Kirin Tor Familiar

[Kel]

I've read a bunch of guides and so on regarding the Kirin Tor Familiar. Does it seriously just come down to sitting in front of a spawn point for months on end over and over, or is there any way to do this achieve a bit faster? I really want one, but I really don't have time to camp endlessly. That's why I still have no Valk either.

[Jerebear]

I don't know if it takes months. I did it back in Wrath and it took a few weeks. I was in Dalaran all the time though. Not sure if there is a faster way to do it.

[Wakamaru]

I'd been looking for the books casually off and on for years, but when I finally got serious to get the Familiar it took about a month of checking for book & camping spawns. I checked for spawns across multiple servers with different toons (figured I'd get there faster by fighting at multiple fronts!) and when I found a spawn I sent a timer for when I would come back and check again if it was one of the "filler" books.

Where I ended up having the best luck was on a low pop US-Brazil server with a level one toon (and yes you can still use the item & get the pet at level 1).

The good news is that after you have found a book, you can cross that spawn point off your list and stop visiting it. The book that took me the longest to find was the "Introduction" book at the Violet Gate.

One other tip you might try, if you have friends across multiple realms - have them cross server you to their realm so you check not only check for book spawns where you are, but also where they are. Mind if you do like I did w/ the US-Brazil server, this will not work unless they are also on the US-Brazil set of sub-servers. (Same goes for US-United States, US-Oceanic, etc. Each can only cross realm with servers from their sub set)

Good Luck! Hope you find your books quickly & with minimum heart break and aggravation

P.S. If you do decide to start camping the books seriously, you are more than welcome to add my Btag - I'd be happy to do invites so you check for them across multiple servers. Wakamaru#1375

Edit:

P.P.S. You can add my Btag if you'd like to check for Valks in the same fashion. I primarily play alliance.

[Landi]

I just got the Kirin Tor familiar and there was a certain amount of sitting around and waiting only to get the filler book. The intro book took me the longest, too. I don't think it was six weeks, more like a couple of weeks. I did spend more time logged in while I did other things near my computer--my desk is now really clean, which I guess is a side benefit.

Apparently a lot of servers have a "bookclub" chat channel--the one time someone announced a book on mine, I couldn't get there in time. I found early in the morning was best for actually finding books. The hardest was not knowing the last time a book spawned so I wouldn't know if I should camp or not. Once I knew when it had spawned, it freed me up not to look at that spot for a couple of hours.

Good luck with your hunt!

[Digem]

Remember this was put in during lich king when we were all hanging out in Dalaran and had the whole expansion to get it.
It will take some time I would say around a month plop an alt in Dalaran and check it out every day.
At least no competition like back in the day when Dalaran was packed and someone might click on a book not knowing why it is there.
Good luck have some patience and you will get this pet.

[Kel]

So my understanding is that the books spawn for only a few minutes before despawning. Is that correct?

Seems like a ton of not being at the right spawn point when that book spawns.

[Tekulve2012]

They should rename this pet : The Dalaran familiar ...cause you will be VERY familiar with the buildings in Dalaran by the end of it!

I finished this one by making sure to be in Dalaran upon server resets ..as soon as you're back online the books often appear (within 30 min anyway from my xp) and at least one of the books is often a 'good' one.

I named my KT Familiar "Booker T" ~ by I'm sure more interesting names could be used good luck

[Kpb321]

I parked an alt there and every time I was switching between chars I'd pop in and check the books I was still missing. Took a couple weeks but I got there and slowly but surely you had less and less spots to check.

[Landi]

So my understanding is that the books spawn for only a few minutes before despawning. Is that correct?

Seems like a ton of not being at the right spawn point when that book spawns.

Yes, they are only up for a couple minutes. I think some are up longer than others. I watched someone open a flavor book and it disappeared in about 90 seconds, but it seemed like the books that spawned in the Intro spot (in the Portal room) would stay up for 3 min or so after being clicked.

[Khorah]

So my understanding is that the books spawn for only a few minutes before despawning. Is that correct?

Seems like a ton of not being at the right spawn point when that book spawns.

IIRC they despawn AFTER they have been read. I typically read fake books to clear them when I am in Dal.

I had the best luck when I was able to log in right after reboots or restarts. When the server comes back up, all of the books respawn although several are usually fakes...

Its a cool idea though.. Good luck

[Ryshat]

I guess we were lucky in the old days when everyone was in Dalaran anyways. We just had a channel for the books and if they popped, someone would shout it out int he channel and then you only had a few minutes to go read it.

NOW, they will only despawn after a few minutes AFTER someone reads it. So it could be there for a while. But it someone happens to read it ... *poof* after a few minutes.

[Mykro9]

With CRZ screwed up at the moment I am not sure if this will work, but it should still work:

Take a toon, any toon, but one that can fly so it goes faster, and park it in Dalaran. This should be a toon you are not doing anything with, so you don't have to keep moving it to and from Dalaran. A Druid would work best, as you have instant cast flight. Next, get some battletag friends on different servers. Alternately, get one friend and have your toon be a level 1. This will go slower movement-wise, but you make up for it in the next step. The key to this is being able to group with someone cross realm, and you getting your character 'pulled' to their realm. The reason using a level one works well, is it allows you to be grouped with another level one, and you get pulled to their realm. If you have a lot of battletag friends on different realms, the level does not matter, so long as they are equal or above the level of your character. Now, once you have your character camping in Dalaran, and you have your battletag friends ready and willing to group with you, start grouping and checking locations for the books. Nothing on realm X, thank them for their time, leave group and get grouped with someone on another realm. If CRZ is working, try to pick people to group with who are not on the same connected realms, or battle groups, as you will in effect be looking at the same spots, instead of the spots on different servers. This one hundred percent worked for me, and I was done with about 6 hours of total time, only looking every so often each day. How this works is you look in the several spots the books spawn to see if one is there. So you start on your server, look in the 8 spots, find nothing, get your friend to invite you to a group. THEY have to invite, otherwise it won't work. Then look in the 8 spots on their server, and keep doing this, hopping servers. Don't ever camp a spot, waiting for something to spawn, look elsewhere. Doing this you should find at least 1 book in no time, literally. Obviously, most of the time there won't be a book, half the time there IS a book, it won't be one fir the achievement, and 8 times, the book you need will be there. Once you get a book from one of the locations, stop looking in that spot, you got the book, you are done. Eventually, you will have just 2, and then just 1 left to find, and by this point you can either camp the one spot on your server, or go all out, and spam group with people to hit as many servers as possible. So, when I did it CRZ was working, so instead of having a possible 200 US servers to hop to, I only had as many battle groups or CRZ'ed groups to bounce between. With CRZ being messed up, you might just have to make sure that you don't search on two realms that effectively share the same Dalaran server.

TL;DR: group with friends from different realms, and look in their spots for the books. It works, (or it worked a few months ago when I did it) this greatly increases the possible spawn points for the books, and greatly speeds up the time per book found process. From weeks or months to days, hours if you spam group and hop as many servers as you can. A book is bound to be up on some server somewhere, and looking at all of them instead of just your own is the fastest way to find it.

P.S.
Absolutely open a non-achievement book to force it to despawn, or the next time you look there, on that server, that same book might still be there. They are there until someone opens them, then they despawn after a few minutes.

Also, what I did exactly was make a ton of level 1 orcs on different realms. When I thought of this, I already had a character with a few books found already. I have 2 accounts, so I took my Mage on the second account that was at least level 80 to have access to creating the Dalaran portal. Then I parked that Mage in the Valley of Trials and grouped all those level 1 orcs to bring them to the mage's realm. Then I created the portal to Dalaran, and poof, level 1 orc in Dalaran. Next I left the group, and I was phased back to the character's home realm. Next, I moved each orc to the different spawn point for the books. If a book that I needed was up, I DID NOT open the book, but took the character that had some books found and got it grouped to that realm to open the book, thus adding to that character's achievement.

A key note here, the pet is account wide and unique, meaning you can only have one. The achievement once complete gives you access to the pet on all characters, everybody knows this. But you may not know that progress on the achievement is character specific. If you find book 3on one character, and book 5 on a different character, each has found only one book, not two. So you must open a book once you find it, by the character that has the most progress.

If there are people here that all still need this achievement/pet, I would make a 'super group' and search your realms together. Once someone finds a book, group your friends to the server the book is spawned on, and loot it together. If you jump the gun, and open the book before you get everyone there, it might despawn and you will have to find another server/wait for the respawn.

[Kel]

Thanks for the tips. I did know the pet was account wide. Odd that the achieve is not. With level 1 toons, you need a mage to port you, right? In your case you ported yourself. But that seems like it's be an issue for me to find someone willing to do it.

I don't suppose this site has a Kirin Tor help forum like the Thundering Serpent Hatchling, does it?

[Wakamaru]

So my understanding is that the books spawn for only a few minutes before despawning. Is that correct?
Seems like a ton of not being at the right spawn point when that book spawns.

The spawn and stay there until someone reads them. After they have been "opened" the book will despawn in 3 minutes.

With level 1 toons, you need a mage to port you, right?

No. Just take the zeppelin or boat to Northrend as you would on a high level toon, the go and see the flight master. You automatically have the flight points for both of our factions starter areas as well as Dalaran, even at level 1. I did this with my level 1, flew here there with no problems (it cost 3g I think?). If you are trying to set up an alt on a ghost-town server and need the gold to get there... I bought the Illustrious Guild Tabard (the blue one) from the guild vendor with my main, mailed it to the level 1 toon, then vendored it.

[Kendrah]

So my understanding is that the books spawn for only a few minutes before despawning. Is that correct?

They despawn after they're read. It's a horrible pet to get. I remember thinking that I wanted to kick the developers for that. Well, that and those fake books. XD Took me two or three weeks. I set a toon up in Dala and got the coordinates for each spawn point, then made a simple macro of those points and checked them every hour or two.

[Janitor]

Took me about 2 weeks to get. The last book took 4 days or something like that
Damn I was getting a bit frustrated at the end hehe.

[Mykro9]

With my WALL-o-text I am sure the message got muddied, but I did the lvl 1 thing for a few specific reasons. First, I made the lvl 1 specifically to be able to be grouped by the other lvl 1's I made. I found having the few battletag friends I have on at odd hours, and available to group, (most are doing grouped stuff themselves.) Second, when I came up with the idea, I did have an alt rogue at 70 something, and the idea was to use the lvl 1's as spotters for the rogue, but I ended up getting books faster on the lvl 1 spotter, and just kept going with it.
So, another long story, but I thought progress finding books was account wide, so I was camping only the books I didn't already have, and I had say 3 books on the 70ish rogue, and 4 on the lvl 1. When I realized the 4 books the lvl 1 found didn't count with the different 3 books the rogue found, and instead of 1 to go, I had 4 to go, I got frustrated, and almost gave up on it altogether. I had camped an hour or 2 straight on the rogue for a couple weeks, and had 3 books to show for it. I mean, grinding mobs for that time would have given me something, but for the 20 plus hours I had spent, all I had to show for it was less than half an achievement and pet. When I switched to the realm hopping and grouping, it was exponentially faster for the time spent, in the number of virtual nodes covered.
As far as getting to Dalaran, I could just as easily have gotten a friend to port me, and it takes a helluva lot less time to get someone to fly to valley of trials, or Northshire, as it would to run to Org. Besides, the Mage can just port back to wherever they want. And do lvl 1's have access to that flight path? I thought they dropped the auto learned flight paths, and you get a quest that takes you to Dalaran via the flight master, I don't think you already know it when you arrive in Borean.