leveling pets without a lvl 25.

[Mirres]

I see leveling guides here that suggest you use two level 25 pets to speed-level a third pet. While that is good information, it doesn't help me right now. I just came back to WoW, and pet battles are new to me.

What is the best way to level pets if you don't have a level 25 pet? my highest level is only level 9 right now, and the level grind is getting boring already.

Thanks for any advice!

[Luciandk]

The best I can recommend is to take advantage of the tamer dailies, even the lowbie ones. They reward a LOT of pet xp.

A pet just needs to soak damage once in order to be eligible to get xp. Then kill the tamerpets with your highest pet.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6893830755

[Mirres]

this is excellent to know! thanks for some reason I thought you had to finish something before they came available as dailies. I don't know how I missed that..

[Quintessence]

this is excellent to know! thanks for some reason I thought you had to finish something before they came available as dailies. I don't know how I missed that..

You need to defeat the Grand Master of a continent before the dailies for that continent unlock. Even for the lower level Tamer battles.

Example: If I want to battle the Tamer in Ashenvale everyday, I would need to defeat the Grand Master Tamer in Winterspring first. After that the daily in Ashenvale becomes available, as do all of the Kalimdor Tamer dailies.

That is, unless they changed it so the Tamer dailies unlock as soon as you complete the initial quest to defeat them?? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Mirres]

Well stuffing. on the plus side, I only have a couple levels before I can defeat the first grand master.

[Tekulve2012]

Hi
There is an app called pet guru that will tell you what pets to collect by zone.. it lists battle powers and attacks of all pets
This site has the same info and the forums help out a lot
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If you have the gold on any character, players often level up a pet and sell it at lvl 25- depending on the server it is costly
and not usually worth it unless it's a rare one anyway (anubisath idol is selling at a (relatively) great price now and it's still a great pet)

The yellow moth is a cheapie on the AH that powers through battles quickly-especially aquatic- and can be used as uncommon-
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if you have 100-300 gold (the price i often see for it now), you should buy a Terrible Turnip which has "weakening blow" to allow you to catch pets weakened to 1hp
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My overall advice is to focus on and enjoy the collecting aspect (catching rares when you have the patience) as you go to new zones and collect more powerful pets, defeat tamers and use this site, an app or petsear.ch to watch your collection mature and see which pets are fastest or most powerful
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[Dakaf]

Only problem with buying a high level pet is that you have to have one of equal or higher level in order to learn it.

[Demoiselle]

Getting your first team of pets to 25 is a slog. That's all there is to it, really.

The one piece of advice that I read, which I thought was good, was to get started on as second team as soon as possible. If your main team are level 9s, pick out some 1s and 2s and get them up to 4 or 5 by weaving them into battles with your 9s. When your main team is level 17, get those 9s to 12.

That way when you finally hit 25 with your main team, you'll already have a head start on building a stable.

[Abyl1]

And don't forget to continually tame new pets at the highest level possible! No need to train a squirrel from 1-25 if you can get one in the 20s and skip all the low levels!

[Mirres]

Some great advice here, thank you all! in my reading, I have a couple more specific questions:

is win trading a viable strategy?

what are pet breeds, how do I find them, and do I really need to care?

Thanks again!

[Luciandk]

You cant wintrade in random pet battles. And yes, breeds is quite important.

http://www.warcraftpets.com/wow-pet-battles/breeds/

[Yalina]

Breeds are important, as that little bit of speed/power/health may make all the difference in a close fight.

I think there's a few schools of thought about *when* they become important. One thought is that if you capture the "right" breed off the bat, it'll save you time later. The other side is that if you think pet battling is a slog now, hunting for a rare of the "right" breed is going to make you want to tear your hair out.

Personally, by the time I found out about breeds, I had already grown attached my pets. My Darkshore Cub is the "wrong" breed. But I can't replace him, as Lil Beary has been there with me for this entire crazy pet battle experience. Would it have been better to have captured the "right" breed up front? Probably. But I'm the crazy person who's far too emotionally attached to her Darkshore cub. I had no issues replacing my Emerald Proto Whelp with the "right" breed, once I finally found one.

There's also a big grey area when it comes to "right" breeds. You'll find a number of threads on these forums and elsewhere about what is the "right" breed for a particular pet. Some it's obvious - grab the P/P Emerald Proto Whelp. Others it's less so - how are you intending to use that Flayer Youngling?

Since you're starting out, I vote worry about rarity first and breed second when it comes to capturing wild pets. Most people don't have the emotional difficulty replacing pets like I do.

Aside from breed, definitely level more than one team. My core team of three (which included Lil Beary) could take down most of the tamers, but having a second team make things a lot easier when I encountered certain teams. You'll be able to overpower most of the tamers in those early rounds simply by having rares at the same level or slightly higher. That becomes more difficult with the Northrend tamers when you'll have to start paying attention to the matchups.

[Anasa]

I had a huge selection of pets already going in to MoP, so I had a lot of choices.

When I decided to get "serious" about pet battling (after my 3rd 90, daily burnout, etc), I did some research on what people were using to powerlevel later on as a way to pick my first team.

My first three pets to 25 were: Anubisath Idol, Pandaren Air Spirit, Onyxian Whelpling

Between the three of them, I had close to zero downtime. They all could heal themselves, and had a variety of move types available. The Anubisath is a plodder, but he gets the job done against almost any wild team or tamer.

With very little downtime, it was pretty easy to find a place in any appropriate zone that had wild pets tightly packed together.

Those first couple pets to 25 take the absolute longest. You have to just grind it out the hard way. Once you have those strong first 2 or 3, it takes less than an hour to get an additional one to 25. And then another. And another.

'fecklessleader' on blogspot has a couple of really good guides for both beginning pet leveling and speed-leveling once you have some dailies unlocked.

[Mirres]

I think most of the pets I'm using right now are "breedless" ones that you can only have one in your collection. Core hound, lil xt, frosty, etc. I'll start looking at breeds of the wild ones I'm catching, but I don't think my first team(s) will need to worry about it.

That said, I will absolutely watch for it in the vendor pets I have, replace the cheap ones for good breeds whenever I'm at the vendor.

Thank you all so much for helping me figure this out! it is a bit of a slog to get the levels, but I think once I have access to dailies it will go a little faster. I hope.