WoWGrrl's World

Continuing from Part I, here are more tidbits about the Level 10 Hunter Pet Quests, "Taming The Beast" and the whole process surrounding securing the ability to Tame, Call, Dismiss and Feed your Hunter pets.

How You Know If The Tame Is Working/Works

After step 2 as above, your toon will assume a funny pose and you should start to see a "hearts" animation appear over the boar's head. You'll get a Channelling bar, and the boar will begin to attack you.

Once the channelling bar runs out, if the boar keeps attacking you, your attempt to tame has failed, and you'll likely do better killing this particular boar and starting on another from a distance. If it has succeeded, the boar may change size as it assumes its position on your left side and follows you about.

Turn In Each Quest

Now that I've got a Dire Mottled Boar tamed, I should go out and hunt things and use my new pet, right??!

Well, sure, you can do that, but unfortunately the pets tamed during the Taming quests only stick around for 10 minutes and then they dissapear. You're better off to run through the Taming quests and completing them all before worrying about actual play-time with a pet.

When you turn in your quest, right-click on your Pet's picture in the top left of your screen, and choose "Dismiss". You cannot tame the next beast until you've released the first, so you might as well do it right away. Be ready for a fight, however, as your pet turns back into an angry wild animal when you dismiss it!

Resetting Action Bar Slot For Taming Wand

Note, every time you start a new stage of the quest, your old Taming Wand is removed and you are given a new one. This means you'll need to re-drag your Taming Bar onto your Action Bar each time.

Replacing Your Taming Wand

Hopefully you won't have to worry about this, but if you begin the taming process for a specific quest beast and have it disrupted three times for that same stage of the quest, you'll use up the three charges your Taming Wand has been alloted for this stage of the quest. If this is the case, drop the quest from your quest log and return to Razor Hill to re-start it with a fresh wand.

Tauren working on the "swoop" portion of the Hunter Taming Quests may find themselves needing to take this step, as the Swoop has a "knock down" ability that disrupts the taming process and uses up a Taming Wand charge.

Staying Alive During Taming

The automatic reaction of every beast you'll ever attempt to tame is for it to attack you. Generally, the beasts that are a part of the Hunter Pet Quest series are not able to kill you, but every hit they land lengthens the channelling time it takes to complete the tame, so even light but quick hits could result in death before taming is complete.

There's not much you can do to avoid death while still channelling for the tame - you can't drink potions, can't bandage yourself, can't cast spells... so what can you do? Here are some ideas:

• Start the tame from as far back as the range of the Taming Wand will allow.
• Use Concussive shot before starting the tame, to slow your target's approach.
• If you have a Priest friend, have the Priest cast Shield on you.
• If you have the ability, or have a friend who can help, lay down a freezing trap between yourself and your taming target, so the target gets caught in the trap for a while.

Finishing Up The Pet Quest Series

Once you learn the new spell Tame Beast, and the two new abilities of Call Pet and Dismiss Pet, you're not done yet! The trainer will then offer you another quest, called "Training The Beast", which you'll want to get done before heading out to tame your first real pet. Without completing this last quest, you won't be able to Feed your pet, and a Happy pet is a much more effective companion than an Unhappy one (read: Happy Pets Hit Harder) - nevermind the fact that Unhappy pets left unfed for too long have a habit of running away!

Finding Hunter and Pet Trainers In Major Cities

The cities are huge and confusing to a newcomer, just like cities are IRL. Thankfully, there are friendly NPCs about whose job it is to both protect the city from invaders from the other faction (Alliance if you're Horde, or vice versa) but also to provide information to those from its own faction about where to find things in the city.

You're welcome to wander around aimlessly and explore yourself if that's the way you like to do it, but if you want to find the quickest way to get to the Hunter trainer to turn in this last quest piece and get on with taming your own pet, then talk to any of the Orgrimmar Grunts within the city limits. I chose to talk to the ones that are right at the doorway entering Orgrimmar from Durotar.

When chatting with them, you're looking for 'A Class Trainer' (second from bottom on the list) and then you'll choose Hunter from the top of the next list. The Grunt will give you a little bit of information about what Valley this trainer is in, but even if you don't pay attention to that information and just click 'Goodbye' you'll be okay - take a look at your map now ('m' on your keyboard) and you should see a red flag marking a position near the top right, in the Valley of Honor. Find your way towards that flag! When you get close, it'll appear in your minimap as well.

In Orgrimmar, the Hunter Trainer you talk to about finishing your pet quest is Ormak Grimshot. Once you finish your quest with him, you learn:

• Beast Training ability
• Feed Pet ability
• Revive Pet spell

Now that you can TRAIN your tamed beasts, venture back towards "out" and visit the Pet Trainer, Xao'tsu, and learn everything he has to teach you, so you can toughen up your pets in various ways as well! From now on, when you reach a new even level (12, 14, 16, etc) you'll want to visit both the Hunter trainer and the Pet trainer to get all the cool new abilities and skills that make Hunters and their Pets so great.

Stay Tuned For Article on Loving and Feeding Your Hunter Pets

Now that you have the ability to tame and train a pet, go out and get one and fiddle around with it! Come back soon for a related article to this topic, on the successful maintenance and caring for a Hunter pet.

Related posts:

1. Level 10 Hunter Pet Quest, Made Easy, Part I
2. Horde Hunter Newbie Tips (Level 1 to 9)
3. Cute Disguise Quest in Shadowmoon Valley