Your Luckiest Catch

[NathKnave]

Anyone have any stories involving extreme luck? Have you ever gotten something that should have taken you way longer than it did? Stories that draw the ire of your friends and fellow collectors? I have a couple.

First, this is how I got my Minfernal:

I've been spending most my time in pet battles just searching for rares. I still don't have any pets leveled up to 25 at this point, just collecting them is enough fun for me right now. The majority of the pets are pretty easy to find, so just any rarity isn't enough, they have to be rare. The Minfernal is different though, just getting any rarity is a worthy quest. I'd been through Felwood searching a few times, but nothing really hardcore. So one day when I saw that they were doing rolling restarts on all realms I figured it was time to buckle down and be there for a restart to get one.

I made my way to Felwood and started looking for a good place to log in. I figured that any place with a few (non battle pet) critters might be a good place to find them when the servers came up, so I scouted around and found a spot and settled in to wait for the message saying the server would be going offline. After waiting around for a few minutes I saw the familiar paw appear on my minimap. After zooming down to check it out, I saw that it was merely a Tainted Rat. I battled it anyway, figuring that it beats just hovering around. This did reassure me that I had found a good spot though, and after the battle I resumed my wait. Several minutes later the paw again appeared on my minimap, and looking down, I saw what was definitely a Minfernal! I swooped down as quickly as I could, went into stealth (pvp server, no chances) and engaged it.

I came away with a poor quality Minfernal, but after all the horror stories I've read from people that have never even seen one, I decided this was a win. I didn't feel like camping out for one, and I'm sure the other people there were happier for slightly less competition when the server restart happened. If I want something better, I can come back at a later time when competition isn't quite as fierce or when (hopefully) the respawns for them are a little more reliable.

My next story isn't about a pet, but a mount:

Around the middle of Cataclysm, in a lull between patches looking for something to do, I thought I might try my luck at soloing Utgarde Pinnacle Heroic for the Blue Proto-Drake. I'd tried before, earlier in the expansion, but couldn't quite pull it off. Rogues aren't really known for their solo capabilities, but I figured I would try it once to explore the possibility. If it's not too bad, I could make a regular thing out of it.

Getting through the instance to the boss was no problem, I didn't even have to defeat the two bosses before Skadi. My first pull was disastrous, I went straight into trying to pull the boss down with the harpoons and he hopped down with a bunch of adds still up beating on me. I was able to vanish and reset the encounter though, so I figured I'd give it another go. This time I made sure to have the adds under control before shooting down the boss. I don't remember too much of the specifics of fighting him that time, just that it seemed to be no problem and I could probably do this every day until the mount dropped. But when I looted the boss I found that the mount had already dropped and I wouldn't have to do it again after all.

That mount is still one of my favorites, and every time I use it I think about my friend Chris saying he was going to kill me in my sleep.

[Axarien]

I got my Porcupette in my first ever reward bag from a fight with an NPC Pet Tamer. I was like, huh, what is this thing?

I also won the roll in my guild at the time for the first Twilight Drake to drop from our first hard mode Obsidian Sanctum run. I was in disbelief!

[Yazhi]

Not exactly a 'catch' but I got my Darkmoon Bunny off the auction house on a blunder for 90g, made my day

[Florencia]

snowshoe rabbit-first catch rare.(only 2 spawns atm)
Scourge whelpling- first day fly to the area, 2nd attempt caught an uncommon.
MOJO-2g buyout off AH yesterday.

[Malanade]

The first giraffe calf after a week of searching spawned just once and it was a rare.
I have to say that's probably the luckiest I've been.

[Azmeaiel]

Rare wild crimson hatchling on 5 health with his scorched earth down.

[Axarien]

Not exactly a 'catch' but I got my Darkmoon Bunny off the auction house on a blunder for 90g, made my day

Score!

[Zaea]

My luckiest pet catch (so far at least) was when I got the seahorse from darkmoon faire in 10 minutes of fishing. The sewer rat literally took me 2 years to get so the fact that I got a fishing pet the first time I settled in to farm for it was amazing

I think that my ultimate luckiest catch would have to be when I got the Headless Horseman mount. I got it during our first pull of the first day of the holiday and I rolled like a 94 to win it. I was SO excited because I was really really excited about that mount and I wanted it so bad and I assumed it would take me a few years of the holiday to get it because I have terrible drop luck.

Another lucky mount drop was when I fished up the sea turtle within a few months of them adding it to the game. My friend who is as obsessed about fishing as I am still has yet to pull one of those bad boys up so I think that that mount catch probably is the one that makes my friends mad the most

[Azmeaiel]

people still hate me over turtle drop, I got logged out in shalozar doing the fishing daily on the night of the patch where it was included, when servers came back on and I logged on there was a fishing pool so decided to finish daily before exploring the new content, first cast got the new turtle mount ! much hate from everyone approx 2 mins into patch and 1 cast.

[NathKnave]

people still hate me over turtle drop, I got logged out in shalozar doing the fishing daily on the night of the patch where it was included, when servers came back on and I logged on there was a fishing pool so decided to finish daily before exploring the new content, first cast got the new turtle mount ! much hate from everyone approx 2 mins into patch and 1 cast.

I'm not sure anyone could top that one. Just wow.

[Florencia]

Have to update this:

Just got my first ever minfernal(bread7 rare quality) after finished watching bliz world champion tournament.

were at least 3 other campers there but my minfernal was only 2 feet away from me when i logged on..

[Doobjanka]

The only Scourged Whelpling I've ever seen was a rare. Didn't know it was hard to get. That's what you get for focusing on pet battles rather than leveling the first few days.

[Emi]

Hmm... A long time ago when Hyacinth Macaw was mega rare I ended up getting on on the nuetral ah for only 5g I think maybe someone thought it was a green wing macaw or something ^-^ ... Havent got a super rare pet from battles yet though...

[InfectiousZombie]

My luckiest was an AH catch. I have never got the Hyacinth Macaw in the wild and never wanted to drop the cash on one in the AH. I was browsing the pets the other day looking at the battle pets and saw one (in a cage) for 100g! Been trying for years to get one, kind of anti-climatic but at least I have it!

[Linaomine]

Well Saturday night I was doing my rounds on my alts parked to watch for rare pet spawns. I had two different toons parked in STV for the Baby Ape. The first one it was not raining, but the second it was! I see the little paw print that is a baby ape and dive for it and lose the tag. So I am freaking out doing circles in hopes of finding another. Suddenly one pops up further inland and I dive and get it! AND ITS A RARE!

Then the next day I was doing my rounds again and lo and behold a sandstorm in Tanaris! I waited around on two different toons (one in each spawn area) for close to 45 minutes and suddenly a green paw! As if my luck hadn't run out the night before I managed to get a rare on the first try!

I'm still working on getting the scourge whelpling, minfernal and, giraffe calf.

Then the luckiest I've ever been was in firelands the mount off alysrazor dropped and my guild had a rule that you had to be at 80%+ attendance to roll on mounts. I roll a 95 and I am freaking out hoping to get it...then a guildie(who for the record was a jerk) rolls a 98 and my heart sinks. BUT! I realize he has been missing quite frequently and check the roster...HA! He only has 69% attendance. I win the mount and that beautiful flaming bird is now the ground mount I use on all toons.

[Hellomynameis]

Hmm... A long time ago when Hyacinth Macaw was mega rare I ended up getting on on the nuetral ah for only 5g I think maybe someone thought it was a green wing macaw or something ^-^ ... Havent got a super rare pet from battles yet though...

I would venture a guess that someone tried to use neutral AH to transfer the bird to the other faction for a sale there instead, and you snatched it in the middle of his/hers "transaction". Sometimes when people faction trade they only have one wow client up at a time, and have to log completely out and then in again to first put it up for auction, and then log another account to buy it. There are also those who camp neutral AH in hopes of getting a catch like this, also called "sniping".

Back to topic: I checked out an island in STV, at first I saw no rain, oh well I thought. The next day I found an alt and camped it on the island and logged out. The next day, keep in mind this was only my third time checking that island, I found a cute rare breed #4 Baby Ape in my first battle.

[Talmar]

My luckiest drop? Has to be my Magical Crawdad.

Grinded out my Firefly in Zangarmarsh and headed over Terrokar to start on Fishing for my Crawdad. Got Mr. Pinchy in less than 50 casts and then got my Magical Crawdad on my 2nd wish.

I was floored and amazed.

[Greenstar]

I found a Hyacinth Macaw in the auction house (alliance, not neutral) for 2 gold back in vanilla. I bought it out so fast and kept expecting to get a tell from whoever sold it about it being a mistake, but I guess they didnt realize how rare it was.

Of course most people didn't pay attention to pets back then and I was one of the rare people that had a 16-slot bag dedicated to my favourite pets.

[NathKnave]

I figured I'd share another story of mine:

Back during Wrath, when they first made the mounts from the TCG able to be sold or traded, I saw the Chicken mount on our AH for 30k gold. This was a ton of gold back then (the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth, at 18k, was very expensive), so I borrowed some money from a friend to help me finance it. It turned out that the seller was actually a real-life friend of mine who put it up just to see if anyone would buy it. He played the card game and always had a bunch of the loot cards that he'd give away. He was so happy that someone had actually bought it (he was always struggling with money), that he actually gave me almost half the gold back.

To this day, seeing my Worgen (I race changed from Human early in Cataclysm) riding around on a chicken gives me the giggles.

[Pandorra]

Four recent catches come to mind for me

Baby Ape, Snowy Owl, Slithid Hatchling, and Nether Sprite Darter,
all of those were rare quality on the first encounter.

Scourged Whelpling is still eluding me though,
its the only wild pet (other than the quira'ji swarmguard) that I haven't caught yet.
In fact, I haven't even been able to see one spawn at all, lol.

~Pandorra