Leveling Preferences

[Violetfemme]

I am just curious how people prefer to level their pets. I was leveling at the trainers, 2 low pets at a time with one level 25 where possible, but it was taking a while. I just switched back to 1 low pet and 2 25s at the trainers and it seems to go much faster, though only 1 or 2 pets gain significant levels each day. I was only using the Safari Hat, until I finally started doing the Shrine dailies with the Beasts of Fable split up and the pvp quest. Now, every once in a while I get one or the other type of pet treat (Lesser Pet Treat for 25% exp or the Pet Treat for 50% exp) as loot. I used the 50% and 25% (on two different characters) and I was able to level my Tainted Waveling (level 1) and a few other almost 25 pets to 25 in a day using the dailies.

How does pvp experience compare and do the treats work the same? I seem to take forever to get even one win at low level pvp'ing, so I tend not to even try it anymore.

[NathKnave]

I've also been using the trainers to level up my pets. Thanks to the guides on these forums I have a team that can carry a leveling pet for each of the trainers. That along with the pet treats from the Beast of Fable quests and I'm able to bump up a few pets pretty significantly each day. I can get to all of the Pandaria tamers along with most of the other higher-level tamers in the hour that the buff from the treat lasts. Then every few days I'll do all three of the Beasts of Fable quests to replenish my supply of the treats.

I used to level with some wild pet battles as well, but I did that primarily while leveling up alts with pet battling experience. Now that I have leveled pretty much every toon that I plan on leveling I don't see as much of a point in grinding pet battles for hours. Sticking with just the dailies to level my pets might limit my leveling somewhat, but it leaves me plenty of time in game to do other things.

A nice side effect of doing all of those dailies is that I have enough Lesser Charms on my main to last me almost an entire year, along with quite a few weeks worth on my one alt that I run raid finder on.

[Livingdeath]

I do all the trainers in Pandaria and BoF everyday. I don't try to level to 25, I just level my lowest pets. For example, I spent a couple weeks taking my level 1s into battle to get them to level 11. When that was done, I took all those 11s and took them to 16. And so on and so on.

I also do wild pet battles occasionally. I have about 2 months left until the last 200 pets I have to level are maxxed out.

[Teacake]

Dailies.

Or, two feline familiars, music, a glass of wine, and all those racoons hanging out with Nitun.

[Slab]

I try to use the tamers across one day to push one pet 1 - 25. Aki is the first stop, and you can use a level 1 there, so she gets the pet to 11 ... then Nishi gets the pet to 15, and that's usually high enough to survive the potential damage the carry pet takes in the other fights. Depending on what level the pet started at, I'll have time to push another one. If the pet gets more than 75-80ish % into 23, or hits level 24, then I don't bother "wasting" the XP from a tamer fight. I levelled 8-10 level 24s the one and only time I used the new pet XP food and pushed an hour of Aquatic pets near Two Moons ... i have 8 more waiting for when I have an hour again to concentrate on that.

If I have some random guys that need finishing, I at least try to always push a level 1 to 11 with Aki each day. I'm "only" 150 max pets in, and half my collection is still uncommon rather than rare.

[Hazelnuttygames]

I level pets from x-20 using the Dragonbone Hatchlings in Dragonblight, and take the level 20 ones along for the dailies. I do all the Outland dailies, one or two of the Northrend and all of the Pandaria dailies typically. I get roughly 3 new level 25 pets per day with this strat when I bother with it- it takes about 40 minutes to an hour for me to get three pets to level 20 on the hatchlings.

[Hazelnuttygames]

I level pets from x-20 using the Dragonbone Hatchlings in Dragonblight, and take the level 20 ones along for the dailies. I do all the Outland dailies, one or two of the Northrend and all of the Pandaria dailies typically. I get roughly 3 new level 25 pets per day with this strat when I bother with it- it takes about 40 minutes to an hour for me to get three pets to level 20 on the hatchlings.

[Syrrie]

Worth noting that the 50% pet treat and the 25% pet treats stack as well as stacking with the safari hat. Once a week I use this stacking to hit up all the Pandaria tamers with 85% bonus xp for pets; It's pretty fantastic.

[Lolfixheal]

What I do is; Pandaria+Spirit Tamers together with BoF(not boosting on them), then finish off with Old World Tamers. 1½h work, sometimes abit more. 2 lesser pet treats being used. Hat on with the addon.

5x level 1 on old world tamers with hat+treat since they don't do backline damage aswell.. 9 9 9 8 8 - those will be boosted next day on Pandaria+Spirit tamers randomly ONLY. This is so the XP aligns up so they either land on 22,9 or 23,1 and 1 battle of 3780xp dings either type of them. The 22,9 gets slightly more because of difficulty bonus of 1 level, a fresh 23 lands on 24,93 so 23,1 gives 25. Should any land on 24,xx, they get tossed into the 24 bunch that gets finished off in wild pet battles later on.

This requires a bunch of level 1 pets, also you level more level 1 pets to 8-9 than 8-9s to 25 so after some days you just take the 5 Old tamers and toss all their XP onto 1 pet only to stop getting 5x 8-9 for next day. Balancing act :p

Only the water spirit tamer I tend to take a level 15 rather than 8-9 to survive the RNG amounts of Tidal waves, but theres always plenty of pets to choose from. Rest of pandarias backline damage is fine with 8-9 from my experience.

I mark my 'current pets under development' with the favourite option. level1s and level24s and those inbetween. Those that land on 25, gets favourite removed and drop below level 1 favorites when you sort your journal after 'level'.

Haven't really counted but Id say 3 pets get 1-25 each day. 4 battles to 25 from 8-9 per pet, lot of difficulty bonus along the way from the steps they land (9-15-19-22-25 iirc). No wasted XP, maximum XP gain, full satchel gain, little time spend.

[Violetfemme]

Hmm, thanks for the thoughts everyone. I think I have to re-think my pandaria and spirit tamers teams. Do the pets on those battles get credit for fighting even if not brought out? I know I can level with Nishi and a couple of the others as long as I use my low level pet for the first fight, but maybe I don't have to put them into the battle at all? I never wanted to waste the potential xp to try to putting them in I also have been skipping the dailies that don't give bags...maybe I should go back to them for the xp. I have to get back to leveling...I still have something like 300 to get to 25!

[Gruhm]

Worth noting that the 50% pet treat and the 25% pet treats stack as well as stacking with the safari hat. Once a week I use this stacking to hit up all the Pandaria tamers with 85% bonus xp for pets; It's pretty fantastic.

Wow, thank you. It had not occurred to me to even try stacking the food.

[Maizing]

Hmm, thanks for the thoughts everyone. I think I have to re-think my pandaria and spirit tamers teams. Do the pets on those battles get credit for fighting even if not brought out? I know I can level with Nishi and a couple of the others as long as I use my low level pet for the first fight, but maybe I don't have to put them into the battle at all? I never wanted to waste the potential xp to try to putting them in I also have been skipping the dailies that don't give bags...maybe I should go back to them for the xp. I have to get back to leveling...I still have something like 300 to get to 25!

The pets only get a share of the xp if they enter the battle for at least 1 round... but level 25 pets do not take a share of the xp regardless.

That said, I do some of the EK/Kalimdor dailies for xp. I will put my lowest level pet up against the various tamers (switching if the pet levels up and I have a different pet that is now lower level). I mostly concentrate on my rares, but if I don't have a rare that will get any xp from the battle, I will put one of my (2 remaining) uncommon pets up. At this time, my lowest level rare is 15 and my lowest level uncommon is 13. I will sometimes battle the Tamers in Outland to get xp also.

Of the higher level Tamers, I usually only put leveling pets up against Aki and Nishi, since I can usually solo them and at worst, only need 2 pets to take their teams out. I have been thinking of starting to put a leveling pet up against Zusshi too though (as I can usually solo his team with a lone Emperor Crab), but need to figure out what would be the best point in the fight to do so.

[R3ib]

As mentioned, I've found the Pandaria dailies to be the quickest way to level pets, especially with food buff. The trick is to find the point in the fight, you can throw in a level 1... and be sure it will survive. Something to note, certain pets will start their turn with a heal... good time to have a level 1 up against a 25 is when they're busy healing.

Another useful tactic, when leveling a level 1 against 25's in the "wild"... start off with a pet that has a 2 round "block", throw your level 1 in for a round behind it.

PS... Thanks for the food stacking tip. Not sure if I'll need to level a pet that fast, but that's good to know... just in case.

[Violetfemme]

Another useful tactic, when leveling a level 1 against 25's in the "wild"... start off with a pet that has a 2 round "block", throw your level 1 in for a round behind it.

Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. I may try that when I go back to looking for my Pandaren rares. I still need to fill out my collection of rares from Jade Forest, Valley, and Kun-Lai. I'm missing a bunch of them from all 3 zones and I was thinking of leveling some of my almost 25s and some low ones while hunting. Thanks for the tip!

[Lolfixheal]

Just do carrypet switchins when your first 25 dies, get it in, get it out and take your second 25. 1 round wasted only. So ideally find a pet that can solo first two pets on tamer, carry pet and a pet than can finish last pet.

[Tiggindy]

I started out with the Emerald Whelpling, Panda Cub and De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion, basically 2 favorites and a third that was nice and a mechanical.

I leveled those through world battles and tamer fight up until the point that I couldn't beat a tamer with just these three. Then I leveled others so that I had one of every family at 25. Pretty much the list that I have as favorites.

Once I was able to beat all the tamers, I leveled pets so that I could beat each of the tamers with 2 25's and a leveler.

At this point, I was still leveling some favorites rather than with any pattern.

Eventually I realized that the tamers gave the best pet XP and realized that vs the higher level tamers I needed to not be level 1 with my leveling pet, so I was also leveling all pets to a target level of 5. I leveled my favorites a little, then leveled them to 25 with a mix of tamers and wild fights. For the tamers, I'd only fight the ones with the bags each day, every day, whether I felt like it or not.

After this I was starting to do pet groupings, like all the TCG pets, all the store pets and so on. Again, I stuck with the target level and a mix of fight types.

Then I decided to get organized. I started rare hunting, and leveling all pets to 5. I started in lowbie zones, and progressed steadily higher until I got to Pandaria. I was also raising pets by family as I finished them (all rare). If I ran out of pets to level in a family that were rare, I'd move on to the next one, but I'd go back and finish it when I got a stone for the non-rare, I but I think this only happened once.

I did Dragonkin, Undead, Humanoids, then Elementals. Once I was down to mechanical, flying and beast, I just leveled them by alphabet.

Once all my pets were 5, I worked on getting them all to 10 and 15. Somewhere soon after I got all my pets to 10, I had all the capture pets as rare, so I focused on areas where I needed stones. I spent a lot of time in the Valley, and finished off my critters faster than I expected. After that I hunted in then Krasarang, but I kinda lost interest once my pets were all 15, so I was doing 2 for 1 stone trades, and buying stone uses from peeps on Lothar.

Once I had all my pets stoned, I stopped doing the non-Pandaria tamers, but I spent a bit of time in Krasarang to get the remaining pets all to level 19 (three tamer fights from 25) and just finished leveling with tamer fights.

Probably way more than you wanted to know.

[Violetfemme]

LOL, Tiggindy, more than I needed to know, but very thorough! I have started doing this process and similarly to your methods. I have now caught all wild non-pandarian rares, except snowshoe hare. I am working on catching all rares in Pandaria and I have started leveling my favorite rares using tamer battles. Some days I feel like I manage to get a few to 25, then it seems like days before I get any more to 25. I can't believe there are so many people who seem to have leveled all pets to 25 already!

[Cat666]

I use a 25 Pterodax Hatchling with a Safari Hat get a pet from level 1-6 on the aquatics outside the entrance to Mogushun Palace. 9 times out 10 they buff themselves or heal themselves first turn so your lowbie is safe. On the odd occasion they die it's not far from either shrine for a ressurect for 10s. Sometimes I'll do more than one fight, you get a level per fight until 14ish.

Anyways then I use the guide on these forums to do the dailies with only the Anubisath Idol and the Emerald Proto Whelp to power level the lowbies I've gotten to 6+ Currently I'm working on the pets in the other guide to make the fights quicker.

[Slick]

I just do an hour of tamer dailies for 1-25 on 1 pet. I use Magical Crawdad and Anubisath and that team can duo every tamer I've come across save for the one outside of Dalaran.