How to tame Gara the Spirit Beast

A couple of nights ago, a bunch of hunters banded together on Twitter and the Petopia forums to try to solve the Gara mystery on the beta. Those I recognized from the forums or Twitter were right beside me in game trying to figure out the same problems, coming up with crazy theories, and just having fun. After a massive group effort and a little bit of luck, Gara has finally been solved.

Just how do we tame her? It turns out that it’s become more complicated than any of us ever imagined. Thanks to some clever datamining of some spell IDs by someone on the Petopia forums, we received enough clues to get past our 4-day rut of no progress beyond the Shadowberries step.

Taming Gara takes you across all of Draenor, and to me it’s basically a mini class quest without actually calling itself a quest. It’s not on the same level as say the warlock green fire quest, but make no mistake, a good deal of effort went into creating this event for hunters!

Basic Requirements:

  • Level 90+
  • Horde or Alliance
  • Beast Mastery spec

What follows contains spoilers, so stop here if you want to discover everything for yourself (and good luck with that!).

garasmvmap
Step One: Talk to Gara

You need to be in Beast Mastery spec for this to work since Gara is a spirit beast. Upon interacting with her, you will get the following dialogue option:

garastart

This first dialogue had been implemented in beta for many weeks, but the second one suddenly popped up in a new build.  That’s when I asked Muffinus what was up.

The hunt was on. Many hunters gathered in Shadowmoon Valley on the beta server trying to figure out the next part. Eventually some people noticed that a nearby rare, Mother Om’ra, dropped a newly added item, the Shadowberry.

Step Two: The Shadowberry

If you talk to Gara with the Shadowberriers in your inventory, you now get a new dialogue option:

garadia2

At this point, we were all stuck in a 4-day rut. There was no progress made at all, but plenty of theories. Hunters scoured all the zones looking for clues, and ate way too many Shadowberries in the process.

The break came when someone on the Petopia forums did some clever datamining. Now we had something to go on.

Step Three: The Effigy

Thanks to that datamining, we realized the Spirit Effigy had something to do with it. In order to create this item, you need to go all across Draenor and collect the following items. These were all found by dedicated hunters who went around killing things until they found which specific mobs dropped them. Truly a group effort!

Once you have all these items, you use the Crude Effigy to assemble the Spirit Effigy. Now head back to Gara!

garagrave
Step Four: Using the Spirit Effigy

With the Spirit Effigy in your inventory, a disturbed grave appears back in front of Gara. Use the effigy on that grave and Mother Om’ra (yeah, the one you killed for the berries) is summoned. I’ll let her dialogue do the talking:

garadia3

Wow, this is getting pretty deep for a hunter pet taming challenge.

So, maybe now I get to tame Gara? NOPE! Right after this, a giant void lord appears.

garadia4

What the hell? You void lord jerk! I just want to tame this lovely spirit beast!

And now… after all that… Gara is gone.

garagone

Step Five: The Void Lantern

This next step is once again thanks to the original datamining. The Void Lantern drops from Shadowmoon Voidtwisters at the Pillars of Fate in Shadowmoon Valley. You need to come in from Spires of Arak to get there if you haven’t yet gotten the flight path. The lantern is unique but you can pick up a second one after you apply the buff. The buff lasts for one hour and says “partially phases you into the void.”

Take your lantern and head back to the main part of Shadowmoon Valley!

garadagger

Step Six: Shadowmoon Voidblade

This next step was discovered by Lupen202 on the Petopia forums.

Head on over to the Great Tree Valuundira as shown on the map above. There was actually a bit of a hint here that all of us originally missed. The one NPC nearby, Anchorite Vanaala, says the following: “We brought this sapling from our home, and now it is dying. I cannot sense any evil nearby, but I will keep trying.”

That evil is clearly the Voidblade stuck into the trunk, but you can only see it with the Void Lantern as discussed in the previous step. Click on the dagger and you will phase fully into the void realm, and… what’s this?!

garaspirit

Gara appears by your side in the form of a guardian pet. You’ll also notice that since you’re now in the void realm, the sky darkens, and a bunch of massive Elder Void Lords and Elder Voidcallers are surrounding the tree. They are level 100 elites so you’ll probably need to be level 100 to complete this by yourself.

garavoidlords

Start killing them! Gara will help you (and seems to do some damage). I’m not sure exactly how many need to be killed, or if it’s entirely random. I killed at least a dozen before I saw Xan, the Lord of Glass spawn. Others reported getting Xan to spawn in as little as 2 kills. Someone in the comments reported that if you let Gara get the killing blow, it will spawn Xan automatically (move close to the void lord so Gara will attack). Others have reported this does not work. So it might be totally random. Either way, just keep killing them and keep an eye out for Xan. You can’t miss him!

The Lord of Glass
The Lord of Glass

After defeating Xan, he does one final attack but you “instinctively” use Deterrence to avoid it. I kind of chuckled at that. Mother Om’ra spawns again and says the following:

garatameher

If multiple hunters are completing the event at the same time, a tameable Gara spawns for each of them. It seems all you have to do is tag Xan.

Gara does not fight back during the taming process.

Who's cutting onions in here?!
Who’s cutting onions in here?!

An epic taming quest

A couple of final notes to finish this off. First, even though you need to visit high level zones and deal with some level 100 elites, you can tame Gara as low as level 90 (thanks to those who commented to confirm this).

Secondly, if you die or otherwise leave the void realm once you’ve clicked the dagger, you do not need to get another lantern. The dagger will always be there now. Actually, the Void Lantern will stop dropping entirely.

If you’ve abandoned Gara and want her back (or you just want more copies of her in your stable), you can go back into the void realm and look for a Lost Netherwolf to tame. It is located far away from the dagger, at 65,37.

Gara looks a lot better in motion, so here’s a very short video showing her off.

I never expected to have a challenge tame be this involved.  A lot of care went into crafting this, and I think I speak for all hunters when I say: Thank You!

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404 thoughts on “How to tame Gara the Spirit Beast”

  1. I will be honest, I was considering abandoning my hunter in favor of my warrior for WoD, but this. . .this speaks to the hunter in me. I. MUST. TAME. IT. (not that Exotic Munitions, tamable Hydras, the epic challenge mode gun weren’t anyways) My only wish was that I was on beta with you guys to help uncover this mystery.

    1. I think that part may be a bug because when the first buff falls off you lose your transparent purple appearance even though the other buffs are still there. I didn’t see the reason to go past 20, which was already absurd. haha

    1. Or possibly let void jerk kill you which places you in the void realm Gara and mother Om’ra great you there she says something how she can’t help but will have Gara fight with you. You take down void jerk escape the void realm with Gara!?!

  2. on another note, just tried to do it again on a lower lvl hunter (94) cant get any of the effigy items to drop so must require lvl 100 to do unless I’m doing something wrong 😛

    1. Edit: i have finally got it tamed on a lvl 90 hunter. took a bit killing in the void zone till Xan spawned but hey its possible 😛

    2. I got the stuff to drop when I was level 94 and now at 96 I tried the shadow latern. It all worked, only that when I went to the other side the guys to defeat were level 100 elites so I died pretty quickly after that. Does anyone know if you can go in as a group?

  3. “Clever datamining” sounds a lot like cheating.

    It sounds really epic, but cheating just kill half epicness of it.

  4. Part if me wonders if Gara will actually end up tame able or whether we just reunite her with her master. Either way works for me. This perks my interest a bit.

  5. Meow, as a extremely pet loving hunter myself, there’s something that bothers me. On wowhead (I don’t know if it’s gonna change) but, on wowhead says that Om’ra only reacts to A (Allience). However as a Horde hunter I would love to have Gara aswell. Does anyone know if, when the expansion releases Horde would be able to get Gara aswell?

    1. I can’t confirm 100% but i’m 99% sure u can at release. I just tamed her at lvl 90 ally, and the hardest part was running thru every zone and being an agro magnet 😛 The wowhead info on Om’ra only reacts to Alliance is wrong as I’ve seen many horde hunters with Gara, in fact the very 1st person to enter the void was a horde hunter 😛

      1. can’t edit post but yea i just saw a 92 horde hunter with Gara so i see no reason you wouldn’t be able to tame gara right at release as horde. The only thing stopping any hunter getting her is that the tamable Gara is lvl 90 so that is the lowest lvl possible to get her

    2. Don’t take Wowhead data from the beta as fact, a lot of it will probably be wrong until sometime after release when it gets corrected.

  6. “If multiple hunters are completing the event at the same time, a tameable Gara spawns for each of them. It seems all you have to do is tag Xan.” I’m not sure I even want to imagine what would have happened if only one Gara had spawned.

    Also, I wish Blizzard made more taming quests like this. Maybe save the ones this long for spirit beasts and such, but I’d love to have a short questline about, say, taming a vicious old bear harassing a small village or something. Just something to add a little flavor.

  7. Great guide as always Bendak! I would like to add that once you’re in the void realm, you can complete this part at level 99 without much trouble. I’m not sure about levels lower than that. But on my hunter, I am level 99. I noticed that the Elder Voidcallers are much easier to solo than the Elder Void Lords. It took a while to kill the Void Lord, but the Voidcaller went down with ease. Also once Xan spawns, he is also easy to solo at 99 🙂 Happy Hunting!

  8. Cool concept, but way too specific. They need to put stuff like this in for people other then BM hunters, especially since its looking like the worst of the specs atm.

  9. When considering naming for this pet, do you feel like you kinda need to name it Gara? I didn’t end up naming my Loque anything like the beast’s true name, but I kinda felt like I should.

    What are yall’s thoughts on this? On the one hand I feel like this spirit wolf will always be “Gara” and if I name it something else, it wont feel right. On the other hand, I’d hate to be in a raid and see several other hunters with the same animal named “Gara”.

    1. Yeah, it’s actually the first one I was immediately compelled to name with its true name. The only other one that was close was my King Krush which I named Krusher. Had a bit of an attachment to that one since it took me 5 years to find.

    2. I named mine Daxniel, after my caucasian shepherd, Dax. I’d been looking for a pet on WoW that could be special enough for me to name after him, and Gara is it. I spent a long time researching breeders and saving money for Dax, and as a guardian breed enthusiast, he is pretty much my dream dog. So just any old hunter pet wouldn’t do.

    3. I had considered naming her “Nurple”, but I didn’t, since that seems like a degrading name for such an epic pet lol

    1. I’m almost positive it dropped from my first and only Grunt kill, but I’ll verify again once the servers are back up. Thanks for the tip. It’s possible I just AOE’d a bunch of orcs.

  10. Hey guys,
    first of i’d like to thank you for making this great guide 🙂
    I followed your steps and took some footage, then turned it into a video guide:

  11. if you die during the fight to get the spirit wolf is it impossible to get void potion again because i did and now i can get another one to drop :/

  12. And more cool stuff for BMs! Guys at Blizz want all of us to play the same spec, apparently

  13. Now we need another hunter legendary weapon ….. only one vs how many melee and caster legendaries there are\?

  14. great work by all, and fantastic guide! BM may not be the strongest spec, but it has always been my favorite.. this just adds to that love.

  15. Thank you to all hunters involved and I’m looking forward to meeting and taming this beautiful model!

  16. It would be cool if blizzard would consider doing this for all the other spirit beasts it would eliminate the disappointment of grinding for months only to have a lock or some other non hunter player kill the rare for that stupid achievement. Not to mention competing with other hunters

  17. Thanks or the guide, I just tamed Gara as a level 95 (ilevel 567) Hunter on live servers, died a few times trying to kill the Shadowmoon Voidtwisters and had to swim to Frostfire Ridge from Talador, but I finally did it.

  18. thanks for the guide..tamed her at lvl 90… water strider pet is invaluable for water walking during journey.. died plenty of times during elite part …made my silithid cunning and misdirected to gara during fights..focused only on voidcallers and after 2 kills the boss spawned…asked ppl for buffs before to phased to the void…I get so many compliments and even ppl questioning how i made it through all the zones while lvl 90, but it wasnt hard…stealth sometimes and fight when u can..if you die the position yourself for a getaway by dying and resing in the distance…all parts were easy xcept elites…took me 6 hours to complete, but prob very easy at lvl 95 and above

  19. You can do this in a group of Hunters as well. Plus, if you die, you can click the Dagger in the tree again to go back. Also even if you have tamed Gara, you can still go back to the Void to help any other Hunters, just click the dagger again.

    1. Thanks to this awesome guide I tamed her 8 minutes before the server shut down this morning at lvl 96 ilvl556 using another spirit beast to kill the void(just 1) and Xan until he was like 2 shots from dead then I dismissed my pet and killed him.

  20. i been trying to tame him but everytime I get to part one and have the berrys in my inventory he still ignores me can someone plz help

  21. Thanks so much for this. I was able to tame her with very little trouble at level 96 and my guild mate tamed her at 93 using this guide. You do NOT need to be 99 or 100 to solo this. I had no trouble at all using a tenacity spirit beast killing the mobs required for this. The hardest part was getting to all the places for the first time on foot. There are two versions of the void lords after you click the dagger. Some have over 1m hp, others have just over 200k. They are all 100 elite, but the ones with 200k health were MUCH easier to kill. In fact, they went down faster and did less damage than the void twister 100 non-elite I had to kill for the lantern.

    Also one more note, there was a night elf hunter killing the void lords at the same time I was, and when Xan spawned, we were able to both attack him and we still got our own Gara’s to tame regardless of being opposing factions and not in a party. The Gara who is with you when you’re fighting the void lords turn into your Gara to tame, regardless of how many hunters or others are there at the time. I believe she can be attacked and killed since she turns neutral before you tame her, but someone would have to go through a LOT of effort to grief hunters in this way.

    Thanks again for an awesome guide and thanks Blizzard for a really fun and moving taming adventure!

  22. MMm It seems bugged for me i have the shadowberry but after i got back when level 100 it is stuck in first dialogue that he aint interested in me

  23. i got him at lvl 96 was hard but it was funny when i was killing Xan i alliacne showed up (im horde) and the ally helped me kill it and we both tamed separate Garas

  24. If you tame him on ally, is that lantern/dagger account bound if I want to tame him on my horde? I know I can go back and tame another so I was wondering if its possible the dagger would be there for my horde.

  25. Just tamed him @ 94. This was so fun to do and challenging. The story was neat, involving, and I really wish there were more like this. Thanks Blizzard.

  26. just thought i would comment to let you know that it is possible to do the entire thing before level 100. i just soloed it at level 94. and she looks AWESOME!! 🙂

  27. Great post! Thank you so much….I was able to get her at 95 solo. Those 100 elites took a LOT of kiting & had to rez pet a couple times during each fight which took like 7ish minutes each, but was able to get them down. Xan was easy to kill in comparison. Thank you again for the step by step!

  28. The comment from Mother Om’ra saying that “You may be able to reverse the process” Has me thinking that the Gara we tame has been corrupted by the void “Hence the coloring” I wonder if there is in fact a way to reverse that and have the white version???? She also says “I hope you find peace soon” so … is there another quest chain that follows this to get the un-corrupted Gara????

  29. so i tried to get a duplicate and gara didn’t show up as a guardian. also i defeated xan and nothing happened. so IDK i still want to know if u can get a duplicate?

  30. I wasn’t geared well (dinged 90 24hrs before WoD launch) and tried to tame Gara at 96. For the most part, following the guide is very straight forward, and if you’ve been questing, then you should have most flight paths already with you (or some that are really close). Great guide, great tame :).

    A couple of things to keep in mind:

    1- Getting the lantern can be challenging. Entering the area from Spires of Arak, you will have to avoid/fight some lvl 100 mobs that are quite challenging if you aggro more than 1. I got lucky with a level 100 pulling aggro on most and clearing the way for the mob I needed. Camouflage might help here, but it still is tricky to get in. Had to Feign Death a couple of times :S.

    2- Once phased into the void, as already mentioned, if you’re not 100 yet, just go for the Elder Voidcallers (with purple “heirloom” like on top of them). They are easy to manage and solo before then. Xan is simple enough and does not seem to do enough damage to worry you, simple to manage.

    3- Do NOT move too far away from the tree. If you do and stay there for more than 5-10 seconds, you will phase out and have to click the dagger again, which, from experience, will prolong the time required for Xan to spawn.(@ Kibble and Bits, this might be the reason you had to kill so many. When I noticed and stopped moving out far, I only had to kill a couple extra).

    4- If you’re main spec is MM, you can still collect the items while MM, but once you phase you need to revert back to BM.

    Also, I would add that you will have enough time to dismiss your pet when it comes time for you to tame Gara.

    Thanks for the awesome guide!

  31. Hey all, just wanted to let you know this quest is possible to solo at 98 at least. Just make sure to take a tanking pet (I took a shale spider) and keep it misdirrected and healed up. I had no problems at all other than taking slightly longer to kill the elites/Xan. Very easy overall though. Happy taming 🙂
    P.S. I am writing this after Warlords went public 🙂

  32. Hello! I soloed this quest and tamed Gara at level 94. Am very pleased with the model and the sotry to go with it. I just wonder if at some point we will be able to “cleanse” her of the corruption, as Om’ra said she hopes one day we will find a way to stop the corruption process and put her soul at rest. Who knows? Maybe there are more puzzles to come!

  33. is anyone else having the same issue as me gara not acknowledging you and I have the strawberrys plz let me know I want this pet bad

    1. It could be one of 2 things:
      1- Did you interact with her before having the berries? This might be a necessary step.

      2- Go ahead and collect the required items. She doesn’t give you a quest or anything. build the effigy place it at the disturbed grave, and continue from there.

      Hope this helps. It was a pretty straightforward tame just following the guide to the letter.

  34. Thanks to this guide I was able to tame my Gara shortly after hitting 100 yesterday. Such a great little quest! Kudos to Blizz and thanks again to EotB for this useful guide!

    1. As you get near the location, you might be compelled to go through a horde camp. 🙂 don’t. Just keep an eye out and it should be relatively easy. Certainly much easier than getting the Lantern. Shouldn’t be much of a challenge, sneak your way in!

      The only challenge I found in Frosfire was getting sidetracked by the scenery. 🙂

  35. Just wanted to confirm that this entire chain is soloable at level 90 – for very determined/stubborn hunters. I brought my 90 hunter to Draenor just to do this. Level 100 mobs can be killed by level 90 hunters, it just take a lot of time and you’ll be using a lot of mend/revive pet and you’ll be making frequent graveyard runs. I’d recommend bringing a tanking pet – I didn’t think to do so until after I was done and it was likely far more difficult than it had to be. Also, on the last phase I only killed Voidcallers because they only had around 200k health and were far more managable.

    http://i.imgur.com/rpSM7i6.jpg

  36. I think it’s important to note that the Void Lords are much harder to kill than the Voidcallers, especially for someone doing this at level 96, as I just did. Your guide was very helpful, thank you.

  37. Hello! I just tamed this extremely gorgeous wolf just now on Moon Guard server, around 4:25am server time. It was me and one other hunter in the void-changed area (the last step where you are killing the void creatures.) We were both level 96-97 and of opposite factions, yet we worked together to get the high health mobs down. Even though each void creature was unable to be tagged by us both (meaning it was greyed out to whoever didn’t tag it), we helped eachother down them, and after about 25 kills of void lords and voidcallers, Xan spawned. Xan was able to be tagged by both of us or any other present though, so don’t be afraid to help eachother out if you see someone having trouble. Two Garas then spawned with two orcs and we both got our tames. 🙂 Good luck out there!

  38. first of all, thanks for this great guide.
    but I may be bugged, been killing void lords and voidcallers for an hour around the tree, zoned out 3 times by mistake, and till the buff expired, still no Xan …

    1. You have to let Gara kill the voids. Xan will spawn after the first void kill if Gara is the one that gets the killing blow. All you need to do is dps the void until 2% then, passive your pet and stop attacking. Gara will kill it and Xan will spawn.

  39. The spirit wolf does not acknowledge your presence is what i see. but no option to start any dialoge :/
    i am in BM spec and tried to reload ui, restart wow, logged other characters but still the same issue. any suggestions ? or just a current bug ?

  40. Just tamed her. Thank you so much for this amazing guide! I’m so in love with my new pet. She was definitely worth the epic journey to get her. The whole questline got me right in the feels. I didn’t have the heart to change her name after I tamed her because of it.

  41. Tamed her about 20 minutes ago on my level 90 hunter, with help from my sister on her level 100 hunter. She’s totally worth the effort. Side note for anyone doing this with someone else, make sure you BOTH do the effigy at the grave. My sister didn’t and had to go back when we were getting the lantern.

  42. got mine on my 92 hunter last night! had a little help on the last part from some other hunters doing same thing in the void zone!!
    thanks so much for the guide!! it was priceless!

  43. It has not worked for me I’ve did everything that has been said to do got the lamp killed lots of the void and xan didnt apear my hour went and now I can’t get another l lantern I have killed a lot of the shadowmoon voidtwisters again and all I get is coins so really p’d off about this WoW sucks lately lol

    1. Ok I went back saw the dagger killed the voids xan showed I killed him and got Gara ty for the info couldn’t of did it without you

  44. Wonderful guide. Straight to the point and easy to follow. Haven’t started on the path to taming Gara yet, but I’ll definitely do it soon. The only thing that worries me is whether the percentage of success is going to be brought down by my hunter’s level (96).

    However, reading all these comments and getting evidence that lvl 100 hunters and below were able to solo this, I’ll give it a try. #YOLO

    Once more, thank you to EotB for this great post!

  45. This took a couple of hours, but honestly, it was not nearly as big a pain as taming Savage or the spider challenge from the molten front area.

  46. Great guide. That was a lot of work (and worth it) so I can’t even imagine what went into discovering these steps initially. Thanks for the collaborative effort! LOVE this pet. Just finished as a 98 Troll. One note is that the Void Lords were MUCH tougher to take down so just opt for the Voidcallers to down. Thanks!

  47. just wanted to thank you for this guide. i’ve been playing Sophil since TBC launch (was the second Draenei made on that server – my wife’s mage was the very first Draenei). got my LK kill as Sophil, got my Garrosh kill as Sophil. i’ve been through more changes as a hunter than i ever thought possible. despite and through all of that, i have always maintained my BM spec – at first because pets were what hunters were all about and later because exotic pets just looked cooler. this was a spectacular find, and i hope Blizzard reads not only the effort you guys put into finding this info, but all of the comments made here. despite the fact that i am currently Marksman (and running Lone Wolf), Gara will be an awesome addition to my active stable for when i feel like blapping bad guys with my pets out. thanks again and keep up the great work!
    as a side note, i just checked… unfortunately, Gara does not appear when you use Stampede as another spec =( kind of disappointing really, since duplicate pets show up if you don’t have a full (5) active stable even in MM spec.

  48. Gara doesn’t look like in the video for me. She’s translucent and not as pretty and shiny as in the video. Is that normal? You can hardly see she’s special :S

  49. Just got my Gara today, thanks for the guide, spot on! Wish I had read it all though, thought I had wasted my voidlantern and went back for another, wondered why it wasn’t dropping an hour later, came back, read some more and kicked myself lol. Woohoo for Gara, though! 😀

  50. I’m at the tree about to fight voids. I got through once but didn’t remember what to click when I killed Xan. His body disappeared and so did Mother then I tried taming Gara and mother said her last words but I didn’t get Gara of course. I might have caused a glitch. Now I’m back out and I click the dagger again to find I’m alone killing voids and I’m only killing voidcallers not lords because I’m by myself.

    1. I’m not sure how you can get Gara to talk to you again. Possibly you might need to repeat the process from scratch.

      Regarding Xan you don’t click anything. As soon as you kill him and the “dark purple void hole” appears, you need to tame Gara. Which means you need to be in BM and have already dismissed your pet. You can dismiss pet as soon as you kill Xan, but I’m not sure how long you have. I did it directly and could tame her.

      Good luck with your attempt, and sorry if you have to do it all over again.

    2. I’m having the exact same issue. Gara died before she could be formally tamed. Could not resurrect her. Now when I go back and click the sword, I’m alone fighting the voids. I waited for server reset and that did not help. What do I need to do to click the sword and see her again?

  51. Got her yesterday named her Lara, I was lvl 97 did the whole thing at lvl 90 but when i got to the void there was no way i could kill the lvl100 elite tryed again on lvl 93 also no go at lvl 97 I Found out that the voidcallers also lvl 100 are very quick killable Gara does not help when you attack them but there way easyer then the voidtwisters

    tnx for the guide

  52. Thank you so much for the guide, and kudos to all the hunters that took the effort to come out with this guide to help hunters all around Azeroth tame Gara 😀

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