WoW Forever Carrion Bird Guide: Tame Spots, Screech Ranks and Rares

The short route for a WoW Forever Carrion Bird: tame a Greater Fleshripper in Westfall at level 16 for Screech 1, trade up to a Dread Ripper or Salt Flats Vulture at 32+ for Screech 2, then grab a Carrion Vulture at 50 for Screech 3 and Dive 3 in one tame. Screech 4 is not taught by any bird, so a bat or owl has to donate it.

Carrion Birds are the General family: medium health, medium damage, 5% extra armor, and a diet of meat and fish. They are leveling tanks with a multi-target attack power debuff, not raid damage monsters. This WoW Forever hunter pet guide covers every tame spot, every skill rank, the rares worth camping, and the food bill.

What Forever changes and what it does not

Blizzard has published the World of Warcraft Forever hunter talent trees, but not the full pet system. Taming rules, family lists, pet talents and stable slots are still unannounced ahead of the 4 November 2026 launch, so the old family data below is the working rulebook until patch notes say otherwise. The confirmed changes already reshape Classic+ hunter pets in a few ways.

• Pets now scale with your stats, so the Agility you stack also feeds your bird.
• Endurance Training now adds pet health and armor at 3% per rank, and the old Thick Hide talent is gone.
• Bestial Discipline raises pet Focus regeneration, which means more Screech and Claw presses per fight.
• Improved Aspect of the Monkey shares half of its dodge bonus with your pet.
• Focused Fire adds up to 2% to all your damage while the pet is out, so a dead bird now costs you personal damage too.
• Lone Wolf gives 20% damage when you have no pet, which is the new excuse to leave the bird in the stable.
• Unleashed Fury and Ferocity buff both pets and the new summoned hawks, while Frenzy and Bestial Wrath still touch the pet only.

Family stats and where the Carrion Bird ranks

Stat	Modifier	What it means
Health	1.00	Baseline pool, nothing to brag about.
Armor	1.05	The only bonus the family gets, a thin 5%.
Damage	1.00	No damage bonus, so offensive families out-hit it.
Role	General	Balanced stats with no specialty.
Diet	Meat, Fish	Cheap to feed from any butcher.

In pure numbers the family sits mid-table: offensive families beat it on damage and defensive families beat it on survival. What keeps it relevant is Screech, a single-target hit that also lowers melee attack power of every enemy next to the pet and carries built-in threat. Few families can hold three mobs this cheaply.

Where to tame every Carrion Bird

Pick by skill taught and by look. Attack speed changes only the rhythm, because faster pets hit proportionally lighter and family DPS stays the same. Rares drift along patrol paths, so trust the landmark over a single coordinate.

Beast	Level	Zone	Teaches on tame	Look and notes
Wiry Swoop	5-7	Mulgore	Nothing	Black, first Horde bird.
Swoop	7-9	Mulgore	Nothing	Black.
Taloned Swoop	8-10	Mulgore	Nothing	Black.
Young Fleshripper	10-11	Westfall	Nothing	Brown, first Alliance bird.
Fleshripper	13-14	Westfall	Nothing	Brown.
Greater Fleshripper	16-17	Westfall	Screech 1	Black, the only Screech 1 source in the game.
Mountain Buzzard	15-16	Loch Modan	Nothing	Brown.
Lord Condar	15-16 rare	Loch Modan	Nothing	Red, southwest of Farstrider Lodge.
Dire Condor	18-19	Redridge Mountains	Nothing	Red.
Vultros	26 rare	Westfall	Nothing	Blue, reported at 63.0, 74.4 and 35, 68, respawn 21-32 hours.
Salt Flats Scavenger	30-32	Thousand Needles	Nothing	Brown.
Young Mesa Buzzard	31-32	Arathi Highlands	Dive 1	Black.
Salt Flats Vulture	32-34	Thousand Needles	Screech 2	Brown, the closest Screech 2 for Horde.
Dread Swoop	32-33	Desolace	Nothing	Blue.
Mesa Buzzard	34-35	Arathi Highlands	Dive 1	Black.
Carrion Horror	35-37	Desolace	Nothing	Brown.
Starving Buzzard	35-37	Badlands	Nothing	Black.
Wayward Buzzard	35-37	Badlands	Dive 1	Black.
Dread Flyer	36-37	Desolace	Dive 1	Blue.
Elder Mesa Buzzard	37-38	Arathi Highlands	Nothing	Black.
Buzzard	37-39	Badlands	Nothing	Black.
Dread Ripper	39-40	Desolace	Screech 2	Blue.
Giant Buzzard	39-41	Badlands	Nothing	Black.
Roc	42-43	Tanaris	Dive 2	Red.
Fire Roc	43-45	Tanaris	Dive 2	Red.
Greater Firebird	46 rare	Tanaris	Dive 2	Red.
Black Slayer	46-48	Blasted Lands	Nothing	Black.
Searing Roc	47-49	Tanaris	Dive 2	Red.
Carrion Vulture	50-52	Western Plaguelands	Screech 3, Dive 3	Black, one spawn logged at 29.9, 54.7.
Spiteflayer	52 rare	Blasted Lands	Dive 3	Black, circles south of Nethergarde Keep above the road.
Zaricotl	55 rare elite	Badlands	Dive 3	Red, southeast of Dustwind Dig.

Pet skills and where to farm each rank

A WoW Forever Screech pet cannot buy a rank you never learned. Stable your bird, tame a beast that knows the rank, fight with it until the chat says you learned the skill, then abandon it. After that, any Bat, Owl or Carrion Bird you own can train the rank with Beast Training, the slingshot icon on the General tab. Growl, Great Stamina, Natural Armor and resistances come from the pet trainer instead.

Skill	Rank	Pet level	TP cost	Tame to learn it
Screech	1	8	10	Greater Fleshripper
Screech	2	24	15	Salt Flats Vulture, Dread Ripper, Shrike Bat in Uldaman
Screech	3	48	20	Carrion Vulture, Ironbeak Owl in Felwood, Dark Screecher in Blackrock Depths
Screech	4	56	25	Monstrous Plaguebat in Eastern Plaguelands, Winterspring Screecher in Winterspring
Dive	1	30	15	Young Mesa Buzzard, Mesa Buzzard, Wayward Buzzard, Dread Flyer
Dive	2	40	20	Roc, Fire Roc, Greater Firebird, Searing Roc
Dive	3	50	25	Carrion Vulture, Spiteflayer, Zaricotl
Bite	8	56	25	Bloodaxe Worg in Blackrock Spire
Claw	8	56	25	Winterspring Screecher, Elder Shardtooth
Cower	6	55	18	Frostsaber Cub, Monstrous Plaguebat

No Carrion Bird teaches Screech 4. Tame a Monstrous Plaguebat or a Winterspring Screecher, learn the rank, abandon the donor, then train your bird. The Winterspring Screecher also carries Claw 8, so one tame covers both endgame ranks.

Learning is slow on purpose. Turn off every other skill on the donor, including Growl, and fight easy mobs until it uses the skill enough times. The game only teaches you when the animal actually casts it.

Lower Bite and Claw ranks come from wolves, spiders, bears and owls along any leveling path. Nobody sane farms Bite 3 on purpose. Tame whatever teaches the next rank on your route and move on.

Training points and a working build

Training points follow a simple formula: pet level times loyalty level minus one. A level 60 Best Friend pet has 300 points. Upgrading a rank refunds the lower one, so skipping ranks saves nothing. The real budget killers are Great Stamina 10 at 185 points and Natural Armor 10 at 150 points.

• Screech stays on autocast at every level, because it is your multi-mob threat tool and your damage reduction in one button.
• A pet holds only four active skills, so Screech, Growl, Bite and Claw fill the bar for most hunters.
• Growl costs zero points even on a pet with negative points, so solo pets train it first and group pets turn it off.
• Dive replaces Claw or Bite when you want an 80% sprint for chasing or crossing zones.
• Great Stamina and Natural Armor eat the rest of the points once Screech is capped.
• Resistances are for specific raids only, and fire resistance is the one worth planning for.

Untraining costs gold that scales with each reset, capped at 10 gold. The WoW Forever pet skills list may grow before launch, so do not spend a respec budget on a guess.

Best named tames: rares and looks

Rare	Look	Why bother
Vultros	Blue	Only blue bird before level 30, and camping it teaches patience you will need later.
Lord Condar	Red	A red condor at 16, with a short respawn and a big patrol path.
Greater Firebird	Red	Rare red roc that also teaches Dive 2.
Spiteflayer	Black	Attack speed 1.2, the fastest Carrion Bird tame, plus Dive 3.
Zaricotl	Red	Level 55 elite rare with Dive 3, the endgame trophy bird.

Colors on offer are black, blue, brown and red. White exists in the files and is not tameable. If you want the fastest swings for PvP, Spiteflayer is the only bird below 2.0 attack speed on Petopia’s list.

How to tame without eating the floor

This part of the WoW Forever taming guide is the same misery it always was. Tame Beast comes from the two-part level 10 hunter quest, and only the second half teaches feeding. Hunters who skip it watch their first pet walk away.

1. Check the target level first, because a bird above your level cannot be tamed.
2. Drop a Freezing Trap before the pull so the bird spends the cast frozen.
3. Start the cast and expect your armor to drop by 100% for the 20 second channel.
4. Pop Aspect of the Monkey and pray Swoop does not knock you out of the channel.
5. Feed the new pet at once, since a fresh tame starts unhappy and disloyal.
6. Keep fighting with the donor until the learned-skill message appears, and only then abandon it.

Raid or PvP: what this family is actually for

For raids, the best hunter pet in WoW Forever will be decided by damage modifiers, and Carrion Birds have none. A General pet with 1.00 damage is a comfortable leveling pet that loses the DPS meter to cats and raptors. The armor bonus does nothing when the boss ignores the pet.

The Forever talent changes make the choice sharper. A WoW Forever Beast Mastery pet feeds Focused Fire and Bestial Wrath, so any living pet adds personal damage. If an encounter kills pets on sight, Marksmanship can shelve the bird and take Lone Wolf instead.

In PvP the family has two real tools. Dive 3 gives 80% speed for 15 seconds to catch kiting targets, and a 1.2 speed Spiteflayer lands frequent hits that pressure casters. Screech also lowers melee attack power on a rogue or warrior standing next to the pet.

For leveling and solo farming, the bird is excellent. Screech threat on several mobs, plus Growl and the new health and armor from Endurance Training, lets it hold packs that would flatten a cat.

Feeding, happiness and loyalty

WoW Forever pet happiness still decides damage under the Classic rules, and that is not a small number. A happy pet deals 125% damage, a content one deals 100%, and an unhappy one limps along at 75% while losing loyalty.

Vendor meat	Required level	Price
Tough Jerky	1	25 copper
Haunch of Meat	5	1 silver 25 copper
Mutton Chop	15	5 silver
Wild Hog Shank	25	10 silver
Cured Ham Steak	35	20 silver
Roasted Quail	45	40 silver

• Carrion Birds eat meat and fish, so butcher food and your fishing catch both work.
• Food far below the pet level gives little happiness, so move up one meat tier as the pet climbs.
• Mounting hides the pet without costing happiness.
• Frequent pet deaths and constant dismissals drain happiness fast.
• Loyalty climbs through Rebellious, Unruly, Submissive, Dependable, Faithful and Best Friend.
• Each loyalty level adds training points, so a neglected pet is also a weaker pet.
• A pet left unhappy for too long at low loyalty simply leaves you.

Lore

Carrion birds cover buzzards, rocs, condors, vultures and swoops. They share featherless heads, broad slow wings and a habit of circling bones and badly kept graveyards. Most of them carry Swoop, a knockdown that interrupts anyone foolish enough to channel under them.

In the Forever timeline, set in the first year of World of Warcraft before Molten Core, they still own the dry places: Mulgore, Westfall, Tanaris, Arathi, Badlands, Blasted Lands, Thousand Needles, Desolace, Deadwind Pass and Redridge. Desert vultures are known to shadow harpies, and the Carrion Vultures of the Plaguelands feed on exactly what the name promises.