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The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts in Cataclysm

Allison Robert
Updated ·7 min read

Every Thursday (except this week, you know, Friday), The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the content is outpacing us somewhat.

The problem with doing extended series like our Mountain O' Mounts overview is that Blizzard's pretty good at rendering them obsolete before long. In that vein, there are a few mounts on today's list that weren't in the game back when we started. Unless I pick up the pace, there might wind up being another slew of them. With 200+ mounts already in the game, the possibility of that genuinely frightens me.

Warning: There are spoilers past the cut concerning some mounts that will become available in patch 4.2 and how you get them.

As always, this is the full series if you're just catching up with us:



Zul'Gurub

Zul'Gurub used to be the old raid you did every few days in order to not get a raptor or tiger drop. Now it's a heroic 5-man you can do every day in order to not get a raptor or panther drop. The more things change ...

  • Armored Razzashi Raptor Like its predecessor, the Swift Razzashi Raptor, you'll find this as a random drop off Bloodlord Mandokir -- or, if you're playing one of the specs being sought by the Call to Arms system through the dungeon finder, it has a random chance of appearing in your goody bag.

  • Swift Zulian Panther The original Zul'Gurub cat mount, the Swift Zulian Tiger, dropped off a boss that no longer exists, so High Priestess Kilnara is the boss you're looking for nowadays. Of interest is that this is pretty close to the cat model being ridden by the Darnassian sentinels, rather than the armored version offered by the night elves through the Argent Tournament. The sentinels' mount is also one of the night elves' original epic mounts, the Nightsaber, so this is as close as you're going to get to a mount that has long since vanished from the game. I guess the sentinels eschew armor in favor of speed.

Zul'Aman

The revamped Zul'Aman is generally considered the more difficult of the two re-introduced "Zuls," and in some ways that's true of the new mount drop there as well. While the raptor and the panther from ZG are simply random drops, you have to land a group with a bit of skill -- or, failing that, a group with a bit of gear -- in order to have a crack at the revamped version of the Amani War Bear.

  • Amani Battle Bear This is a slightly more subdued version, color wise, of the War Bear. Getting both is/was a matter of beating the clock once you've started the dungeon. However, as gear improves over the expansion, I'd expect this to become the latter-day equivalent of the Bronze Drake in that landing a group that doesn't make the mount timer is more notable than landing one that does.

Vashj'ir

I think Vashj'ir represents the first time in the game where you'll get a permanent mount simply as a matter of normal questing.

  • Abyssal Seahorse There are technically two versions of this mount, but only one is permanent and counts toward the Mountain O' Mounts achievement. The Subdued Abyssal Seahorse is the "quest mount" you'll get fairly early in Vashj'ir, and it turns into the perma-mount as soon as you finish the quest series. It's pretty cool to be able to rocket around Vashj'ir as quickly as this thing goes, and hey! It's pretty!

Deepholm

For everyone who loved spending weeks to months trying to get the Time-Lost Proto-Drake in Wrath of the Lich King, congratulations! You have another open-world mount to drive yourself nuts chasing! I'll grant that this one is a little less frustrating than the Time-Lost, as Aeonaxx doesn't appear to share a spawn with other rares. Then again, there are some phases in Deepholm questing where apparently you can't see him at all. The gin's over there on the sideboard. Why do you ask?

  • Phosphorescent Stone Drake While running around Deepholm you may be lucky enough to happen across Aeonaxx, a very large, blue-hued stone dragon with turquoise-ish crystals. Most people find him pathing somewhere around the Temple of the Earth; he doesn't seem to spend much time around the edges of the zone. That's both good news and bad news for you, because you're likely to see him while going about your regular business in Deepholm, but then again, so is everyone else. He's a vehicle and starts off friendly, so you'll be given an option to mount him, at which point he becomes not so friendly. Aeonaxx has 774,900 health and will summon a number of Young Stone Drakes to attack you with fireballs (they don't hit for much; about 2-3K each), so he's not appreciably tougher to get down than the Time-Lost was, unless you're a hunter who is now trapped on top of a giant, pissed-off dragon with no access to your primary weapon due to minimum range. Have fun with that!

Uldum

I'm not sure which is worse: Spending weeks flying around Deepholm without ever once seeing the Phosphorescent Drake, or spending weeks flying around Uldum without once seeing the specific tiny camel figurine you need.

The Molten Front (Mount Hyjal)

This and the Firelands raid drops below aren't actually in the game yet; we'll see them in patch 4.2, which is likely to hit next week.

  • Flameward Hippogryph Words fail me: This thing looks absolutely amazing. As you complete quests for the Regrowth and Molten Front in Mount Hyjal, you'll get access to vendors selling some cool gear and -- we thought -- this mount. However, on the PTR players started getting this in the mail from Malfurion Stormrage as a means of thanking them for finishing the full quest series rescuing Mount Hyjal from Ragnaros' flunkies. For the moment, I'm going to assume it's a gift rather than a purchase, which kind of makes it sweeter.

Firelands

If you don't want one of the following, you probably have no soul.

Right. Now that I've sat here reading through approximately 5,000 comments online concerning these damn birds, I'm reasonably certain that the Beryl Fire Hawk (the raid meta) = green, the Pureblood (Ragnaros drop) = Crimson, and the purple fire hawk = who the hell knows. The fire hawks share a skeleton and animations with proto drakes, so if you loved the proto drakes (and I sure did), then these are even cooler.

Working on achievements? The Overachiever is here to help! Count on us for advice on Azeroth's holidays and special events, including new achievements, how to get 310% flight speed with achievement mounts, and Cataclysm reputation factions and achievements.