Prycobach: the Sturdy

It's been a long time since I've posted here, something I truly regret. I've had a lot going on and just no time for WoW, let alone for writing up a large post on it. Add that to a difficult semester, finals, and other obligations, and you have a sadly empty blog.

Today, I want to talk about another specific pet: Prycobach. I could swear to you Pry's name means something, but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I remember it being Welsh, and I remember picking it out from the same website I always use, but it seems to have disappeared off the internet. Regardless, here's my Prycobach.

Pry is a shale spider of the purple variety, and I tamed him as soon as I was of level to. All I really knew about the species was that they glowed, they tanked, they came in my favourite colour, and they were adorable.

So I was a little surprised when I realized just how durable these little cuties are. When I level, I tend to do it with Gwyn by my side. I've always had more of a fondness for ferocity pets than any other spec, and I've never really been able to click with a tenacity or cunning pet before.

Pry changed that. I went from almost always using Gwyn to have Pry by my side every time I logged on. Gwyn doesn't mind; he's been with me pretty much since day one, and cemented my love for this game.

I can't really explain why I ended up using Pry all the time. It really only started as I was running daily heroics for the Raven Lord and the Swift White Hawkstrider with a friend. It didn't matter what pet I brought, as we were both ridiculously overleveled for each dungeon. She was capped at 85 since she didn't have MoP, and I was sitting at 86 out of laziness.

So I'd bring a crew of pets and just sort of randomly pick one each time.

Now, the way we did these heroics involved being on voice chat and just talking at each other a lot. She liked to play with her sound on; I had to play with it off so I could hear her.

The first time I brought Pry, she started laughing in the middle of a fight so hard I was worried she might fall out of her chair.

"What's wrong?" I asked. The fight was going the same as it always did.

"Do you hear that screeching?"

Upon further inspection, yes, I did.

"That's your pet."

I think we both downed that boss on auto attacks and Pry doing what he does best.

Ever since, we've been inseparable. I can't imagine not having him on call at all times. His animations are adorable, and every time he starts up his screeching I can't help but giggle. He seems strangely cuddly for a spider made of stone; in game, he tends to sit as close to my character as he can possibly get. His little waddling is cute, and I love how he dashes forward when I attack something. He was with me when Anzu finally dropped his shiny loot, when Kael'Thas finally loosened his grip on a hawkstrider (and, later, when Selin Fireheart gave me an Orb of the Sin'dorei). He did most of the grind to 90 with me.

I haven't done any MoP dungeons yet, and it makes me sad to think I probably won't take my lovely spider when I do. He's a strange little thing, but he's definitely part of Dona's stables. With 55 stable slots nowadays, I'm not sure I'll always have pets I connect to.

Prycobach will never, ever replace Gwyn as my top pet. But he makes a solid second, and I'm always glad to have him by my side.

Gwyn: The Constant

A few years ago, when I was first really getting into WoW (though, at that time, I'd been playing for at least a year already), I had a problem with pets. Oh, I had a few, namely Shiota the bear, who was the first pet I'd ever tamed and the only one who'd stayed with me. The problem was more that nothing was clicking. Even Shiota kept feeling like I should just stick her in the stables forever and never look at her again.

A quick trip to google later, and I found out about Petopia for the first time. I ended up spending hours just searching through the site, looking at all the pets and trying to decide what I wanted. There was a ravager that caught my eye, namely because it was located where I'd been leveling and I figured I might as well try it.

And, after quite a few knock-backs and annoying deaths, I finally tamed one. I named it Lorcan (the name was to be reused several times until, finally, it stuck), and went on my way.

But Lorcan made a lot of rather... odd noises, and I couldn't stand looking at the way he walked. So I said goodbye and pulled Shiota back out, frustrated again.

Petopia had been helpful before, so I went back. I'd tried every pet you could get in the Draenei starting areas, and nothing was working. I, once again, looked through almost everything, until a little link on the side caught my eye.

"Rare & Special Pets"

Now, I never wanted a special snowflake pet. But nothing I could find easily was working, so maybe something that was harder to get to would. So, I clicked the link, then followed it to "Pets with Unusual Looks".

And there he was, finally. After so much searching for the perfect pet, I'd finally found him.

The Ghost Saber. Spawned from stupid little statues, which can be harder to find than anything so simple ever should be, which may not even spawn the cat at all.

Those statues were located in Darkshore. I was not.

So I took the trip, though it ended up being a shorter one than many I took at lower levels later for pets. I got there, checked Petopia again, and rejoiced. I was finally there, I was level nineteen, so I could get it, and wow were there a lot of naga there.

I died so many times before I reached a statue. I didn't have a pet with me, the nagas were a level or two higher than me, and I got very frustrated very quickly.

Eventually, I got to a statue. And, to my surprise, a cat spawned! At level 21.

Sure, I'd managed to up myself a level, but I still wasn't high enough to tame it. I sighed, killed it, leveled, got the thing that lets you summon one, and went back to hunting statues.

Luck must have been on my side that day, because it only took me five more before I got my cat. This time it spawned at level 19, though I'd reached level 21 and would've been fine no matter what. His tame wasn't as hard as I was afraid it would be, though he came close to killing me for a second, and soon enough he shrunk down and I had my cat.

I hearthed, because I wanted out of there, even though my cat certainly could've used the levels, and sat in The Exodar, wondering what I was even going to name it.

A quick tab out and a trip to babynames.com had me my answer. I searched for names that meant cat, and was irritated by the lack of anything I deemed decent. I searched fierce, as I had for Lorcan, and hit the back button in anger. I stared at the cat, trying to think of things that described him. He was ghostly, but that got me nothing. He just... was. He had this calmness about him. And he was white, I guessed.

Searching for names that meant white, surprisingly, got me my answer.

Gwyn: Welsh, meaning fair, white, or blessed.

It fit so perfectly, without me even meaning to use it. He was all of those things, though I couldn't have known that yet. More than anything, he was a calmness that hadn't existed before on Dona. She'd always been anger, rage, fury; a hurricane of emotions, all of which were negative. But Gwyn, he kept her sane and good. He kept her from making stupid mistakes and from dangerous chances.

And he's continued to do that. Dona's had other pets since, all of whom she loves, but if we could only have one pet for the rest of our time in the game, it would be Gwyn. She would take him over Absino, her Loque, over Lorcan, her devilsaur, over Kairos or Gezzie or Cwrw or anyone. He's special to her, and to me.

Because of Gwyn, I ended up joining the Petopia forums, where I made many friends and, ultimately, became a better hunter and a better player overall. One of those friend, Veph (who also has a pet blog here), has a very special pet named Skorn.

Gwyn is my Skorn, always and forever.

He's surprisingly photogenic, even though I'm not very good at taking screenshots. So here's a slew of pictures!

The Start of Something Great

I've been meaning to make this blog for a while; for a good year or two, actually.

I don't want to do much in this post, other than set this place up, but in the next post I'll talk about the pet who's been with me the longest in WoW and who's had the most of an impact on me both in the game and outside of it: Gwyn.