At least it did for me. Alright, let me give you the situation. Aithne is level 14 and has her blue crab Lapis. As beautiful as Lapis is and as much as I love her, I know that she is not a great pet. After all, all crabs can learn is Claw. I head over to Petopia and after choosing a few pets, taming them, and then deciding that I didn’t like them, I got to the raptors. They’re a viable class, able to learn Bite and Claw (and Dash come patch 2.2). And they look pretty cool too. After 20 minutes or so of browsing through the different looks, I decided that I liked the grey one the best. That meant taming a deviate stalker.

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.