Introduction
Alright so firstly, let me introduce myself. My main character is Mootykins and Mootykins just happens to have over 100 mounts.
Official stamp of approval: What your soon to be achievement will look like.
Mootykins also has a bunch of other achievements, but we're not going to talk about any of those today. My grind to 100 mounts took a long, long time and certainly wasn't free, as i wanted a few rare mounts that i didn't wanna farm for in my collection, such as Reins of the Raven Lord. This guide however, is going to teach you how to get the Mountain o' Mounts achievement WITHOUT spending any real money what so ever. This works for BOTH Alliance players and Horde players.
Now, before we start i just want to say that this is not the comprehensive guide to getting the coolest most flashiest amazing 310% drake in WOTLK, this is the comprehensive guide to getting 100 mounts with as little effort as possible.
Enjoy.
SPOILER:
There's gonna be alot of effort put in anyways.
Index
1. Essentials
2. A Whole New World (Getting started)
3. Prince Ali/Princess Jasmine (Tailoring)
4. If you could only rub a lamp to get 100 mounts... (Some more easy mounts)
5. As night falls (PvP mounts)
6. One step ahead (Your first raid mounts)
7. I just cant wait to be a king (Bulk reputation mounts)
8. No worries (Rep mounts)
9. Mounting under the sea (Getting your profession mounts)
10. Separate the men from the mice (RNG based mounts)
11. Everyone want's to be like you (Emblem/Shard and AH mounts)
12. From zero to hero, we're wrapping it up (Argent Crusade mounts and a daily mount)
Final words.
Step one: Essentials
Now, before you can even get started with this serious task you are on, you need a few things there Kojak. Mount collecting at this level is not cheap, it's not always easy and it can be VERY RNG based.
Here is a list of more or less exactly what you need (to do it this way, obviously if you just came here for a few pointers and quick mounts, skip this part):
1. Patience:You are going to need alot of this. Getting 50 mounts is quite easy, but getting 100 takes you doing dailys for WEEKS.
2. Capital:You need cash money, dollar dollar bills. The grand total is going to be something like: 183773 gold (according to my calculations), 300k Honor, 300 Stone Keeper Shards and 200 Emblems of Heroism. Do note though, that you can scratch 150k of that gold if you're willing to farm and hope for 2 RNG mounts.
3. Friends, a guild or people who can run you through instances:Now, don't bring just anyone, bring trustworthy people and be HONEST. Nobody likes a ninja, and if that's the way you want to get these mounts you're going to have a hard time. I've bought 2 of my drakes from guildies who rolled over me, being nice goes a long way.
4. A level 80 character:It should go without saying, but alot of these mounts you cannot get unless you are level 80 (If you don't buy them, and we're not doing that today.) Starting your collection early might be a blessing and a curse though, doing the quest as you're levling gives you less to do later but makes you broker than a beggar in Goldshire.
4. Tailoring and Fishing: The reason you need tailoring and fishing specifically is because you can get 4 mounts from that, free mounts are good mounts.
Furthermore: Do take into account that my gold estimate does not factor in buying materials for tailoring, repairs or anything but the actual mounts. Also, keep in mind that my gold estimate is based on you being exalted with these factions.
Step two: A Whole New World
Getting ready to start up are we? Well let me show you the way, sit down right here with me and i'll show you a whole new world.
Starting up, what you want to do is obviously get all of the "easy" to get and cheap mounts first. Raising your reputation with your mainland citys such as Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Thunderbluff or Exodar is very easy and the mounts are cheap. How do you do this as quickly as possible then, Mootykins?
Well, starting with your race's capital, hand in different kinds of cloth to the citys Cloth Quartermaster. This gives you reputation, and you need to be exalted with the city to buy mounts from their respective vendors. Getting the cloth should be very easy, if you're level 80. There is a pretty decent cloth farming guide right here, but if you wanna farm on your own or do it in dungeons (Such as Scarlet Monestary for Silk and Magecloth), by all means go right ahead. This way you can get Wolves, Sabers or any other citymounts your faction has to offer.
After you've done this, you already have 32 mounts! Congratulations, you're going places buddy! Now, don't worry, getting a few more mounts will be easier than making scrambled eggs.
Step three: Prince Ali/Princess Jasmine
Royalty already? Are you sure you're ready for this? Ofcourse you are, Prince/Princess.
Now, it sounds fancy, but it really isn't. You're going to start on your tailoring before we get a few more easy mounts. Go to your nearest tailoring trainer in your favorite capital and start sewing! Want to spend gold buying all the mats? Do so! Want to save up money? Go get the cloth from the farming guide i linked previously! Now remember, this can take TIME and that's totally fine! You're in no rush anyways, but when you're done you'll have 3 flying carpets in varying speeds and if people don't already call you Prince Ali, they will after they see you flying around on that persian rug.
Step four: If you could only rub a lamp to get 100 mounts...
Well unfortunately, you can't and i realize tailoring is taking it's toll. I think it's time for us to get some easy mounts once again my friend.
Time to go to Dalaran guys! Go talk to this random girl in a buckethat. Mei sells a few of the mounts you need, but for starters you wanna buy the Wind Rider's / Gryphons, depending on what faction you are. You do NOT want to buy the armored version, the bear or the mammoths unless you are exalted with the Kirin Tor! The reason for this is that this vendor, like many others, gives you a discount on certain items if you are exalted with their faction.
How do i get exalted you ask? Well, either you quest/do dungeons and spend no currency what so ever, or you simply go Rich Homie Quan mode and spend your dungeon emblems on reputation tokens, purchaseable from Horde Vendor Magistrix or Alliance Vendor Miluria.
That's 7 mounts, not counting the bear, the mammoths or the armored mount! You now have 39 mounts, 3 in the works as a tailorer and 4 more when you're exalted with the Kirin Tor!
Step five: As night falls
From the light of your capitals and the bright shimmer of Dalaran you are now going to go to darker places, but do not worry, they bring great rewards.
It's time for you to venture into the world of PvP! Not only is it incredibly fun to pvp, it's also rewarding in terms of mounts. Your faction capitals, Orgrimmar and Stormwind both have a PvP vendor who sells nothing but mounts. These cost 50k each and there is one for every race, the total price will be 300k. "But Mooty, there are only 5 races per faction? How can the total be 300k?" Because both factions also have an Alterac Valley mount, sold by: Horde Vendor Jorek or Alliance Vendor Gaelden.
300k might sound like alot, but if you play for a few hours and you're winning over and over, you can easily reach honorcap (75k). Not only are the mounts quite easily obtainable, they also look really cool. Thats 6 new mounts, bringing the total up to 45 and with 7 in the making, you could be at 50 right now if you were a workaholic!
Step six: One step ahead
So by now, you either have to start doing dailys, raiding or repfarming seriously, all of which take some time. With some help from your guildies or friends however, you can stay ahead of the curve.
Gather up your friends, bring a tank, a healer and as many DPS as you wish, but make sure they know that you're there for the mounts and that you want all of the colors. Don't worry, loads of them will drop so your friends can get some mounts too. What dungeon am i talking about? Ahn'qiraj 40! A few things to remember about this dungeon and these mounts are these:
1. You cannot 3 man this entire instance and you don't have to. You don't even have to kill the first boss.
2. You can't ride these mounts outside, but they count towards the achievement.
3. There are 2 instances next to eachother, make sure you're in the 40 man, Temple and not the Ruins.
When you get there, go in and kill all the mobs until the first boss, mounts will drop, then go out and reset the instance. This way you can get all the colors at once. There are a total of 4 colors as the legendary one is unobtainable, and they look like this!
The total is now 49 with 7 in the making, good stuff!
Step seven: I just can't wait to be king
You're almost at the 50 mount mark, and that gives you an Albino Drake! You're halfway to becoming a king of mounts.
Now, before you tell me that repfarms take forever, hear me out. There are 3 repfarms in outlands that give you LOADS of mounts, and as a healer, i completed them all in just over 3 hours. Sound interesting? I'll talk about all of these three factions, but you don't have to do them in the order I talk about them in. If you want to, you can look at the mounts and decide which ones you wanna go for first.
So my favorite of these mounts are the Nether Rays. Not only are they cool and unique, but they're real easy to get. In Terokkar forest there is a place called Blackwind landing. You're going to want to do most of the quests there, but skip the ones that involve bosses or anything related do the shadowworld (as those take time and don't grant too much more rep). The quests you wanna focus on doing are given to you by this guy. All you have to do is kill a bunch of 65 mobs, take dust from their corpses and hand it in to the guy who for some reason treats you as a celebrity if you give him dust. After about an hour of questing, you'll be able to buy Nether Rays.
Since your character is lacking flying mounts at the moment, i think we'll get some more of those. This time, you wanna go to Shadowmoon Valley and talk to this lad. He's going to give you a questchain that basically makes Game of Thrones look like a joke. It involves feeding dragons, talking to dragons, killing dragons and eventually, flying on dragons. You'll know that this questchain is complete when you get to a part that says your mission is to infiltrate the red orcs fortress. Fly over to it, then purchase the mounts from the Drake Dealer. Note that it will say, on your reputations tab, that you are at war with them. This however is not a problem when you get to the infiltration part of the quest, as you will look like them.
Now lastly in this step, we'll get you some goats... Or are they deer? I have no clue what they are, you figure it out. These mounts are just like the Nether Rays, you kill mobs, get an item and return them when you have enough of them. The obsidian warbeads and the quests to hand them in are both found in Nagrand together with the Talbuk vendor. To get these beads, you wanna kill ogres and these reside all around the edge of Nagrand such as in Laughing Skull Ruins. Once you've gotten exalted, we're finished with the Outlands repfarm (for now).
Thats 20 new mounts right there, including the Albino Drake you should have gotten in the mail for collecting 50 mounts! Your total is now 69 and you still have 7 in the making.
Step eight: No worries
Now the really hard part begins, at this point, you're repfarming/emblemfarming for 1 - 2 mounts, no more. But we'll get through this, no worries.
Dungeons, you wanna do loads of them for emblems while you're questing/repping up with the Kirin Tor and at this point you wanna start doing a few other quests and reputationfarms aswell. You want to become exalted with Sons of Hodir and The Wyrmrest Accord. Now remember, Sons of Hodir has a mandatory questline even if you buy their reputation for emblems. When you're done with their questline, you'll be able to buy 2 mammoths. When you're done repping for the Wyrmrest Accord, which can be bought for emblems, you'll be able to buy this drake. Now if you're really putting your back into this, you should be done with the Kirin Tor reputation we talked about aswell, so go back to the random girl in a buckethat and buy the bear, the big expensive mammoth and the armored gryphon/wind rider.
Now let's go back to Outland for the last time and do quests in the Cenation Refuge. The reason we didn't do this when we were here the last time is because this repfarm only grants you one mount and takes just as long, if not longer than the Nether Ray quests. Do as many quests as you have to, until you get exalted and then buy your Hippogryph.
If you get all of these mounts, your total should now be 76 with 3 in the making, only a fourth left!
Step nine: Mounting under the sea
Riding mounts and flying mounts are cool. But what about water mounts? I wanna be able to mount under the sea.
You should be done with your tailoring now, and so, it's time for you to make the three flying carpets we talked about earlier. But Mooty... I only have 2 carpet recipes avaliable to me... Thats because you haven't bought the recipe for the Frosty Flying Carpet from Frozo The Renowned.
Time to farm dungeons for emblems and Stone Keeper Shards, and while you're waiting for que pops, get to fishing. Fishing might sound like a huge chore that takes forever, but it isn't too bad. Fish in Orgrimmar or Stormwind until you reach max level and que while you fish. When you're at max level, you have a chance to fish up this turtle from schools of fish. It might have a low droprate, but seeing as fishing only takes a few seconds, you can get hundreds of throws in an hour.
That's 4 more mounts, 80 mounts and counting.
Step ten: Separate the men from the mice
This part separates the men from the mice, but stay with me, because I belive in you.
Time to get the last emblems, shards and get a few mounts while we're doing it. The first mount you want to go for is the Bronze Drake, it drops in The Culling of Stratholme on HC mode from the Infinite Corruptor. Just before you face the last boss, take a left instead of a right and kill the corruptor. Wowhead says it has a 90% dropchance, but i've never had it not drop and i've done this dungeon more times than i can count, so don't worry about it.
Let's talk about the OS mounts. These can both be quite a hassle and pretty easy to get. You can 6 man this dungeon on 10 man mode if you have a geared party of people who know what they're doing, and this obviously increases your chances to get the mount. On 25 man you could probably run it 19 or 20 man without an issue. A good way to get this mount is to get the same group to do it every week and split up who gets the mount each week, another good way is to have the weekly quest to make geared players interested in joining. To get this mount, all you have to do is kill all the trash on the side but leave the drakes, then fight and kill the boss. Then you obviously have to roll like a god, but that can be quite easy too if RNGsus is with you.
After this, what you want to do is set up a group for For The Horde! or For The Alliance! based on which faction you're on. There is no definitive way of doing this. Some people prefer to do small groups and stay incognito and some people prefer 40 man groups. The great thing about this achievement and mount however is that it is a guaranteed chance of getting one, so doing it with a group of pugs isn't a big deal (if they're geared/know what they're doing).
Thats 4 RNG mounts for you, bringing us to a total of 84 mounts.
Step eleven: Everyone wants to be like you
Let's take those hard earned emblems and turn them into the right currency and bring the Stone Keeper Shards down to Wintergrasp, cause when you get these mounts everyone is going to want to be like you.
Ok, so, getting one of the mammoths shouldn't be hard for you to do. You've all met her, you all love her, the random girl in a buckethat wants to take your emblems and turn them into a mammoth.
After that, what you want to do is wait for your team to win Wintergrasp (or actually help out because you know, you're the one who wants a mount). After that happens, you want to go the stairs just outside of VOA, on the right side there is a vendor. That vendor will sell you another mammoth for Stone Keeper shards.
Here's where you hit a crossroad. If you have a low / average goldstack, SKIP THIS PART. At this point, it would be wise of you to invest in a Crimson Deathcharger and the Mekgineer's Chopper / Mechano-Hog. Why is this, you ask? Well because if you don't, you are going to have to farm one mount, a mount that takes alot of time and alot of dailys. If you buy one of these mounts, you don't have to do any extra farm for your 100'th either, it'll just require some more work. However, if you don't wanna spend the money, just read the next chapter. (You're going to have to anyways, because it will sum up the mounts you need to reach 100.)
You're now at 86 or 88.
Step twelve: From zero to hero, we're wrapping it up
You're at the last part of your quest for 100 mounts, you went from zero to hero.
Ok, so before we wrap this up, I just want to say that this part was alot better before this was posted. The autosave mechanic on the forum failed on me, and basically i stacked in defile guys. An hours work was lost, and so if this part lets you down and looks a bit empty, blame Warmane!
So at this point, the really teadious work begins. You're going to have to do dailys, and lots of them. This guide used to be very accurate, but as of now, it's more or less as it was in retail. The guide does however show you how to start your final journey.
Keep in mind that if you did NOT buy either or just one of the mounts mentioned in the last chapter from the auction house, you are going to need ALL of these mounts.
If you bought both or just one of the mounts mentioned in the last chapter from the AH, CONGRATS you now have 100 mounts! Did it feel rewarding? It sure did for me!
If you didn't buy any of the mounts mentioned in the last chapter from the AH, here's a great guide that helped one of my friends out alot, this will get you the last mount without having to rely on too much RNG!
Final words
I just want to thank the people who've been helping me out with this achievement when I was working on it. Old guildies who aren't playing anymore and IRL friends, there are too many to mention but i'll try to name a few. Also, there is a possibility that i've missed something that could save you money, and if so, sorry.
Special thanks to:
Snoppstuga
All of Fake Taxi/Knaspatrullen, especially Milko.
And last but not least, Drued for carrying me in arenas.
Member
Quote