Having way too much fun playing Pokemon!

I don't know what I was expecting. Surprisingly I am having a lot of fun with it. When Cata came out, I had high hopes for Archaeology  but it turned BORING really quick. I think it came down to only being able to search for 3 times per zone, then having to fly across the continent to try again. Pet battles are not like that. I can level all three of my pets in an area. Pick the right zone, there are critters everywhere. (see wowhead link below for maps). Fight, fight, fight until you start maxing level, then move on to another zone. (sort of like questing).

Yesterday, I went through and trained to become a pet battler. (trainer is up by the Orgrimmar flight path). Pick a pet and a go start fights with other pets (that big yellow paw above their head) in and around Orgrimmar (usually dung beetles and spiny lizards).

You start with one slot for one pet. Your pet has one skill. After your first fight, the pet will ding level 2 and pickup a second skill. After about 10 fights, you open up another pet slot, then finally a third slot. These are the pets you take into each battle. As you fight, you can swap between these pets (at the cost of a turn).

Elk's Elite Crew

Stats: Health, strength, speed. Health and strength are fairly obvious. More health means can take more damage, strength is based on level, equates to stronger attacks, but speed may not be obvious. The pet with the higher speed will attack first.

Abilities: What your pet can do is based on type of pet, and what level. My Blizzard Bear at level 1 had Bite. Level 2 gave it Bash. Level 4 gave it Maul.Level 10 will be his next ability.

Note some abilities have preferred targets. Bite for example does better damage on critters and less when fighting a flying pet. I'd benefit changing to my pet (which I still need to train). Enchanted Lantern or maybe Elementium Geode?

Passive abilities can win the battle. Passives are based on the critter's class (bear = beast, robot = mechanical, etc.). Beasts do more damage when under 25% health. Robots get to respawn once per fight. In fact, during a PVP pet battle, my robot won the match after he came back from the dead and issued that final blow. Woot!

Healing is not so obvious. Not played my hunter very far, so I've hardly ever interacted with the stable masters. We're now going to learn the location of ever stable master in zone as they offer a service to heal and revive our pets for a nominal fee.

Gotta collect them all.. Once you get one pet to level 3, you can start capturing your opponents. They need to be under 30% health and your skill needs to be as good or better than the pet's. These pets come into your collection already trained to the level you acquire them at. I acquired some nice level 6 spiders while fighting in Ashenvale. :)

Links:

• Wowhead
• AskMrRobot