Pet leveling techniques

[Tonid]

First of all, forgive me, if this subject has been talked about before, I couldn't find a post on it, and neither Pet Collecting nor Pet Battling forums seem fit for it...

I was wondering, what are your techniques for quick, mass pet leveling? I've noticed many people with almost every pet at level 25, and whilst collecting (all wild ones now rare except for the summer pet) and battling (around 500 wins already) don't seem to be a problem for me, leveling takes me quite a while.

So far my approach has been very simple and limited. I've leveled pets from 1 to 10 in Heartland, simply doing 4 battles with crickets (since they usually start with such a low damage spell, that it doesn't kill a lvl 1). Then I simply did 5 tamers in Pandaria everyday to level a single lvl 10 to 25. However, this gives just one lvl 25 a day, around 2 years in total to get all my pets to max level...

Recently I've started doing more daily tamers, all the tamers in Pandaria, along with the spirits (which, however, are more difficult, even with a good team — a lot depends on RNG). This approach gives me approximately 2 25s a day, but it takes well over an hour daily.

Have you found any other more efficient ways to level your pets? Simply grind battles e.g. in Heartland? Or more tamers all over the world (e.g. with strategically placed alts)?

What's your secret?

[Peanutty]

I'm one of "those people" with all 25s, and for the most part did it via tamers. Back when I was mass leveling I made sure to hit every single tamer that granted a bag (so all the Pandaria tamers and spirits + Uldum, Icecrown, Shadowmoon Valley, Winterspring & Deadwind Pass). If you do that (assuming with Safari Hat and without pet foods) you will level two pets from 1 to 25 each day plus a third to maybe halfway or so. Pet foods, which I sometimes used on select alts that were parked at tamers, would boost that a bit more.

I also hunted for rares in the wild back when you couldn't forfeit out and still leave the wild pet up, so I would literally start from one side of a zone and battle through every single wild pet that came across my path, always making sure to carry a lower level pet through the battle. I got my Legendary Pet Battler (5k wins) over a year ago thanks to that.

There is no real speed option, other than paying people to level pets for you, which is up to you if you want to try that.

[Kpb321]

I think the most common response you'll get will be pet trainers. They do provide a large amount of experience per battle but id does sound like there are things you can do to improve things.

First a handful of links for teams for pet trainers:
http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... =10&t=4580
http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... =10&t=4314
http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... =10&t=7023
http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/f ... =10&t=7556

The older guides can still be useful. You seem to have enough pets that you shouldn't need the beginners thread.

Making sure you have good teams setup and a pet team add-on to make selecting them easy will help make things easier and it should go faster than an hour. Most of the teams should be pretty reliable and should only rarely have losses. I like rematch now but PetBattleTeams worked fine for me for a long time too.

While doing trainers there are things you can do to maximize your exp:
1. Make sure you have your buffs. Hat and 25% pet food should be the minimum. Hat 25% and 50% is great but you can only get two 50% treats per week. PvP weekly and the CT weekly. They all stack so that is a huge increase in exp when combined.

2. Work out your routine so you minimize your wasted exp. Based on your combinations of buffs there are certain points that minimize your wasted EXP and minimize the amount of leveling you have to do at 24 to finish it off. When I do my leveling of level pets from level 1 they end up a fight or two short of 25 and I don't waste any trainer exp. Unfortunately I'm pretty much out of level 1 pets to level now and am starting to work on wild pets that are random levels all over making this harder.

3. Minimize travel time. Use tomtom or some other similar add-on to make sure you are heading the right direction. Parking alts at trainers also works well. Some can be relatively low level while others will aggro stuff and need to be higher level. Alts can also maximize the benefit from the food buffs. I've got alts at all the old world trainers that give bags (deadwind pass, Winterspring and Shadowmoon) and at Aki in the vale.

You'll probably need to do the beast of fable to get the less pet treats at least occasionally but don't do it when you are using the 50% pet treat as it wastes buff time.


Yes. You are limited to a couple pets every day but it is pretty fast and provides stones for those remaining pets you still need to upgrade.

If you want to try to grind it some other way instead of or in addition to the trainers/spirits then I'd recommend the area's near some of the beasts of fables. Nitun for example has tons of critters around him and it's almost impossible to kill them all. A team with a carry pet, a strong beast with a heal (Xufu or a zlandy raptor is my choice) and a third good pet you can grind pretty much non-stop. There are tons of beast by Kafi or gorespine but mechanical pets that have heals are rarer.


I'm not quite full 25 yet but I am getting close and it is primarily from the trainers and spirits. I did do some leveling while capturing wild pets but that is a distant second at this point I'm sure.

[Quintessence]

In the beginning I attempted to just grind levels with wild battles (after completing trainer dailies each day), but the monotony of that really started to wear down on me.

I tried a new method after that - get each pet to a certain level "break point". I would then take those pets and level them via trainer battles since pets at certain levels benefit the most from trainer dailies. Experience wasn't wasted/lost; very efficient.

My usual route for a day of leveling:

• Started with a new pet (level 1) and battled lowbie pets until it reached level 3. With or without a Safari Hat, it didn't really matter to me.
• Once level 3, I used the Grand Master trainer dailies in the following order to level my pet up (using Safari Hat and any experience food): Winterspring > Deadwind Pass > Uldum / Shadowmoon Valley > Icecrown
• My pet hits level 19 at that point, the perfect level for making the most of the Pandaria dailies.

After completing the dailies, I'd camp myself in a spot and grind out wild battles to get each of my pets to level 19 (or another specific level). That way when dailies reset, all I had to do was make a quick pass at all the Pandaria dailies to level a few pets to max each day.

Once they came out with pet food that boosted experience gain, this process went even faster (yay!).

TLDR; Do the Grand Master trainer dailies, make the most of dailies by leveling pets of certain levels, and Safari Hat and experience buffs from pet food helps. Good luck and happy battling!

[Tonid]

Cheers folks, so I guess it's precisely what I've been doing, just more intense ^^.

I have all the 7 trainers in Pandaria well managed (with a bit different teams than suggested in the linked posts though, but they work wonderfully), so those are no problem. I guess I just need to figure out the best teams for the four pandaren spirits which are giving me some trouble at the moment, and then the shortest route between them.

I was thinking to go as far as the Grand Master tamers in other lands, using parked alts, but I'm not sure they're worth the trouble. Same with Beasts of Fable, since they are definitely hardest to beat with a carried pet (easily beaten with a full 3x 25 team).

I haven't been using pet buff food, I have loads stacked, I guess I should start making use of it! Safari Hat -- obviously got it.

cheers!

[Kpb321]

The beasts of fable aren't even close to being worth trying to carry a pet. The give very little exp and as you mentioned are harder to do.

[Jerebear]

If you are talking leveling a subset of your pets to 25, the tamers are the way for quickness. If you are aiming to level all of your pets to 25, there are a few things to consider:

1. Level 10 & 11 pets get the most EXP from the tamers versus any other level carry pet.
2. You only get 50% foods once or twice per week (Celestial Tourny and PvP weekly)
3. You can get 3 25% foods each day so you should always have the 25% buff against tamers.
4. You can get an additional 10% buff (darkmoon tophat) once per day during the Darkmoon Faire (only good during the faire, so can't stockpile)
5. For the following strat to be effective, you need to be able to do all the pandaria tamers (including spirit) fast and efficiently. You'll even want to go to Northrend/Cata tamers as well with what remaining time you have on your buffs. The more tamers you can get the better.
6. The team addons Pet Battle Teams and Rematch are both great for the following method. I prefer Rematch because you can build a queue of pets to level and right click remove ones when you are done with them, so it really makes the process more seemless.
7. Alternate to the strategy I am about to explain, the fastest way is to park an alt at each tamer and give each alt all food buffs, but you have to stay logged out of your alts until you use them to battle. I find this extremely inconvenient the way I play the game, but some like this method and it is definitely faster than what I am going to explain below.

With that in mind, the most efficient long term strategy I have come up with (assuming no alts):

1. Whenever possible, do wild pet battles for pets 1-9 until they reach 10-11 and stop. This can be done with a Safari hat only (no need to waste food buffs unless you have tons to spare). 1-4 battles against 24/25 wild pets will get you to level 10/11. Gorespine is a great place to do this as the wild pets are beasts and level 24-25 with a great spawn rate.
2. On days you can take a full set of pandaria tamers run AND you have the 50% and 25% foods (usually up to two days per week), take each of your lowest level pets starting at level 10 (and moving up) and pit them against one tamer each. A level 10/11 pet against a pandaria tamer gets 8787 experience, the higher (or lower) you get from 10 and 11, the less EXP you get. You want to get the most out of the 50% buff, so pit a level 10/11 carry pet against each tamer (swap carry pets for each battle). This way you get the most out of your 50% buff while you have it.
3. On days you only have the 25% buff (the remaining days of the week), do the same thing you did in #2 but starting with level 22 (pandaria tamers)/23 (northrend & cata tamers) pets and working down. For this, pit your highest level pet you can against the tamer that won't waste EXP.
4. For all the pets that didn't quite make it to 25 (the level 24's), just do wild battles for them. Again, it will be 1-4 battles to get them to level 25.

This method is kind of like a pincher attack style. You work up from level 10/11 with the 50% + 25% buffs and down from level 22/23 with only the 25% buff, meeting somewhere in between. For all pets below 10 and higher than 23, you do wild battles to clean them up. This ensures that you get as much bang out of the 50% buffs as possible, so it saves time long term.

I've been doing this and it really does work long term. It doesn't always feel as rewarding because some nights you don't get any new 25s, but then other nights you gets 18 25s, so it balances out. As of today, I have 11 pets left to get to 25 (well barring a few duplicate level 1's) and they are all sitting at level 24, so if I don't get bumrushed with children, I'll be able to hit all 25s tomorrow night.

As far as the tamer circuit, I've been doing:
Jade Forest
Whispering Spirit
Thundering Spirit
Vale of Eternal Blossoms
Valley of the Four Winds
Krasasong Wilds
Flowing Spirit
Dread Wastes
Kun-Lai Summit
Burning Spirit
Townlong Steppes (usually have 25 minutes of the buffs after finishing this).

At this point it depends on what means of transport you have. I have an argent tournament tabard so:
Teleport to Argent Tourny -> Major Payne
Crystal Song Forest
Zul'Drak
Dragonblight
Teleport to Shrine, Portal to SW, Portal to Deepholme -> Deepholme Tamer
Mt. Hyjal Tamer
Twilight Highlands Tamer (sometimes run out of time after this guy)
Obalis in Uldum

On a good night, I can get all 19 tamers within the hour of the buff. If I get bad RNG, sometimes as low as 17 of them.

[Dragonwizard]

4. You can get an additional 10% food once per day during the Darkmoon Faire (only good during the faire, so can't stockpile)

What is this 10% food you are talking about?

[Kpb321]

4. You can get an additional 10% food once per day during the Darkmoon Faire (only good during the faire, so can't stockpile)

What is this 10% food you are talking about?

I believe it is just the regular 10% exp buff from the fare which is available a couple different ways.

[Jerebear]

The darkmoon top hat. It provides an additional 10% pet experience. I verified in both on wowhead using buff ID's and in game as well. Costs 10 tickets. NOTE: it will disappear from your inventory once the faire leaves. I probably shouldn't have called it food. Force of habit.

[Luciandk]

You can level even a lvl 1 on Pandaria Tamers.

Aki the Chosen's first pet does so little initial damage that anything but a lvl 1 undead can survive a single hit. To be able to count for participiating and getting experience. Then you can easilly solo her team with Anubisath Idol, with Jade Owl as back up against bad rng.

Courageous Yon's first pet is likewise. Anything but a lvl 1 aquatic can survive the initial weak attack, and letting you proceed to trash her team with the idol.

[GilroyKilroy]

When I have a level 1 pet to level I use the Thundering Pandaren Spirit. There is a well documented strategy using Alphine Hare, Fox Kit and leveling pet where the leveling pet takes no hits at all.

There are a couple other good tamers that don't do aoe and a level 1 can survive one hit. After you get pets to the 3-5 range any tamer will be OK.

I used hat and both food buffs going around to each of the Pandaren tamers when I was leveling pets (I have over 700 level 25 pets, all rare.) You can get a little more than 2 a day from 1-25 though towards the end I leveled them evenly.

[Hermy]

I always do Hyuna (in Jade Forest) with a Level 1 pet & my Safari Hat - today's Landro's Lil' XT made it to Level 11 from that one battle. My team is a P/P Emerald Proto-Whelp and Son of Animus - my Proto-Whelp can often solo it, I just swap my Level 1 pet in when Dor the Wall is in his heal/shield phase.

[Ishildur]

Back when I was leveling for my collection I'd hit every tamer out there. But I'd also first get the pet I was gonna level a few levels through the crickets. Some of those tamers you have to have something of a buffer.

Honestly it depended a lot on my mood or needs. I had some alts I was leveling up and wild pet battles seemed more fun than doing the same quests the third time around, so I'd set myself rules like "every pet must be level 5-6". So every pet got one fight against a heartland cricket. Then I'd do blue pets up to 15th lvl because well, I was getting xp for the fights so why not? Or I'd try to get every undead pet up to 10th since they need extra levels to survive critters. Then I got fixated on my dragonkin so they got the wild pet battle level treatment. Then every pet had to go to 10th lvl, then 15th. All the while I was doing the tamer dailies as I could so a few select pets got maxed each day I did those dailies.

Sooo 7 90th lvl alts later the goal was to get every pet to 21st lvl so it would take fewer tamer battles to get them done with. By that time I was pretty close to done. It just sort of happened over time as I got bored with quests or wanted to unwind after raid but also to level a character up. I'd settle in for "until I get a stone or I hit lvl 86th or I run out of xp buff" type of sessions for wild battles. For the tamers, after a while I just made new chars, got some help relocating them and camped in to them to do each tamer quest. Less xp, but more sanity. Around your 400th maxed pet sanity becomes a commodity to be managed.

[Hootstwo]

I always do Hyuna (in Jade Forest) with a Level 1 pet & my Safari Hat - today's Landro's Lil' XT made it to Level 11 from that one battle. My team is a P/P Emerald Proto-Whelp and Son of Animus - my Proto-Whelp can often solo it, I just swap my Level 1 pet in when Dor the Wall is in his heal/shield phase.

Same as me, although I use a Celestial Dragon and Onyxian Whelpling, but sending in a level one when the turtle is healing/walling is the same thing I do.

[Jerebear]

Another place to do the swap on Hyuna is the 2nd round of the fly. The 2nd dot always does 30% of your health (6% per tick), so no pet can die from it directly. Of course, it totally depends on the team you are using as to when the swap is best done. I prefer the turtle as well.

[Peanutty]

My Hyuna team is an Enchanted Lantern (takes out the fly), Darkmoon Zep (takes out the snake, and then I keep the Zep out against the turtle until Decoy is available again, use Decoy, swap in the level 1, and then swap in either the Lantern or Zep to finish it off.

[Waynebrady]

It's funny how everyone has similar rules/strategy. I was doing all the Pandaren tamers at first, then I added the Spirits, and then I realized I had extra time so I started adding the Legendary Beasts of Fable in. Prior I was doing the Beasts of Fable a couple times a week for the 25% food buff.

Once I had 75+ of the 25% food I cut back on the Fables. Now I set a base level for my lower pets, at first it was level 6 (one battle against crickets in Valley) and now I'm moving to a level 10 baseline. I do 2 maybe 3 trainers/spirits with each level 10 and stop when they're level 24. Then wild battles to get my 24's to 25. I choose to use my 50% buff when I know I will have at least an hour to pet battle.

I used to take two level 1's to 25 each day but it was getting boring. My path begins at the Thundering spirit > Air Spirit > Hyuna in Jade > Valley > Aki in Vale > Kun Lai > Fire Spirit > Townlong > Dread Waste > Water Spirit > Moruk in Kras. I had always started with Thundering because you can put a level 1 in first, have it get stunned, swap in your next (in my case a snail) and easily level a level 1. Also right along that path you could do each Beast of Fable pet. There is probably a better route but I like mine.

[Mojogrow]

Usually i just level one or two pet a day (depending if I am not too lazy) as well, starting at Jade forest tamer, swapping my level 1 in at the Turtle. But due to the PvP pet treat,I hatched a plan so you can level 3 25s with only the pandaren trainers using all the buffs (Safari, DMF buff, Lesser and greater pet treat). My plan is to save all the treats for the first week of the month, and power level the pets getting 3 done a day, starting at Jade forest tamer, then starting my next level 1 at Aki and then my last level 1 at Kun-lai mountain tamer (Sandstorm then switch to level pet during one of the 3 turn moves)(the order of what to do afterwards doesn't matter too much since at 15-16, your pets should be able to withstand any AoE) If I am not mistaken, it brings up the pet level to 15 on the first battle, then 20, then 24 then all you have to do is fight 1 wild pet and it's 25.

Against Hyuna, My team is EPW and Whatever hits like a truck (usually chrominius, Crow, or Xu-Fu are my picks just to end it faster) I let EPW die at the first headbutt, then switch to level pet, then to hard hitter.

[Tonid]

Against Hyuna, My team is EPW and Whatever hits like a truck (usually chrominius, Crow, or Xu-Fu are my picks just to end it faster) I let EPW die at the first headbutt, then switch to level pet, then to hard hitter.

My latest discovery against Hyuna: Nexus Whelpling. Arcane Storm -> Mana Surge, sometimes kills first 2 pets in 2 shots (!). As second, I always use a moth, but Chrominius sounds interesting, will give it a go.