WoW Rookie: How to start collecting mounts

When you hit the end of your leveling process, there are a few obvious things to do. You can gather additional gear by doing heroics, and you can start exploring the wide world of raiding. You can start cruising the world of PvP, especially if you already did some battlegrounds while leveling.
Another way to spend your time is collecting mounts. You can cruise Stormwind and show off your collection, or just enjoy the roleplaying value of having 100 cool rides. The game even has a series of achievements to show off your accomplishment. You get Filling Up The Barn for 25 mounts, Leading The Cavalry for 50 mounts, and Mountain o' Mounts for 100. As you'd expect, you get a new mount for achieving Mountain o' Mounts.
Let's talk about a game plan for getting to 100 mounts.
Know where to look
The most important thing you'll need in order to collect 100 mounts is a list of all the mounts that are available to you. There are many online and in-game addons and such that will help you keep track of your mounts. But I like a good, old-fashioned checklist.
To create that checklist, I go to Wowhead. If you just do a raw list of all the available mounts, you'll get over 290 available mounts. Now you need to start filtering. There are 201 mounts available to the Alliance and 202 mounts available to the Horde.
These are just raw lists. There are some mounts here that you can't obtain if you're not a particular class and other mounts that aren't available anymore. Others aren't available to players. But still -- the point of this list is to get started so that you know where you are.
Print out (or save to a spreadsheet) all the mounts on your list. Now you can get started.
The broad strokesWhen you're collecting mounts, it helps to get the "broad strokes" out of the way. That means picking up all the racial mounts available to your faction, then getting all the PvP mounts. It helps to make sure you're exalted with all of the races that make up the Horde and Alliance, since that gives you carte blanche to collect everyone's mounts. To make it a little easier, look at the list of Horde-specific mounts and Alliance-specific mounts.
The PvP mounts might be the most painful to you, if you don't enjoy the battlegrounds. However, PvP really is one of the quickest ways to pick up a handful toward your goal. Each mount takes 2,000 honor to get. You get the Alliance mounts from Lieutenant Karter in Stormwind and the Horde ones from Raider Bork in Orgrimmar.
The next obvious place to start looking for mounts is the Argent Tournament. Each race has an additional mount available there, and the tournament itself offers a mount. Picking up these mounts will take a while, since you get the currency to buy them from daily quests. But give it time, and you'll get them all.
The one-offs
There are still a lot of one-off mounts living in instances. Here is going to be where you spend a great deal of time grinding instance after instance. Whether the mounts drop in heroic or normal mode, just chalk yourself up for a lot of time in the dungeons. If it helps soothe your frustration, make sure to sell all the cloth and greens on the auction house; it'll make the time spent feel a little more worthwhile.
There are about 15 mounts that are reward from achievements. However, these require a lot of work outside your ability to solo, so don't put too much effort into them. Reserve these mounts for when you're done everything else.
It takes time
Lastly, remember that the ultimate mount achievement is 100 mounts. That's a lot. It's going to take a lot of time. It's meant to; this is supposed to be a big deal. Take your time and work down your printed list one by one. Look at your progress along the way, and remind yourself that you're getting there. Leave us a comment when you're successful; I'd love to hear that people are getting this done.
Filed under: WoW Rookie






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Nipah Feb 24th 2011 8:07PM
Actually, you can get 2 different versions of the racial mounts from the Argent Tournament vendors...
Trolls sell a purple raptor as well as the blue Darkspear raptor
http://www.wowhead.com/item=46743
http://www.wowhead.com/item=45593
Nipah Feb 24th 2011 8:08PM
And rereading what you wrote, you said that. *sighs*
Fundamental, reading is... mmm...
Gindy Feb 24th 2011 8:12PM
To be fair it could have been read as each race has a mount, and then the argent tournie has one of their own, rather than one from the tournie for each faction.
Harvoc Feb 24th 2011 9:07PM
@ Gindy
That's how I read it. I thought that it was each race has their own mount that's sold in the Argent Tournament and then the Argent Tournament has a mount for each side, not each race. Thanks for clarifying.
(cutaia) Feb 24th 2011 8:08PM
"The next obvious place to start looking for mounts is the Argent Tournament. Each race has an additional mount available there, and the tournament itself offers a mount."
The AT has 2 mounts per faction. One for 100 seals and one for 5 seals and some gold. There there are also two mounts offered by the tournament itself: A ground and a flying mount. So, there's about 12 right there.
hicks Feb 24th 2011 9:31PM
I think there are 13 total at the Tournament--for Alliance, the two hippogryphs, the 10 faction mounts, and one additional in the western tent. I think it's the Argent Charger or something.
I've been working on this achievement on and off for nearly two years. I'm still holding off on the PvP mounts until the end (because I can probably farm enough honor in 3-4 days for the 4 I don't already have, and I'd like an easy grind to finish things off, as opposed to the awful Kurenai/Netherwing/Skyguard grinds I've already done) and am grinding for the 100-Champion-Seal Tournament mounts on days when I remember to head out to Icecrown.
100th mount is definitely going to be the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. I love stacking achievements--I did Diplomat, They Love Me in That Tunnel and 25 Exalted at the same time for exactly that reason.
hicks Feb 24th 2011 10:04PM
To add about rare mounts, I've lucked out on TLPD and--well, not lucked, but sort of lucked in that I scored a ticket to Blizzcon that year--into the Big Blizzard Bear, but I'm two-plus years into Mysterious Egg grinding and the only time I've SEEN the Blue Proto drop was when I was running a friend's toon for him. From another server. That was Horde.
Naturally, I won the roll for him. By one. You know the traditional theater masks? Comedy and Tragedy? That was us--he was practically high-fiving himself.
raneydj Feb 24th 2011 11:59PM
Aren't there 14 (Or 15 if you're a pally)? Two for each race, 2 for Sunreavers (or Silver Covenant), and 2 from the Argent Crusade. Plus the charger for pallys.
Noyou Feb 25th 2011 12:36AM
I found it less frustrating if I waited til I was exalted with all my factions main reps first (SW IF EX DARN and Gnomer) for alliance. While working on that you could do Argent tourney and the BC faction of your choice (if you haven't done so). I found the Kurenei rep to be far less grindy as Shataari Skyguard or Netherwing. If you hit all the quests in Zang/Nagrand you should be well into honored if not revered. The Kurenei are vital to 50 or 100 mounts as they sell 7-8. Hope this helps anyone on their quest for more mounts. Enjoy :)
Andrew Feb 24th 2011 8:11PM
I recently hit the big 100 on my Draenei Paladin. Protip: Dragonhawks (or as I prefer to call them, Bragginhawks) are cool, but if you're a Draenei male, picture the following:
A Dragonhawk, with its neck trapped firmly between the legs and tail of a goatman, with the goatman's armored hands hovering about a foot above the Dragonhawk's head, as if compelling its behavior via some bizarre Draenei/Dragonhawk mind meld.
If you're like me, you ride the thing around for vanity's sake for three days then go back to riding a big mount like some sort of drake. It does fly extra pretty, though.
MikeLive Feb 24th 2011 8:12PM
What's the best way to get a Proto Drake? Any colour, I'm not looking for bragging rights here, I just like the design, but wasn't able to get one throughout Wrath.
Cyno01 Feb 24th 2011 8:21PM
Red or Violet are the "easiest" to get, in that theyre guaranteed, but take a lot of work. Time lost you MIGHT have a chance nowadays, but i still doubt it. Blue can MAYBE be farmed depending on class, and green you just have to be a lucky sumbitch. I finally got my Green just this tuesday night after 26+ months of eggs...
Andrew Feb 24th 2011 8:25PM
The droprate of the Green Protodrake from the egg has been increased in Cataclysm. I'd say work toward Glory of the Hero and Long Strange Trip while hatching your eggs weekly.
Ten man Glory of the Ulduar Raider might be the absolute quickest way to do it, though, if you can get a group together of level 85 players who know the fights. It can be done easily in one night.
GeekyGR Feb 24th 2011 8:26PM
Bug your guildies into helping you get Glory of the Hero from Wrath heroics for the Red Proto-Drake. It requires the least amount of work to get and you'll see plenty of them flying around your capital city, but the other protos are from raid metas and lucky drops(or in the case of the Time Lost, spawns).
Raydex Feb 24th 2011 8:33PM
Your best options are probably Blue, Green, and Red, presuming your guild doesn't do mount runs in Ulduar.
Blue: Heroic Skadi solo every day. It drops like 1.5% of the time though so it could take a while.
Green: Oracles egg every three days. Took me forever but I have crappy luck. The droprate got buffed a bit and the time reduced now, so it'll probably take much less long.
Red: Plenty of people are doing H. achivement runs now. Find a group that needs your class.
Your other options are:
The Ulduars (Rusted and Ironbound): Do Ulduar achievs. Like Red, but in a raid no one does anymore.
Purple: What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. If you haven't started this will take you a full year.
Time Lost: Have fun camping!
Cyno01 Feb 24th 2011 8:34PM
@Andrew: I dont think the drop rate has been increased at all, its just since Cata they lowered the cooldown on the eggs from 7 to 3 days.
Still, like i said, the RNG can be a bitch.
I just looked it up and did the math, i got the achievement for the oracles on 12/28/08, so i probably started getting eggs maybe 2 weeks before that... with the lowered CD since cata.... ive hatched maybe 125 eggs to get mine. Probably a few less than that because i havent noticed my egg hatching for a day or two sometimes (altoholic stopped telling me about it).
Nathan Cator Feb 25th 2011 6:58AM
@Cyno01
I'm pretty sure they did up the drop rate; it was even in patch notes if I remember correctly.
quickshiv Feb 25th 2011 10:56AM
It is now 5% instead of 2%.
Cyno01 Feb 24th 2011 8:18PM
The Argent Tournament is by far the best place to start, since its a quick and easy way to grind rep with all your factions cities. Getting the "Crusader" title is worth 50+ mounts.
Also dont forget about the BC factions. Netherwing and Skyguard each have 6, which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and the Kurenai/Maghar offer 8 talbuks. Thats another 20 that are a relatively painless grind nowadays.
Leonardnimoy Feb 24th 2011 11:17PM
Aye, I just recently went on a mount binge - last week I was at about 8 or 9 mounts. Today I'm at 45. The most recent 'grind' I did was the Mag'har grind. I just went to the cave to the West of Garand in Nagrand, grinded for about 45 minutes and went back to vendor, mail and hand in the beads. Each 45 minutes of grinding netted me about 8000 rep, so it went pretty quick. I did it over the course of a few nights while watching movies. It's a very easy grind that anyone can do without paying attention now.
Plus, 8 mounts are available and I personally think they are pretty awesome looking.