Battle Pet Leveling Tips and Tricks

By Wowhead Updated: 2019/04/09

Pet Battle Bonus EventBattle Pet Collection TrackerMount Collection TrackerYou can read more about how to use this feature here!ItemsSome items buff you and your pet so it gains more experience while battling against Tamers and Wild Pets:Lesser Pet TreatPet TreatSafari Hat

These items all stack, and also stack with the Sign of the Critter buff from the Pet Battle Bonus Event weekend.

Lesser Pet Treat is sold by: Lio the Lioness/Serr'ah, and contained in Fabled Pandaren Pet Supplies (a reward from the Beasts of Fable dailies) Pet Care Package (a Children's Week quest reward).

Pet Treat is sold by: Lio the Lioness/Serr'ah and Master Li, and contained in Pet Care Package (a Children's Week quest reward) and Brawler's Pet Supplies, a reward from the weekly quest What We've Been Training For.

Safari Hat is a reward from the achievement Taming the World.

Other items allow you to grant your pet levels directly, without having to battle your pet.

Ultimate Battle-Training Stone grants 25 levels, and is rewarded by completing the one time quest Unearthed Magic/Unearthed Magic and the special Pet Battle weekend quest The Very Best.

Fel-Touched Battle-Training Stone grants 5 levels and is sometimes contained in Fel-Touched Pet Supplies which is earned by completing the Tiny Terrors in Tanaan pet battles.

Flawless Battle-Training Stone, which grants 1 level to any pet, is sold by Lio the Lioness/Serr'ah and is a reward from Battle Pet Tamers: Warlords and Critters of Draenor/Critters of Draenor.

Leveling against Wild Pets

When you battle against wild pets (i.e. pets marked with a green paw and found throughout the world but not on the map) and your pet is not max level, it will gain some experience from that battle.

The requirements for your pet to gain experience are that it must be alive at the end of the battle and it must have been the active pet for one turn (although it doesn't need to perform any actions.)

Wild Battle Pet experience gains against max level wild pets: During the Pet Battle Bonus Weekend, with no other buffs: 2175 XP, from level 1-8.

Leveling against NPC Tamers

This offers a lot of XP but does require a cadre of pets that you already have at 25 in order to do this efficiently.

When you battle against Tamer NPC pets (i.e. pets marked with a green paw on the map) and your pet is not max level, it will gain some experience from that battle.

Warlords/Pandaria Tamer during Pet Battle Bonus Event weekend: 10875 XP, from level 1-17. Ashlei, for some reason, will grant more experience.

Battling against NPC tamers is significantly better experience than battling against wild pets, and is therefore the best way to level your pets.

The Right Way to Level Pets?

As they say, killing two birds with one stone is where it's at so battling against tamers that reward items that can lead to earning battle stones is your #1 best bet for leveling pets.

Using low level pets against the Warlords tamers earns you tons of experience as well as Shiny Pet Charm, which can in turn be traded in for stones that add levels to your pet.

An Example Strategy

Battle your level 1 pet against a Warlords NPC tamer while fully buffed with pet treat and a Safari Hat to get your pet from 1-19

Get a Fel-Touched Battle-Training Stone by completing NPC pet battles in Tanaan and use it on your pet to get from 19-24

Earn some Flawless Battle-Training Stone either by purchasing them or through the quests and use it on your pet to get your pet from level 24-25.

Comments

Comment by Gwiez

When battling for xp, your leveling pet will get a little less xp if it is within 4 levels (lower) than your opponents. Ideally, you can get your pets to around 20 with battling, and then get them to 25 with battle stones. Also, if you buy in bulk, it's cheaper to buy Mystery Bag than Flawless Battle-Training Stone.
A lot of the trainer fights you can do with a 2 pet strategy and have a 3rd "carry" pet to get all the xp. There are a few ways to make sure your carry pet won't die even if it's level 1. Not applicable if enemy pet does backrow damage.

A lot of trainers have a predictable round where they do no damage.
If you are able to use pet abilities to block incoming damage, eg:Decoy
If all your other pets are dead at the end of the last round, your carry pet is technically active without facing any danger. Explode and similar abilities make this easy.
If you swap in your carry pet right when your first pet dies, then immediately swap in your second powerful pet.
If the carry pet is mechanical or magical it can take one hit and survive (multiple hits from the enemy in one turn can kill it though.

Comment by Merana

The level of the wild enemy pet influences how much experience your low level pet receives after the fight as well.

If you're interested in the maths behind pet battle experience gain, check out the carry pet experience reference guide over on warcraftpets for further reading.

Comment by Cierona

While the XP from NPC tamers may be great, while you're battling (1-21 in a single fight with bonus week, hat, and both pet treats), there are a few issues with that method:

You can only fight each of these tamers once per day.
You have to travel long distances between them.
Because your opponents are also rares, the fights last longer, and some have a chance of failure due to RNG, or not having the best pets for your teams.

All these reduce the amount of XP you can get for the amount of time you are in game, as well as reducing the amount of buff time from your pet treats that you're actually able to use.

Also, some tamers are in locations where you will pull aggro on low level characters, and you won't be able to learn flying for the zones on low level characters to get to the locations safely, making this pet levelling method available to only 90+ players. The character XP gain from pet battles is well worth taking advantage of (especially with heirlooms), but you can't combine it with this pet levelling method unless you have someone there to protect you and transport you to the tamers (ie. you're a multiboxer with a passenger mount).

I have characters to level, and there's no way I'm passing up on lots of very easy XP while I level my battlepets, so the Eternal Striders behind the Goldern Lantern Inn at 35.35, 79.0 in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms still has a lot of benefits (and could also be combined with the above once you've run out of daily battles). You'd need to get a mage portal to get into the zone at low levels, and might have to corpse run a bit to get to the inn (especially if you're horde. Alliance can pretty safely follow the southern edge of the zone from their shrine, although a mount can help to run from the eagles near Mistfall Village):

It's an inn, you can set hearthstone there, and you don't have to go far to log out and gain rested bonus.
There's a mailbox out front so you can pick up pet items that your 100s get from garrison battles, or from NPC battles.
Mount-haver Nik Nik is very close to the battle area for pet healing.
The area is safe to battle in for characters of any level, and is part of the Battlechest game, so can even be used by those without the WoD expansion.
Several 24-25 wild pets are there, close together, and they spawn fast enough that you shouldn't have to wait more than a minute for respawn, unless someone else is also levelling there, allowing for good, solid farming. You can do several battles back-to-back in the time it would take you to fly from one NPC tamer to another (with full buffs I went 1-9-13-16-19-20(.9) in 5 short battles).

And lastly:

Unlike NPC tamers, with their intentionally hard teams, requiring good teams of your own, the pets you'll be fighting behind the inn are pretty consistently aquatic, with a few flying thrown in. With the right pet on the team you can tear through these very quickly, ensuring you get as many battles, and as much XP for both your pets and your character as possible, in the smallest time.

What is that pet?

A Rare P/P Imperial Eagle Chick.

That's the single highest damage flying pet with Cyclone, Hawk Eye and Slicing Wind.

If you don't have battlestones to upgrade a low quality version of this, as it is hard to find a rare P/P among the few spawns in game, then you might have better luck finding a rare P/P Dragonbone Hatchling, which is the next highest damage pet with those abilities, and spawns in much greater numbers.

What team should it be in?

For getting a pet from 1 to a level they can take a hit (swap your level 1s into this team to get a bunch of them enough health to take a hit):

Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling (2,1,2) (preferred as it has a flying type base attack), Darkmoon Zeppelin, or anything else with Decoy to protect your level 1.
carry pet
Imperial Eagle (1,1,1)

For levelling pets that can take a hit:

carry pet
Imperial Eagle (1,1,1)
P/P Nexus Whelpling (1,2,2) (for the rare occasions where both adds are flying, and your eagle takes a bit too much damage from an uncommon+ cleansing rain/pump strider).

Or if you want to level pets while laughing maniacally at the sheer damage a buffed eagle can put out (if you have a Mr Wiggles, and why I ended up naming my eagle Shock and Awe), there's the Pignado combo:

carry pet
Mr Wiggles (1,2,1) (just to cast Uncanny Luck before swapping to the eagle)
Imperial Eagle (1,1,1)

To use the eagle cast Cylone, Hawk Eye, then Slicing Wind until you need to refresh Hawk Eye (if you need to. Once buffed the eagle can get 3 kills in 3 rounds against an all aquatic team, and because of its speed and damage it can hang on with low health).

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With low health you need to heal often, but with the stable master so close that isn't a problem (and you could always use bandages too). You can even speed up your healing trips with the following macro, and interact-with-target (IWT) bound:

/tar Mount-haver Nik Nik
/script SelectGossipOption(1);StaticPopup1Button1:Click()

Click that once as you ride to him, IWT when you reach him, and then the macro again as you're turning to ride off.

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If you're competing with someone else for the strider spawns, turn on click to move, mount up, stand on the big rock, and spam both your IWT button and this macro:

/tar Eternal Strider
and you'll run over to the first spawn and start the battle as soon as it appears.

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Tame a P/S Eternal Strider and P/P Yellow Bellied Bullfrog if you get the chance while battling behind the inn. They're both very strong aquatic pets, and if you're farming here, you'll get a lot of opportunities to get rare quality ones.

Comment by GizdaHUN

You can defeat these tamers with a lvl 1 pet.

Frostfire Ridge tamer
Nagrand tamer
Shadowmoon tamer

2 Jade Forest tamer
Valley of the Four Winds tamer (only a critter)

Comment by Tirain

Collect a Zandalari Anklerender from the Isle of Giants, then head down to Halfhill near Farmer Nishi and farm the critters there in the neutral area. It's a consistent and stress-free experience.

The best ability setup that I've found for the Anklerender is:
1. Bite
2. Primal Cry
3. Devour

Used right you should never have to manually heal your team.

Only bring in a level 1 pet against the grasshoppers, otherwise they will die. Always start combat with your leveling pet in the first slot and have them attack on round 1. Swap in the Anklerender afterwards and he will finish things off. Have a 3rd beast (any beast) in there for the odd RNG. A strong flyer works for slot 3, as well, but the Anklerender is just as effective against off-class stuff anyway.

Comment by douglasts

If you have the World Quest Beasts of Burden active, you can battle this trainer more than once, as long as you like and earn exp till the quest time disappear. You can even use level 1 pets, since Mini Musken first attack takes two turns to be used.

Comment by H4WKgg

I recently got in to Pet Battles and I have leveled quite a few pets battling the Dream Whelplings you meet after defeating Xavius. You battle 3 of them at once, they're between level 22 and 25 if I remember correctly and they're really easy to beat because they deal so little damage.

One of the first pets I leveled to 25 was the Iron Starlette which can easily oneshot the whelps with a Supercharge and Wind-Up combo so you don't have to worry about the whelps healing all the time.

I mainly used this method on pets I caught above level 20-ish where I didn't want to use a Ultimate Battle-Training Stone. On average it takes around 4 or 5 battles per level.

The fastest way to get to the Dream Whelplings is to:

Teleport to Dalaran on the Broken Isles
Talk to Archmage Timear
Choose Rift of Aln on the list
Kill Xavius (he's easily soloable at level 60)
After Xavius is dead you get teleported to the Emerald Dream with the Dream Whelplings

Make sure to catch a whelp or 2. They're really good in certain boss fights.

Battle Pet Leveling Tips and Tricks

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