Monstrous Spineclaw- the worst mob in the game?

[Soeroah]

Who here has had the vast misfortune of wanting to get this crab's pet, be it for achievement, for the pet itself or whatever other reason?

I just wasted four hours killing crabs to get this rare to spawn, and due to some utterly moronic little personal addiction to something called 'water', I spent thirty seconds outside my room to get a drink, came back, and saw the Monstrous Spineclaw's corpse 20 yards away from my character, killed by players who weren't helping me kill crabs in the area.


So, what do you achievement/pet hunters think of this mob? Do you think the four-layer RNG is reasonable, or do you think it's over the top? Personally, I think if I had put the time spent trying to get this mob's pet into trying to get the Time Lost Proto-Drake, I'd actually have a new mount by this point. At least that one spawns without player input so you can actually do stuff on an alt.

[zaaz]

why dont they just put the pet in the store then if youre just going to cry about it. You missed your shot its intentionally rare good luck next time

[Mormolyce]

I've killed it 3-4 times IIRC, it sure is a pain in the ass with its enormous spawn path and the fact it's dead immediately if it does spawn. Although I've only ever seen it on the western coast, normally near the Horde FP.

It'd be acceptable if it was only needed for the kill achievement, or if it dropped the pet 100% of the time, but man. As it is, it's fucked.

[Soeroah]

Cry? I'm not crying about it. I'm concerned that Blizzard has failed in their goals of creating engaging content and, given the 100+ hours it's taken me so far with no measure of progression, might not have thought this situation through, especially compared to other rares on the island.

There's a difference between making something rare and making it badly designed. This is a pet locked behind a higher amount of RNG than most other rares in the game, yet it's required for an achievement. It should be its own feat of strength under the current set-up.

There's also a slight difference between 'missing your shot' and 'wasting your time'. If it spawned regardless of player input, I'd shrug it off like most of the other rares and try again later. Actively spending four hours doing content that dwarfs the original complaints against dailies when MoP came out only to have other players remove a CHANCE at getting what you want is just...so against what WoW's meant to be it's not even funny.


Those of you voting 'no' who are collectors; I'd be very interested to hear which spawns you think are worse than the Spineclaw, so feel free to reply, please.

[Kaustos]

Spineclaw Crab needs to be a on a .5-1% drop from the Ancient Spineclaws. Just like the Death Adder Hatchling needs to drop from Death Adders. Just like the other 1-2% drops that drop from rares need to be shared on something farmable. It's far too low, well below the 'fun' threshold. I like farmin and collecting shit, but super low %s off rares is draining, boring and frustrating. The only reasonable one is Huolons mount.

[Soeroah]

Spineclaw Crab needs to be a on a .5-1% drop from the Ancient Spineclaws. Just like the Death Adder Hatchling needs to drop from Death Adders. Just like the other 1-2% drops that drop from rares need to be shared on something farmable. It's far too low, well below the 'fun' threshold. I like farmin and collecting shit, but super low %s off rares is draining, boring and frustrating. The only reasonable one is Huolons mount.

I agree with this. Allowing the pet a lower chance to drop off the normal crabs seems like a perfect solution to me.

1) It allows for achievement credit, because you just have to loot the item. It doesn't matter what you loot it from.

2) Every crab you kill has a chance of ending the suffering, rather than having a chance of having a chance of having a chance of ending it. That's motivating.

3) More people will actually kill the crabs, which leads to a natural increase in the amount of Monstrous Spineclaw spawns.


It's not like I'm asking to have the pet just handed to me, I just want there to be a sense of progression. You know, where after 100 hours you are actually closer to getting to your goal, rather than being at exactly the same point as you were before you even started. A bonus roll system purchased with Timeless Coins (give me something to spend my excess 320,000 coins on), bad luck protection like in LFR (and I think Normal and Flex, now?), the ability to summon a random rare spawn on the Island for a Coin cost every 20 minutes, increasing the drop chance of the pet, increasing the spawn rate of the Monstrous Spineclaw.

Those are all possible options that would make the grind less terrible, without making it trivial. Pet-dropping-off-normal-mobs-at-a-reduced-rate is my preferred answer, though.

[Sin Cara]

You are asking it to be handed to you. No one is forcing you to obtain one and pet collectors can simply buy it off the AH.
I think the drop rate is a little low, but don't think it's bad design at all.

[lokinrond713]

welcome to the new wow, home of the rare shit to kill w/ lots of time put into it, we hope you enjoy your stay, or dont, we're fine either way

[TEHPALLYTANK]

The achievement is there to help you understand that you don't HAVE to get every single achievement (that or it is there to drive you insane).

[Soeroah]

You are asking it to be handed to you. No one is forcing you to obtain one and pet collectors can simply buy it off the AH.
I think the drop rate is a little low, but don't think it's bad design at all.

How is asking for it to be more in line with the other rare items on the island the same as asking to have it handed to me?

I've gone through Pandaria, Cataclysm zones and Northrend to personally capture rare versions of each wild pet in every zone so far, I've done almost 20,000 daily quests on my Death Knight main and my banks are full to bursting from all the toy items I've collected over the years. This isn't meant to say I deserve the pet, I'm just using it to highlight that I work toward goals in the game.

With all that under my belt, the Monstrous Spineclaw is the first time I've felt something is overly ridiculous compared to other, similar things. There are pets that only drop in raids, that have no achievement for getting them. I buy those, or try to get them if they are available in LFR or Flex. There are pets that drop from normal rare spawns, that have no achievement attached to them. I check on the rares every now and then and kill them to get the pets as normal. There are mounts on bosses in old dungeons and raids, I run those to have a shot at getting them once a week. There are craftable pets, purchasable pets, faction-specific pets...I don't even touch PVP achievements as I have no interest in them, I only go after stuff that is obtainable through my play style.

I put plenty of work in to get a lot of the stuff I have in the game. I'm not asking for Blizzard to mail me the pet. I'm not asking for it to be handed to me. I'm asking for it to be brought more in-line with other pets obtained in similar methods. Again, it's not the low drop rate that gets me, it's not the low spawn rate that gets me. It's not even the fact that it spawns over such a wide area. It's the fact that all three of those things are true, at the same time, combined with the fact that you personally and actively have to work to get it to spawn, leading to the relatively high likelihood that someone else who isn't helping can kill the pet while you're elsewhere killing more crabs, which nullifies the hours of work you put in to it.


I struggle to think of a way to describe a similar situation for other parts of the game. No other part of the game I'm aware of has so much RNG attached to it while also allowing other players to nullify any work you put in. Closest I can think of is trying to get the Tol'vir archeology mount if other players could exhaust your digsite.

[Raiju]

Who here has had the vast misfortune of wanting to get this crab's pet, be it for achievement, for the pet itself or whatever other reason?

I just wasted four hours killing crabs to get this rare to spawn, and due to some utterly moronic little personal addiction to something called 'water', I spent thirty seconds outside my room to get a drink, came back, and saw the Monstrous Spineclaw's corpse 20 yards away from my character, killed by players who weren't helping me kill crabs in the area.


So, what do you achievement/pet hunters think of this mob? Do you think the four-layer RNG is reasonable, or do you think it's over the top? Personally, I think if I had put the time spent trying to get this mob's pet into trying to get the Time Lost Proto-Drake, I'd actually have a new mount by this point. At least that one spawns without player input so you can actually do stuff on an alt.

How is it any different than imperial python's pet? Same drop chance as far as I know, same spawn mechanic, similar hp. Dies in seconds.

[Sin Cara]

Would you be complaining if you received the drop already? Sounds like you have mild ocd more than anything else.
Like Raiju said, the python can be just as bad.
I suggest that you form a group of like minded people and farm each spawn point.

[Deleted]

Blizzard knew exactly what they did there. They do not care about how tedious it is for you to farm the pet. They want to restrict the number of people who have it. Whether that number includes YOU is not their problem. You want it? Then go and farm some more. You sounds incredibly entitled.

[Soeroah]

How is it any different than imperial python's pet? Same drop chance as far as I know, same spawn mechanic, similar hp. Dies in seconds.

It's not that different, it's just slightly worse. The Pythons spawn in something of a circle around the Court area and they're all accessible by land. The crabs spawn along the coastline, on land and under water, stretching from north of the Horde base to just east of Bufo's spawn. Travelling along the route where the crabs spawn takes longer than the pythons, plus more people tend to be killing pythons for some reason. Standing where I do to farm the crabs I've seen pythons spawn on my minimap up to three times in a few hours, while no crab spawned- to the best of my knowledge- anywhere on the island. I dislike the python, too, it's just not as bad as the Spineclaw.

Would you be complaining if you received the drop already? Sounds like you have mild ocd more than anything else.
Like Raiju said, the python can be just as bad.
I suggest that you form a group of like minded people and farm each spawn point.

Not as actively, honestly, but I'd be there to agree in any future topics I saw about how poor the chances are, and it'd be my go-too choice for any topics asking people what their least favourite part of the game is/was. It's managed to knock Battlefield Barrens off the top of my most-boring-part-of-WoW list. I want to point out that I didn't actually start complaining about the situation after after my 60th hour killing crabs, after which point I had seen perhaps twelve spawns. Waiting on respawns gives one time to complain on the forums. And do a variety of other non-WoW related things, which seems contrary to the goal of creating engaging content but whatever.

Blizzard knew exactly what they did there. They do not care about how tedious it is for you to farm the pet. They want to restrict the number of people who have it. Whether that number includes YOU is not their problem. You want it? Then go and farm some more. You sounds incredibly entitled.

Oh good, I've been looking for a Blizzard quote saying anything about the situation. Could you link it?

[Raiju]

It's not that different, it's just slightly worse. The Pythons spawn in something of a circle around the Court area and they're all accessible by land. The crabs spawn along the coastline, on land and under water, stretching from north of the Horde base to just east of Bufo's spawn. Travelling along the route where the crabs spawn takes longer than the pythons, plus more people tend to be killing pythons for some reason. Standing where I do to farm the crabs I've seen pythons spawn on my minimap up to three times in a few hours, while no crab spawned- to the best of my knowledge- anywhere on the island. I dislike the python, too, it's just not as bad as the Spineclaw.

I'm guessing you got lucky with the python, then?

And spineclaws are killed plenty on the handful of realms I see. They drop the aggro redux which is useful for using censer in the court. I'd also recommend you invest in gliders, a raft, the WW mount, or the monkey helmet for easy water travel.

[Soeroah]

I'm guessing you got lucky with the python, then?

And spineclaws are killed plenty on the handful of realms I see. They drop the aggro redux which is useful for using censer in the court. I'd also recommend you invest in gliders, a raft, the WW mount, or the monkey helmet for easy water travel.

Bit lucky, yeah. Only took me maybe...20 kills, all up? About a week at a couple hours per day, while waiting for Bufo spawns. And yeah, I always keep a supply of gliders, my Falling Flame off cooldown, got Path of Frost on etc. For the last week, though, I've been the only person Horde-side calling out Spineclaw spawns, and sometimes I barely manage to finish typing it out before it's pulled, occasionally by another, silent Horde player.

[Raiju]

Honestly, I don't call out spawns either. I usually keep a fast pace so waiting everytime a rare spawns seems counter productive. I call huolon, but I won't wait and it will die in about 10 seconds of me reaching it. If I call it I have to wait for people to arrive, so it just seems redundant (I often spend 1 hour or less on the isle at a time till chiji buff wears off once)

[Soeroah]

I figure I don't want any else to have to go through the whole situation if I can avoid it, so I don't mind waiting a few minutes to let people get over to the rare so we can all have a chance at the drop. That just makes it more annoying when other people don't, though, especially when you lose four hours of trying to get the rare to spawn because you foolishly left the room to get a glass of water for all of thirty seconds, as I did today.

[nightfalls]

Realize that when you get it, you then look at your list and realize you still have all the other pets (For me, include the Python, Garnia, Spirit of Jadefire) then realize that at the end of the day...

it's an optional achievement with no reward. You can do it on your own time, not do it at all, or you can go crazy and put yourself in asylum trying to get it done by next week.

[Raiju]

Realize that when you get it, you then look at your list and realize you still have all the other pets (For me, include the Python, Garnia, Spirit of Jadefire) then realize that at the end of the day...

it's an optional achievement with no reward. You can do it on your own time, not do it at all, or you can go crazy and put yourself in asylum trying to get it done by next week.

I've been attempting 1 item a day for the most part. It's worked out even as I move onto the rare only drops so far but eventually I will have to maybe say 1 a week.