Who's Ready to Tame Mechanical Hunter Pets in Legion?

The Legion will be adding 4 new hunter pet families to World of Warcraft. Namely, they are the: Oxen, Scalehides, Mana Sabers and Mechanicals. The three of them can be a walk in the part in terms of taming but, the Mechanical pets are the most stubborn ones! They could give players a challenge and best thing to do now is, give you some overview on what you’ll be doing when facing a Mechanical Pet.

How to tame such beasts

Gnomes and Goblins will have no worry in taming these zoids (I prefer calling them this) as they can easily reprogram these beasts. However, the other races in World of Warcraft will need as much help as they can get to tame these beasts.

For Engineers, they can craft the Mecha-Bond Imprint Matrix and you can use it to tame a Mechanical Pet or, you can trade it to other hunters. Once you use the device, you will be able to tame those zoids regardless of your character’s race.

Engineers can learn to craft this device via a schematic sold by Xur’ios in Dalaran. This schematic may be tied to a world quest faction, but it’s not clear because this particular vendor doesn’t seem to be fully implemented as of this writing. It also requires materials obtained in the Broken Isles. This means only Gnomes and Goblins will be able to tame mechanicals in the 7.0 prepatch. Many of the pets we’re about to cover will be tameable in the prepatch.

If you’re wondering, it appears that the racial requirement only applies to the taming process itself. If you were to, for example, race change your Hunter to a Gnome, tame a mechanical pet, then race change back to your original race, your mechanical pet would still be available for use. It’s possible this will change.

The Mechanical Pets

Mech bunny

Currently, the only way to get this pet is to roll a brand new Gnome Hunter. The mech bunny is the Gnome starting pet and it has an adorable little attack animation where it jumps up and does a flip, smacking your enemy in the face. Plus its tail is a light bulb!

Mechano Striders

There are currently two different mechano striders available for taming. The first, and easiest, is the Proto-Strider, found inside the Ironwing Cavern in Loch Modan. The Proto-Strider is an unpainted mechano strider. Found in the same area is Optimo, a rare spawn (1-4 hours range) that comes in a nice blue and red color.  Optimo doesn’t stand still, he runs around the Ironwing Cavern among the other Proto-Striders.

Battle Chicken

The Haywire Battle Chicken is found in Ironwing Cavern along with the previously mention mechano striders. This is an extremely low detail model straight out of 2004, but if that doesn’t bother you… enjoy your battle chicken!

Tekton the Exploding Sheep

Tekton is found in Elwynn Forest and is only accessible with a flying mount. You may have come across Tekton in the past. Attacking causes him to explode, which sends Agee Tyler out of his home to yell at you for killing his sheep. You do not want Tekton to reach you during the tame as he will indeed explode mid-tame and knock you back. Just make sure to Freezing Trap or Binding Shot before you begin the tame. Tekton even received a model/texture upgrade for Legion.

Treble and Rush (mechano wolves)

Similar to the the track hunting rares from Mists of Pandaria, Treble and Rush are two mechano wolves that require you to track them via little puddles of oil they leave on the ground. Follow the puddles of oil (spaced every 20-30 yards or so) until the trail stops. Keep a close eye on the ground for the next one to appear. Once it does, throw your Flare down just ahead of it. This can take a few attempts to get right (and if puddles of oil start disappearing it means you are at the wrong end of its path), but once the pet is revealed you need to tame it before it leaves the flared area. A Freezing Trap (Survival) or Binding Shot (Beast Mastery and Marksmanship) will work best.

Treble is a black mechano wolf is found in Highmountain, taking a path through the Mucksnout Den and Fields of An’she area. I found the easiest way to find him is to wait for his tracks to appear in the Mucksnout Den. This is a cave located near the Hunter class hall, Trueshot Lodge.

Rush is a red mechano wolf found in Azsuna, patrolling a large loop through the North East part of the zone.

Respawn times are unknown at this point, but if they’re anything like the MoP rares it will only be an hour or two. The challenge here is locating their current position via the puddles of oil, not getting lucky with a spawn timer.

Treble and Rush are references to robot dogs from the Mega Man series.

Friender (mechano wolf)

Friender is a blue mechano wolf found deep inside Gnomeregan (the dungeon), inside the Engineering Labs. His level will scale to yours, similar to how it works in the Broken Isles. You’ll find him sleeping when you first arrive, and in order to wake him up and make him tameable, you must solve three puzzles.

There are three button puzzles on the wall and the goal is to light up all the buttons by pressing them in the correct order. It will take some trial and error, and the puzzles start in different states every time you reset the instance. I completed the set of puzzles several times, and twice I believe the 8-button puzzle wasn’t solvable. Maybe I’m just bad at puzzles, but I couldn’t crack it. Resetting the instance gave me a different starting state for the puzzle and then I was able to solve it.

Once you solve all three puzzles, Friender wakes up and runs around the room in a circle. He cannot be crowd controlled and he hits like a truck. The key here is to pop Aspect of the Turtle right before taming so you can survive the hits.

Friender is a reference to a blue robot dog from the Casshan anime series.

Possible Mechanical Pets in the future

In addition to black (Treble), red (Rush), and blue (Friender) there are also green and orange mechano wolves in the game files. I suspect both colors will become future pets. Maybe the green one can be called Dynomutt? I’m sure there’s an orange robot dog from an obscure TV show, too.

When mechanical pets were first announced, the first one that came to my mind was Iron Juggernaut from Siege of Orgrimmar. So far the boss itself is not tameable, but there are a few interesting items that have been datamined. This is pure speculation on my part, but I think we may be able to craft smaller versions of Iron Juggernaut (in multiple colors) and tame them.

Consider these items:

Deactivated Blue Juggernaut (there are also grey, teal, and green versions) does not appear to be a battle pet or toy. Why else would you summon a juggernaut, and why would there be multiple colors?

These juggernauts are crafted with a Pile of Juggernaut Parts, Blackfuse’s Power Core, and Bucket of Blue Paint (also buckets for the other 3 colors).

These items might be found in various places (sort of like the items gathered for Gara) in order to craft and eventually tame an Iron Juggernaut.

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