It looks like Hunters will be able to tame big, gross Blood Beasts in patch 8.1

Shall we call this “Taming with a side of ‘Ewwww'”? The latest build on the patch 8.1 PTR shows that a new category of Hunter pets, Blood Beasts, will become tamable with the patch. If you hadn’t guessed, Crawgs and Blood Ticks are the two pets in this family. Gross. There are four Crawg colors: brown, green, dark grey, and light grey. Meanwhile, Blood Ticks come in dark blue, dark red, purple, and “regular” red.

If you want either of these pets, you’ll have to go to either Zuldazar or Nazmir. Immediately west of the Alliance camp of Fort Victory, you’ll find a Blood Troll encampment — this is where you’ll find the brown and light grey Crawgs. For Blood Ticks, the dark blue variety can be found in Underrot, while dark red ones can be found around the entrance to both Underrot and Uldir, among other places. Generally, if the area has Blood Trolls, it probably has Crawgs and Blood Ticks.

These pets will be Tenacity, with their special ability being Blood Bolt. This attack launches blood at the enemy, reducing movement speed. If you still feed your pets, their diet consists of fish and meat.

You can’t just start taming on Day One, though

How do you get one of these lovely pets into your stable? You will need to find a Blood-Soaked Tome of Dark Whispers. At the present time, no one is certain where or how you get this. Remember — back in Mists of Pandaria — in order to tame any Dinosaurs on the Isle of Giants, you had to kill Trolls until they dropped the Ancient Tome of Dinomancy. Since these pets are companions of the Blood Trolls, it seems probable you’ll need to kill Blood Troll Hunters for the book to drop. “Read” it, and you’ll get the ability to tame these pets.

Community reaction seems to be mixed, with as many people wanting this now as there are people who aren’t interested. A lot are excited to get their very own “Spud.” Players are also wondering if this is a precursor to being able to tame Wicker Beasts from Drustvar. I’m probably not going to get a Blood Beast, to be honest — but if I could tame a Wicker Beast, particularly those worgs with the spikes on them, I’d be all over that in a heartbeat. What do you think, Hunters? Are you going to go get a Blood Beast?

PS: Shout-out to Kylia for helping get screenshots. She was not harmed while we got these. Me, on the other hand…