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This is a very, VERY fast mount

This is a very, VERY fast mount

While exploring The Veiled Stair, I found myself on a mountain cliff overlooking the very northwestern sliver of Jade Forest, on the border of Valley of the Four Winds. Down below me was a river, the green hills of Jade Forest, and ... Ooh a gold elite!

Base jumping off the cliff, I began my merciless attack on the Sungraze Behemoth, a monstrous, sleeping Mushan. For a gold elite it didn't put up much of a fight (though it did have a lot of health) so I was quite surprised when I looted a mount from the Mushan's corpse. Wait -- no, that's not a mount. After reading the tooltip over a couple of times I realized that I had looted a curious sort of mount that could only be used in Valley of the Four Winds, and only had three charges. But it was a very, VERY fast mount, the tooltip told me. What could that mean? And only three charges? Since I hadn't finished leveling yet, I wondered if maybe I should save it for long trips between quest hubs.

Not long after finding the Oddly-Shaped Horn, I was wandering around Kun-Lai Summit, just south of Shado-Pan Monastery when I found another gold elite with a name: the mountain goat Zhing. After killing the goat, I looted Bag of Kafa Beans and at this point I was too curious to care about it being a limited use item. I clicked on the bag and woosh! Off I went! Off a cliff. Yep, that's fall damage. Ow. Ow.



This is a very, VERY fast mount

I retrieved my corpse on the mountainside about five minutes later. Seems you can't stop the mount from moving once you get on, only steering. As a result, I may have poorly gauged the height of that second peak.

Having found two of these mounts now, I wondered if there were others for each zone in Pandaria. After further exploration (now by air at level 90) I came upon Pengsong in Dread Wastes, west of Soggy's Gamble. That's where my heart sank. Pengsong was a yak ... I don't kill yaks. Ever since I rounded up my first yak in Kun-Lai Summit on the beta, I made a vow not to hurt any living yak in the game. (While I was doing the bad yak quest chain in Townlong Steppes, I'd run hundreds of yards away from all the Mean, Smelly, Angry, Stabby, Very Bad Yaks just so I could drop aggro and not have to kill them.) Why would anyone want to kill something so cute and cherished? And seriously, when is Ember Isolte or Sharm going to do a Yak Wash song to Rose Royce's Car Wash?

Err ... Anyway, if you're some sort of yak killer, Wowhead says Pengsong will drop a Tuft of Yak Fur which summons a very, VERY fast mount. (You can purchase cruelty-free yak mounts in Kun-Lai Summit if you really want to ride one.)

So far I haven't found any other very, VERY fast mounts than these three, so please leave a comment if you know of more. For those of you interested in getting these mounts yourself, there are some things you should know. The mounts are have a 100% drop rate from the gold elites, and the elites themselves have a fast respawn timer of just a few minutes. That means it's easy to replace these mounts when you run out of charges. Unfortunately, the mounts have a short duration of seconds, so you can't trek across an entire zone in one charge. Despite this, they're still quite valuable for questing because of how fast they are; the Oddly-Shaped Horn in particular, is ideal for leveling since Sungraze Behemoth is just a short run north of the first quest hub in Valley of the Four Winds.

This is a very, VERY fast mount

Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.