Post by tarunloko
Most of the rarespawn beasts tend to have unique skins, especially in Northrend and cataclysm zones, before you decide if you want to try and camp a rarespawn i suggest you head over to
http://www.wow-petopia.com/ and look over the different skins available for the pet of your choosing.
So you have looked over the different skins and models and found that special one you really like, however it turns out to a rarespawn.
The first thing you want to do is make sure you have a Beast Mastery spec if the pet you are looking for is Exotic (Silithids, Chimaeras, Spirit Beasts, Devilsaurs, Core Hounds, Shale Spiders and Rhinos)
Before you head out and look for it you will want to know its Spawn(s), Patrol and respawn timer if possible. These can usually be found on WoWhead, though doing extra research is always good.
An addon that isnt necessary but will make finding the beast (or any rarespawn actually) a whole lot easier is _NPCScan
When you first see an creature or npc it will be added to your cache folder in your World of Warcraft folder, what NPCScan does is set off an alert as soon as this happens, let me give you an example:
Lets say you are looking for a named monster you need to kill for a quest, as soon as you
come in viewing distance of it it NPCScan will go off and a small 3D model of it can be seen.
Of course NPCScan doesn't search for all monsters, the default search list consists of all Outlands and Northrend rarespawns that are required for the "Frostbitten" and" Bloody Rare" achievements, so to find most Spirit Beasts and Cataclysm rarespawns you will need to configure it a bit. When you log in after having installed NPCScan you will want to configure it, simply press ESC then go to interface and then addons and then to NPCScan, here you can change a few settings such as the alert sound. You will want go to Search under NPCScan Options and add IDs of the beasts you are searching for. If you are unsure how to find it simply search the Name on WoWhead and the ID should be in the link. Here are the IDs of a few rares:
Sambas: 50159
Terrorpene: 50058
Madexx: 50154, 51404, 51403, 51402, 51401 (Note Madexx has five different ID's due to him spawning in different colors)
Ghostcrawler: 50051
Karoma: 50138
Skoll: 35189
Arcturis: 38453
Gondria: 33776
One thing to note though is that you should not specify the continent for Cataclysm rarespawns as that causes the alert to sometimes not go off.
If you notice there is a small red x next to any of them it means you have already seem them (Most likely tamed) and you will need to delete your Cache folder (Don't Worry it gets remade as soon as you launch WoW)
If you decide to install NPCScan i would recommend also downloading the Addon called NPCScan overlay. What this will do is basically mark the patrol and spawn points of the rares you are searching for.
If you don't feel like using an addon to find your rare pet then you can just do it "the old fashion way"
What this consists of is having track beasts up while using a targeting macro to find the rarespawn you are after
For example: /target Karoma
You wil always want to inform general chat:
Lets say you are looking for the rarespawn pets in Twilight Highlands (Karoma and Sambas)
You will want to inform general chat that you are looking to tame them and most importantly: That it will be worth it to let you tame them rather than just to kill it.
In the last two expansions rarespawns have always dropped a blue and some gold, so most players associate rares with "Free gold!" and will most likely kill any rare they see on sight.
This is the macro i used every time i went to look for them and once every hour since people would come and go:
If anyone comes across a rarespawn named Karoma(Ghost Wolf) or Sambas(Lion) be sure to let me know, ill pay you to let me tame either of them, if anyone knows when either was killed it would be very helpful and will pay if it turns out to be true
Information when they were last killed is also quite useful since they it will always take a few hours before they can spawn again and camping without the chance of anything spawning is just a waste of your time.
Most rarespawns have a spawn timer around 6-22 hours. It may take a few days or even weeks before you manage to find but if you keep going you are guaranteed to find it some time. Don't give up!
On a closing note: If you see a fellow hunter camping the same rarespawn as you, come back another day. Having to fight over it when it finally spawns makes taming it a whole lot harder since you two will be fighting over it.
So to sum everything up:
Do your research first, knowing is half the battle
Make a targeting macro or download NPCScan
Always keep general chat informed about what you are looking for.
Wrote this for the EU WoW Forums a while ago, so I figured I would post it here, hope anyone finds it helpful :)
