January 2013   « Archives | Current News »

The 5.2 PTR is now open and available to players, however most of the new Pet Battles features have not been implemented yet.

That doesn't mean the PTR doesn't have any neat information for pet collectors, though! The Pet Journal has been updated to include the three pets that were datamined towards the end of December. Here's a sneak peak at what's to come.

New TCG Pet
The Gusting Grimoire will be the common pet loot card from the upcoming TCG expansion, Betrayal of the Guardian. This new set is scheduled to be released in February of this year.


The Gusting Grimoire shares a similar look with the Lofty Libram, however unlike the Lofty Libram, the Grimoire has a different color scheme as well as slightly different Pet Battle attacks.

Possible Raid Dropped Pet
The second datamined pet is the Living Sandling. This interesting elemental companion is a drop from within the Throne of Thunder, according to the Pet Journal.


Wowhead categorizes the Throne of Thunder as a raid zone, so could this pet be the first pet to drop from current raid content? For now, we can only wonder which boss or creature it might come from!

Elite Battles Reward
Last but not least is the Red Panda. This crimson colored critter is listed as the reward for completing a quest. Currently the quest has not been implemented, however the nature of the quest was already revealed in the official 5.2 PTR patch notes.

"Elite Battle Pets" have a chance to spawn in the wild. Rather than a team of three, a player's pet team will face off against one elite pet! These new encounters will be part of a quest, and completing it will reward the Red Panda.


The Red Panda might still be a work in progress since it's currently classified as a humanoid with multiple humanoid attacks similar to the Curious Oracle Hatchling. We'll see if this pet receives any updates in the next PTR build.

Drrum, well-known within the pet collecting community for her amazing gallery of pet screenshots, has also been a great friend to WarcraftPets over the years. She's produced several pieces of artwork for our site, including 2012's holiday art.

It's our pleasure to help sponsor her contests and giveaways, one of which is beginning today!

Giveaway Details
Drrum's Winterspring Cub has wandered off and gotten lost! Please help find her and bring her home. The Lost Cub Hunt begins today, January 5th, 2013, and will last through January 14, 2013.

As a REWARD for her beloved cub's safe return, Drrum is giving away a very rare Spectral Kitten Loot Card (redeemable for a Spectral Tiger Cub) to one lucky participant who helps find her!

Review the clues found on the giveaway page (linked below), think hard, and determine where Drrum's lost cub can be found!

• Spectral Tiger Kitten Giveaway
• Drrum's Blog
• Drrum's Pet Gallery

Good luck, pet hunters!

Enjoy our monthly web comic created for WoW pet collectors! We feature a new World of Petcraft strip every month.


About the Artist
Meaghan McLaughlin is an aspiring artist and the author of "Nerds Illustrated." She's currently available to create custom WoW artwork.

UPDATE: Added the sources for each new datamined companion. There are also 4 new wild pets to capture in 5.2!

A new 5.2 PTR build was released. The latest patch includes 9 new datamined companions and a new achievement. [source]

• Sunfur Panda (BoP) - Quest reward
• Snowy Panda (BoP) - Quest reward
• Mountain Panda (BoP) - Quest reward
• Spectral Porcupette (BoU) - Quest reward (Isle of Giants)
• Stunted Direhorn (BoU) - Drop: Isle of Giants
• Sunreaver Micro-Sentry (BoP) - Drops from Sunreaver Construct (The Lighting Isle)
• Living Sandling (BoP) - Drop: Throne of Thunder
• Zandalari Hatchling (BoP) - Drop: Isle of Giants
• Son of Animus (BoP) - Drop: Throne of Thunder

New Wild Pets

• Elder Python
• Electrified Razortooth
• Swap Croaker
• Thundertail Flapper

All of these new wild battle pets make their home on the Isle of Lightning.

Elite Pets Achievement
Fabled Pandaren Tamer was confirmed by Mumper on Twitter to be the new Elite Battle Pets achievement. [source]

As mentioned in the 5.2 PTR patch notes, players will have a chance to encounter an Elite Pet in the wild. These fearsome wild pets will be standalone "boss" battles.

A quest to help track your progress will be available, and upon completion the reward will be the Red Panda companion!

Our good friends over at WoWTCGLoot and Wowhead have joined forces to present everyone with an amazing giveaway contest. Here are all the prizes that will be awarded.

• Grand Prize (1): 1x Tyrael's Hilt
• First Place (5): 2x Feldrake and 3x Magic Rooster Egg
• Second Place (10): 5x Foam Sword Rack and 5x D.I.S.C.O.
• Third Place (10): 10x Purple Puffer

You can enter the giveaway by simply commenting on this Wowhead post answering the following question:

"What have you been most excited to achieve/acquire in-game?"

This contest ends on January 16th at 11:59PM (PDT), so don't delay! Submit your response for a chance at Mini Tyrael and other awesome prizes.

2013 WoW TCG Loot Giveaway

There are currently 10 known Elite Battle Pets, as detailed on Wowhead.

These specially marked opponents are requirements for the quest Beasts of Fable, which rewards the Red Panda! But that's not all. Completing this quest will earn you the achievement Fabled Pandaren Tamer, and unlocks the Beasts of Fable daily quest.

Three additional uniquely colored panda pets (pictured right) have a chance to drop from the Fabled Pandaren Pet Supplies. If you think the Red Panda is a must have companion, you'll definitely want to complete the Beasts of Fable daily quest...on a daily basis!

Challenging an Elite Battle Pet
These named pets are marked with a notable orange paw print, making them stand out from standard wild pets. You won't have to search far and wide for them, though, since they remain stationary in a specific spawn location. Currently they have been found only in Pandaria, with one or two in each zone.

In an Elite Battle, there is only one pet that you must defeat, but each fearsome foe is legendary quality and can range between level 23 and 25. This could make for a tough encounter!

Here are some additional details about a battle with one of these pets.

• You cannot capture an Elite Battle Pet.
• These encounters are coded so that you will not be broken out of the battle by PVP. [source]
• Forfeiting or losing the battle will not cause the Elite Pet to despawn. Elite Pets despawning on the PTR is currently a bug.
• These pets cannot be attacked or killed using player spells and abilities.

So continue to train hard with your pet team — when 5.2 comes, you'll have some serious opponents to face!

5 new possible pets were datamined from the 5.2 PTR. [source]

• Ji-Kun Hatchling (BoP) - Drops from Ji-Kun in Throne of Thunder
• Pygmy Direhorn (BoU)
• Pierre
• Direhorn Runt (BoU)
• Spawn of G'nathus (BoU) - Drops from Zandalari Dinomancer on Isle of Giants

Wowhead has a 3D preview of the model for Pierre, which looks like a cooking stove, as well as an unassigned pet model simply named "Python Pet".

According to the Pet Journal, the model for the Python Pet is assigned to the new wild pet, Elder Python, found on the Isle of Lightning in 5.2.

The official 5.2 PTR patch notes were recently updated to include some changes to a few pet abilities, as well as a more detailed explanation of the "Elite Pet Battles" quest and rewards. [source]

• Supercharge now provides a 125% damage bonus, down from 150%, and lasts for 1 round (no cooldown change).
• Prowl now lasts for 2 rounds.
• Crystal Overload now lasts for 2 rounds.
• Focus Chi now lasts for 1 round.
• Sprite Darter Hatchling: Evanescence and Arcane Blast have swapped ability positions.
• Nether Roach is now a real roach and can now survive the apocalypse.
• Battle Pet Bandages now stack to 25 and are Bind to Account.
• Battle-Stones now have a chance to be awarded from PvP Pet Battles.
• Pets whose color schemes change each time they are summoned have returned. Older pets with this behavior now have it back, as well as some newcomers.
• Taming the World now lists its reward correctly in the Achievements pane.
• Level-capped players will now have a chance to earn Lesser Charms of Good Fortune after winning a pet battle versus a pet within 5 levels of the highest level pet on their team. Higher-level pets will offer a better chance to earn a charm.
• Winning a pet battle versus a team within 5 levels of the player's highest-level pet will now award player experience.
• Fleeing a pet battle will no longer despawn the pet that was being battled, but doing so will now inflict some damage on the fleeing pet battle team.
• Disconnecting from a pet battle will once again respawn the pets you were fighting.
• Any pet that has been killed in a pet battle will now never respawn.
• A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops.
• Elite Battle Pets have been added to the game world. These rare pets will spawn alone against an entire team. The Beasts of Fable taming quest will now become available from Gentle San or Sara Finkleswitch once Aki the Chosen has been defeated. Defeating all of the fabled beasts will award the new Red Panda pet, while completing the associated daily quest has a chance to award the rare brown, white, and orange variants.
• Please note: Many of these changes have not yet come to the PTR, but will be available soon.

There are still bugs being ironed out on the PTR, so more changes and updates might be coming in the future. We'll be sure to bring you the latest, so stay tuned!

Our team has been hard at work on a variety of major site upgrades. Among them are some exciting new improvements for your pet collection.

Improved Collection Tracking
Topping our list are significant improvements to collection tracking. Once you've had a chance to update your collection, it will show:

• Pet Levels - Found in the lower righthand corner of each pet.
• Pet Rarities - Denoted by the color of a pet's border.
• Pet Stats, Breed and Gender - Available when hovering over a pet.
• Pet Names - Seen in bold when hovering over any pet that's been named.
• Duplicate Pets - Any duplicates you've collected are lightly shaded in orange. However, duplicates do not count toward your pet total.

Along with these updates, you'll now be able to use our pet filters to filter your list of collected pets by rarity. And of course, you can apply additional filters to break down your collection even further.

In addition, your pet collection can now be accessed on its own page, rather than being buried within your profile. This makes it easier to share your collection with friends. Check your Account Management page for the link.

Pet Profiles Show YOUR Pets
Whenever you visit a pet's profile, if you've collected that pet, its stat calculator (found under the Battle Info tab) will automatically adjust to your collected pet's stats. It will show your collected pet's level, rarity and breed. This allows you to easily adjust the stats of your own pets!

Pet Collection Stats
As you browse though pet collections (your own and others), you'll notice a table featuring some juicy new pet collection data.

Ever wonder what percentage of your collection is made up of rares? Or how many pets you've raised to the max level? This table tells all!



But wait a minute... what's that "pet score" thingy...?

Introducing Pet Score
Pet score is a numerical assessment of your pet collecting efforts. Your score is primarily determined by the total number of unique pets you've collected. But your pets' quality and their levels also play a role. Here's the formula:


Duplicate pets are not counted toward pet score in any way. We only count the highest level pet of the highest rarity you've collected. In addition, duplicates are not factored into pet stats. More info

IMPORTANT! Until you update your collection, your pet score will be zero. Once most people have had a chance to update their collections and unlock their pet scores, we'll begin using this value as the primary ranking mechanism for user lists on our site.

Retired Features
To make these collection enhancements possible, we've been forced to retire a few of our other methods for updating your pet collection:

• WarcraftPets Express - We know many of you enjoyed using the addon, but it's incompatible with our new system.
• Manual Updating - Yes, that gigantic list is a thing of the past.

All pet collections recorded on our site are now imported via the official WoW Armory. This means that you'll need to enter your in-game data (if you haven't done so already) to continue maintaining your pet collection. Limiting collections to Armory imports has the added bonus of making our data more consistent (i.e., no more false collections).

Other Updates
What could be better than all of these sweet new pet collection updates? More updates!

• Ability Autolink - We've added an "Ability" button to our forums and commenting UI to easily autolink to pet abilities. (NOTE: If you don't see the button, refresh your browser.)
• New Pet Filters - In addition to collection rarity, we've added a couple more pet filters under Pet Properties. New filters include "Is new" and "Has alternate skins".
• Guide to Pet Breeds - We've pulled the "Pet Breed" section out of our Guide to Pet Battles, expanded it, and developed it as a stand-alone guide.

A Special Thanks
None of these updates would've been possible without Weena, our Lead Web Developer. He works diligently behind the scenes to make this site a success. Here's to another job well done, Weena!

And while I'm handing out the thanks, I'd also like to thank our Site MVPs for all of their support. You guys are definitely one of the reasons why WarcraftPets remains the best site around for pet enthusiasts. Thanks!

If fishing is your forte (and even if it's not), you'll be glad to hear that four new fishing pets have been datamined from the latest PTR build! [source]

• Tiny Red Carp (BoP)
• Tiny Blue Carp (BoP)
• Tiny Green Carp (BoP)
• Tiny White Carp (BoP)

Mumper confirmed on Twitter that each pet can be fished up from unique areas in Pandaria. [source]

With so many zones and areas in Pandaria, it will be quite the task to figure out where each of these pets drop from. Better get your fishing gear ready!

A new PTR build was released and datamining has revealed three new raptor pets. [source]

• Zandalari Anklerender (BoP)
• Zandalari Footslasher (BoP)
• Zandalari Toenibbler (BoP)

These baby raptors will be joining the previously datamined Zandalari Kneebiter, which brings us to a total of four new raptor pets coming in patch 5.2.

Needless to say, these aptly named companions seem to be fixated on our feet and ankles. Watch where you step!

So Many New Pets!
With these latest additions, there are now 23 possible new pets coming in patch 5.2. There are also 4 new wild pets to capture!

Keep in mind that some companions may not make it into the release of 5.2, but we certainly hope to see all of them in the future.

Check out all the datamined pets for 5.2