In just a couple of months we'll be leaving behind the Broken Isles and heading off to new adventures in Battle For Azeroth, so this month we're featuring another battle pet from Legion. Don't miss out on this little cutie — it's the Baby Elderhorn!
Collecting the Baby Elderhorn
Collecting the
Baby Elderhorn is fairly simple. This pet can be purchased for 500 gold from the Highmountain Emissary,
Ransa Greyfeather. Howerver, players must first earn Revered with the
Highmountain Tribe.
Earning reputation with this faction is straightforward — complete
story quests while in the Highmountain zone. Upon reaching player level 110, players will have access to
Highmountain World Quests which also reward reputation for this faction.
There are two items that help speed up the Broken Isles reputation grind. They're both random drops and require access to Argus, so these might not be the most reliable for reputation grinding.
Nathrezim Tome of Manipulation and
Demon's Soulstone are two Bind On Account items that drop from Argus zones. The Tome applies a buff that increases reputation earned for 2 hours (does not persist through death), however it cannot be used above player level 109. The Soulstone grants a flat reputation increase but must be used while on Agrus.
Completing certain Order Hall missions also reward tokens that grant a flat amount of reputation. These missions can reward any of the Broken Isles faction tokens, so if you're looking specifically for Highmountain Tribe reputation, the tokens might not be that reliable either.
Last but not least, the
World Quest Bonus Event is excellent for grinding reputation. Add on top of that the
WHEE! buff from the Darkmoon Faire carousel (if you're lucky and the two weekly events occur simultaneously), and reaching Revered with the Highmountain Tribe should go a lot quicker!
It should be noted that this battle pet can be caged. You can try your luck buying/trading for the Baby Elderhorn, but we're unclear if the caged version will still require revered with the Highmountain Tribe. If so, we can't say we're surprised — we wouldn't give away this cutie to
just anyone either!
Battling with the Baby Elderhorn
The Baby Elderhorn is a battler with some hard-hitting moves for battle and some off-beat moves for flavor.
The biggest question to answer with the Elderhorn is, "Trample or Horn Gore?"
Horn Gore, a straight up DPS move, will deal more damage if your opponent’s maximum health is less than 1650 or so. Above that, Trample’s 10% damage kicker starts to do a bit better. However,
Trample deals its damage in two parts so that may figure in for damage shields, per-hit multipliers, etc. When in doubt, Horn Gore.
Headbutt does a decent amount of damage with a 25% chance to stun your opponent. It’s a small chance but it may be just the thing that nets you a win that 25% of the time. Roll the dice!
On the flavor side of things, the Baby Elderhorn has two moves that apply the Chilled effect. Chilled essentially does nothing except allow you to use abilities that benefit from a Chilled state. The Elderhorn doesn’t have any of these moves available for synergy.
The weather effect
Call Blizzard is all but useless to the Elderhorn. It does a very slight amount of damage done, and the fact that it’s a weather effect is all it’s got.
Slippery Ice does a bit more. In addition to the damage it also makes the Elderhorn’s opponent more likely to miss its attacks for the next four turns. At a 20% chance, that’s even more of an RNG-heavy unlikely savior than Headbutt.
My personal favorite of all its moves is definitely
Tough n’ Cuddly, which reduces its damage taken. It’s both a decent resilience move for battle and adds that cute flair the Baby Elderhorn has in spades.
If you can’t bring yourself to grind any more rep, the closest substitute would probably be the
Meadowstomper Calf. It has several of the Elderhorn’s Beast moves, including Tough n’ Cuddly, but none of the Chilling ones.
If you need the Chilled effect, a
Tundra Penguin is your best bet. If you need to Call Blizzard specifically the most attainable pet options are the
Father Winter’s Helper or
Winter’s Little Helper, and you can pick them up off the Auction House if it’s not Winter Veil. All these pets have
Ice Lance, an ability that has actual synergy with the Chilled status, too.
The Baby Elderhorn is a great little friend to have around to remind us of our time spent in Legion. Ah, the mountains. Ah, the rep grinding. Ah, the adorable, squishably cute battle pets.
Pet of the Month is co-written by Liopleurodon, an experienced pet battler and long-time WoW player. She maintains her own Pet Battle blog and is a Pet Battle and esports columnist on the fansite Blizzard Watch.
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