Spending time in Azeroth inevitably leads to one thing -- travelling. Lots and lots of travelling. Whether you're astride an epic mount, clinging on to a gryphon, or using Shanks' Pony, you've got to get from A to B somehow.

I personally find travelling boring, though flying is useful downtime to rearrange bags, check quests and get away from the PC for a bit. Fortunately, there are a couple of things which can save you time and get you to your destination faster:

• Mounts. Getting a mount at level 40 (60% speed increase) and then an epic mount at level 60 (100% speed increase) helps make things a lot faster. While the normal mount is usually affordable, the epic mount requires a little more investment -- a cheap epic mount can be bought after a lot of PvPing, for those who prefer slaughter to farming. Alternatively, some epic mounts drop in instances.
• Skills. Obvious as it sounds, skills like the druid's travel form, hunter's aspect of the cheetah and shaman's ghost wolf are practically free ways to travel faster.
• Teleports. From portals to summons, magic can transport you immediately from one point to another. Sometimes you'll need a friend or two to help. The druid's teleport to Moonglade is nifty, too.
• Gadgets. Goblin and gnome engineers can make trinkets that teleport themselves to Everlook or Gadgetzan respectively. Well worth the investment.
• Hearthstones. Clever positioning of your hearthstone can take advantage of the other tricks up your sleeve (e.g. if you can teleport to Moonglade, hearth to Ironforge). Of course, shamans' Astral Recall is a sneaky shortcut.
• Battlegrounds. Sounds odd, but lucky timing can leave you in a capital city at convenient moments. Why rush back to Orgrimmar when you know you'll end up there eventually? If BGs are few and far between on your server, this may not work.

What other tricks have you found? What's your system? I use all of the above, but there are many devious ways that I'm sure I've missed!

Filed under: Tips, Tricks, Breakfast Topics