Neverending Spritewood & Scary Sprites

I'm sure by now that most of this post will probably be old news, but hopefully some of you will find some tips I'll be sharing useful in snagging yourself a Dandelion Frolicker pet sooner rather than later.

Take a look at the screenshot below. This is the tree just east of Old Pi'Jiu with the Nice Sprites frolicking merrily around its base. See those purple crystals in the shot? Those are Neverending Spritewood Crystals. There are four of them - all are pictured in the screenshot below. I am showing you all four in one shot so that you can see exactly where each spawns from one vantage point. They cannot and will not spawn in at the same time. 

 

Spawn Time:

On the ptr, and when patch 5.4 went live, the spawn time on the crystals was about an hour. It has since been stealthily changed to about 15 minutes. Which crystal will spawn in next is completely random.

The Crystal "Daily":

You can only interact with the Neverending Spritewood Crystal once per day, per toon. Once you have completed the event, you can see the crystal when it spawns in again, but you will not be able to interact with it. Those of you with more than one level 90 can farm for this pet on multiple toons. I've been farming it daily on three toons myself.

The Fight:

Ok, so the basics are this. Once you interact with the Neverending Spritewood you will immediately receive the Crystal Breaker debuff. This debuff only lasts one minute and makes the sprites aggressive toward you. The aggressive sprites that you aggro will toss Sticky Sap on you through the entire event. This debuff stacks, making gathering them quickly (or fleeing) a little more difficult.

Starting the event by becoming a Crystal Monster! RAWR!

The nice sprites will turn into one of two types of sprites when they attack you. Most of them will become little blue Angry Sprites, but if your lucky several will become larger bright green Scary Sprites. Scary Sprites are the mobs that can drop the adorable Dandelion Frolicker pet. The pet itself has a fairly low chance to drop chance.

Scary Sprite pictured on the right

From my experience so far, it seems that the more sprites you kill, the better chance you will have of getting a Scary Sprite to spawn. Granted it is random though. I've had massive pulls before with only one or two Scary Sprites. I've also had smaller pulls yielding far more Scary Sprites. (When I say this, I do mean after the hotfix on Oct. 9: "Scary Sprite now deals 40% less damage and should spawn slightly more frequently.")

Angry Sprites each have 196k health, and Scary Sprites have 393k. Any sprites not dead after the minute is up and the debuff wears off will turn friendly and run away. The sprites each hit for roughly 5 - 7k, and of course double that when they crit. If you pick up a lot of sprites this damage will add up very quickly. I have watched far too many people pull half the sprites at once only to get eaten alive and die just seconds later. Having some damage mitigation and heals is highly recommended here. If your not sure how many you can take on at once, play it safe. Remember you only have one shot at the event each day per toon.

If you are serious about trying to get this pet, you are going to have to do as much aoe as possible while watching your health. Friends can come in very handy here. Although other players cannot help you kill the sprites, you can still be buffed and healed by them. You can also group with others doing the event and roll if the pet drops even though you were not the one to start it.

There are many many helpful items you can have ready to go for this fight that will increase your dps and survivability significantly. I try to have as many as I can before waiting for the crystal to spawn in each day. I usually average about 300k dps on each of my toons with all of the extra buffs.

Items I highly recommend using for this event:

• Thick Pi'jiu Brew - This is my favorite item for this event. The amount of aoe damage this does is no less than AMAZING. The Spectral Brewmaster tends to do about 70-80% of the damage when I use my bear tank, and a good 40% - 50% or so on my hunter. Seriously, the dps this little helper does is just insane. Check out the screenshot below for some actual numbers. No matter how much dps you can lay out I still recommend having this item handy. You can get it from the Spectral Brewmaster mobs right nearby in Old Pi'Jiu. It should take no more than a couple of minutes to get one to drop. 

• Bubbling Pi'Jiu Brew and Misty Pi'jiu Brew can also be used at the same time for some extra dps, but they don't do nearly as much damage as their Brewmaster buddy. This drops from Spectral Windwalkers and Spectral Mistweavers respectively.
• Strange Glowing Mushroom - Another phenomenal item for this event. My hunter in particular LOVES these. Between the heals and +focus regen, I can get off a rediculous amount of Multi-Shots one after the other and not worry about my health if I forget to misdirect. I try to have 5 or 6 of these ready to go and just use them back to back as they wear off. You can get these from the Damp Shambler mobs or Rock Moss in the Cavern of Lost Spirits.
• Faintly-Glowing Herb - This is another very helpful heal over time item that you can use several of one after the other during the event. These drop from the Ashleaf Sprite mobs found at the base of the trees along The Blazing Way, as well as Leafmender.
• Timeless Nutriment buff from a Ripe Crispfruit - These look like red apples hanging from trees. There is one right next to the event area.
• Dew of Eternal Morning, Book of the Ages and Singing Crystal will also make this a lot easier. You'll probably have several of these in your bags already from killing mobs on the isle. 
• Any Celestial blessing from a Time-Lost Shrine (all shrine locations are shown on the wowhead map in that link). The blessings include: Wisdom of Yu'lon, Xuen's Strength, Chi-Ji's Hope and Fortitude of Niuzao.
• Any one of the Timeless Legends items. (Click on the items listed below to see the maps on Wowhead of their locations.) Finding any one of these items will give you an extra action button in the middle of your screen. Cloudsrike Family Helm = Cloudstrike, Riverspeaker's Trident = Rivercall, Flameheart Shawl = Flameheart & Snowdrift Tiger Talons = Snowclaw. Using the button will deal an enormous amount of aoe damage to enemies within 8 yards. Make sure you have a hefty pile of sprites before you use your ability. With the cooldown you will only be able to use it once during the event. This should one-shot most of the sprites.
• Heroism/Bloodlust, Timewarp, Ancient Hysteria, Drums of Rage for big burst of extra haste.
• Food Buff
• Flask, potions, elixirs, etc.

So far I have seen the pet drop twice. I've probably killed north of 300 Scary Sprites along the way. Hopefully the rest of you will have better luck in seeing it drop than I did, because that ends up being less than a 1% chance. Ouch!