Let’s start of with a very “special” level 40-something blood elf hunter that I met on Hydraxis realm that I will refer to as “John”. Khaja was in Orgrimarr selling her wares when I noticed John asking numerous times on trade chat where to buy a mount. Everyone else seemed to be ignoring him so I decided to be helpful and asked him what kind of mount he was looking for. This lead to a rather confusing conversation paraphrased here (I talk in all lowercase in the game just because it’s faster to type):

John: i want a black horse
Khaja: do you mean the flaming ones?
John: yeah
Khaja: That’s a mount only warlocks can get
John: no, I mean the one with the skirt
Khaja: skirt? do you mean the armored horses? those are paladin-only mounts.
John: no, there’s these other ones that have a sort of skirt…meet me and i’ll show them to you.

Despite him being in Undercity, I agree to go. As I’m travelling, he’s stunned to realize that Khaja’s only level 17 and quickly asks if this is my main. Of course, my answer is “no”, not that it really matters what level I am. He also keeps saying stuff like “i’m waiting here. where are you???” despite the fact that it takes several minutes to get to Undercity. Once I get there, I follow him into Undercity and watch him run around trying to find the elusive skirted horse mount. After a couple minutes he says that he can’t seem to find one but he’s gonna keep looking. Then suddenly he whispers me with “i have to go bye” and logs instantly, leaving me all alone in Undercity. Luckily, I had a quest to complete nearby anyways so I shrug and go about my business.

Later, I’m playing Aithne. And guess who’s online asking questions on trade again? Yep, it’s good old John. This time he’s asking if there are any white tigers available below level 43. Now this I will admit is a very valid question that not everyone knows the answer to. I check Petopia to be sure and indeed there are no white tigers tamable under level 43. I tell him that, he says “ok” and that’s the end of that.

Cue the next day where I’m now playing Nicora and I had just finished all of my Stranglethorn quests. I have a ton of stuff to sell on the AH so I’m in Grom’gol heading toward the zeppelins to get back to Orgrimarr. Just as I’m running into the inn, someone I had barely noticed sitting on the ground asks me to wait. I stop and look, only to see John sitting there. He says to be that he’s only has 4 bars to the next level and can I please help him level up? I spend a good minute staring at him, debating as to whether I should or not. Finally the nice side of me wins and I say yes. We mount up (yes, he managed to find a mount all by himself) and start off. We’re barely outside Grom’gol when he asks me if I know where to complete a certain quest, one that I must have done a while ago because I don’t remember. I tell him that and he just says “let’s do a quest you know then”. I just look at him and say I don’t know which quests you have. He replies “just pick any quest you know”. It’s at this point that I think of the thousands of quests available in the game, how I do not want to scour my brain for the few that I do remember how to complete, and how this is so not worth my time. So I do something that I have never done before: I fake a disconnect. I exit the game as quickly as possible and don’t log back on for a good half hour, just to make it really look like I was having internet problems. Turns out that when I did try to log back in is when the login problems were happening. In a way, it’s a double-edged sword. If I ever see him again, I can just say that it was the technical problems that made me disconnect. However, I wasn’t able to play WoW for most of the night and ended up playing Final Fantasy XI with my boss’ friends because they needed an extra person. I guess that’s a little bit of karma coming back to bite me in the rear end.

For some reason, last night I attracted another weirdo. I was playing Khaja again, trying to get her as close to level 20 as I could. I was battling harpies in the Barrens and trying not to die due to an elite harpy that likes to hang around there and attack me when I least expect it. I had been getting group invites all evening, which I can only guess came from spammers because no one was ever around me when I got the invites. So I would just decline the invite and that would be that. Until after cancelling a particular one, suddenly I get a whisper from the person (who shall be called Owen):

Owen: please accept my invite
Khaja: why should I? *thinking at this point that this is a particularly insistent spammer*
Owen: please just accept please
Khaja: give me one good reason why I should.
Owen: i want to see your hp
Khaja: it’s 470
Owen: please accept, i want to see something else
Khaja: that’s not a good enough reason
Owen: PLEASE accept pleeeeeeease

At this point I’m trying to fight a normal harpy just as the elite shows up so it stop his whining, I accept the invite and manage to barely survive the fight. I’m sitting down tending to my wounds when Owen says this to me: “ha ha, i could so pwn you! you are so weak! seriously, what kind of gear are you wearing? lol”

You know that phrase “if looks could kill”? That’s the expression I had on my face at that moment. I had just barely avoided a trip to the graveyard because I had to deal with your stupid whining and group invites and so you decide to mock me?!?!

/ignore Owen

This is another thing I had never done before. Honestly, every one of my characters had had a blank Ignore list. I hadn’t even ignored the freak that came up and /licked me when I was only a few minutes into my first character, a night elf druid.

I’ve been plotting my revenge ever since. I was thinking of logging onto Nicora and inviting him into a dungeon run, only to leave him behind to die. He he he. It’s rather mean so I don’t know if I’ll go through with it.

Nicora has Blacky, who was originally Snarler. I tamed him because he’s black (one of my favorite colors) and he’s a wolf (one of my favorite animals) and because he reminded me of my RL dog, who passed away in May. Nicora also has a ghost sabre (just like everyone and their mother) who’s named Tonrar, which means “ghost” in Inuit. I tamed him because…well…he looked cool

Machalor has a thing for hyenas. They didn’t really appeal to me at first and I had tamed her first one, Chuckles the bluish-purple hyena mostly for the novelty. But then he stuck to the orc hunter like glue. And his strange aura of fierceness bordering on hysterical laughter really drew me in. And his bouncy run! And how could I forget the way his tiny tail swings around as he lopes along. This led to the taming of Machalor’s second hyena, Snickers the Scarlet Tracking Hound. Chuckles is enjoying his retirement in the stables (he might come back out again one day) while Snickers bounces along side Machalor wherever she goes.

Jorthwyn likes anything to do with Norse mythology, especially Odin. She has two pets right now, Freki the prairie wolf and Muninn the red and black carrion bird. Freki was named after one of Odin’s wolf companions and Muninn after one of his ravens. I know a carrion bird isn’t exactly a raven but it was the closest thing in the game. Freki is really neat because he’s one of those that barks every time you click on him but since Nicora already has a wolf, Jorthwyn needed something different. Which is where Muninn came in. I don’t really like the look of the carrion birds or flying pets in general but for some reason, ol’ Muninn is growing on me. His beautifully colored feathers sure help.

Aithne has gone through a lot of pets, including a ravager, a dragonhawk, and a pink tallstrider. Only two pets have stuck to her: a blue crab named Lapis and a dark blue raptor named Rath. Strange pets for a blood elf, I know, but they fit with her. I love Lapis for her shiny blue shell that just gleams in the sunlight and her name. Her name fits her beautifully. Unfortunately I know crabs don’t get much love in the skills department so I decided to get Aithne something else. A few tames later, I settled on Rath, who was a pain to tame but is too handsome and powerful to turn away. His name just popped into my mind at random but I love it and it suits him.

Brighit’s pretty much a one-pet Draenei. There was a brief time when she was going to tame cats exclusively but then I decided to create my night elf and make her my cat lady. Now Brighit is named after Brigid, a Celtic goddess of fire, who had a boar named Triath as her companion. This made my choice pretty obvious…Brighit was to tame a boar! I had shied away from boars before because it seemed like everyone had one. But then I decided that you can’t knock it until you try it and tamed a black one from around Ironforge and called him Triath (how imaginative). And he is awesome! He holds aggro better than any pet I’ve seen and his Charge and Gore skills makes killing things so much faster. Also, I will admit that he is cute and has lots of personality.

Fhionn is my cat lady. Cats are so popular in the game because they come in such a variety of skins that are all beautiful and they’re also known for some of the best damage. I too like the cats so it only made sense to have a character who had them as pets. Fhionn currently have two brightly coloured cats, Irusan and Neala. Irusan is an orange Durotar tiger that she traveled all the way to the Echo Isles for. He’s named after the Celtic king of cats. Neala, whose name is Gaelic for “queen” or “champion”, is the first yellow-leopard-skinned cat that you can tame in the game, a rare spawn called Dishu who, might I add, was a challenge to tame.  Why did I choose orange and yellow cats when they’re such a great amount of equally beautiful whitish or purplish cats? Because it seems that everything having to do with night elves is either white or purple and I was getting sick of it. When Fhionn runs around with her cats, they seem to glow brilliantly in the low light of Teldrassil.

Last but not least is Khaja, my newly created troll hunter. I’ve decided to have her tame some of the “colder” beasts, like scorpids and windserpents. She tried playing with a very cool-looking black-and-red scorpid but it just didn’t work out. Now she has one of the yellow serpents from Wailing Caverns and as soon as she’s high enough level, she’s going to tame one of the red-coloured ones. I haven’t decided which one exactly yet. Her current windserpent is named Blit (I don’t know why) and he’s beginning to grow on me. He’s quite graceful, except when he’s “running”. In addition, his ranged Lightning Breath attack seem to grab aggro fairly well.

…Wow, good thing that I didn’t actually post that in the comments of Mania’s article. It was long enough as it is!

Machalor went from level 29 to level 31.5 (so she now has the incredibly useful Feign Death) so she’s only 2 levels away from taming a scarlet tracking hound.

Aithne is now level 20! That’s one down, 3 to go to cross that off on my to-do list.

Jorthwyn is on her way to level 20, not with the help of quests in Loch Modan however. Has anyone else had problems finding quests in this dwarven area? Doesn’t really matter because now Jorthwyn and Freki are enjoying Darkshore, where there are lots of quests.

Brighit and Nicora…sorry, haven’t done anything with them.

After grinding to level 15, my plan was to try taming it myself and see how I did. Keep in mind that this is a level 15-17 elite in Wailing Caverns. This resulted in a very quick trip to the graveyard, mostly because I couldn’t even kill the other mobs around the stalker near the entrance of WC. On to plan B: asking for a higher level player to help me. I asked on Barrens general chat for some help and a nice high level rogue popped over. Of course, he was really good at getting rid of the other mobs but we actually had to go through 3 deviate stalkers that were higher level than me until we found a level 15 one. Which killed me. And then the rogue accidentally killed it. It was at this point when I thanked him for his help and logged off. I obviously needed to get to a higher level. Onto Plan C. More grinding and Aithne is level 16. I don’t ask for help this time because I felt like a fool last time and that I was just wasting the rogue’s time. I use every buff, scroll, and potion that I have and find the level 16 stalker hangs around the entrance. He slaughters me…twice. This is adding up to one major repair bill but I’m not giving up now.

Then I remember a post Mania had written where she mentioned a sand or dust that put mobs to sleep. A quick search of Wowhead turns up Slumber Sand. And so plan D is formed. A zepplin ride to Tirisfal Glades to do the quests, then back to the Barrens. I walking into WC again, clear out the trash mobs, and TAME! Aw crap, forgot to use the slumber sand! Another walk back from the graveyard and this time the slumber sand is in my action bar so I can’t forget. I use it on the stalker, start taming, and just as he wakes up, bam! He is mine!

I was so relieved and proud of myself for finally doing it. The only thing that I was worried about was that after all the work, I wouldn’t like him. It turns out that Aithne and him get along really well. I named him Rath, just because it popped into my head and I liked it. Now she and Rath are going on level 20 and I think they’ll be together for a long time.

As for character progress, I’m just trying to level everyone except for Nicora and Machalor up to level 20. I will post about Aithne’s tame of Rath, and I’m in the process of writing a beginner’s guide to the hunter class based on my experiences. So more to come soon!

When her main pet Rath was tamed, he was an elite in Wailing Caverns around Aithne’s level, thus extremely difficult to tame. I resorted to using slumber sand on him.

Aithne’s Pets

I abandoned my dragonhawk and made the long trip to Mulgore. I knew where to find Mazz from Thottbot but took forever for him to actually show up. I don’t know if someone had just killed him or what but I waited for an hour where he’s suppose to cross the road and then logged off in frustration. I came back on later that night and ran from the road to very eastern point that he’s suppose to be and then all the way back to the road. I was about to the road when I sighted him, quickly dismissed my ravager that I took along for the ride, and tamed him. I have yet to name him but I think I may just stick with Mazzranache because it’s such a unique name.

Here’s Aithne and her very own living pink flamingo:

I wrote a post about my new blood elf hunter that tamed a ravager, a creature that can only be found on Azuremyst Isle at level 10. Here I’ve written a quick guide/summary of how I did it.

1. Get to Undercity. That involves going into the Sunfury Spire in Silvermoon City and using the Orb of Translocation inside the Inner Sanctum.
2. Take the zeppelin from Undercity to Orgrimmar. (If this is your first time doing it, it’s is located outside Undercity and the ruins on a hill to the north. It’s hard to miss. And make sure you take the right one.)
3. From Orgrimmar, you then need to make the long walk to the Crossroads in the Barrens. (I knew the way from my other horde characters.) To do that, go south from Orgrimmar to Razor Hill. Then go west into the Barrens. When you meet a road going north-south, you can either get the flight path at the Crossroads south down the road (and then head north back up the same road), or follow the north directly into Ashenvale. Here’s a map of the Barrens if that’s too confusing.
4. Then you have to walk north-west through Ashenvale and around the alliance town of Astranaar, following the road up into Darkshore. If you’re like me, you’ve probably already died at this point. No big deal, you’re suppose to anyways. What you are doing is called ghost travelling.
5. If you haven’t died yet, you will because you need to get to Auberdine, an Alliance town that has a ship dock. So die however you want, don’t resurrect, and then find the dock in Auberdine. The boat going to Azuremyst will be straight down the dock (there’s sign posts if you get confused). Jump on the boat and sail to Azuremyst.
6. Once you arrive, follow the road straight past the Exodar and keep running. There is a graveyard just off the right side of the road when it gets close to the Stillpine Hold mountains (map). Note: If you walked through the Exodar area, you will be flagged PVP automatically, even if you are on a normal server.
7. This is the important part of ghost travelling. You must log off and then log back on again. Otherwise you could end up at the closest graveyard to where you died. And that’s bad.
8. Resurrect at the healer. I find its best to put Tracking Humanoids on to see if anyone is around.
9. You are now ready to tame. If you’re looking for level 10 ravagers in particular, ravager specimens are located in this area. Once you are done, you can either hearthstone back or ghost travel again.

There are some people who do not want to pay the spirit healer. There is a way around this. While you are still alive, instead of running through Auberdine, you can swim from a far shore out to where the boat docks. Once there, drown yourself and ghost-walk up the dock until you get close to your body. Once the boat comes, jump onto it and resurrect yourself. Then you have a free ticket to Azuremyst without the hefty spirit healer cost.

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen, Aithne’s Guide to taming level 10 Ravagers. It’s not hard, just a looooooot of walking.

Of course you can also use this guide if you want to tame other animals that can only be found on Azuremyst/Bloodmyst Isles at low levels, such as nightstalkers, barber crawlers, greater timberstriders, and so forth. If it needs more information, please tell me by commenting below.

Even though I’m not on a role-playing server, I still like to give me characters a sort of personality. Aithne means “little fire” and that’s how I like to think of this character. Beautiful and delicate as blood elves tend to be, but brimming over with vim and vigor and more dangerous than meets the eye. Not a direct danger, like a sword pointed at your chest, but a more subtle and cunning one, not a person you want to turn your back on unless you want to start sprouting arrows. She’s also a survivor, letting nothing stand in her way. You knock her down, she gets right back up again and deals a severe blow. You defeat her and she will only come back for revenge when you least expect it.

But as tough as I wanted Aithne to be, blood elves suck at close-range combat. Why? Have you seen their health compared to their mana? Their health is about 3 times lower. I’m used to playing the tougher classes: taurens, dwarves, orcs. She may do great damage from a distance but up close, she doesn’t last nearly as long as my tauren hunter would.

Of course, this led to the level 1-10 quests taking a liiiiitle longer than usual. At level 9, it was too difficult for her to do her level 9 quests (not impossible but I hate dying) so I grinded until I dinged level 10. And of course at level 10…that’s when hunters get their pets.

I guess you could say my pet choice was a little unusual. But I like being different and trying different things out. So I wanted a ravager, the bug-like beasts that can only be found on Azuremyst Isle at low levels. Azuremyst Isle is not only about as far away as Aithne could possibly go, but it’s also the home of the Draenei, who are the sworn enemies of the blood elves. Now unless they’re attacking her, Aithne has nothing personal against the Draenei. It’s just they might have something against her. But Aithne gets what she wants or dies trying, and so began the long trip to Azuremyst Isle.

I’ll post the exact details of how to do this in another post for the sake of people who don’t really care Needless to say, I tamed a ravager specimen and then hearthstoned back.

And the whole world should know that ravagers ROCK! I can’t ever remember killing enemies so quickly. Together we blasted through a level 10 quest as if it was level 6. There’s just two problems: ravagers aren’t exactly the nicest beasts to look at, and the great skill Gore that they have is “missing” Rank 5 and 6. By “missing”, I mean that there are no known animals that have Gore Rank 5 and 6. Why this is, I have no clue. Sounds like someone screwed up to me.

And being a blood elf, I see all these dragonhawks gliding around beautifully. And they breathe fire. Aithne, “little fire”, a pet that breathes fire…they belong together. But the only ones available have caster stats, as well as every second blood elf hunter has one as a pet. Arrrgh, I’m so torn!

Maybe I should just get a boar like everyone else. Wait, what am I saying?!?! No boars for me, ever!