The Things We Do For Pets

I’m a one-toon kind of gal.  I’ve started alts but always tired of them very quickly.  I once leveled a Mage to 47 and a DK to 84 (really? not that ONE MORE LEVEL to 85??), but that’s about the length I’ve gone to.

I have been in larger social/raiding guilds, but after finding myself too, let’s call it “emotionally charged” in a prior guild during Cata, I took a break and went into a smaller guild – the bank guild I started that my boyfriend and his brother eventually joined: Friends of Pengu.  That’s it; there’s only three of us in it, people!  So while I managed to score an Armadillo Pup and a Dark Phoenix Hatchling before I left the raiding guild, I’ve been pretty sure that Lil’ Tarecgosa and the Thundering Serpent Hatchling were well out of my grasp.

That is, until I was perusing forums.

I saw that WarcraftPets.com had a guild where people could get together and have fun events/talk about pets.  They also had Lil’ Tarecgosa available.  I was sold, and rolled a Horde toon on the Madoran server in order to request an invite.  I found everyone there super helpful and it was a nice, jovial community.

Later that day, I came across a post on the Battle.net WoW forums asking if any guild had the Thundering Serpent Hatchling (this is the pet available to a guild who has received the Challenge Conquerors: Gold – Guild Edition achievement).  No guild on my home server has this achievement.  But some amazingly generous pet collector from a guild was allowing invites for players interested in getting both dragonkin pets.

At first I was reticent: I was already in the WarcraftPets guild, and had received some generosity to aide in my leveling.  Also, this other guild was on a PVP server(!!).  I’ve always wondered why anyone would want to play on a PVP server.  Even though I’m an arms warrior, I imagine myself to be really bad at PVP (probably because I’m mostly a “clicker“).  Really bad.  I have some anecdotal evidence I may share eventually, but right now it’s too embarrassing.  Lastly, there was the issue of “taking advantage” of a guild for their pets.  It felt a little slimy, but I was buoyed by the fact that their leadership was offering it openly, and not charging for access.  So I rolled a goblin DK, picked up an extra caged Terrible Turnip to help fund my endeavor, whispered for an invite, and got leveling.

The guild had it setup pretty well.  They had a rank set just for pet-hunters, and set restrictions accordingly.  No bank access obviously; also, no guild chat.  It was weird not gratzing players on their various rare pet captures and achievements, which tells me I’m a more social person than I expected I was online.  Getting to Honored was relatively easy, and I picked up the Thundering Serpent Hatchling with ease.

When I had finished up and raised myself to Exalted rep with the guild (took about two days on and off – only ganked thrice!), I was excruciatingly short of funds to purchase Lil’ Tarecgosa by about 250 gold.  I checked their server’s AH to see what other pets I could purchase on my server and transfer over to fill the gap.  Terrible Turnip, again, was the answer.  But I’m an impatient collector, and waiting for it to (maybe, maybe not) sell on the AH was just too much.  I whispered the person who invited me to see about donating the pet to the guild for amount I still needed to acquire the pet, and in 5 minutes I had the gold via COD transfer!  Huzzah!

I have to say, Lil’ Tarecgosa, while being slightly less-exclusive at this stage, is definitely my favorite of the two.  She has such a unique look – all cutesy and blue.  The Thundering Serpent Hatchling’s lightning spark effect is cool, but frankly it’s barely noticeable and can easily be mistaken for the Wild Jade Hatchling.  My next point of business will be getting back on the WarcraftPets guild’s server and doing something nice for the generous person who donated enough gold for me to buy my first rep tabard.  Maybe another pet purchase through the AH?

What extreme lengths have YOU gone to in order to catch your favorite pets?