We all have a few pets they are partial to, be it for looks, skills, or idle animations. I’ve selected a few from my pet journal that I think everyone should try to pick up. Today: Emerald Proto-Whelp
I get asked a lot by friends and guildmates, “Which pet should I get for this fight?” or “I want to level something cool, what should I go hunt down?”. This pet is always on the top of that second list. The Emerald Proto-Whelp is by far my favorite pet in the Dragonkin family.
The selection of damage reduction and healing abilities are absolutely brilliant in both PVE and PVP battles, particularly against Flying pets, who do reduced damage to Dragonkin, and take increased damage from Magic attacks, of which this pet has two. The Emerald Proto-Whelp‘s move sets are as follows:
(1) Breath, (2) Ancient Blessing, (3) Proto-Strike
(1) Emerald Bite, (2) Emerald Presence, (3) Emerald Dream
Now for the (as a certain guy likes to say about me) Pokemon Nerd-Math that I am so fond of!
Breed-wise, a lot of serious pet battlers prefer Breed#4 or the P/P version of this pet, and I tend to agree. From the wowhead comments, user SirRoyas on sums it up best: “P/P all the way. This guy is going to get outsped a lot, so P/S is a bit pointless. Also, with it’s great damage mitigation and healing, the tiny bit of health from P/B is unneeded. P/P, however, boosts the damage reduction from Emerald Presence and the healing from Emerald Dream as well as its damage, making it an amazingly sturdy powerhouse”
So, now that you’re sold on how completely awesome it is both as a damage and healing pet, you may be wondering, “Gimmick, how/where do I catch this majestic creature?” Well, that is easier said than done in a lot of cases, and everyone’s best friend, the Random Number Generator seems to play havoc with this one. Some have referred to this pet as the “new Scourged Whelpling” with respect to how difficult that pet was to obtain before the new “abandon and the pet respawns” game rules.
The Emerald Proto-Whelp spawns in Sholazar Basin, Northrend, in the Savage Thicket, which is in the northern burning forest-like part of the zone.
My personal experience in catching my first Emerald Proto-Whelp was back in 5.1; I had read the Wowhead comments comments on wowhead regarding people having success killing the drakes all around The Savage Thicket, so I settled in to one-shot things for a while and wait. I killed a lot. And I waited. And waited. Killed some more. And waited. I’m tired and hungry…. Killed some more… Waited…..ZZzzzzzz. Zilch. I had no success whatsoever killing the spawns there; hours went by with no pet spawn and I left to try again another day. After 2 or 3 of these sessions I ended up parking an otherwise unused alt of appropriate level in the Savage Thicket area and just logging in every once in a while to check (FYI, I found 2 Unborn Val’kyr with this method as well in their spawn spots). I eventually came across a poor quality one that I did stone up to rare after several days of these random checks. Some do not have the luxury of the unused high-level alt, so in that case I recommend you do periodic checks/camping and resign yourself to the fact that it is a low spawn-rate pet and you will likely not get a rare for a while, unless you’re extremely lucky (or patient).
A lot of the commenters swear that the pet spawn is connected to killing the drakes, but this was not my experience, and as we all know, correlation does not equal causation. An equal number of users align with me in the comments as well:
“Can confirm with 100% certainty that clearing the mobs–aggro and non-aggro–makes no difference to spawn times.I work from home and can pretty much run around there non-stop when I’m on calls all day, so trust me on this.” – Wowmeds comments
Curious, I sent one of our tanks and my raid leader out to grab this pet this week; neither of them had any luck killing the mobs in the area to force a spawn. One finally popped up for my raid leader a while later, but he felt it had no connection to what he was killing or was not killing. Just random.
Fear not however, because this pet even as Uncommon quality has enough power to take the lions share of other pets out.
In conclusion, my recommendation:
Camp for a spawn, but kill things only if you are bored, I really don’t think this is how the spawn works. If you can’t camp, check back periodically or on a parked alt.
Try to acquire a P/P whelp of any quality; they do come in 2 other breeds, (Breed#8 or P/S, and Breed#10 or PB) so this is up to luck.
Don’t bother waiting for a rare, just use a stone. If you end up with a poor/common, you can easily stone one to Uncommon with a Polished Battle-Stone if you are like me and have absolutely no use for a mountain of spare justice points. You can also randomly acquire the green stones through battle pet PVP.
Try not to go crazy.
As always, Happy Hunting!