Not to fret, you will get that battle pet

I started playing with the new "battle pet" feature in WoW at about the same time as most other people — about as soon as it was introduced a couple of months back.

At first, I really struggled with getting high quality pets.  I also found it very hard to level them up quickly.  This is largely by design, I think.

Also likely by design, it turns out that it is a temporary setback.  Things get easier as you go along.

Once you have a lot of battle pets, you can employ them in various clever ways to speed up the acquisition process, as well as leveling up your pets.

This past week, my evenings were a lot more rewarding than usual.  I got some great battle pets; many of them of 'rare' (the best) quality:  Spawn of Onyxia, Stunted Shardhorn, etc.  I cannot remember exactly how many I got but it seems like it was a couple dozen new ones this week.

I also managed to speed up the leveling process of my battle pets quite a bit with a tip from a new friend in the game that took me under their wing for a bit after dinnertime one night, and explained their technique to get battle pets to jump up maybe as much as 5 levels in several minutes.  Normally, that could take half an hour.

Basically, you team them up with a pair of your most powerful or at least much more powerful battle pets.  When I say powerful, at the very least I am talking about how high their level is.

I tried that out and it works great.

Battle pets range in levels from 1 to 25.  You take a level 1 pet and a couple level 25 pets and go to a zone where the battle pets are say, 10 or 15.  Your level 1 pet just has to survive a single round and you pull them out immediately, and finish the fight with one or both of your level 25 characters.

Bang, instead of your character going from level 1 to 2 it goes from level 1 to 5.  Repeat the process, and it will likely gain another level or two in one fight!

Another lucky break I caught was receiving some flawless stones which allow you to convert battle pets of lower quality into a rare quality one.  I used those and they helped quite a bit.

Now, all of these new and improved pets are grist for the mill in obtaining and speed leveling more pets.

I am far from an expert but at least now I have not just the basics of the whole thing down, but also have got the process slightly refined.