Gotta Catch 'em All

pokemon3I recently had an e-mail from somebody who wanted to hear more stories about my pets… where I got them, how they got their names, when I use them, how they fit in to my character roleplayingwise, etc. Now on the one hand, I was a little worried about fulfilling this request, because I feel like I’ve already talked about most of this at some point. But on the other hand, it was probably a while ago and I’ve gained a lot of new readers since then, and like most hunters I turn into a proud gushing grandma when asked about my pets, especially seeing as I am a self-professed Pokemon hunter who freaks out over pets.

So let’s talk. And if you’ve heard this all already, feel free to skip it. >.>

tuxsquareTux was the first. The first pet ever. He was level eight and I was level ten and for some reason he didn’t leave me when I didn’t feed him for such a long time– since back then pets ran away when they were unhappy. My adventuring companion throughout most of Vanilla WoW, he has never been my first pet to hit the level cap of the day, but he has always hit it eventually.

Sometimes I get this urge to swap Tux for one of those crazy rainbow owls. Because he’s a special pet and it feels like it would somehow be a weird way of “evolving” him to a form more befitting of him. I could still name him Tux, and it would still “be” Tux. But then I look at the big gray featherhead, the same ball of pixels I’ve had since my first week of World of Warcraft ever, and I can’t do it.

To sate my longing for the rainbow owl though, I tamed one on another character. >.>

Tux spends most of his time in the stable these days, which is sort of sad, but unfortunately he is not a very PvE-viable pet and I haven’t done any serious PvP in a loooong time. He’s pretty dang good at doing dailies and stuff though. *nods* He also tends to be the pet I pick for screenshots and posing, because it’s supposed to be Tawyn & Tux, dang it!

Named for the mascot of the main operating system I game on… heck, the only operating system I played WoW on, period, for the first 69 levels of Tawyn’s existence..

lockesquare Locke was the rare spawn I tamed at 4am server time. There were two reasons: one, he was teal. My favorite color. ’twas a given. Two, I was reading hunter blogs regularly by now (heck, I was writing one) and I had come to the sad realization that a lot of people disliked hunters who instanced with flying pets because they had big flappy wings that got in the way. I wanted a backup pet to be able to take into instances who wouldn’t annoy anyone, and the kitty was the winner.

Locke was the Big Bad Raiding Pet through most of Burning Crusade until towards the end when he was replaced by… the next pet I shall be talking about. It actually got to the point where most of my guildies saw me as Tawyn & Locke instead of Tawyn & Tux, which I sort of had mixed feelings about. I mean, I loved Locke, but it seemed odd. Locke also became the butt of a solid handful of inside jokes that still exist among my friends’ circle, the best being that he was going to leave me, don a monocle, top hat, and dastardly mustache, and become the new endboss of Heroic Mech. Long story.

These days he has been largely stabled in favor of Wash, although he comes out sometimes for nostalgia’s sake. The last time I brought him to a raid, though, there were five hunters there all told and every single one had a cat and one of them was the exact same skin as Locke. It bugged me enough that halfway through during a break I went and swapped him out for my raptor. >.> Sorry, Locke. It was really confusing though… all those kitties… /twitch. My Locke was the only one going Big Red though. <3 He is named either after John Locke or Locke Cole… take your pick!

eltaninsquareEltanin is the Windserpent who became the Burning Crusade raiding pet after Locke. Lightning Breath for the win! I love this guy– beautiful skin and I just adore windserpents. I went into ZG solo to tame him, the story of which I chronicled in this blog!

Sadly with the advent of 3.0 he no longer was a good raid/instancing pet so while he alternated with my other pets during my leveling, he has been stuck at level 79 for a while. I love to pull him out of the stable sometimes and strut around with him, just because I think he’s gorgeous. I wish I could use him more often.

He was named after the brightest star in the constellation Draco.

washsquareWash has a long story to him. As I’m sure most of you lovely folks have gathered, he’s rather near and dear to my heart, even though I’d released him for some time and didn’t re-tame him until recently. He is my current raiding/instancing pet, partially because I am so attached to him, partially because I simply got tired of having a cat like everyone else (again– sorry Locke!), and partially because his DPS is phenominal– I maintain that he performs better than my cat does in my experience, largely I think because of Savage Rend. When it crits, it increases the damage he deals by 10% for 30 seconds. When you are a Beast Master hunter as I am, this crits a lot, and the cooldown is down to something like 46 seconds, so it’s up– a LOT of the time.

Mostly I just think Wash is adorable. I’ve always liked dinosaurs. Protoceratops are my favorite, but for the lack of them in the game, a raptor will do.

…and, come on, you mean the story behind his name isn’t obvious enough? =P

nachisquareMy fifth stable slot is currently in a state of flux. Usually it’s occupied by a tenacity pet to make up for my lack of one, but over the past several months a bear, a rhino, an eagle, a wolf, a turtle, and now currently a teal worm (named Nachi) have all resided there. Who will get the fifth stable slot permanently? I dunno. A part of me really wants Loque’nahak, not so much because I like the look, so much as it seems to be the ultimate badge of Beast Master hunter pride. (Although, I do like the look, but not to the point that I would get him otherwise, if it wasn’t such a symbol of my favorite spec.) Still, I’ve circled the Basin a bazillion times over the past few months while herbing– yes, following “the route” and keeping a casual eye out– and I’ve never seen hide nor hair, not to mention then I wouldn’t have any room for my token tenacity pet, so… I’m really not sure!

From a roleplaying standpoint, Tawyn considers all her pets to be very important to her, and her closest friends. She only keeps them with stable masters that she trusts (she’s good friends with the dwarven hunters in Stormwind) and the stories I write about her often involve multiple pets all out at once… hey, I can dream, right?

Next up, if enough people are interested… the stories behind the pets of my other hunters!

…don’t give me that look. We’ve already established that I’m a Crazy Pet Lady.

19 thoughts on “Gotta Catch 'em All”

  1. My personal favorite pet was the birds in Blade’s Edge. They look like the druid flight form so when waltzing around town it looked like I had a druid as my sidekick. That and I loved the birds for their annoying abilities in PvP. It is very hard for people to change targets when they have a large flappy thing in their faces, as you said.

  2. I would love to hear stories of the pets on your other hunters 😀
    (Guess that’s just the writer/RPer in me :D)

    I use my spirit beat most of the time now because I love her (Yes HER :P) to death and she’s sorta special to the background of Zhire.

  3. /Sigh , i want to Spirit Beast , i been after that thing for months .
    It denies me to be its master , and i have a cool name picked out for it too….

  4. I actually tamed the spirit beast on Day 3 of my search >.>

    The best time I’ve found is to go searching early in the morning on a weekday. First day that I did that, I found Loque just hanging around on my first fly around. But then again, this is on a low population server. BUT…I have done the same thing to tame Humar. Waking up at 5am to tame a pet…I must be crazy too 😛

  5. I got my spirit beast by accident… I had misplaced ((read abandonded)) my gorilla Boomer. And I was doing runs throught the coilfang instances for one of my guilds priests. Just cause I’m me and therefor weird, I knew that the black gorilla’s were sometimes higher lvl then the grayish white ones. So i rode to were I knew only one would spawn so others around wouldn’t aggor and stun me while tameing ((yes yes I have favorite tameing spots and remember them.)) so I ride up tame the one I want and mount up. Lo and behold there is the lazer kitteh one fast dismount and /abandon later I have lopu traped and am tameing all the while typeing omg like 40 times in party chat…. yeah it was fun.

  6. Since I leveled as a duo with my wife’s mage, aggro holding is key for me, and so I went out of my way to tame Uhk’loc in Un’goro. I only just picked up one of the demon-looking wolves from Zul’drak and got him to 80 when I discovered the cursed spawn of har’koa, and now I’m torn. Awesome looking wolf versus awesome looking kitty? *sigh*

    And of course, I know full damn well I’ll have my rare spawn gorilla out when Loque will spawn in front of me and I’ll be forced to make a terrible decision. And I’ll probably abandon him because hell, he respawns on a _schedule_.

  7. Tenacity Pet? Monkey. Until worms can Thunderstomp anyway. 😉

    And no Devilsaur? Been a while since I’ve tried the Raptors, but OmNomNomNom was named for what he is and what he does…. and seeing him get BIGGER than some bosses (built in special that makes him grow, THEN Bestial Wrath) is always amusing. 🙂

  8. I got pretty lucky with Loque shortly after writing this macro to help me find him:

    /cleartarget
    /targetexact Loque’nahak
    # more /target as needed…
    /stopmacro [noexists]
    /run PlaySoundFile(“Sound\interface\levelup2.wav”)

    I’m on a pretty crowded server, so I gave up camping him early on and just flew around doing Oracles dailies. Caught him about 2 days before I dinged exalted, so I guess we were just fated to be together.

    As for my pets, I can’t leave them cooped up in the stables for too long when I they’re not with me. I tend to release them instead. But, I know their usual usual haunts, and visit from time to time.

  9. My personal favorite pet is and forever will be wolf, and in 3.1 hes raid viable… what what omg I’ll never use another pet again

  10. OMG, just had to reply here due to your worm name. Once a geek, always a geek. My worm (the transparent (translucent?) one from Sons of Hodir dailies) is named Welchia. I wonder if our worms are… related.

  11. *giggles with glee*

    This is fantastic! I knew you’d be into your pets as much as you’re into your hunters – thank you for the detail Pike 🙂 /two thumbs up

    Psst … new spirit beast – Gondria – now open to tame in Zul’Drak. Looks like a mini spectral tiger mount… very shiny

  12. Keep the history coming!

    It’s great to find other hunters who feel that deeper connection with animals they run with. Max, my ghostclaw lynx (we were both level ten when we met), have been together since the beginning as well. Last week when I walked into Ulduar for the first time, it was Max who was at my side.

  13. This may sound dumb, but I like my cat. It may not be the highest DPS right now, but they just move right. Plus Samhain is one of the ghost cats. I brought him up from level 20. I’ve tried other pets, but I just don’t feel right if I am dungeon running and he’s not there.

    There is one exception. Frank the Tank (Gorrilladin extrodinare). But he’s different. He’s there for farming and “Doing work”. Getting all the nice animals together so I can grop a volley on their heads.

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