balancing time vs reward

one complaint frequently aired on the official pet battle forum is that it takes far too long to do all the pet battle dailies. which, well, is true. it does take a long time. which is why i don't do them all.

here's what i've been doing, most days. i start with the thundering pandaren spirit, conveniently (if you're horde) located in the hills above the shrine of two moons. if you bring a fast rabbit as your first pet, this fight is fairly easy and you can let a baby go in as your second pet to get the xp. then it's down into the vale of eternal blossoms for aki the chosen. send in a baby pet first, then a crab with shell shield and healz to clear out her first two pets. pretty much any bird can finish off her last one.

next i cross the mountains into the valley of the four winds. maybe pause for a few minutes to harvest golden lotus on the farm, or motes of spirited away, or whatever i planted yesterday. across the fields to farmer nishi, who is easy like a sunday morning. pretty much any strategy works worth her - i go with a water strider to take out her elementals (swapping in a baby pet to take a hit when toothbreaker does his night of the living turnips move), and finish it off with my darkmoon tonk's ion cannon of badassity.

finally, it's knock beasts of fable book ii time. these guys give lousy xp, so i don't bother trying to level baby pets of them. conveniently located in the valley are mostly harmless yi (easily downed by team yeti) and greyhoof (call lightning and let slip the ion cannons of war). just across the border in the krasarang wilds is skit-skit-skittererer xi'a (all darkness and nocturnal strike spam). and then i'm done.

so how'd i make out? 20 valor points, three big fat lumps of xp for baby pets, four shots at flawless battle-stones, a shot at an earth spirit pet, and a shot at a panda pet. all in under twenty minutes. feels good to me.

not so tranquil anymore

my "tranquil" mechanical yeti is now stoned and carrying an ion cannon.

probably best you avoid eye contact.

flawless battle-stones

spent a few hours leveling pets in valley of the four winds this weekend. along the way, i picked up three family-specific battle-stones - the kind that can only be used to upgrade pets of a particular family. (note that this contradicts the patch notes, which said family-specific ones only came from battling tamers.) since the valley is full of critters and aquatics, that's what i got. it's kind of unfortunate that the pets most needful of upgrading, because they are really rare and therefore hard to farm for a rare, are also the ones hardest to get a battle stone for. yes magic i'm looking at you - willy needs an upgrade! (apparently you can also get a general purpose battle-stone from battling wild pets, but the odds are super low.)

anywho, when you get one of these stones, the way you use it is as follows: (1) summon the pet you want to upgrade. (2) target the pet. (3) right click on the stone in your inventory. a little clunky, but at least it works. since rare critters and aquatics aren't too hard to find in the wild, i ended up using my stones on quest reward pets that have a distinctive, if not unique, look. so war pug the perky pug, commodore bob the fishy, and peanut all got the goods.

got some traffic from folks looking for the polished battle-stone vendor. you can buy them from commander lo ping in townlong steppes - he hangs out in the niuzao temple, out in the islands. i'm not feeling any need to buy these myself - as many rares as i have at this point, paying to make a pet uncommon is not appealing. but not everyone is me, so if it fits your plans, then rock on.