Monday, August 11, 2014

Rounding out the Dragonflights

Wrath of the Lich King introduced a whole bunch of drake mounts. In fact, it might be surprising to those who haven't been playing as long as I have that the number of flying mounts (and to an extent, all mounts) used to be far, far more limited.

Part of the issue was that mounts used to exist as an item within your inventory. One of the big advantages to being a Paladin or Warlock, or once BC came out, a Druid, was that your class mount (or flight form) did not take up any inventory space, but was instead a spell that you cast (it would cost mana, but it was a pretty cheap cost.) In vanilla, you basically just had the racial mounts (and the "swift" models for the epic mounts came later) plus a handful of alternate models, like those out of Zul'Gurub or Stratholme, and then the class mounts. In BC, you had the gryphons and wyverns, and then the super-long rep grinds for the Nether Rays and the Nether Dragons, though they started to expand the system, adding rare drops or rewards like the Ashes of Alar and the Amani War Bear (which sadly became unattainable after BC, as there were a lot more "you had to be there" cosmetic rewards back then.)

Anyway, Wrath exploded the number of mounts  you could find, largely thanks to the new interface in which a mount or a companion pet would be "learned." One of the most obvious things to do was to introduce drake mounts. Dragons have always had a pretty big presence in WoW, and so they made it possible for you to get drake mounts from each of the dragon flights. The Blue one dropped off of 10-person Malygos (or, later as a bribe to keep people running Oculus, from the special reward bag at the end of that dungeon,) the Black one was a reward for the 10-person version of Sartharion 3D (with all three of the drake mini-bosses up.) The Bronze drake dropped off of a timed boss in Heroic Culling of Stratholme (that became very easy to get later in the expansion.) The Red drake was simply purchased from the Wyrmrest Accord once you hit exalted.

What was missing? The Green drake, of course. Well, finally, six long years after Wrath of the Lich King launched (jeez...) you'll be able to get your green drake mount. And it's simple as pie! Just get 250 mounts... Yep! 250 mounts! Wow. There are a lot of mounts in the game.

Now, on the other vanity-collection side of things, there's another dragon flight that's long been neglected. There have been a variety of green, blue, red, and black dragon whelp pets, but for some reason, never a bronze one. You can catch Infinite whelps around the caverns of time, which theoretically are (or were... will have been?) bronze dragons, but you can't get any whelps who call Nozdormu, rather than Murozond, their dad (or grandfather... or however it works with dragons.)

How one gets one's bronze whelp is as yet unknown, though it appears you'll be able to find a "time-locked" whelp (Dr. Who reference?) somewhere, somehow, in Draenor.

Anyway, the dragon flights might not be as relevant in the post-Cataclysm world, but it's still pretty exciting to finally be able to complete the set with these guys.

Biggest request after this one: I want an Infinite Drake mount.

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