World of Warcraft Pet Battles offer a captivating turn-based mini-game, adding a layer of strategic fun within the vast WoW universe. Whether you’re looking to level up adorable companions, collect rare wild pets, or challenge other players, understanding How Do You Start A Pet Battle In Wow is your first step. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know to embark on your pet battling adventure, ensuring you’re well-equipped to become a true pet battling master in Azeroth and beyond.
Getting Started: Your First Pet Battle
To begin your journey into the world of pet battles, the first thing you need to do is find a Battle Pet Trainer. These trainers are your gateway to learning the basics and initiating your pet battling career. You can find them in starting zones suitable for lower levels, as well as in major cities like Stormwind for the Alliance and Orgrimmar for the Horde. Seeking out a Battle Pet Trainer is the definitive answer to how do you start a pet battle in wow.
Once you locate a trainer, speak to them to learn Battle Pet Training. This initial training costs 10 silver and unlocks the core ability to engage in pet battles. Along with training, you’ll also learn Track Pets, a useful skill that allows you to see wild pets on your minimap, making it easier to find opponents and expand your collection.
The minimum level requirement to receive Battle Pet Training is level 5. The great news is that once you’ve trained one character, all other characters on your account will automatically have access to pet battles. This account-wide access makes it simple to enjoy pet battles across all your characters without repeated training.
Trainers also offer a race-specific pet if you don’t already possess it. However, they will only offer the pet that is unique to your character’s race.
Race-Specific Starter Pets
Each race in World of Warcraft has its own unique starter pet. While the Battle Pet Trainer will only directly teach you your race’s pet, collecting all of these starter pets is achievable.
Here’s a list of each race’s trainable starter pet:
- Human: Calico Cat
- Dwarf: Brown Rabbit
- Night Elf: Moonkin Hatchling
- Gnome: Mechanical Squirrel
- Draenei: Azure Moth
- Worgen: Black Rat
- Pandaren: Pandaren Earth Spirit
- Orc: Black Rat
- Undead: Cockroach
- Tauren: Prairie Dog
- Troll: Jungle Cockroach
- Blood Elf: Golden Dragonhawk Hatchling
- Goblin: Bombay Cat
If you want to collect all the race-specific pets, you have a couple of options. You can check your faction’s auction house to purchase them from other players. Alternatively, you can create a character of each race you’re interested in, visit a Battle Pet Trainer in a major city to learn the pet, and then delete the character. The learned pets will remain in your collection account-wide, even after deleting the character.
Pet Battle Basics: Assembling Your Team
After completing your initial training, the first slot in your Pet Battles team will be unlocked. To assemble your team, you need to open your Pet Journal. Within the journal, you’ll see a list of your collected companions. To add a pet to your team, simply drag it from your pet list into the first available space under “Battle Pet Slots”.
Initially, only one battle pet slot is available. You can unlock the second and third slots by completing specific achievements: Newbie and Just a Pup. These achievements are straightforward and will naturally occur as you engage in pet battles.
Before venturing into the wild, it’s essential to revisit your Battle Pet Trainer. They will provide you with a short questline that introduces you to the Revive Battle Pets ability. This spell is crucial as it is the most convenient method to heal and resurrect your pets after battles. Learning to revive your pets is a key step in mastering how do you start a pet battle in wow effectively and sustainably.
Once you’ve learned how to heal your companions, you are ready to explore the world, engage in pet battles, and capture wild pets across Azeroth and beyond!
Tracking and Engaging in Pet Battles
The Track Pets ability is essential for finding opponents in the wild. When activated, it displays green paw prints on your minimap, indicating the presence of nearby wild pets. This icon will also appear above a critter if it is a pet you can battle and potentially capture. This tracking feature simplifies how do you start a pet battle in wow in the wild, making it easier to locate and engage with capturable pets.
To initiate a pet battle with a wild pet, right-click on the critter. This action will transition you into the unique Pet Battle UI. It’s important to note that you cannot start a pet battle if you are already in combat. Any attack from a player or nearby creature will interrupt and remove you from the pet battle engagement.
Tip: Choose a flat and clear area to start your pet battle. Obstructions like houses, large rocks, or insufficient ground space can prevent the battle from initiating.
During a pet battle, wild creatures in the immediate vicinity will become temporarily invisible to you, though they can still attack if they wander too close. Remember that in PVP-enabled areas, other players can still see and attack you during your pet battle. Similarly, other players can observe your pet battle in real-time, viewing the pets involved and their health status.
Understanding the Pet Battle UI
The Pet Battle UI is your command center during battles, providing all the necessary information and controls. It displays your active pet’s abilities, your opponent’s pet’s health, stats, quality, and abilities. The UI also offers options to switch pets, pass a turn, attempt to capture a pet, or forfeit the match.
A golden border and a ‘speed’ mini-icon around a pet’s portrait indicate initiative. Initiative determines which pet attacks first each round and is based on a pet’s speed stat. A higher speed stat than your opponent’s pet means your pet will likely act first.
Utilizing Your Pet’s Arsenal
Each pet possesses a total of six abilities, but only three can be active during a battle. Initially, only the first ability slot is unlocked. The second and third slots become available as your pet levels up. Similarly, new abilities unlock as your pet gains levels, expanding your strategic options.
You can customize the abilities in each of the three active slots. However, ability changes can only be made outside of battles, in your Pet Journal. To switch an ability, click on an active slot and select a new ability from the dropdown menu.
Hovering over an ability provides a tooltip that indicates its effectiveness against different pet types. Similarly, you can hover over your opponent’s pets to view their abilities during combat. Understanding type matchups is crucial for strategic play, allowing you to pit pets with advantageous abilities against vulnerable opponents.
How Pet Battles Function
Pet battles are turn-based, and in PVE encounters, there’s no time limit per round. This allows you to carefully consider your strategy for each move. Some pet abilities have cooldowns that last multiple rounds, while others might inflict extra damage under specific conditions. Experimentation and understanding ability combinations are key to success against various wild pets.
If your pet’s health is low or its attacks are ineffective, you can switch to another pet from your team. Only pets in your active Battle Pet Slots can be switched in and out during a battle. After a battle, you can rearrange your active team to accommodate pets that are injured or have fainted.
Victories in pet battles reward experience points to each participating pet. However, pets that faint during battle do not gain experience. Experience gained is based on your pet’s level relative to the wild pet’s level. Defeating higher-level opponents yields more experience, but also presents a greater challenge.
Tip: Capturing a pet provides less experience compared to defeating it. If your primary goal is to level up your pets quickly, focusing on defeating opponents is more efficient.
Wild pet battles can involve multiple opponents. You will only see the full opposing team composition once the battle begins. To win, you must defeat or capture all opposing pets, including any reinforcements that join the battle.
Healing Your Battle Pets
After each pet battle, your injured companions automatically recover 50% of the damage they sustained. However, for pets with critically low health or those that have fainted, you’ll need to utilize healing methods.
The Revive Battle Pets spell is your primary healing tool. Using this spell, which has an 8-minute cooldown, heals and resurrects all pets in your Pet Journal, including your active team. It can only be used outside of combat, so plan its use strategically.
Stable Masters, found in major towns and cities across Azeroth, offer another healing option. They can heal and revive your pets for a small fee, without any cooldown. Stable Masters are a convenient alternative when Revive Battle Pets is on cooldown.
FYI: Both the Revive Battle Pets ability and Stable Master heals are subject to a 3-minute lockout upon logging in. This prevents players from rapidly switching characters to bypass cooldowns and repeatedly heal pets.
A third healing method involves using Battle Pet Bandages. These bandages are random drops from the Sack of Pet Supplies, obtained by defeating NPC Pet Tamers. Battle Pet Bandages function similarly to the Revive Battle Pets spell but have no cooldown.
Tip: Battle Pet Bandages are bind-on-account, allowing you to transfer them between your characters. They also stack up to 25, making them efficient to store and use.
Understanding Pet Battle Families and Abilities
Pets are categorized into ten families, each with unique strengths, weaknesses, and passive bonuses. These families are: Aquatic, Beast, Critter, Dragonkin, Elemental, Flying, Humanoid, Magic, Mechanical, and Undead. Understanding these families is crucial for strategic pet battles.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Each pet family has advantages and disadvantages against other families. Attacks against a strong family type deal 50% increased damage, while attacks against a weak family type suffer a 33% damage penalty.
| Vs. | DEFENDING |
|---|---|
| ATTACKING | |
| x1.5 | |
| x0.66 | |
Understanding this chart is crucial for effective team composition and strategic decision-making during battles.
Tip: Utilize a Pet Battles Cheat Sheet for a quick reference to family strengths and weaknesses during gameplay.
Passive Pet Family Bonuses
In addition to strengths and weaknesses, each pet family has a passive bonus, adding another layer of strategy to pet battles.
- Aquatic: Reduces harmful damage over time effects by 50%.
- Beast: Deals 25% extra damage when below half health.
- Critter: Immune to roots, stuns, and sleep effects.
- Dragonkin: Deals 50% bonus damage next round after bringing a target below 50% health.
- Elemental: Ignores negative weather effects.
- Flying: Gains 50% extra speed above 50% health.
- Humanoid: Recovers 4% of max health if damage is dealt this round.
- Magic: Cannot take more than 35% of max health in one attack.
- Mechanical: Revives once per battle at 20% health.
- Undead: Returns to life for one round when killed.
Ability Types
Similar to pet families, pet abilities are also categorized by type. While most pets have abilities aligning with their family, some possess unique abilities from different groups. For instance, the Azure Whelpling (Dragonkin) has Beast, Magic, and Elemental abilities alongside Dragonkin attacks. A diverse ability set can be advantageous, allowing you to adapt to various opponent types.
Capturing Wild Pets
Capturing wild pets is a core aspect of pet battles, allowing you to expand your collection. Most wild pets encountered in PVE battles can be captured. To capture a wild pet, reduce its health to below 35% and use the Trap ability when it becomes available. Using Trap consumes your turn for the round. You can only capture one pet per wild pet team, so choose wisely.
Caution: Avoid accidentally defeating a pet you intend to capture. Once a pet’s health drops below 50%, be mindful of using high-damage attacks.
Not all pets within a wild pet team are capturable. Generally, if a pet is listed in your Pet Journal, it is likely capturable.
Persistence Pays Off
Trap attempts can fail. However, the chance of success increases with each subsequent attempt. If a trap fails, you might need to reduce the wild pet’s health again to make it eligible for capture.
FYI: Completing certain achievements unlocks upgraded traps, increasing your capture success rate.
PVP Considerations
Engaging in a pet battle phases you out from the immediate environment, making nearby wildlife invisible. However, in PVP zones, you remain vulnerable to player attacks. An attack from another player will break you out of the pet battle, granting a 3-second damage shield that absorbs 50% of incoming damage. The wild pet team you were battling will respawn, unless you had already defeated the primary pet.
Pet battles do not automatically flag you for PVP on PVE servers, except in designated PVP zones. On PVP servers, you are always subject to player combat.
Claiming Your Captured Pet
Persistence is key when capturing pets. Each captured wild pet will have a random set of battle stats based on its quality and breed. Captured pets also experience a level reduction:
- Level 16-20 wild pets lose 1 level when captured.
- Level 21-25 pets lose 2 levels when captured.
Caution: If you lose a pet battle, any pets you trapped during that battle are lost. To keep captured pets, you must win the overall pet battle.
Pet Battle Quality
Battle pets come in several qualities, each affecting their battle stats:
- [Poor] – gray
- [Common] – white
- [Uncommon] – green
- [Rare] – blue
Higher quality pets have superior health, power, and speed stats, which scale better as they level up. Even pets of the same quality can have stat variations due to different breeds.
Stat Calculator
Each battle-ready pet profile on websites like WarcraftPets includes a stat calculator. This tool allows you to adjust a pet’s level and quality, and explore different breeds to see how stats change.
Wild Pet Quality
The quality of wild pets is random. Upon starting a battle, the Pet Battle UI displays the wild pet’s quality via a color-coded border. Forfeiting a battle incurs a small damage penalty to your team (approximately 10%). There is no way to determine a wild pet’s quality before initiating a battle.
Non-Wild Pet Quality
Many non-wild pets, such as rare world drops, also have quality designations. For example, world-drop dragon whelps are of [rare] quality. Check your Pet Journal to see the quality of your non-wild pets.
Upgrading Pet Quality
Battle-Stones can upgrade your pets’ quality. Polished Battle-Stones upgrade pets to [uncommon], and Flawless Battle-Stones upgrade to [rare] quality. There are general and family-specific Battle-Stones:
- General Battle-Stones: Tradeable, upgrade any pet.
- Family-specific Battle-Stones: Bind-on-pickup, upgrade only pets of the specified family.
Tip: Using a Battle-Stone on a pet level 15 or higher causes it to lose 2 levels. Re-level your pet after upgrading its quality.
Battle-Stones are obtained from Tamer daily reward bags, as random drops from wild pet battles, and rarely from PVP matches. Higher-level opponents increase your chances of obtaining stones. Polished Battle-Stones can be purchased with Justice Points, and family-specific Flawless Battle-Stones can be traded for a Marked Flawless Battle-Stone at trainers in Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
Pet Breeds and Breed IDs
Pet breeds significantly influence your pets’ primary stats: Health, Power, and Speed. Understanding breeds is crucial for maximizing your pets’ battle potential.
For in-depth information on pet breeds and their ID system, consult dedicated guides like the “Guide to WoW Pet Breeds and Breed IDs” available on WarcraftPets.
Becoming a Master Pet Battler
Once a pet reaches level 3, a quest will guide you to Audrey Burnhep (Alliance) or Varzok (Horde) to begin a quest chain focused on battling Pet Tamer NPCs across continents. Defeating these tamers rewards significant pet experience and a Sack of Pet Supplies, which can contain useful items like pet bandages and the Porcupette companion.
Each continent’s quest chain involves defeating multiple Master Pet Tamers and then a Grand Master Tamer. Defeating the Grand Master unlocks daily quests from all tamers on that continent. These dailies continue to offer pet experience, with Grand Master dailies rewarding the Sack of Pet Supplies.
These quests are optional and account-wide. Progress made on one character carries over to others, and unlocked dailies are accessible to all characters.
PVP Pet Battles
For player-versus-player pet battles, you have two options:
- Pet Battles Queue: Match against a random player.
- Pet Battles Duel: Challenge a specific player.
Queued matches reward experience to surviving pets, making them ideal for leveling. Duels do not grant experience.
To queue for a random match, use the Find Battle button in your Pet Journal. The system attempts to match you with opponents of similar pet levels.
PVP pet battles are turn-based but timed. You must choose abilities within a time limit each round, or your turn is passed. Exceeding 15 seconds to choose an action results in progressively shorter round timers. In queued battles, you cannot communicate with or see opponent details. Capturing opponent pets is also not possible.
Organizing Your Pet Collection
With a vast array of wild pets to collect, organization is key. You can own a maximum of three of any one pet (and only one of certain unique pets). Exceeding this limit prevents adding more of that pet until duplicates are removed.
To manage duplicates, you can either release or cage them.
Releasing Pets
Releasing a pet permanently removes it from your collection. Right-click a pet in your journal and select “Release.” Unique or hard-to-obtain pets may not have a release option unless you exceed the duplicate limit.
Caging Pets
Caging a pet creates a tradeable item in your inventory, preserving its stats and level. Caged pets can be traded, sold, or gifted. To cage a pet, right-click it in your journal and select “Cage.” Currently, wild pets cannot be caged.
Pet Battle Strategy and Tips
Here are some strategic tips for pet battles:
- Level multiple teams of 3 pets to rotate injured pets while Revive Battle Pets is on cooldown.
- Early on, mechanical and beast pets are advantageous due to common beast and critter opponents.
- Use abilities that persist over multiple rounds (buffs and debuffs) early in battles.
- Switch pets during battle to ensure all active team members gain experience.
- Non-level-capped players gain player experience from pet battles with wild pets within 5 levels of their highest-level pet.
- Review the Pet Battle combat log (enable in chat settings) to analyze battle performance.
- Capture pets as you level to collect higher-level pets, saving leveling time.
- Rare wild pets and those with special conditions require patience to find.
- If seeking a specific wild pet, battle another pet in the zone; the target pet may appear as a teammate.
- Level-capped players can earn Lesser Charms of Good Fortune from battles against opponents within 5 levels of their highest-level pet.
- Pet resilience grants crowd-control immunity for 2 rounds after being affected by crowd control.
- Be cautious when buying high-level pets; you cannot add pets exceeding your highest-level pet to your collection.
By following this guide, you’re now equipped with the knowledge of how do you start a pet battle in wow and progress towards becoming a master pet battler. Dive in, experiment with different pets and strategies, and enjoy this engaging aspect of World of Warcraft!
