Collecting still... Collecting?

[Nevaxe]

So with mop coming out i have a question.
Currently your learned pets range from common to rare etc. Is it still worth collecting the pets now before MOP?
Like in MOP when u go find pets to capture are they the same ones u farm for or buy from vendors? Does that make them less rare or does it make it easier to get all of em? Or are they different from the regular ones ( IE: their adding way more new pets? )

[Lysi]

I'm not in beta, but I've read most of the posts on this forum. They're adding many new pet models, but even if/when the pet looks the same as a non-wild one, it sounds like it will count as another pet in terms of the collection. I doubt they'd make a formerly difficult to obtain pet appearance easy to get. Some pets will be high level and you'll need to work up your pets to battle them, some you won't be able to capture even if you can battle them for experience. And keep in mind anything in the beta can change, so you don't really want to make assumptions at this point.

I'm still collecting any pet I don't have yet on any character. What I'm not doing is collecting the same pet on multiple characters. It sounds like they'll all be together in the pet journal, you can use from any character. So if I have it on one character, I'm done, like when I got the ice chip on my DK a few days ago, I stopped doing the midsummer dungeon.

[Quintessence]

Lysi pretty much summed it up!

Nothing is changing with the rarity of existing pets. I would continue collecting as usual since there doesn't appear to be any change to how currently existing pets will be obtained in MoP. A rare zone-dropped companion will still be a rare zone-dropped companion in MoP, and likewise with all the pets from achievements, vendors, quests, etc.

[Nevaxe]

Ok thanks Time to get me Mr. Grubby

[Dementron]

Since we'll be able to cage pets from our journal and sell them, then put them back in the journal by learning them on a different character, what I would suggest is collecting every pet you can get, but NOT learning pets you already have on a different character. That's what I'm doing; saving repeats, including (especially) bop holiday pets, until Mists comes out.

[Kagalii]

Since we'll be able to cage pets from our journal and sell them, then put them back in the journal by learning them on a different character, what I would suggest is collecting every pet you can get, but NOT learning pets you already have on a different character. That's what I'm doing; saving repeats, including (especially) bop holiday pets, until Mists comes out.

I am not sure I quite understand how the caging/relearning pets works. If you know how it works could you please explain it in more detail. I'm not playing beta but my friend is and I asked him to try caging a vendor-bought pet, then sell/destroy the cage, then buy the same pet and try to learn it but he couldn't. It said he already knew the pet. So I find to be quite confusing.

[Quintessence]

I am not sure I quite understand how the caging/relearning pets works. If you know how it works could you please explain it in more detail. I'm not playing beta but my friend is and I asked him to try caging a vendor-bought pet, then sell/destroy the cage, then buy the same pet and try to learn it but he couldn't. It said he already knew the pet. So I find to be quite confusing.

This is something that's probably still a work in progress on the beta, so it's somewhat confusing and the mechanics could change before the release of MoP. Please bear with me as I attempt to explain! (Sorry for the wall of text explanation!)

There are currently two categories of pet items:

• - The original pet item (such as a Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot for example)
  OR
  - A caged version of the pet

If you are playing on a character that already knew the summoning spell for the pet (prior to the existence of the Pet Journal), the original pet item will be classified as "already known" and you will get an error if you attempt to purchase another one and train it.

If you create a new character or play on one that didn't learn the summoning spell from the actual pet item, you can purchase the item from a vendor and learn it, thus adding a second version to your Pet Journal.

The caged version of a pet can be learned by any toon, regardless if they already knew the summoning spell for that pet.

Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot example -

• My druid bought and learned the pet. She can no longer learn it from the vendored version. My hunter alt has not bought it from the vendor, so she can learn the vendor version. I would then have two versions of the rocket bot pet in my journal.
  
  If for some reason all my toons have already learned the Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot item but I still want to add a second one to my Pet Journal, I can find another player to buy/trade with. They would cage their version of the bot and trade it to me. This tradable version will train the same pet but does not have the same item ID or spell ID as the original vendored version, so anyone can use it.

In the case where your friend caged a pet then sold/destroyed it, in order to re-add it to his collection he would need to log onto an alt toon (that didn't buy the pet from a vendor and learn it) and from there he can buy + train the pet again. OR he could find a caged version of the same pet for sale on the AH or find another player to trade/buy from.


Side note: The existence of the "already known" error stems from the fact that collections were originally unique for each character, and collections were tracked using the spellbook companion tab. Toon #1 might have had X, Y, Z pets in their collections, while Toon #2 had A, B, C pets. Two different characters, two different collections. This changed in the beta.

The spellbook tab was removed and all collections across all toons were merged together into one giant collection in the Pet Journal, but toons that learned certain pets (from the actual pet items) were still flagged as already knowing those pets from their unique collection and therefore couldn't relearn them from the original pet item. They have to use a caged version or use an alt character from here on out.

It's not clear if this is a bug that will be fixed or if this is intentional.

[Kagalii]

Thanks Quintessence, I think that cleared it up. I hope the "already known" bug gets worked out before it goes live because I have some duplicate BOP event pets sitting in my banks that I wish to trade to friends by caging then relearning from the bop pet item.