Farming TLPD

I met a friend who is a hunter in Feathermoon. At first I thought this player was stalking Skoll, a blue wolf that has lighting sparkling about it and can be tamable as a hunter pet. I found it one day and hopped onto my hunter to tame it, although I did give this other hunter the chance by letting him/her know where Skoll was. After no answer I tamed it, but after a while I did get an answer... turns out we're both farming the Time-Lost Proto Drake.

After about a week of farming, we've been comparing notes and war stories, following the trails, and groaning in despair when we see the corpse of Vyragosa.

 It turns out that Vyragosa is a rare blue dragon that flies the skies of the Storm Peaks in Northrend. She and the Time-Lost Proto Drake share everything... almost. They both can spawn in the same locations, they both fly the same trails. There are four different routes they could be at. The only thing they don't share is when they spawn. Only one can be up at any given time, and the TLPD is much less likely to be chosen.

The game uses a random number generator, aka RNG, a lot of people's biggest enemy or best friend, sometimes both at the same time. Every so often the game will select a rare monster to put up, and if it chooses this one, then it also rolls to see which of these two dragons will spawn. Unfortunately, Vyra tends to spawn much more often than the TLPD.

This morning I had been farming for hours with no luck, and I decided to test a theory. I parked my druid on a cliff and logged out, got onto my mage and went flying around to look for rares in Northrend. I eventually found one. Scholozar Basin, the snow leopard that hunters usually tame. Yeah, I killed it, just to get it in the achievement for this toon. I logged out and went back onto my druid and after five minutes I logged out and got back on my mage. Then I found Old Crystalbark in Borean Tundra. Logged out.

Back on my druid, my NPC scan picked up Vyragosa... dead as a doornail. And my hunter friend told me that their scanner picked it up just as I logged out. Figures. I already killed this one though, so it didn't really matter, but now at 12:30 my time, I had something to go on.

Then we compared our data. I told her I had hopped onto my alts to kill rares, and I think just that one, the leopard in the basin, was what spawned Vyra for us. Not only that but my hunter friend told me that the spawn time might have been reduced since the Cataclysm, so instead of 6 hours, Vyra or the TLPD could respawn in 4 hours.

So I said, "Sounds like a plan... next time, I sit pretty on the cliff with my teeth chattering, and then you can go kill other rare spawns."

One thing I plan to do... if he/she wants me to. If I get the TLPD and the mount first, then I'll get on my mage and hunt down the other rare spawns to proc the TLPD for him/her. And if he/she gets it first, I hope s/he will help me get it too. =)

I'll try to keep this updated. Since Vyra is dead I'm gonna take a break and go to the faire and do other things, then back to freezing my butt off.

-PEACE!