Welcome to another episode of Adventures in Azeroth, where I document my misadventures as a new Hunter on a new server. (Want to check up on my progress? You're welcome to join me and a whole group of readers in the It Came from the Blog guild on Zangarmarsh!) But this week I'm not really talking about playing (I haven't leveled much since the last episode of Adventures in Azeroth) -- instead, I'm talking about the crazy lure of hard to find Hunter pets, and my new-found pokemon-esque desire to catch-em-all.

However, practical concerns have limited my collecting. After all, one pet is quite enough work to keep leveled on its own -- much less if I had a pair. But, after noticing that every last Blood Elf hunter with an Eversong Woods cat identical to my pet Mittens, I decided I had to do something about it. I didn't want to be just-another-Blood-Elf-Hunter -- I wanted to be... well... unique! So I went searching for a new pet, one that every run-of-the-mill Hunter wouldn't have.

By now I'm sure you've read about last week's instance runs in the It came from the Blog guild on Zangarmarsh. And, maybe, if you looked through the galleries, you noticed that my newbie Hunter, Lizzie, was there in RFC. I've got to say, I've run quite a few instances in my day, but never as a Hunter, and it was an interesting learning experience as Mittens and I tried to do the best we could in a group setting.

Now, I've got to say -- I have high expectations for Hunters in an instance setting. My main is a Priest, and my favorite instancing partner is always a good Hunter. Why? Because a Hunter stays back from the action, usually near where I am. And if an add runs after me, a tank, who's busy tangling with the main target of the group, might not even notice. But a good Hunter will always notice. They'll send in their pet with Growl, Intimidation, or Bestial Wrath and have that thing off of me in a flash. (Trust me, I heal very little while being smacked around by a mob -- and by saving me, an open-eyed Hunter can easily save the entire group.) So, despite being rather low level, I tried to emulate all the best Hunters I'd played with in the past.

And what did I learn from all of this? Playing a good Hunter isn't as easy those Hunters make it look!

Last time we talked about my adventures as a newbie hunter running around Zangarmarsh with my pals in WoW Insider's It came from the Blog guild, I was a newly minted level ten trying to figure out what pet to tame. And knowing little of what I was doing, I asked for your advice on what I ought to tame. From the image above and the title of the post, I'm pretty sure you can guess what the results are, but I'll break it down for you anyway. Out of a total of 762 votes, cat won out with a total of 198 votes. However, boar was very close behind with 190 votes. And in third place, the noble owl, with 82 votes. (If you want to see the full results, check here.)

So, as you can see, I went out and tamed a cat in Eversong Woods -- and I have to say, it's a completely different game after getting a pet! With a pet doing the tanking, I didn't have problems with monsters rushing up into melee range, where I can't use my bow, and beating on me. (Really, I'm hopeless once something gets into melee range!) And if something does get into melee range? I can just call my faithful cat in to pull it away. Oh yes, it seemed like the game was going to be eeaassssy sailing from here out. But of course nothing's ever easy...

Despite how much I love World of Warcraft, I've got to say that leveling through the same zones over and over gets old after a while if you're an alt-a-holic like myself. So, when faced with the prospect of starting a new character on a new realm, I decided to try a different approach: I picked up a copy of Joana's 1-70 Horde Leveling Guide. For those of you unfamiliar with Joana's guide, it walks you through the fastest way to level up in World of Warcraft with a combination of grinding and questing. Joana's time of 4 days and 20 hours /played to level 60 sounded good to me, so I decided to give it a go, and when we all created new characters on Zangarmarsh to play together in It came from the Blog, I created a blood elf Hunter (though I have little experience playing Hunters, they seem to be best equipped for this speed leveling game) with plans on following Joana's guide and seeing how quickly I could get to level 60.

After leveling my new hunter, Lizzie, up to level 11, I've pretty much decided I'm not going to be breaking any major records -- though I may beat some personal bests. Interested in hearing about Lizzie's newbie Adventures in Azeroth? Keep reading!