Oh RNG, how I hate thee.

I'm kind of bizarre in that I like some of the mindless grinding. I like fishing in game. It's calming, a break from the sometimes high-stress atmosphere of raiding, heroics, the constant grind for badges that in large part my characters may not need right now.

My current pet project is to get Caze up to 75 pets. I'm at 59 or so right now, I believe. All the Alliance tourney pets, 3/4 crocs, a handful of the rep-buyable pets [Sporeggar and Kalu'ak so far]. I originally worked on this on my priest, my achievement-child who has a similar number. A few differences have bothered me, though.
- The Squashling. Caze had it; Amh didn't. Finally got it on her this year.
- The proto-drake hatchling. I did the rep grind on Amh and have all the pets on her (no green proto yet though). I still need to *start* the quest chain on Caze. I've bought all of them except the proto-drake - 75g for a pet I can rep grind to get? Seems silly. I'll probably give in one of these days, though.
- All the Winter Veil pets. All of them. I've got to create more alts on my new server to go for them this year. I think I'm missing one on Amh; I passed all of them to her last year.
- Phoenix pet out of MgT. I've told my boyfriend we should run that sometime. No really. Soon pretty please? [My priest has it and has seen the mount drop enough times to get everyone EXCEPT her the mount. Every other person I've run it with has it. Seriously.]
- And.. most key.. the Emerald Whelpling.
- Fishing pets. I have one croc on my priest. I have three on my druid. Guess which one I'm missing? The one my priest has. Boo.
- It gets better though; my priest has Mr Pinchy. I'm farming that on my druid shortly. My priest also has the Sewer Rat. It's not liking the look of chicken. >_< And the fishing daily reward pet? Dropped on my druid.. once I'd given up ever seeing it drop.

I decided at one point that I wanted the Whelpling collection. I half-heartedly farmed it on some character awhile back in hopes of getting it for my priest. It didn't last terribly long, and I didn't get the whelp. Big surprise, eh?
I was leveling a shaman a bit later who happened to be running through Swamp of Sorrows for some reason or another. Why not - she's here, I'll kill a few and then move on.

Three kills later, I had the whelpling in my bags and had sent off a few whispers to my ever-tolerant boyfriend to the effect of 'OMG OMG LOOK LOOK LOOK'.

Oh, how I wish the story ended there. I decided I wanted it on Caze, and I might as well level up my weapon skills while I'm at it. I spent three hours in Swamp of Sorrows stabbing whelps with a dagger. I figured I'd just keep going 'til I maxed out all my weapons skills. My daggers got up to 399, and the pet dropped. WOOOO!

Two addendums to my whelpling-tale:

I went to go farm the Azure Whelpling right after Emerald. I went from 399->400 daggers, from 399-400 staves, from 399-400 unarmed, and realized I didn't have more weapons on me and the pet hadn't dropped yet.. 20 minutes or so in. They respawn fast enough I don't mind killing them with wrath, though, so I stayed around for a bit. Heading back this weekend.

I told a friend of mine on my old server about the whelps and spent several minutes directing her to the correct place for the Emerald whelpling to drop. Three kills later.. yep. She's got one now.