Mountain of Mounts

With a new set of content coming up soon with Cataclysm, there are a lot of people who are seeking a route to knock out the achievements they have not yet had a chance to complete. This includes the likes of Leading the Cavarly and Mountain o’ Mounts. For those interested in getting their achievements knocked out before they reach the end of the content in 3.3, here are a couple of short guides.

Leading the Cavalry

This first achievement requires you to obtain 50 mounts, for which you will receive an Albino Drake as a reward. There are many ways to go about getting 50 mounts, but the easiest route is to get the 32 standard Horde and Alliance mounts – which you should be able to easily obtain if you have high enough reputation with all of the capital cities. Other mounts to snag include:

• 7 Standard Flying Mounts purchasable in Shadowmoon Valley
• 5 Cheap Mounts from Argent Tournament
• 6 PvP Mounts Available with the Marks of Honor

Of course there are plenty of other ways to go about mapping out this list of mounts. You could always go with daily quest and get the Netherwing or Sha’tari Skyguard mounts instead of the PvP options. Another option is farming on Kurenai/Mag’har reputation instead because of how easy it is (though it is a grind).

Mountain O’Mounts
While Leading the Cavalry is an easy enough achievement to snag, the next one up is a chore – with 100 mounts required to get there. That means you’ll need to snag 49 more mounts than what you just got (you’ll get the Albino Drake for free). For those that manage to get all 100 mounts, you’ll receive a Red or Blue Dragonhawk depending on your faction. Here are some tips to help you get those mounts in a relatively decent amount of time.

If your class has its own mounts, you already have an added advantage because you can just land those early and have more than other people.

To start with, you need to go out and start bolstering your reputation with a few select factions. Here is a list of those that you should work on for mount rewards:

Kirin Tor – The Kirin Tor faction can be built up by equipping a
Tabard of Kirin Tor and running the instances in WotLK on heroic that reward reputation for that tabard. You will gain between 1000 and 3000 reputation per run through while wearing your tabard.

Cenarion Expedition – The Cenarion Expedition faction is located mostly in Outland, but also a bit in Borean Tundra. To get what you need, you will need to complete all of the quests provided by these factions in Blade’s Edge, Zangarmarsh, Hellfire Peninsula, and Borean Tundra. Even then, you’ll still need some more reputation, so run the Coilfang Reservoir a few times – you can do this solo in about 20 minutes for 2000 reputation when you turn in the armaments you can loot here.

Sons of Hodir – It takes 27 days to reach Exalted while doing all of
the Dailies provided in Storm Peaks every day. Make sure you keep close track and get all of your dailies done each day or this could take even longer.

Netherwing – The Netherwing Reputation requires that you complete daily quests in Shadowmoon Valley. The full grind is about a month long if you do all the quests every day until you reach Exalted. You should be able to get your Eggs very quickly here as well for a faster boost in speed.

Sha’tari Skyguard – For this faction, you’ll need to complete
daily quests in Terokkar Forest and Blade’s Edge mountains for about 5 weeks. You can also gain some extra reputation if you summon Terokk and the minibosses – which rewards a total of 2500 reputation for a half hour of work.

Mag’har, Kurenai – For these two factions, you’ll need to farm on
Obsidian Warbeads in Nagrand. The best places to do this are in the Ruins and Warmaul Hill. It can be done in a solid day if you put your mind to it.

Wyrmrest Accord – Make sure to equip the Wyrmrest Accord tabard and then run 5 man dungeons for 1000 to 3000 Reputation per run through.

City Factions and Main Faction – Make sure that all of the Horde
or Alliance factions are at exalted. To do this, you’ll need to complete all of the quests in the starting zones as well as Argent Tournament dailies to get them all up there. You should already have at least two of the five up to Exalted – make sure to get the other three there as well.

The Oracles – You only need to get to revered with this faction so
that you can get the Mysterious Egg which will allow you to possible get a mount after 7 days. It takes no extra work and just a few gold to buy, though the chances of getting the mount are relatively random.

Once you’ve gotten all of your reputation up to par, it’s time to spend a few minutes getting the currency in line. It’s going to cost quite a bit to snag all of those mounts as well. Here’s a complete list of cash, tokens, and everything else you’re going to need to pick up your mounts.

• Cash – You’re going to need at least 50,000 Gold to get everything you need. Start saving.


• Champion’s Seals – You’ll need around 525 of these puppies. You’re going to get about 5 of these a day (6 after you reach Exalted with all of the Horde/Alliance factions), so this should take 105 days or 3 months if you do it every day.


• Stone Keeper’s Shards – You need approximately 300 of these to knock this off your list. The max is 40 a week with weekly Wintergrasp quests. Keep in mind that you can get a few extra shards as well if your faction controls Wintergrasp when you run heroics.


• Emblems of Heroism – You’ll need 200 of these. You can get 2 of these from every daily heroic you run, plus a whole lot of them when you run raids. You can also exchange your Valor and Conquest Emblems for 1 Heroism Emblem each.


• Marks of Honor – You’ll need a number of Marks of Honor from different battlegrounds. Get 200 for Alterac Valley, 150 for Warsong Gulch, and 150 for Arathi Basin.


• Halaa Battle and Research Tokens ‐ These tokens can be gotten in Nagrand for a number of different things. You’ll need 170 Battle tokens and 35 research tokens. To get the battle tokens, you can either grind for days in Nagrand or you can get your Warlock friend to kill and resurrect themselves over and over again. For research tokens, you’re going to need to farm a LOT because the drop rate is only 8%. However, you can get a good amount of Oshu’gun Crystal Powder while doing your Kurenai farming for the Warbeads. Make sure to keep it all for this purpose.

Buying the Mounts
Once you’ve gathered all of the tokens, cash, marks, and emblems you need, you should be able to turn them in for 86 mounts. Toss in the free Albino Drake you get for Leading the Cavalry and you will have 87 total. You can also buy a Chopper or Hog from the Auction House for 20,000 gold, getting you to 88. Additionally, if you are a Warlock, Paladin or Tailor, don’t forget to include your special mounts that other classes and professions do not have available to them.

Getting to 100

Once you’ve bought, traded, acquired or looked up all of the mounts you can get, you will still need to get another 5‐12. That means some grinding and achievement completions to get knock out a few random/rare options.

To start with, there are achievements that can reward you with mounts for your efforts. These achievements include:

The Culling of Time – Finish off the Caverns of Time: Stratholme
in 20 minutes and defeat the Infinite Corruptor to get your special mount – a Bronze Drake.

Glory of the Ulduar Raider – Complete all of the rare achievements in Ulduar including the following:

• Orbit‐uary
• Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare
• I Choose You, Steelbreaker
• Crazy Cat Lady
• Lose Your Illusion
• Firefigther
• One Light in the Darkness
• Stokin’ the Furnace
• Heartbreaker
• Disarmed
• I Could Say That this Cache Was Rare
• Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood
• I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning

For the Horde/Alliance – You need to complete all four achievements that involve killing the leaders of the Alliance or Horde. This involves going into
the four opposing faction capital cities and killing their main lore characters. You will usually need a group for this.

The Twilight Zone – Kill Sartharion with 3 Drakes still alive
in 10 man mode. You can get the drake in 25 man mode too, but it’s a bit harder, so there’s no reason for it.

In addition to achievements, you can gain quite a few mounts by looking for random drops in the world. They are random so they can take quite a bit of time to gather, but they are usually relatively easy to snag. Some of the places to look include:

Temple of Ahn’Qiraj Mounts – There are 4 Mounts available in this 40man raid back in the old world. The drop rates are rare, so you are going to want to use a trick to keep them from despawning. Enter the Temple and fight the first four bosses there, but only kill 3 of them. Then, leave the temple and come back in again to kill them again for a chance to get the mounts from them. If you keep doing this, you will eventually get at least some of these mounts.

White Chicken – You can loot the white chicken from Kael’thas in
Magister’s Terrace at a 2% drop rate. It can be soloed by most characters who are geared for end‐game content, but if you cannot solo it, you can still get through with just one other person in tow.

Zul’Gurub Mounts – There are two mounts in Zul’Gurub – the Swift Razzashi Raptor and the Swift Zulian Tiger. You can get the raptor off of Bloodlord Mandokir and the tiger off of High Priest Thekal. You can only try this every 3 days, but if only takes a few minutes and you can continuously try every 3 days until they drop. Most classes can solo these bosses at this point (if you can’t, bring a friend).

Grand Black War Mammoth – You can get this mount off of any of the Vault of Archavon bosses. Go into these fights with as few players as you can get away with and make sure to do all three on both 10 and 25 man each week to get 6 chances to get the drop. It might take two or three weeks to get it, but it’s an easy one to snag.



White Polar Bear – In Storm Peaks, there is a daily quest chain with Brunnhildar that will reward you with a White Polar Bear. There are four daily quests from this NPC that will reward you with Hyldnir Spoils, which may contain the reins for this mount. The four dailies include:

• Back to the Pit
• Defending Your Title
• Maintaining Discipline
• The Aberrations Must Die

This list is by no means complete. There are still quite a few rare mobs that you can snag throughout the game if you don’t yet have your 100 mounts. Here is a less detailed list of additional mounts that you can hunt for if you’re close but not quite there:

• Deathcharger’s Reins – 1% Droprate in Stratholme from Baron Rivendare
• Fiery Warhorse – 0.7% Droprate in Karazhan from Attunmen the Huntsman
• Raven Lord – 1% Drop Rate in Sethekk Halls (Heroic)
• Swift White Hawkstrider – 2% Drop Rate from Magister’s Terrace (Heroic)
• Ashes of Al’ar – 1.7% Drop Rate from Tempest Keep
• Blue Proto Drake – 1 % Drop Rate from Utgarde Pinnacle (Heroic)
• Time Lost Proto Drake – 100% Drop Rate from Rare Mob in Storm Peaks (12 Hour Respawn)
• Mimiron’s Head – 100% Drop Rate from Yogg Saron on 25 man mode with 0 Watchers
• Brewfest Mounts – Swift Brewfest Ram and the Great Brewfest Kodo drop in blackrock Depths
• Headless Horseman’s Mount – 0.3% Drop Rate from Scarlet Monastery during Hallow’s End

Good luck getting those mounts and make sure to keep your eyes out. There are always new mounts being added to the game that can help you load up on the necessary number to get this achievement. You never know when you’ll stumble across a rare one to help
push you over the top.