Mounts and riding

What a mount is

A mount is a beast you ride, and what it gives you is speed. No armor, no damage, no stats: it carries you over the ground faster, and springs a little higher when you jump, and that is the whole of the bargain. Every mount in the game is a ground mount, so there is no flying, and none of them swim.

Learning to ride

Riding is a skill you buy once, and it opens at level 20. Marla Hitchen, the stablemaster, keeps the Galecrest Stables out on the downs, and she sells Riding Training for 80 gold. That one purchase is what lets you sit a mount at all, and it stays with you for good.

Once you have it, Marla has a quest for you: Riding Lessons. Take it, follow the marker to the glowing square behind the start arch, and press Start Race. She lends you a training Valorsteed for the lesson, so the lesson itself costs you nothing. Ride the course, finish it, and go back to her for your coin and experience. The lent steed goes back in the barn afterward, so the lesson teaches you the seat rather than handing you a horse.

Your first mount

The Valorsteed is the only mount sold anywhere in the world. Once you have learned Riding, Marla will sell you the Reins of the Valorsteed for 10 gold, and those reins are yours to keep. Every other mount is earned out in the world, so the horse is where nearly every rider starts.

Getting on and getting off

There is no mount window and no favorite to set, because the reins are the mount. Use a set of reins from your bags or from an action bar slot and you ride that mount. Summoning takes a moment, a short call rather than an instant one, so it will not save you from a bad pull. Getting off is instant and never blocked.

Use the reins you are already riding and you put that mount away. Use a different set while mounted and you swap straight to it, with nothing to summon in between. The Mount and Dismount key, the backquote key by default, only ever gets you off: it is the way down, not the way up. The one exception is the riding lesson, where that same key calls the steed Marla lends you, since a borrowed horse has no reins to click. On a phone or tablet, the Mount button in the More tray works both ways, though it calls the first set of reins sitting in your bags rather than one you pick, so tap the reins themselves when you want a particular mount.

What puts you back on your feet

Water always wins. Ride into anything deep enough to swim in and you are down at once, because no ground mount swims, and dying drops you where you fall. You cannot call one while you are in combat, while you are dead or making your way back as a spirit, or at any point during a Thornhollow Fields match, which is fought on foot from the form-up to the final hold: if you were riding while you waited, being seated into the match puts you down with it. Walking into combat or into water partway through a summon cancels it as well.

Most of what you do puts you down too. Swinging at something, starting a cast, harvesting a node, fishing, crafting, enchanting, salvaging, and recharging a profession tool all dismount you the moment you start, so expect to hop off at every vein. Calling a mount also drops any shapeshift form you are holding: you are never both shifted and mounted.

Speed and tiers

Speed is the only thing that separates one mount from another. The Valorsteed you buy from Marla sets the base pace, and the mounts you collect out in the world ride above it: the rarer the reins, the quicker the ride, in a few clear steps rather than a smooth slide. There is no second rank of riding to train and no upgrade to buy afterward. You pay for Riding once, and from then on the reins you used decide how fast you travel.

Where the rarer mounts come from

Beyond Marla's counter, reins are found rather than bought. They come off the last bosses of the five-player dungeons and the raid on heroic, and out of rift clears, where the harder the rift you finish the rarer the reins it can leave behind. They are rare finds by design and no run promises one, so the kind way to hunt a mount is to bring the hunt along on the runs you were making anyway. This page will not tell you which mount hangs on which boss: that part is yours to find out.

The stables race

The show-jumping course in Marla's paddock is open to anyone, any time, not only during the lesson. Sit a mount, stand on the glowing square behind the arch, and press Start Race. A countdown holds you still, then the clock runs: clear all seven jumps and ride back out through the arch before it runs down.

A jump only counts if you are genuinely in the air over the bar, so an easy ride-through clears nothing. You may take them in any order and from either side, and a missed one is not the end of the world: circle back and take it again. Dying, getting off, or leaving the paddock ends the attempt, and so does letting the clock run out, which sets you down out of the saddle where you stand; cancelling it yourself just stops the clock. Nothing stops you starting another. There is no fee, no cooldown, and no prize beyond the time itself, and any number of riders can run the course at once without getting in each other's way.

Reins are ordinary goods

A mount is an item, which makes it something the economy can move. You own a mount for as long as its reins sit in your bags or your bank, though banked reins keep the mount yours without letting you ride it: to call the beast you have to be carrying the reins. Player reins carry no soulbind, so they trade, travel by mail, and list on the World Market like any other find, unless the item itself says otherwise. Two things are worth knowing before you part with one: no merchant will ever buy a set of reins back, so a mount is a purchase you keep or pass on rather than cash out, and if the reins leave your bags and your bank both while you are riding, traded away, mailed off, or sold on the market, the mount goes with them and you are set down where you stand.