How do you level your pets?

[Viruzzz]

Pet week is going on, and I was wondering how people are actually leveling their pets...

I used to do it on the pet battle dailies, a few battles a day. I didn't level anything fast but I was steadily leveling pets , but those don't give any meaningful exp anymore, so now I mostly just do it if the reward is something I want or if I happen to walk right by them anyway. And outside of squirt (who will not be making a visit this week, at least not on the US realms) I don't really know of any decent repeatable/steady way to level pets anymore.

[Gráinne]

I don't really level many pets any more. I kind of miss it.

When I do, I usually take a Pandaria circuit for old time's sake.

But the current way to level pets is with the Legion Family Familiar tamers, who are infinitely repeatable when their world quest is up. They give as much XP as Squirt, and there's usually one of them up at all times.

Wowhead provides maps of current world quests so you can quickly see what's available

For EU:
https://www.wowhead.com/world-quests/legion/eu

For US:
https://www.wowhead.com/world-quests/legion/na

Taking both speed of battle and need for bandages into account, Nyari, who has looked into it, ranks the options from best to worst like this:

Squirt > Odrogg > Robert > Galveston > Bodhi > Tiffany > Xorvasc > Jarrun > Grixis > Andurs > Amalia > Aulier > Varenne > Merayl > Bredda

but, for example, if you don't care about blowing a bandage every battle, Robert Craig is apparently fastest by a few seconds with https://wow-petguide.com/index.php?Strategy=2655

Anyway, if you just want to grind tamers for pet XP, critter week or not, look to these Legion tamers,

[Killerkarl]

Been years since I have leveled pets. I guess a bank full of https://www.wowhead.com/item=122457/ult ... ard-from-q has spoiled me.

[Peanutty]

I have alts parked at various Pandaria tamers, so that's the "easiest" route for me. I've done Squirt-day once... didn't enjoy it in the slightest, so back to Pandaria for me.

[FuxieDK]

At this stage in the game: I just buy a level 25 stone.. They are dirt cheap.

[Viruzzz]

At this stage in the game: I just buy a level 25 stone.. They are dirt cheap.

It's 60 charms, I wouldn't call that cheap. If you do the charm WQs that's around 1 every other day if you had nothing else to use them for. I'm still working my way through the pets I want to buy...

[Whoppadoo]

I am running the pandaria circuit as I type this to level some pets and level my 113 rogue, since I dont really like to play him but it would be nice to have all classes at 120, so this is the way I level pets and toons I dont really care to play :/

[Jerebear]

I do the 8 Darkmoon Faire resets of the Feasel brothers when they are up. Otherwise I do the the 1 hour MoP + WoD + 1more circuit (for the player exp in addition to the pet exp). I don't really enjoy the squirt method as it gets too monotonous (or any repeatable for that manner). I generally don't need to do a lot of levelling. I mostly just level up the trash pets from alchemy bags so I can sell them on the AH and make something off of them.

[Harpooha]

It has really changed over the course of time.

Initially, it was just leveling pets in the wild. But that was long ago.

For a long time, I used to do the Pandaria circuit. But eventually that was too time consuming.

WOD was the real breakthrough. With the Menagerie and the ability to buy upgrade stones, it really streamlined the process. I always had someone parked at Ashlei and I did the Garrison Daily pretty regularly. And when Squirt was up, I would level pets till I fell asleep.

Now I keep alts at Major Payne, Obalis, Bloodknight Antari, Crysa, Environeer Bert and Lydia Accoste. And I never miss the DMF dailies. This usually does the trick since all my pets are currently at max level. But I usually end up with spares that I level and sell. I keep anywhere from 30-200k on various realms just in case a bargain pops up.

Leveling is so much easier than it was when I started collecting pets. Mainly because you have a lot of options in how you approach it. The best thing is to use all the tools available. Then it seems like less of a grind.

[NathKnave]

It's definitely a long time since having only a few dailies and wild battles to level. I've had all max level pets since those days in Mists. During Warlords I would primarily go back through Pandaria along with the the Draenor tamers when I got new pets to level. During Legion it was awesome having pet battle dailies that would passively let you level anything - so much so that I would often run out of pets to level. That's when I started leveling my duplicate cageable pets to sell in the AH.

When the XP died for BfA pet battle dailies it hurt me pretty bad, but I'm too stubborn to go back to selling level 1 pets on the AH (at level 25 they don't sell like hotcakes, but when they do sell it's for a few thousand gold more than a level 1). I tried Squirt and the Legion tamers, but that's too much monotony for no actual reward other than the levels you get. I also tried doing the Pandaria circuit daily using pet treats, but that quickly became a chore.

Now I hit up the Darkmoon Faire daily when it's available (also the best ratio of prize tickets to game tokens you can get) and I do the Legion tamers semi-regularly (steadily counting towards Draenor Pet Brawler). During the Pet Battle weekly event I go nuts and hit up the Pandaria and Legion tamers daily. Right now I have 100+ pets I'm leveling during this week. It does't take too much effort, since it's just a week every couple months.

Slightly related: Anyone else not keep a toon with the Pandaria Shrine as their hearth and had to rearrange their Pandaria tamer route because of the portal change? Works out okay for Alliance since I can start with Hyuna, go to the Whispering Pandaren Spirit, then the Thundering Spirit and follow my normal path. Horde is a bit more annoying since those two are pretty close but you end up backtracking if you start with them.

[Guinless]

I have an alt sat permanently at my Garrison.

As most of my pets are level 25, I only need to do one or two as I get new ones. I either use the daily in the Garrison (if it pops up - I'll cycle through other alts to try to find it) or do three of the Draenor tamers, which all have strats to easily level from 1.

I've levelled that char from 90 to 113 purely from pet battles, over the course of the last 2 expansions. (along with 4 others from 90 to 100.)

[FuxieDK]

At this stage in the game: I just buy a level 25 stone.. They are dirt cheap.

It's 60 charms, I wouldn't call that cheap. If you do the charm WQs that's around 1 every other day if you had nothing else to use them for. I'm still working my way through the pets I want to buy...

True.. It's 1-2 days pet charm..... But when you already have bought every single pet, toy and 1.500 --> 2.000 upgrade, there is NOTHING ELSE to use the PPCs on.

And I sure don't get a pet every other day on average, so plenty of PPCs to spare.

[Nagini]

Except at the start of an expansion, when my pet collection grows by leaps and bounds, I generally level all the pets I pick up here and there using a combination of Ashlei and Crysa. Any pet starts out against Ashlei, leveling it to 11 or 16 untill it can take a few hits from Crysa's vultures. I usually finish off with leveling stones if the pet hits 23 or 24. In the darkmoon weeks, I finish off lvl 20+ pets against the dark moon faire trainers.
Both my parked alts are allied races, that passively pick up a few levels this way. The alts start out in the barrens, then rotate to shadowmoon valley once they hit 60 and can fly.

[Uduwudu]

Pet week is going on, and I was wondering how people are actually leveling their pets...
...

(a bit long ... sorry!)

In the old days, I used to do Ashlei and all that ... religiously. As I got more pets and less religious, I do Ashlei for the bump, (or the Murlocs, which I can do on all my characters ... thus so many times that I will be asleep on the last one and miss the heroic Leap .... twice!), however, by the time you have over 1000 pets, things change. You know that you can get enough Pet Charms or single rocks to level your pets, and you don't waste the time anymore ... you have an hour to play, and the guild wants to raid the Kindgom of Come&Get Nothing, and you only have 10 minutes for the pet ... you just go to the vendor, get the rock ... done!

The amount of time you spend "leveling" pets is probably negligible and non-existent, compared to the days that you had 100 pets and had to level 250 more!

But I loved the Pet Week ... I could go to one spot or two, and level up every single pet that was 15 and up in two, maybe even three fights ... and that made it easier to deal with. Of course, we don't want to discuss the day that I spent babysitting Squirt, and got the equivalent of over 1,000 levels in one day! Somewhere in this board is a post on those days, if it's not archived and trashed!

I think that most of it depends on your play level and what you get/do with the pets ... I don't PvP and the Pet Battles are more fun for me, than the stupid Mythics (I've never gotten past level 2 ... believe it or not and have 5 characters at better than 390!), and I'm so tired of raiding (been doing it for almost 14 years, starting with Molten Core and Blackwing BS, and what not, to the point that the "new" raids, and what not, are the things I ignore the most! They aren't fun, and I used to like healing them ... can't even do that these days ... one healer does 55K, and the next healer 20K and the next one 19K ... and the disparity is ridiculous, and obviously designed on some kind of cheating mechanism that can take advantage of the game ... same thing for DPS ... one person 35K and the next one 19K and the next one 17K ... and until the day that someone's computer is one of the ones inside the network at Blizzard, with the latest 12 inch memory graphic card on it, I seriously doubt that this game can get better and be more fun ... seeing numbers like that pretty much means that person knows the GM spots and are using it and not taking any damage whatsoever or getting interrupts ... and if the game is not smart enough to level that, I don't see why I should bother!

At least, in Pet Battles (and I don't do PvP for the same reason! There are some folks cheating and getting interrupts that are not coded correctly ... for example, one is supposed to trigger 15% of the time, and in three battles, it triggered 49% of the time! Sorry .... that is not proper and it is obvious that person has some kind of cheating mechanism that most of us don't.

At that point, the game is not fun anymore! But, at least, the majority of these cheaters in dungeons and raids, are not quite all over the Pet Battles, and that makes it still fun. AND, I love the idea that you need to keep some level 1 pets to do some fights ... to me that's far out! It takes out a lot of cheating!

[Darkchyld]

I'll save my pets for pet battle bonus week, choose one of my 110+ alts and fly around and do MoP and WoD trainers. 2 trainers gets from 1-25 and if I do a full circuit it's like 75% of a level XP.

[Juddinscire]

I only recently read about the ability to use the 'Beasts of Burden" pet battle when it is up over and over by only killing the same 'boss' each time with an Iron Starlette allowing two carry pets to gain XP as well as your character each time.

It is super-quick with only 4 moves required, minimal fail chances and I finished levelling about 35 pets in a fairly short time the other night as well as gaining 2 full levels on one of my alts (went from 112 - 114 in a few hours).

Sure beats Super Squirt and would be better again at the times it coincides with pet battle bonus bonanza.

[Nearlysober]

I did "Super Squirt" once to plow through a massive amount of pet leveling. I won't be doing that again, partly because my backlog for leveling is always short but mostly because it was tedious.

I much prefer to periodically do a WoD & MoP loop. Good XP for pets and good XP for alts. I basically "accidentally" leveled one of my alts to like 116 just doing this... which posed a problem when I tried to go questing with him and his gear was so terrible from lack of quest rewards

[Tunguska]

I only recently read about the ability to use the 'Beasts of Burden" pet battle when it is up over and over by only killing the same 'boss' each time with an Iron Starlette allowing two carry pets to gain XP as well as your character each time.

Can you explain this one? I’ve never heard of that one.thanks!

[Nyari]

I wrote a Powerleveling Guide:
https://wow-petguide.com/index.php?m=Powerleveling

Quote for the Beast of Burden part:

Rydyr or Andurs
World quest: Beasts of Burden
Location: Stormheim
Rydyr:
Recommended strategy:
Draenei Micro Defender + Any Pet with Explode
Fight duration: ~0:30
Andurs:
Recommended strategy:
Iron Starlette
Fight duration: ~0:40
Note: Only repeatable if you fight just one of them, so you have to choose which one you want to use for leveling.
Once you've completed this world quest you can't challenge them again!
You get less experience from them then you would get from the other tamers listed here. In return these strategies are reliable and really fast.
Since these are short fights you'll need more bandages (or more teams).

[Djkillj0y]

I've automated the squirt battling process to an extreme degree.

By combining a couple of in game macros with the interact with target button i'm able to do most of the complex work of between fight movement without having to look at what is happening.

I have the Move to interact with item option on and my interact with target bound to the * button on my num pad.

First macro is target the healer in my garrison
Second selects the correct conversation options to heal my team.
third macro targets squirt

So five buttons total gets me healed and back in the fight.

tdpet battle scripts handles the fighting and the queue on my rematch keeps pulling the next pet into the fight. 2 fights per pet gets them from 1 to 25 no issue.