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Minipet Mania

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I figured since my last few posts were so focused on minipets– the bat minipet in particular– I should at least discuss my thoughts on them a little.

So, minipets. I’ve really liked them ever since I started playing WoW. I say “really like” instead of “love” here because I never really considered myself to be a diehard collector. I just liked having some fun minipets. My first ever minipet was the Westfall Chicken, when I was about level 8 or so. My sister showed me how to get it and helped me set up a /chicken macro to spam. I still have that macro in Tawyn’s macro list. The Westfall Chicken followed me everywhere until one day I found an adorable Mechanical Squirrel on the Auction House for a whopping 40 silver. I spent all my cash on it. I was broke but happy. My boyfriend thought I was nuts for spending that kinda money on a pet.

Then came the Children’s Week Quests and you had the option of getting one of three minipets, or five gold. Five gold! I would be rich!

…yeah, forget that. I wanted Speedy. So off I went to all sorts of crazy far off locations at the tender level of 16 and got my turtle.

As I progressed through the game I found myself casually collecting the occasional minipet, mostly the ones that I really liked. I willfully passed up on several minipets because I wanted the ones I owned to be special. It’s sort of like that inspirational story you’ll hear sometimes, about the kid who only owned two Hot Wheels cars but didn’t want any more because he couldn’t spread the love around that much. That was sort of like me– I carefully picked the minipets I owned. Of course, there were many minipets out there that I considered to be special, so it wasn’t long before I had a whole bag dedicated to minipets anyway (now consider my quiver and my bag dedicated to random holiday junk and “toys”, and you will know where my constant bagspace issues came from.)

At level 70 I sort of gained a reputation among my instancing/raiding circle as being That-Hunter-With-The-Minipets. Other people would have one or two minipets that they could bring out to show, me, I had a Random Minipet button on my action bars that I would hit every five minutes so I would cycle through several different ones throughout the course of your average Heroic. More than one person asked me “How many of those do you have anyway?” or /boggled at the fact that everytime they looked at me, I had a different minipet out. I was different that way, and unique, because I was that willing to give up my bagspace for them. But I was never a collector so much as just a fan.

And then Patch 3.0 and Achievements came out. Minipets became summonable, and fashionable. Even though it sort of bugged me on a minor level that now everybody could and likely would become a minipet junkie, on the other hand the idea of actually having bag space again made me so ecstatic that any potential sadness caused by a loss-of-uniqueness was nullified. It was also about that time that I realized “Hey… I’d might as well go pick up all those minipets that I passed up on before.”

So off I went, gathering up all the faction-specific minipets that I didn’t have and any of the other easily-obtainable ones, and after getting the Batling I took a look at my collection and realized hey– I have 40 minipets. Without even really trying.

Then I realized that when you get 50 minipets, they not only send you an adorable skunk in the mail, but you also get an achievement that includes wording which is suspiciously similar to my current place of employment. The irony, I could taste it. That achievement? Tawyn needs it.

So she spent the last three days living in Wetlands. It was worth it for #41 here:

Three more dragon whelplings and days of endless farming to go! Hey, it’s the week before the expansion, what else do ya expect me to do? =P

Do you guys have any thoughts or stories on minipets? Or other comments or questions? Share the comment love!

24 thoughts on “Minipet Mania”

  1. i frequently read your blog here…which i love ^_^ (just wanted to throw that in there) but i came across this one and kinda felt the same way about the minipet thing….so i too went out to get all the ones i never did…farmed for days to get the azure whelpling only for the guy that came in right when i was leaving to pick it up after 5 kills. LOL. congrats on your crimson one! lovely 🙂 good luck with the others!

  2. Oooh, random minipet macro? Any chance you could post that here? My significant other would love that!

  3. Ah… Minipets… How I love them. I had bagspace problems for the exact same reason as you. 1 bag+ full of pets. Now I have 49, but no time to grind. So on Monday I’ll stop by Darkmoon Faire and use some of my Dark Iron Ale for a Jubling.

    And I too would love to see that random minipet macro. 🙂

  4. My favorite minipet is the Hyacinth Macaw. The Bloodsail Pirates hate me SO much, I spent weeks down there in STV slaughtering them for it.

    I also have a Hippogriff Hatchling that I got from one of the card game loot cards, which is cute as all get out.

  5. Hi Pike,

    Another adorable blog post from you! I love reading your posts because they’re sort of the ‘softer side’ of WoW. 🙂 My fiancee does the same thing. She’s happy spending an entire evening fishing for an achievement while I’m min/maxing an upgrade for a particular slot. I did farm the Azure Whelpling for her, which won me many brownie points. 🙂

    Regarding the achievement text for the minipets: “Shop smart. Shop Pet-smart.” It’s loosely based on the place of employment in the Evil Dead series: “Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.”

  6. Do not forget the other craftable: the tranquil mechanical yeti. He will tap is toes while idle 🙂
    It is rather hard to find a crafter with the recipie, but there is a mechanical frog crafted also.

    There is also the mechanical chicken done by getting a drop and escorting a chicken in Tanaris, Feralis, and the Hinterlands. If you get the quests done on an alt, you are still good. It is one of the few rewards that is >BoE<. I mailed it to my hunter for the 50 requirement.

    Make sure to stock up during Christmas with all the minipets. There is a red and green helper, a itty bitty reindeer, and a snowman.

    You should get to 50 easy with these. Good luck!!!

  8. LoL and I thought I was bad – 40?! You go girl! I do believe you’ve given me something to do with my ‘not enough time’ to really play WoWLife. Wetlands is it?

  9. I kind of hit a wall with this and the RP story in my head for my characters. I’m trying to get the achievement on Ahami for the skunk, but the way I see it, she has a kitten who travels with her everywhere and the others are just pets she “rescued,” nursed back to health, and then passed on to people who love them. She will keep Speedy (her original incarnation had him and I lost him when I rerolled) and the skunk, and the rest just come to visit sometimes.

    I do love the minipets, though, and did even before the achievement was announced — I even made two accounts on Breani’s site so that I could track just the ones Ahami had and all of them over all my toons separately. And I am also very excited to have bank space now.

  12. I have been obsessed with mini pets ever since my husband first got me an orange tabby cat. I am a pretty hard-core collector, actually, though I’ve only let myself buy two of the TCG pets. (Hippogryph Hatchling and Bananas)

    When I was leveling I didn’t spend much on pets, but when I got to 70 I started seriously collecting.

    I think the Hyacinth was the first really rare pet I got. Someone had one drop for them in my old guild and I bought it from them for, like, 900g. As for the other rare drops; I found the Firefly on the AH for only 300g, farmed the Blue Whelpling (I was bored one night I couldn’t sleep), bought the Red Whelpling, Farmed the Black Whelpling (got it on about the 50th kill) and farmed the Green Whelpling (I HATE Swamp of Sorrows now. -_- ). I also spent, like, five hours farming for the Disgusting Oozling.
    (Nevermind how many times I killed Lord Ahune [hours and hours of farming] to get my Scorchling. It was, like, the last or second last day of the festival and my Husband actually rolled higher than I did when it finally dropped. He passed it to me and I’m still trying to think of a way to repay him for it.)

    The other notable grind was the Blood Parrot, which is one of the mini pets I may be most proud of. I spent about 10 hours killing Booty Bay bruisers and died a couple times trying to solo the subsequent quest from the Bloodsail, but it was totally worth it. Plus, I’ve got an awesome title now. XD

    But anyway. There are some mini pets I collected just because I’m a completionist. Like, I hate the cockroach. So much. But I have one because it’s part of the collection. Same for the snakes. This is mirrored in my real life, too. I collect things like plush tigers and coins.

    Having a lot of mini pets has never decreased the value of my favorite ones too me. I go through phases, too, where one will be my favorite for a while until I get a bit tired of it and switch to a different one. The mini pets I’m proud of won’t ever loose their special place with me because I know what I went through to get them or how rare they are. (Like the Black Tabby cat. She’s such a plain little kitty, but I love her since she’s so hard for Alliance to get.)

    Before 3.0 I always had my 8 favourite mini pets in my bags and about 40 stowed in my bank. I think the thing I looked forward to the most in 3.0 was being able to keep all of my mini pets with me all the time. I’ve since gotten the random mini pet macro from http://warcraftpets.com/, and an add-on that auto summons a select (or randomly from several designated ones) pet on your character moving forwards if not mounted or in combat. I’ve currently got Stinker set as my ‘with me all the time’ pet, since he’s so adorable and he means a lot to me. I love that Blizz recognized that mini pets mean a lot to some of their players. And the fact that some people will do the 50 mini pet achievement just to get another achievement doesn’t make me less proud of my Stinker. (The first thing I did, before even spending my talent points, the day of the 3.0 patch was to learn all my mini pets. XD )

    Wow. That was a really long, rambling response. ^^;

  13. @ All the people wanting the macro: prior to 3.0 it was a simple /userandom (all the names of your minipets), now post-3.0 we have to thank warcraftpets.com for the following:

    /run CallCompanion(“CRITTER”, random(GetNumCompanions(“CRITTER”)))

    @ Angry Raider – Yep, it is indeed an Evil Dead reference, I like to pretend though! =P

    @ Ernest – I have the reindeer and snowman. I also have the Mechanical Chicken… on Lunapike! Not on Tawyn yet. That was gonna be one of the ones I worked on next. Cause I love it.

    @ Ionutz- yes I did!

    @ Rilgon & Mae – big grats!

    @ Theaah – Hehe, I think maybe you made a new record for longest comment ever posted here. Which is awesome. <3 long comments!

  14. I’m still waiting for my Dark Whelpling to drop. It’s the only Whelpling I’m still missing – and also the one that I’ve been wanting the most. Ah, the irony.

    Right now I have 42 minipets, and aiming for 50 and the skunk.

    —

    Heh, I should comment here more often. My Dark Whelpling finally dropped! *victory dance* Now I can proudly say that I own all the farmable Whelplings and haven’t bought any of them. But the Frostwyrm will be THE pet of my collection, as soon as I get my hands on my Collector’s Edition.

  15. I spent a couple of days killing the slimes in EPL to get the cute slime pet. I really wanted the fire elemental pet from the fire festival boss but that never dropped. Maybe next time.

  16. I wouldn’t even consider attempting a grind like that on a mage.
    Good lord, that would be brain melting. Yeah, I love playing mages, but I need a freakin challenge.

    On the other hand, grinding endlessly is sickeningly fun on a hunter.

    Day three of farming for the little firefly guy. 😀

  18. My minipet grinding has ground to a halt at 43. I’ve gotten every vendor-purchasable pet except the white kitten, three of the engineering pets (waiting for those blasted goblins to send me the schematic for the bomb-omb), the pet phoenix from kael’thas, and even ground out the firefly pet. I really want the white chicken but being horde, I’m having problems finding an alli willing to cooporate. /cry

  19. Talk about crazy for minipets…I have the skunk on 2 of my 70s and am only a few pets away from a third!

    It helps to have other accounts with different factions. Getting the harder to find off-faction pets has been pretty easy for me. The white kitten, black tabby, Westfall chicken, as well as all of the buyable on each side-easy. I also have a high level engineer.

    As for the rare ones, I’ve been lucky and gotten the Blue and Red whelps quickly, but killed over 1500 of the dark ones with no luck. The Oozeling took me about 2 weeks, 2 hours a day of farming to get. Still no luck on the Firefly.

    And as always…keep checking the AH! About a month ago, early on a Sunday morning, I found the Hyacinth Macaw on the AH for 2g! I was stunned!

    Other ideas…don’t forget the Sprite Darter, Alliance only quest line. Jubling from the Darkmoon Faire. Green Wing Macaw drops in Deadmines(or usually very cheap on the AH). And the chance at a cute little Croc from the fishing daily!

    I love them all so much! Trying to decide who my 4th character to start collecting will be!

    oh and I love your blog tons! 🙂

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  22. I love mini pets. I tried the random pet macro you gave us. Works great. Thanks so much. Also, you’ve inspired me, gonna attempt a WoW blog. Hope you don’t mind I put a link on my blog to your blog.

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  24. I spent a good 2 days for the Crimson Whelpling had to kill over 200 of those dang guys! I now have only 38 minipets (not much) but i spent over 200 gold on them i think.

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