My First Mount (or, why you should never challenge siblings)

Like many others who are new to the game one of the first things I was looking forward to was getting my first mount. This was dampened slightly when I started Dali and saw that the Draenei mount was the Elekk. I was rather... unimpressed. As I got closer to level 40, I set about researching my alternatives, luckily I discovered that I could get mounts from other factions if I was Exalted with them. My favourite faction mounts were the Saber Cats, so I decided that I was going to get myself exalted with Darnassus, before even reaching level 40, so that I could start my hunter on a Saber cat from the very start. 

When I informed my older brother of my great plan - to hit exalted with Darnassus by the time I reached level 40 so I would never have to ride an Elekk, he laughed and informed me that if I managed to hit exalted with a faction by the time I hit 40, he would pay for both my mount AND my riding training.(being still new to the game, I was hopeless at making money, I don't think I went anywhere near the auction house until AFTER I hit level 70).

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Thus I set about on my first reputation grind. Slowly but surely I made my way through each and every night elf area that I knew of, when I ran out of areas I knew, I took to the internet. Thotbott was a big help to me at the time, being able to sort quests by the reputation gains you got from completing them helped me immensely. I was just over level 30 so when I ran out of Night Elf areas I could access, I resumed levelling for a short while, so I could access even more NE quest givers. During my research for grinding rep I learnt about roll-over rep, where rep gains for one faction rolled over into "linked" factions. In this case, all the Alliance areas were linked, so when I ran out of Darnassus quests to do, I started on Stormwind quests beginning the whole process again - clearing out human area after human area) I started also farming cloth for the repeatable reputation hand-ins that were available for each faction.

It took a lot of work, but in the end I hit level 40, and exalted with Darnassus in the same day. My brother (who I like to think was somewhat impressed with my determination) handed over the gold and watched me proudly buy my new Saber cat. It wasn't long after that when I hit exalted with Stormwind and managed to scrape together the gold to buy a horse as well (even if Draenei did look a little silly on horses - better a silly horse then an elekk any day)

I have to say of all the achievements I have managed in Warcraft, this one - getting exalted with a different faction well before the "normal" time (and proving my brother wrong) was one of my greatest. Getting that first mount was amazing, and what made it even better to me was how hard I worked to get it. It was a great feeling, summoning my Saber for the first time and riding around knowing how much time and effort and research I poured into making it happen.

Now my main has over a hundred mounts, and with the introduction of the latest patch, majority of my alts have over a hundred mounts too.

It makes me a little sad that now getting your first mount on other toons is an expectation. It's not something that as a seasoned player you consider important or special - not having one is a hindrance, and then when you do get one, you spend most of your time complaining about how slow 60% speed is, and later, how not being able to fly is a pain in the rear.

It's not too often anymore where I go through what I would consider undertaking an "epic" grind like this one (though farming for my talbuks comes in a close second.) It's thinking about this feeling of losing that epic-ness that usually triggers me going on and on about how my perception of the game has changed since I started playing, however I think I might leave that for another post.

Your first big in-game achievement is always special. I know I will remember this one for a long time to come, and there are few other things I've done in-game which will come even close to what this one meant to me.

Also, my brother has never again bet money on me being able to do or not do something again, so it's lucky I eventually learnt how to make my own gold XD (though I have had to get him to throw me a loan on more then one occasion).

(This picture is not directly releveant to this story... but I also have matching dragonhawks!)

Happy Hunting!