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How I'm Becoming the Very Best: Winning at WoW pet battles, Part 1
I've been spending an inordinate amount of time lately in the game playing pet battles. As in, hours upon hours of having my monsters fight other monsters, all while chain watching Dexter via On Demand. It's a vicious cycle, something where I can be supremely entertained, multitask, yet still have the freedom to press pause (literally and figuratively) to get up and walk away to do other things. Although if I was being honest with myself that whole "walking away" thing really doesn't happen too much, especially at 2am when you only have a few more kills to get yet another pet up to level 25. And that's what we're going to talk about for a few weeks -- strategies to get your pets up to level 25 and beating all the pet trainers. Getting started The base of your journey to becoming the very best starts with your first pet. Go with something forgiving, and don't try to get an exotic pet with strange abilities right off the bat. In fact, don't try to get those until your very last step. Instead pick a pet that has easy to understand attacks, maybe a little flow to them, and something that you'll learn inside and out to help you all along your trials. For me that pet is the Darkmoon Zeppelin. It's a mechanical pet that does increased damage to beasts, and has the delightful ability to revive itself after its first death in a pet battle. That essentially means you get a big screwup button that lets you recover from the majority of misktakes you'll make. The Zeppelin also had the added bonus of having a gigantic bomb of death you can toss on an enemy to causes a lot of hurt after a couple rounds.
How to get started building your own battle pet arsenal
No, we aren't talking about hunters today: the battle pet system allows all of us to have and fight with pets through a special battle pet interface. And though you're not likely find mention of pet battles before you hit Pandaria, you can start participating in pet battles as early as level 5. And even if you aren't a fan of the "gotta catch 'em all!" game on which the system is modeled, we think pet battles are a fun break from leveling -- and since you're walking right by battle pets to collect and fight as you wander through each zone, why not have your battle pets advancing at the same time you are? The concept behind battle pets is simple; your battle pets fight other battle pets throughout the game in a turn-based format, gaining levels (up to 25) and skills (each pet has 6). Whenever you see another battle pet -- or battle pet trainer -- you can fight to gain experience and, of course, the glory of victory. If that sounds interesting, let's get started on the road to becoming the fiercest pet tamer in Azeroth!
My first day with Mists of Pandaria's pet battles
Ever since Blizzard announced pet battles back at BlizzCon, I've been really excited about the feature. Oddly, though, I haven't tried it until today. I've been so caught up with other beta (and general World of Warcraft) activities that I've let the one feature I'm looking forward to most pass me by. This morning, I set absolutely everything else aside so I could take a crack at it. The fun of it was the fact that I didn't even know where to get started. I've been following the countless pet battle guides floating around the internet closely enough to have a basic grip on the system's mechanics, but the first step, the starting point, never stuck with me. Where do I get the training? How much does it cost? Luckily, finding that information in-game was easy enough. The trainers' being located in a capital city seemed like the obvious answer, so I stopped in Stormwind and checked in with a city guard. The guard was able to direct me to the pet battle trainer just like any class or profession trainer. An icon was placed on my minimap, leading me straight to Audrey Burnhep, the Alliance pet battle trainer. Between you and me, that seems like a seriously misplaced pop culture reference. What does Audrey Hepburn have to do with pet battles? Maybe she has a cockfighting history I don't know about.
