Sprinkle of Pixels
A Gaming Blog
Swenyola’s Top 10 Favourite Companion Pets
With the amount of companion pets available in World of Warcraft today, there is bound to be a small collection that become your favourites. The companion pets chosen in my top 10 are all a part of my collection in-game. There are many out there that I have yet to obtain that I think are adorable, but the point behind this is to highlight my special creatures that have traveled alongside me over the years.
10. Giraffe Calf
I think Giraffe’s are cute. I just do! I was so happy when I found you could capture a Giraffe battle pet.
I don’t think the Tiny Sporebat in the picture here looks as cute as the pet in-game! But nevertheless it is still in my current top 10 because of the in-game glowy cuteness.
We were the first guild on our server (Shadowsong EU) to get this. I remember the fuss in Orgrimmar our guild made when the legendary quest was completed and I was so proud to run around with this little pet at the time.
Back in the day, this was the first real “cute” pet I attained and he is still just as cute today.
6. Snow Cub
I made a Monk in almost all races before finally deciding to go with a female Panda. But at the time of creating a Dwarf, I noticed the little Snow Cubs running around Dun Morogh and my pet battle add-on told me I hadn’t collected one so far. I must have been really lucky because the first one I contested with was a rare, and I caught it!
My boyfriend doesn’t like buying digital mounts and pets from the Blizzard Store, but he really surprised me with this little fella and I was so happy to add him to my collection! He bought it because 100% of the money paid was donated to support the earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Japan.
4. Emerald Whelpling (Esmeralda)
The Emerald Whelpling is my favourite of all the little dragon whelplings because Emerald is my birthstone and so it has always stood out to me.
I love this pet! It is so sparkly and amazing! Anything with this many sparkles is an instant favourite of mine – bosses, mounts, pets and all!
I attained several of these pets when I was farming my White Hawkstrider mount, and unlike every other duplicate I had that I set free to neaten up my pet tab, I have kept every Phoenix Hatchling because I love them so much. I hope to one day have the Ashes of Al’ar mount, it is the best looking mount of all time and my dreams would come true if I ever got my hands on it!
1. Fox Kit (Crafty)
This little guy is SO easy to attain these days it’s so sad! When I first heard about this pet back in Cataclysm, I just had to farm him! It took me about a week in total and over 1000 fox kills. But in the end it was all worth it because I never saw anyone else on my server with this companion pet. He was so unique! and definitely my most prized pet collecting achievement. He might be more common these days, but I know how much effort I put in to getting him and if I normally summon a companion in an instance, it is most likely little Crafty. So that makes him my number 1 favourite companion pet.
♥
TAG: I want to know what YOUR top 10 favourite companion pets are! I tag you all to make your own and leave a comment to this post with a link to your blog post so I can check out who’s running in your top 10! :)
All images taken from www.warcraftpets.com
Sith Sorcerer – Copic Marker Illustration
I decided recently that I was going to teach myself how to draw manga characters. After a few sketches, online tutorials and skimming through how-to-draw-manga books, it was time to ditch “copying” manga and draw my own ideas free hand. With Star Wars: The Old Republic being my current active MMORPG, I thought about drawing my Sith Sorcerer Kha’lyxxi with her light saber at the ready and stood in a battle stance.
For the first time ever, I recorded the art process. I had trouble with the lighting, auto-focus on the camera and the whole general recording. (I had to use three different cameras in the end, one only allowing me to record in 10 minute time slots -.-) But the whole idea was never meant as anything more than a test to see if the outcome would be watchable and enjoyable, so that maybe in the future I could consider making more recordings. I am very pleased with the outcome and even though the recording is not fantastic, the process can definitely been seen quite well. All that is left is to find a reasonably priced digital camera with good optical zoom and picture quality that can record for longer periods of time, as well as finding a good set-up to provide the same lighting effects throughout the filming.
The Power Of The Dark Side
With the new digital expansion “Rise of the Hutt Cartel” due to be released on the 14th of April 2013, I thought it was about time I hopped on my speeder and journeyed through the Galaxy once again to see if the game excited me as much as it used to and whether the expansion was worth pre-ordering. Not only that, with double xp weekends taking place for lower levels to reach 50 in preparation for the new expansion, I thought I would take this opportunity to level my Sith Sorcerer, who’s been sticking around at level 18 for quite some time now. With a Bounty Hunter being the first ever class that I played, I took her all the way to 50 first back when the game was released. Since then, I have messed around with lots of alts trying to find my favourite class to play. I normally go for playing your typical damage dealing caster who can also heal, which is why I opted for something different in playing the Bounty Hunter class first. It was not at all a shock when I found the Jedi Consular the most appealing class to play. Purposely choosing a Republic character after seeing what the Empire had to offer, I found the class mechanics to be exactly what I was looking for. With the Sith Inquisitor being the Jedi Consular’s Empire equivalent, it wasn’t long until I returned to the dark side; my level 50 Bounty Hunter would supply a low leveled Sith well in beginning her journey.
Returning to the game recently, I have taken my Sith Sorcerer from level 18 to (currently) level 32. I can’t get enough! The story is really exciting and I am simply loving being back in the game! The server population is great, I’m no longer on a planet by my lonely self. That being said, I pre-ordered the new digital expansion straight away; I’m really looking forward to it! And I have two more double xp weekends to play through to be prepared for the launch. Do you think I will be level 50 in time? Those who pre-ordered before January 7th will gain 5 days early access starting on the 9th of April. The rest – like me, have to wait until the 14th.
Black Ops 2 Emblem – Jawa (Star Wars)
Call of Duty Black Ops 2 was released on the 13th of November 2012 – (I pre-ordered and got a free t-shirt yay! :D) and I have been addicted to playing the game ever since I got my hands on it.
When I played the first Black Ops I would search YouTube for cool looking emblems, and use the tutorials I found to make an emblem for my playercard. This year, I thought I would try making my own and I so I am pleased to announce that I have made my first ever time lapse tutorial on YouTube of an emblem I completely made up from scratch! I had quite some fun making it, so maybe I will make some more in the future…
I am so shocked as to how many views I already have on this video! This makes me feel so proud and happy inside, and I hope I can bring better quality videos in the future! :D
I have to say though, I don’t have a capture card or any other hardware/software that allows me to record my PS3 in good quality and therefore, my video is simply made by recording my television with my digital camera. :( Sucks, I know. But it is all I have. It is a shame you can’t record any 2 minute video footage in the theater mode built into the game – it’s only game play footage you can record.
Colour Changing Battle Pets!
I recently caught my first colour changing battle pet and I LOVE IT! :D
I didn’t notice it at first though to be honest! I have a macro that tells me the rarity of wild pets I battle with in case a rare comes along and I can then capture it. I was in Desolace and had the intention of catching an Amethyst Shale Hatching to add to my collection, when a Forest Moth decided to join the battle – and yes, it was a rare! I already had a Forest Moth of each colour – all of which I like, but just because it was rare, I decided to catch this one in this battle and find another Amethyst Shale Hatching roaming around later. (For those of you who don’t know, you can only catch one wild pet per battle.)
I decided to add my new rare Forest Moth to my battle team as it was a higher level than two of my other pets and this would make battling higher leveled wild critters easier of course. Seen as the only pet I intended to keep in my party throughout pet battling was my beloved Fox Kit – Crafty – who, by the way, is very crafty indeed! (Surviving many encounters on less than 10 health!) … it wasn’t a problem to replace one of the two other pets in my team with the Forest Moth. In my pet tab, she was shown as a blue moth and the first time I summoned her, she also happened to be a blue moth. A few pet battles later, when I switched out Crafty for her to come in to battle, she was YELLOW! What the hell? It was late at night, maybe I was seeing things? *rubs eyes* … Nope, she’s definitely yellow! After the pet battle was finished, I opened my pet tab to find her, and there she was – all blue and innocent. Hmmm. I summoned her, she was blue again – oh no, you ain’t fooling me sister! I re-summoned her. She was red! Oh! What is this?!? Then I researched online to find that it is actually intended for some lucky catches that the pets are colour changing! This is great! Well, I mean I couldn’t decide which colour Forest Moth I like best because I thought they all looked kind of pretty – now I don’t have to! I called her Flutterbow.
I know there are some people out there that aren’t happy with colour changing pets, especially because it can happen to pets that hunters tame, which I can totally understand. If you spend some time researching what pet you want to tame, sometimes its a certain colour you want – maybe because you only like it in one colour, or you have a cool name that only suits the pet in a certain colour – these things are important! And it can be frustrating to summon it and find it’s a different colour than what you wanted.
For instance, I spent days killing foxes to loot my baby Fox Kit, and IF that happened to be a colour changing battle pet, and when I summoned it it was grey – I would be annoyed! I specifically wanted the red fox!
What’s your opinion on colour changing pets? Good? Bad? Not bothered? I can understand both good and bad reasons, but luckily for me, I’ve got something I didn’t think was possible and it was a good thing because I know I can be very undecided sometimes – so Flutterbow can flutter the whole rainbow colours for all I care! :D
——–
For anyone interested in the macro I was talking about that lets you know the rarity of wild critters you enter a battle with, I will list it here:
/run hooksecurefunc(“PlaySoundKitID”, function(Q) if Q==31584 then for i=1,C_PetBattles.GetNumPets(2) do SELECTED_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(C_PetBattles.GetName(2,i)..” – “.._G["BATTLE_PET_BREED_QUALITY"..C_PetBattles.GetBreedQuality(2,i)]) end end end)
Please note: You should press the macro ONCE every time you log in to the game. Pressing the macro more than one will result in the text being displayed multiple times – which can be annoying and hard to read.
There is also a lightweight add-on you can get that looks after all your battle pet rarity needs. It’s called “Battle Pet – Quality Notifier”, and it’s available via curse.com – I am using this add-on, it’s really handy and was suggested to me by a follower on Twitter.