete the achievement ‘World Safari‘ and grant me the title Zookeeper. But these 2 pets are proving very elusive.
One is the Qiraji Guardling, which only comes out during the Midsummer Fire Festival, which is a week away, so not too bad there, but the other is the infamous Minfernal. My God catching this pet is pissing me off.
It only spawns in one little area in Felwood, and with no discernible pattern that I have been able to figure out. I currently have 4 toons, on 4 different servers, parked over the area and switch between them hoping that one has spawned. And I’m not alone in that plan either, there is always someone else hovering over the are when I appear, adding to the frustration.
I’ve even made the almost blasphemous decision that if I see one on the AH I will just buy the damn thing, regardless of cost. I’ve avoided buying any so far but for this one screw principles! And I usually try to avoid collecting Poor quality pets (they range from poor to rare) but if the Minfernal is Poor quality I don’t give a crap, I’ll take it!
My favourite pet collecting experience is actually getting the Tiny Shale Spider. It drops from a rarespawn elemental spider called Jadefang, which lives on a ledge in a cave in Deepholm. I camped this ledge for days and on the night of the weekly reset it finally spawned – with only 2 minutes to go! I almost had a heart attack as I furiously killed Jadefang, looted the pet, added it to my collection, and logged out, all before the auto reset 🙂
I suspect I’ll have a similar experience if the Minfernal ever appears. It probably isn’t good for my health, but it’ll be exciting enough to make up for the incredibly annoying hunt!
17/6/13 – UPDATE – I found a Minfernal!!! Oh the feeling LOL. I thought I’d have a quick check when Crystal called that dinner was ready, just for the hell of it, and holy crap there it was! It was uncommon but I’m happy with that. As I posted above, I had 3 other toons in position over Felwood, so I decided I didn’t need them there anymore and logged onto each one to send them home. And lo and behold, there was another Minfernal! I could not believe it! I swooped down hoping for a rare, but is was a poor, so I cancelled the battle and left it alone so that someone else could grab it. My good deed for the day 🙂
