Critters are mobile non-player entities, typically small or non-predatory animals or vermin, intended primarily for ambiance.
While critters are a kind of mobile object, in World of Warcraft, "mobs" differ from critters in that critters are primarily for ambiance, provide no direct experience and little or no loot, and are trivial to kill. There are subtle mechanical differences, such as critters cannot be targeted by use of the tab key.
Targetable and non-targetable
There are two kinds of critters, ones that can be targeted (by clicking on them, not by tabbing) and interacted with and wear a yellow (neutral) label, and ones that cannot be targeted and have no label. The targetable, interactive critters have noteworthy characteristics, the non-interactive critters have only movement, appearance, and location characteristics.
Land critters are targetable. Low flying critters are hovering land critters, and are targetable. High flying birds are not targetable. Fish critters can be either.
Characteristics of (targetable) critters in World of Warcraft
- Critters have hit points.
- Any 'attack' that causes no damage will not kill a critter.
- Many critters have just one hit point and always die when hit by a damaging attack.
- Some critters have a few hit points and a will survive a weak attack.
- Size is a poor indication of relative robustness.
- Many larger critters, such as deer and sheep, have one hit point.
- Squirrels, which are among the smaller critters, have eight hit points.
- Critters are (mostly) harmless and low level.
- Most will run in fear if they survive the first attack.
- Some critters, such as the rats in Deadmines and the Deeprun Tram, the Biletoads in Wailing Caverns, or Frogs (no, really!) will strike back at an attacker if the attack doesn't immediately kill them. They do minimal damage.
- Priests can use
[Shadow Word: Pain] to test critter reactions, as it has a delay before it does actual damage.
- Unlike mobs, critters do not yield experience nor loot (with the exception of Giant Marsh Frog and Dig Rat).
- Most critters can be skinned, but rarely give better than
[Ruined Leather Scraps].
- You can (safely!) train up weapon skills by attacking critters.
- The biggest drawback is the critters die too fast, so you get little opportunity for skill-ups per critter.
- Larger predator animal mobs (cats, wolves, etc.) frequently chase and kill prey critters.
- Critters can also be killed by
[Sleepy Willy], a non-combat small pet that is a quest reward from the annual Children's Week event.
- Critters can also be killed by
- Critters can be Polymorphed by Mages, Feared by Warlocks, Shapeshifted by engineers, and various other status effects that do not deal damage.
- Amusingly, sheep can be polymorphed into sheep. The visual effect looks like dust billowing from the sheep.
[Growl] causes critters to run in fear instead of coming at you (although see above note about critter aggressiveness).
- Many small pets share the same 3D model with the critters of the same type.
- Many critters have an older, generic representative of the type, and representatives with more specific names added with new content.
- Some critters represent a type of creature that is also or is primarily represented by mobs; spiders for example.
- Some critters are quest objectives and achievement objectives.
- Whenever a critter is the object of a quest or achievement, the name must match exactly.
Fish
- Non-targetable critter fish are a graphic element within a School of Fish, a fishing resource.
- There are also both targetable and non-targetable schools of fish that are a collective critter made up of individual fish critter models. These are not a fishing resource and swim deeper than the fishing resource schools. They act as a single critter. If you kill the targetable school of fish, each individual fish dies and rolls over on its back in unison.
- There are also non-targetable free swimming individual critter fish.
- Fish critters of any sort seem to appear only in fishable waters. Absence does not mean the water is not fishable, but presence is a good indication that the water is fishable.
Notes
- The chicken critter is the only source of the [Westfall Chicken] small pet. During the course of obtaining the small pet, the chicken becomes an exception to the rule that critters are neutral, becoming friendly to characters, but at that point the chicken appears to be a temporary NPC, not a critter. Horde characters need to buy the special chicken feed from the neutral AH before they can do this.
As of a recent patch, William Saldean in Brill sells Chicken Feed to horde characters.
Characteristics in previous Warcraft games
- In Warcraft II & III, if the player clicked on a critter in rapid succession, the critter would detonate in a large, bloody explosion.
List of critters
These are mostly targetable, and wear a label.
- Critters marked with * are needed for the [To All The Squirrels I've Loved Before] achievement.
- Critters marked with ‡ are needed for the [To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life] achievement.
- Critters marked with † are needed for the [Pest Control] achievement.
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