Does This Thing Make My Butt Look Big?

Hey. How's it going? Good? Good. Me? Fine. Yeah, so, um ... listen. I'm not sure how to tell you this, but I thought someone should. There's been a lot of snickering directed your way. Not your fault, though. Not at all! It's just ... that mount of yours makes your butt look huge.

Other classes have at least a couple of options on race, so having a ridiculous looking mount can usually be prevented. However,if you're playing a Horde druid or Alliance shaman, you have no choice at all. So how can you get yourself another race's mount? Well, there are three ways to do it: battlegrounds, cloth turnins and quests.

If you already plan on doing battlegrounds and can wait until level 60, purchasing a mount this way may be your best option. With the removal of battground marks for purchase of end-game items, players can find themselves with plenty on hand. These items are the currency used to buy the racial mounts as battleground rewards. Each of your faction's epic racial mount styles is available for purchase in any colour you like, as long as it's black. These mounts cost 30 marks of Arathi Basin, Warsong Gulch and Alterac Valley (yes, that's 90 marks in total), and are available at the Hall of Legends for the Horde, or Hall of Champions if you're Alliance. If black isn't your thing, you can get a (white) Frostwolf Howler if you're Horde, or Stormpike Battle Charger (Alliance), for the cost of 50 Alterac Valley marks. The vendor for these mounts is in Alterac Valley itself.

What to do if you're level 50 or higher and have tons of gold or runecloth? Well, since you can only buy another race's mount if you're exalted with their faction, you can do the repeatable cloth turnin quest for whomever you prefer. My favourite mounts are the sabers sold in Darnassus. Other popular choices are the mechanostriders sold by the Gnomeregan Exiles, the Darkspear Trolls raptors, and Orgrimmar's wolves. Make sure that you know which NPC you should be turning cloth in to; mistakes can be very expensive. Even if you get it right, it's still going to be expensive. Each stack of runecloth is worth 75 reputation, so if you've just hit revered it will take around 280 cloth turnins. If you can get all your runecloth for 5 gold a stack, that's 1400 gold for the privilege of buying a mount. On the other hand, if you can get the cloth, it can be the fastest way to get yourself a nicer ride.

In part 2, I'll talk about the questing option, with some specific tips and examples involving getting a saber mount from Darnassus.