Don’t forget to spend your battle pet charms before the pre-patch!

In the transition between Warlords of Draenor and Legion, Pet Charms managed to evade the usual fate of currency in World of Warcraft and wasn’t wiped between expansions. However, Battle for Azeroth isn’t going to be so kind: while your current Pet Charms aren’t getting wiped, they are being demoted. The Pet Charms you have now will become Shiny Pet Charms, and in Battle for Azeroth, you’ll begin earning Polished Pet Charms instead. These changes were officially detailed by Community Manager Kaivax early last month.

This currency conversion will be happening when the expansion pre-patch goes live. When it happens, Shiny Pet Charms will still be used for all current Legion-era rewards, whereas Polished Pet Charms will be used for the next expansion’s rewards. Makes sense, right?

However, there’s one big exception: most pet battling consumables, even ones in-game right now, will be converted to using Polished Pet Charms. That means you’ll no longer be able to purchase items such as battle stones, biscuits, or bandages with the Pet Charms you have right now. In the gap between the patch and the expansion’s official launch date, you will effectively be unable to purchase any of those items whatsoever, because you won’t be able to acquire the new Pet Charms yet.

We advise spending your Pet Charms now rather than waiting for the inevitable currency conversion. If you don’t already have permanent rewards such as the Lost Nether Pup, you might as well buy them now, even though they’ll still be available later. That’s a better way to do it than doom yourself to grinding out old currency in old content somewhere down the road. But if you do have those pets already, you should dump all of your current Charms into stocking up on bandages or training stones as soon as possible. You have nothing to lose by doing so, and everything to gain.

If you don’t partake in pet battling often enough to justify oodles of bandages laying around, you can’t go wrong with stockpiling Ultimate Battle-Training Stones, allowing you to instantly level up any new pets you might acquire later. And in Battle for Azeroth, plenty of new pets await.