How to Catch a Spirit Beast

1) Loque'nahak

-Spawn points:

Wowhead Map

-Rare spawn macro:

/target Loque
/target King Krush
/target Aotona

2) Gondria

-Spawn points:

Map

-Rare spawn macro

/target Gondria
/target Griegen
/target Terror Spinner
/target Zul'Drak Sentinel

To make catching a spirit beast easier, first you need to understand how rare spawns in Northrend work. Each zone only has one rare spawn active at a time. So if you are in Shalozar and see Aotona, Loque is not there. This is what the other names in the above macros are for. They will tell you if your spirit beast OR any of the other rare spawns they share their zone with is close to you. In the example above, you would kill Aotona (or tame her,) and then wait at least half an hour to start looking again, because there is a half hour minimum respawn timer on Northrend rares.

When I was after a Loque'nahak, I tried to minimize the time I spent flying in circles around Shalozar with every other hunter who wanted one by logging in at odd times. I'd get up ten minutes earlier before I got ready for work and take a quick pass of all the spawn points. That way my only competition would be the other early birds. If you're lucky using this method, nobody else will have been looking for the last few hours, and a rare will have spawned and wandered around unharassed until you logged on and found it.

The method for Gondria is a little different. In Shalozar Basin the 3 rare spawns share the 5 spawn points. So your best bet is to cycle between the 5 points when you search. In Zul'Drak (check out the map,) Each of the 4 rare spawns has its own region that it spawns in. This means that if you plan to spend an hour circling looking for Gondria, you should check the spawn points of EVERY rare in Zul'drak, because if any of the other rares have spawned it will be impossible for Gondria to spawn until the current rare is dead. On the other hand, if you plan to do just a circuit of Gondria's spawn points, you may as well ignore the other rare spawns.

I hope this helps anyone who's planning on looking. I invite anyone else who's caught a spirit beast to offer their advice.