Let’s talk about Pet Collars

How many of you wish you had a oil-stained wolf like the one above? Or maybe a boar that’s on fire? Or maybe one of those Icepaw Bears with glowing frosty paws? Tames such as this were only possible though some “clever use of game mechanics” (aka glitching) and they were all eventually fixed by Blizzard. They did let those hunters who tamed them keep their pets, but taming in such obscure, glitchy ways was obviously not their intention.

Pets that have additional effects or props attached to them almost always lose them upon taming. There are some exceptions, like Gib, but for the most part anything not part of the original model is lost. There’s a good reason for this. The way I understand it, these effects are applied with a hidden aura (buff) and whenever you tame something it is intentionally stripped of every single aura it has. This is so hunters can’t tame a pet while it has a damage buff active or some other game-breaking buff. The downside is we can’t tame pets with these unique effects.

A while ago there was mention by Dave Maldonado on Twitter that they were going to look into making these appearance auras be attached to the pet even after a tame, but nothing ever really came of it. Muffinus stirred the pot recently when he responded to this tweet:

@Dravenor Anything that’s not in the base model (3d model view) is added later and not avail. after taming, maybe hunter pet dress-up items?

— Jeremy Feasel (@Muffinus) September 20, 2014

Hunter pet dress-up items? Sounds like a perfect opportunity to add this sort of functionality to the game. The first time I ever saw the hunter pet collar idea brought up was an old post by Frostheim at the WHU. His idea centered around making it a piece of gear with stats on it that you slot into your pet, but what I’m proposing is that pet collars become the new way we can customize the appearance of our pets. You want an oil-stained wolf? Why not an oil-stained tallstrider or devilsaur?

Collar Ideas

Xota on the Petopia forums created a nice compilation of various visual effects that could possible be applied to our pets. Drawing from that, here are some pet collar ideas.

• Oil-Stained Collar — Applies the Oil-Stained Wolf effect to your pet.
• Chained Collar — This one’s an actual collar. A big ol’ chain collar on your pet. Obviously would have to be restricted to certain families. As seen on Kung Din.
• Fiery Collar — A flaming pet! A perfect companion to the Challenge Mode armor! As seen on Armored Battleboar and Felscale Crawler.
• Sha-Infested Collar — Desaturates the pet and adds the black sha glowy things. As seen on Sha-Infested Prowler.
• Butterfly Collar — As seen on Fern Feeder Moth.
• Icepaw Collar — Frosty feet. As seen on Icepaw Bears and Icehorn.
• Stone Collar — Makes the pet look like it’s using a Kang’s Bindstone.
• Bloodthirsty Collar — Makes your pet extra ferocious, with blood dripping from its mouth like the Savagery weapon enchant.
• Bladed Collar — Your pet now holds a large blade in its jaws. OK so this one may be going too far, but it would be cool.
• Natural Camouflage Collar — Your pet now has the floating leaves effect as seen on the Blackrock Hunters.

The above examples only scratch the surface of what’s out there. You can check out this post on Petopia that maintains a list of all the beasts with special visual effects.

How would it work?

Well, one idea is to collect them by taming the pets that already have that particular effect applied. By doing so you could unlock the collar for use on your other pets. Perhaps with something as simple as a dropdown menu on the pet’s paper doll window to select which collar you want to use.

Another idea would be for the collar to be the end reward of a “hunter green fire” quest, and you would swap the various effect out with that somehow.

As for a more technical explanation on how these effects work, I’ll leave that up to SpiritBinder from the Petopia forums (also known as @Dravenor on Twitter). It explains how many of these effects can be applied to various pet families.

1. This area on all pets can vary, though they are already set on all pet models in game as they already glow when they gain certain buffs such as bloodlust/heroism, Kalecgos’ Presence. This is normally set to claws and paws (Like Icepaw Bears) but on models like carrion birds, it’s set to their wings (Like Fire Rocs) or other places, It can appear where ever it is set in the database to that model type.

2. This is the allover effect, such as Duskstalkers, Mutant War Hounds and the Oil Stained Wolf/Hawk. Effects that change entire models colour/transparency, eg. turns green from a poison, or purple from curses, etc.

3. This effect normally sits in the core of the model, the center or heart. This is the same location/effect that the void wolves show, Felscale Crawlers, Fluttering Moths and when you used to be able to use the cremation torch on pets for the fire effect.

4. This one is a Location based effect that emanate from underneath, sits below the model. Examples are the Sha effects on the Sha-haunted cranes and Black Bengal Goats, the Angered Arakkoa Protector and Nozdormu’s Presence.

5. This one I’m not 100% sure about, I assumed it was the same as number 3, but in pets such as Tainted Black Bear, Nightstalker and Screecher, it’s pretty clear that it’s showing around the mouth/head so I’ll also include it.

6. Again as mentioned, there are a large variant of these, from swords, to Grain Bags and Mining Picks, etc. They vary a lot and are almost limitless possibilities, but with that said would also take a lot of time and work to try and implement over all tameable beasts.

Closing Thoughts

This is not something I would expect to happen any time soon, but it’s an interesting idea. Assuming it’s not a massive technical hurdle for Blizzard, maybe we’ll see some kind of pet visual customization in the future. In the meantime there’s plenty of fun new pet stuff to enjoy in Warlords!

Just for fun though, what kind of visual effects would you like to customize your pets with?

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