Crawling Claw

The Mummified Monkey Paw is one of the rare archaeological finds from Tol’vir. It rewards you will the Crawling Claw pet. Just like The Last Relic of Argus, it requires 450 skill to find and 150 Tol’vir Archaeology Fragments to solve. Up to three Tol’vir Hieroglyphic keystones may be used to complete it.

Unsolved: This appears as nothing more than the paw of a small primate. A closer inspection shows that the hand has been dried by centuries of exposure to the sands of Uldum. Still, you have no doubt that it is far more than meets the eye.

Solved: A legend among the tol’vir tells of a wicked djinn whom the Ramkahen sought to destroy. In an attempt to prevent his own death, the djinn tried to transfer his spirit into the body of a monkey. He was slain right in the middle of the transference, and only a fraction of his essence had moved over – only enough to possess the monkey’s paw.

This has to be one of my favourite pets in-game and hands down one of the best rare items from Archaeology. The sound the Claw makes when clicked reminds me of Alien (the movie). It even plays Rock, Paper, Scissors when in the vicinity of another Crawling Claw. Winning a match will give a Thumbs up. However, losing a match will cause the claw to explode and will need to be re-summoned.

To this day I’ve only seen one other person on the server with this pet out. It was late one night when I was in the old reforging shop when all of a sudden I noticed my claw had disappeared in a puff of smoke. Seconds later I realised that the Alliance Shadow Priest next to me had hers out too. I managed to see both claws duke it out in another match before she ran off. Two matches and it turned out to be a tie.

With Mists of Pandaria coming out and the pet battle system, I see this as being one of my fighting pets. Go Claw!

Things to note:

• Before 4.1 this item used to be BOA, but you could only learn it on one character;
• With the improved number of fragments per dig, this item should be a little easier to get.