A couple of nights ago, a bunch of hunters banded together on Twitter and the Petopia forums to try to solve the Gara mystery on the beta. Those I recognized from the forums or Twitter were right beside me in game trying to figure out the same problems, coming up with crazy theories, and just having fun. After a massive group effort and a little bit of luck, Gara has finally been solved.

Just how do we tame her? It turns out that it’s become more complicated than any of us ever imagined. Thanks to some clever datamining of some spell IDs by someone on the Petopia forums, we received enough clues to get past our 4-day rut of no progress beyond the Shadowberries step.

Taming Gara takes you across all of Draenor, and to me it’s basically a mini class quest without actually calling itself a quest. It’s not on the same level as say the warlock green fire quest, but make no mistake, a good deal of effort went into creating this event for hunters!

Basic Requirements:

Level 90+

Horde or Alliance

Beast Mastery spec

What follows contains spoilers, so stop here if you want to discover everything for yourself (and good luck with that!).

Step One: Talk to Gara

You need to be in Beast Mastery spec for this to work since Gara is a spirit beast. Upon interacting with her, you will get the following dialogue option:

This first dialogue had been implemented in beta for many weeks, but the second one suddenly popped up in a new build. That’s when I asked Muffinus what was up.

@BendakWoW Fully implemented, good luck 🙂 — Jeremy Feasel (@Muffinus) September 3, 2014

The hunt was on. Many hunters gathered in Shadowmoon Valley on the beta server trying to figure out the next part. Eventually some people noticed that a nearby rare, Mother Om’ra, dropped a newly added item, the Shadowberry.

Step Two: The Shadowberry

If you talk to Gara with the Shadowberriers in your inventory, you now get a new dialogue option:

At this point, we were all stuck in a 4-day rut. There was no progress made at all, but plenty of theories. Hunters scoured all the zones looking for clues, and ate way too many Shadowberries in the process.

The break came when someone on the Petopia forums did some clever datamining. Now we had something to go on.

Step Three: The Effigy

Thanks to that datamining, we realized the Spirit Effigy had something to do with it. In order to create this item, you need to go all across Draenor and collect the following items. These were all found by dedicated hunters who went around killing things until they found which specific mobs dropped them. Truly a group effort!

Once you have all these items, you use the Crude Effigy to assemble the Spirit Effigy. Now head back to Gara!

Step Four: Using the Spirit Effigy

With the Spirit Effigy in your inventory, a disturbed grave appears back in front of Gara. Use the effigy on that grave and Mother Om’ra (yeah, the one you killed for the berries) is summoned. I’ll let her dialogue do the talking:

Wow, this is getting pretty deep for a hunter pet taming challenge.

So, maybe now I get to tame Gara? NOPE! Right after this, a giant void lord appears.

What the hell? You void lord jerk! I just want to tame this lovely spirit beast!

And now… after all that… Gara is gone.

Step Five: The Void Lantern

This next step is once again thanks to the original datamining. The Void Lantern drops from Shadowmoon Voidtwisters at the Pillars of Fate in Shadowmoon Valley. You need to come in from Spires of Arak to get there if you haven’t yet gotten the flight path. The lantern is unique but you can pick up a second one after you apply the buff. The buff lasts for one hour and says “partially phases you into the void.”

Take your lantern and head back to the main part of Shadowmoon Valley!

Step Six: Shadowmoon Voidblade

This next step was discovered by Lupen202 on the Petopia forums.

Head on over to the Great Tree Valuundira as shown on the map above. There was actually a bit of a hint here that all of us originally missed. The one NPC nearby, Anchorite Vanaala, says the following: “We brought this sapling from our home, and now it is dying. I cannot sense any evil nearby, but I will keep trying.”

That evil is clearly the Voidblade stuck into the trunk, but you can only see it with the Void Lantern as discussed in the previous step. Click on the dagger and you will phase fully into the void realm, and… what’s this?!

Gara appears by your side in the form of a guardian pet. You’ll also notice that since you’re now in the void realm, the sky darkens, and a bunch of massive Elder Void Lords and Elder Voidcallers are surrounding the tree. They are level 100 elites so you’ll probably need to be level 100 to complete this by yourself.

Start killing them! Gara will help you (and seems to do some damage). I’m not sure exactly how many need to be killed, or if it’s entirely random. I killed at least a dozen before I saw Xan, the Lord of Glass spawn. Others reported getting Xan to spawn in as little as 2 kills. Someone in the comments reported that if you let Gara get the killing blow, it will spawn Xan automatically (move close to the void lord so Gara will attack). Others have reported this does not work. So it might be totally random. Either way, just keep killing them and keep an eye out for Xan. You can’t miss him!

After defeating Xan, he does one final attack but you “instinctively” use Deterrence to avoid it. I kind of chuckled at that. Mother Om’ra spawns again and says the following:

If multiple hunters are completing the event at the same time, a tameable Gara spawns for each of them. It seems all you have to do is tag Xan.

Gara does not fight back during the taming process.

An epic taming quest

A couple of final notes to finish this off. First, even though you need to visit high level zones and deal with some level 100 elites, you can tame Gara as low as level 90 (thanks to those who commented to confirm this).

Secondly, if you die or otherwise leave the void realm once you’ve clicked the dagger, you do not need to get another lantern. The dagger will always be there now. Actually, the Void Lantern will stop dropping entirely.

If you’ve abandoned Gara and want her back (or you just want more copies of her in your stable), you can go back into the void realm and look for a Lost Netherwolf to tame. It is located far away from the dagger, at 65,37.

Gara looks a lot better in motion, so here’s a very short video showing her off.

I never expected to have a challenge tame be this involved. A lot of care went into crafting this, and I think I speak for all hunters when I say: Thank You!