World of Warcraft: Beginner’s guide to Battle Pets

It has been a few years since World of Warcraft introduced their Pokémon-style minigame: Battle Pets. Using these pets can really feel like playing another Pokémon game within the WoW universe. Despite the nostalgia that might give, it may be a bit confusing to get started with your battle pet journey. But don’t worry. We’re here to help!

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World of Warcraft: Beginner’s guide to Battle Pets

Getting Started

There are a few things you should do to prepare yourself for Pet Battles. The first thing you have to do is meet the prerequisites for starting pet battles: You have to be at least level five, and you have to purchase battle pet training from a battle pet trainer (which costs 10 gold). The pet battle trainers can be found in Stormwind for the Alliance, and Orgrimmar for the Horde. They can also sell you a pet to battle with if you don’t already have one. You’ll have to buy this from them before you can start battling on your own.

Initial setup and battling

You can organize your pets by pressing the “Collections” button or by pressing “SHIFT-P”. Then click on “Pet Journal” in the bottom left corner of this menu. Here you can look at all the pets you’ve collected and set them onto your team (each player can have up to three active pets at a time). You can also heal your pets by pressing the upper right icon. This has an eight-minute cooldown, so just keep that in mind before using it after every fight.

Once you’ve set up your pets, you can start looking for battles. Put “Track Pets” on from the minimap interface, and you’ll be able to see a green paw-print wherever pets are available. Clicking on one will let you initiate a fight.

The fight works like a standard Pokémon-esque battle where the creatures take turns in their fight. You can try to defeat the monster or try to capture them with the trap command (with will be unlocked once one of your pets reaches level 3).

Building a team: Quality, abilities, and types

Once you get the hang of battling, you’ll want to consider putting together a team. There is a lot to consider when starting this process.

Quality and stats are the first thing you’ll want to look out when deciding on whether you want to use a pet or not. A pet can be one of six different quality types: Poor, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary. The higher the quality the stronger the pet is, with “poor” being the lowest and “legendary” being the highest. Stats can vary even if two pets are of the same species and quality, however. There are a variety of breeds that can be seen with specific addons. Overall though, you’ll want to try and obtain higher quality versions of the pets you want to use. If you have a low-quality pet, however, you can turn it into a rare pet by buying specific items from the Darkmoon Festival.

Regardless of the quality, each battle pet can learn six abilities, with only three being active at any given time. These moves are learned at levels 1, 2, 4, 10, 15, and 20.  Each move has its own type and specific effect. Some moves are simple damaging moves, while others may heal the user. Keep in mind what each pet’s abilities bring to the table when putting together a team.

Just like in Pokémon, each battle pet and pet ability has a specific type. Each type has one type that it’s weak to, one type that it resists, one type that is weak to its abilities, and one type that resists its abilities. Along with these weaknesses, a battle pet’s type determines what its passive is.

For example, Critters cannot be stunned, rooted, or put to sleep. Variety is key when it comes to battle pet types, and you’re going to want a mix of types that compliment each other. Be sure to carefully consider what types you want to resist, and which ones you are okay with being weak to when deciding on the pets for your team.

Quests and leveling

Pets level as they battle, and wild pet’s levels coincide with player levels for each area. For example, the lowest level battle pets can be found in the lowest level areas for players. This means as your character gets to higher level areas, your pets have access to higher level content as well.

Following the battle pet tamer quest line is by far the best way to level your pets, and to get some rewards for them (such as bandages to heal them, or obtaining unique battle pets). The quest line starts from the battle pet trainers once you have a level three pet.

Additional resources 

While you don’t need addons to make pet battling easier, there are a few that can generally help you, especially with seeing the strengths of a particular pet. Two of the best ones are Battle Pet BreedID and Niggles: Pet Teams. Battle Pet BreedID lets you see the breed of each pet so you can decide whether you want to keep a pet with extra health or extra speed. While Niggles: Pet Teams lets you create team loadouts and helps with some of the UI of the Pet Journal.

Whether you are using battle pets for the collect-a-thon aspect, or to challenge other tamers in PVP, there is a little something for everyone in this WoW minigame. For more addons, you can check out Curse’s list of battle pet-related addons.