I win! "Higher Learning" and the Kirin Tor Familiar are mine. I can stop living my life in 3 min/3 hour blocks of time.
This was a fun achievement to do. Maybe because it appeals to the obsessive part of my personality. I began my quest to become a scholar of the magical arts five days ago. I followed the wonderful guide on warcraftpets.com to learn the book spawn locations and how to time the spawns. I did a mixture of camping and pathing though the city, trying to gather as much info on spawn times as possible, and then camping when I knew the schedules.
The achievement was fun because I made a lot of new friends, chatted with a lot of random people. Misery loves company, right? The spawn points were almost never lonely. I made a few Alliance buddies--a cute Gnome and a less-cute Dwarf--and we exchanged many /dance, /hug, /sigh, /cry, and /comfort over the days. I met several helpful Hordies, with whom I exchanged information about spawn times, altered to books that I saw spawn ("get to Ledgermain Lounge upstairs NOW! BOOK!"), shared tips, and celebrated our victories. All in all, it was a much more interesting way to farm a vanity pet than to spend endless hours fishing or slaughtering mobs.
My goal is to have 75 vanity pets on Lynxr before the new patch hits. There will be a new Achievement with the patch--75 vanity pets wins you an adorable baby deer. I need 4 more pets. They will most likely be the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti, Mechanical Chicken, Mechanical Squirrel, and Tickbird Hatchling... unless I get really lucky and manage to fish up that Giant Sewer Rat, or Muckbreath, or Mr. Pinchy. My original plan was to NOT collect any of the mechanical minipets, and a lot of the non-animal-like ones (like the Christmas gnome helpers, the ghostly skull..), but I've had to sacrifice my standards in order to ensure that I'll be getting my little fawn on patch day.
