and she's back in the game. for now, anyway.

my wife took a sabbatical from wow to focus on school and work these past few months. the semester is winding down now, and this weekend she logged on and started leveling alts through pet battles. after enjoying herself for a few hours, though, a problem arose.

"why didn't you tell me there are four new untradeable pets that can only be got through fishing?"

"i dunno. i thought i mentioned them at some point."

"I gotta have them."

"you gotta?"

"i need!!!"

and she was off.

of course, fishing is a slow process, even when you aren't trying to catch really rare fish. so she did some research, and ran across the ancient pandaren fishing charm, which gives you a buff that gives you a 20% or so chance to get a bonus fish every time you catch one in a fishing pool. to get it, you have to talk to the ghostly pandaren fisherman, a friendly npc who spawns once every few hours in the valley of the four winds. (i probably read all this back at the beginning of the expansion, and then promptly forgot it.)

unlike me, julie does nothing half-assed in this game. she set up her npcscan add-on to detect the fisherman. she parked herself right at his spawn point. then she launched a second wow session, logged on to her second account, selected a character on a different server, and parked that one at the spawn point as well. then she fired up her other laptop and proceeded to do school work. after maybe an hour, the scanner alarm went off, followed immediately by a triumphant "ha-ha!". then she switched to a different character, parked it, and got back to her homework.

by the end of the day, she'd picked up fishing charms on five different characters, including one of mine (thank you, love :) ). along the way, she had a couple of conversations with other players who said they'd been looking for the fisherman for "weeks", and then flew away. moral of the story: this is a game that rewards patience.

she hasn't got any carp yet, but i expect she'll get all four before i do (i still need red and white). either that, or school will pick up again in the summer and she'll make me play her account to get them.

add-on: petbattle teams

one of the add-ons i find really useful is petbattle teams. it allows you to define an unlimited number of teams and then switch a new team in with a single mouse click. in addition to remembering which three pets are on a team, it remembers which three spells you have selected for each pet.

here is what it looks like on my computer:

it creates an extra frame to your pet journal, showing all the teams you have defined. you can see that i've named my teams based on their purpose. i've got four different teams for leveling in the valley of the four winds, each with the pet i'm currently leveling (today it's the scourged whelpling) and two level 25 pets chosen for their ability to carve up critters and aquatics. after each fight, i switch to the next team, and by the time i've used all four the the cooldown on revive pets is up, saving me the trouble of having to find a stable master. you can also see a team with heavy mechanical damage for fighting beasts, and my teams for fighting some of the npc pet tamers. i took this screen shot as i was getting ready to fight the tamer in winterspring (that goblin whose name i don't bother to remember), so that team is currently selected one. underneath the list are buttons for creating a new team, casting revive pets, and slapping bandages on them.

i started using petbattle teams shortly after mists came out. back then, i only had two teams - the six pets i initially leveled. being able to instantly swap between them was a big help even then. now, i have no idea how i'd manage to keep it all straight without it.