Guide to Flying in Draenor: Becoming a Pathfinder

It looks like we will be getting flying in warlords of draenor after an amazingly fast turn around from "we will not be adding fight in this or future expansions" to "here is what you need to do to get flight".

My personal opinion is that earning flight in such a way that you need to do something to get it is better than just paying some gold fee and flying.  While I might think some of the requirements are a little much, at least the option is now there for the people that want it, or soon will be.

Before I get into what you need to do to get flying I will point out that flying will not, repeat, not be coming with the release of 6.2 but in a future, yet unknown, time with 6.2.x.  We also know that when flying is added, if you have the achievement to activate it, it will be account wide.  This means you only need to go through this process on one character which is awesome.

Furthermore, once flying is activated any character on draenor at level 90 or above will be able to fly.  Yes, this even means the alts you plan on leveling later will be able to fly while they are leveling.  Not bad if you ask me and more than I wanted personally.  I would have been happy with flying at 100 only, but enough of that, lets move on to what you need to do to get flying.

[Draenor Pathfinder]:

A new achievement is being added in 6.2 titled Draenor Pathfinder which is a meta achievement.  In 6.2 it will reward, fittingly enough, a flying mount.  At a later date anyone with this achievement will be given the ability to fly on draenor on that and all other characters level 90 and up that are on draenor.

The following achievements are what will be needed to get the meta achievement to unlock flight.

Loremaster of Draenor (A) / Loremaster of Draenor (H):

While it would be a space, and time, prohibitive thing to post all of which you need to do to get the loremaster achievements I will try to give some helpful advice to those that never finished the zones while questing and now wish to go back and do so.

If you open your map (M by default) you can check easily to see your progress toward loremaster of that specific zone.  If your map does now show the quests in that zone when you open it that means one of two things.  It is full screen, which you can hit the inward arrow in the upper right hand corner of the map to shrink it, or you have the quest details window closed, which you can open by clicking the arrow in the lower right hand corner of the map.

Looking at the quest tracker details you will see at the top your progress toward loremaster of that specific zone, it might say something like 6 / 9.  This means that there are three major story lines in that zone you have yet to compete as you only have 6 of the 9 major story lines in that zone done.

If you are like me, or many others in game, that might have forgotten where you left off in a zone and have no idea where to pick up where you left off, go back to your map (M by default).  Open your map to full screen for easier viewing, but its not needed, and look for an exclamation point on the map somewhere.  You might over look at at first but any major story line in a zone will have their quest marker exclamation point on your map.  This will give you the direction you need to go to pick up the story lines you might have missed.

Now go and poke 12 saberon with a stick, collect 14 stinky socks, free 6 goblins that somehow tapped themselves in their own cages and collect the pinky finger from hubba bubba the pink ogre that has been terrorizing the area while dancing around in a tutu singing I feel pretty.  Once you are done with all said quests, or whichever other ones they send you on, and compete the three major story lines you needed, the zone achievement pop up.

Being Loremaster of draenor happens to be a meta achievement itself that asks you to complete all the major story lines in each zone, you will have to do this for every zone to get the Loremaster of Draenor achievement.

Explore Draenor:

This achievement is easy enough.  It requires nothing more of you than just spending a little time running around and uncovering all part of the map for every zone on Draenor.  It is something you could do over the course of a lazy day or while waiting in queue.  You probably discovered most of the zones just from completing the loremaster part of the meta achievement we are aiming for.

If you are missing a part of the map and do not notice any part of it that is still shaded visit a site like wowhead and check the individual achievement.  Usually there are great people there that will tell you which places to go to so you can get credit for that individual area.  For me there was one part of talador I needed to go back for as no quest ever had me pass through it.  All other parts I got through standard exploration and questing while leveling and doing loremaster.

This part of the achievement should take no time at all and little effort.  Enjoy exploring.

Grand Treasure Hunter:

The grand treasure hunter achievement might say 200 treasures needed but you only need to find 100 to get what you need to activate flying.  But while you are out and about you might as well go and get as many as possible.

While nothing you gather will be great by any means most things can be sold for a fair sum of gold considering the minimal amount of effort you have to put into collecting them.  There are also some goodies you might like and garrison resources to gather.

If you are one of those people that hate jumping puzzles, and from the looks of it there are a lot of you, no worries what so ever.  You can easily get 100 treasures without ever leaving the safety and comfort of having your own two feet, or hooves, on the ground at any given time.

For this achievement I suggest you download an addon called Handy Notes and then get the addition to it for draenor treasures.  With that installed you will have 100 treasures and not even notice you have done it.

If you pick this up and grab things while questing and while exploring, you will have the 100 with absolutely no additional effort on your part.  Being I leveled with Handy Notes active on all my characters not only did I level faster thanks to the experience of finding treasures but I was close to having 100 treasures found just while leveling.  Handy notes just makes it too easy.

But word of advice, if you really hate jumping stuff, stay out of nagrand, that place is a nightmare for getting some of these treasures if you don't already know how to get to them and could even be a nightmare if you do know how to get to them.  ~mumbles something about that damn tree he kept missing with the kite~

Securing Draenor (A) / Securing Draenor (H):

In a clear cut case of easier said than done there is the requirement of doing all the original apexis dailies once each.  There are 12 dailies in total but the problem with them is that they are on a random generated system which could mean it will take you 12 days to do it, or 48 days to do it, depending on the random number generator.

I must say I have always been against any content that is based on random so needless to say I would not mind at all if they removed this as part of the meta achievement even if I have it already.  I still feel bad for the people that don't and judging by the number of people who have that achievement posted on MMOC it seems like extremely few have done this.

I hear that currently the pit daily never shows up but when I did it at the start of the expansion it was the pit nearly every single day.  I recall it being 8 days in a row, then after two days of different ones it was 6 days in a row again.  See, this is exactly why I hate the randomly generated content.  No rhyme or reason to it.

My suggestion would be to check to see which ones you have done and look at the table in your garrison each and every day to see if one of the ones you need is there.  If it is, do it.  Do not wait, do not say I will do it tomorrow, do not put it off.  If you need it, do it, because with a random system if you don't it is possible you will not see it again for a month or longer.

Here is to hoping that blizzard does what they did with the profession vendors and fixes it so that it will cycle thought all of them so at worst it would take 12 days, but do not hold your breath for that to happen.

UPDATE: I have just been informed that the missives do work so just buy the missives at your garrison for 200 resources each and knock them all out.  This will make it insanely easy to finish.

Three 6.2 Reputations at Revered:

Order of the Awakened, The Saberstalkers, and Hand of the Prophet for alliance, Vol'jin's Headhunters for the horde are the new factions that you will need to get to revered to finish off the achievements needed to open up flight once it is added.

Being you only need to get to revered it will be a lot easier than if you had to do exalted.  A total of 21,000 reputation is needed to get to revered which is, of course, better than the 42000 needed to get to exalted.

I suggest if you want to speed this along that you have a level 3 trading post in your garrison as it increases reputation gained.  Any other boosts you can tag on, such as being a human or the darkmoon fair buff, will make this a little bit faster as well, but the level 3 trading post should be something everyone can do not limited to a race or timed event.  So make sure you have it if you want to speed this along.

How to get reputations:

Each faction tied reputation has a set of daily quests you can do that will offer you either 3 or 4 quests giving up to a total of 1250 reputation if you do them.  This can very well be used as the slow way to work toward getting all three of the factions to revered.  Also the new additions to the garrison campaign can award some reputation with these faction alined reputations so make sure to do those weekly on the character you are working the reputations on.

For the awakened there is a daily quest that awards 1500 reputation, which can be boosted by the trading post to 1800 and for the saberstalkers there is a weekly quest for 3500 which could be boosted by the trading post to 4200, there is also a chance you might get a daily as well, but it is not every day.  In addition the saberstalkers reputation can also be boosted by kills in select areas 30 for common mobs and 600 for rare elites.

There is also a new mission you can get from your harbor that rewards Medallion of the Legion, which will give you 1000 reputation with all factions on Draenor.  The beauty of this is that it is not soulbound, so if you have the gold, or enough alts, you can just buy, or collect, 21 of these and never need to grind even one single reputation.  You will be all done with these and these along.  Even if you do not do it with all of these, these will help along with your effort to get to revered with all three.

One thing of note, if you are going to use these, they do benefit from the trading post buff, meaning you get 1200 per faction instead of 1000, but you must actually be in draenor when you use it to benefit from the trading post buff as the buff only works on draenor.  It is also reported that some rares could drop these medallions.  If that is the case it is extremely possible you can grind all three factions not only to revered but to exalted in the first days of the release of 6.2.  I shall be one of these fools that intends to do just that and with all my alts and medallions coming in, I do not see this taking long at all.

Conclusion:

As you can see, it will not be hard to get flying, but you will need to earn it.  It is no longer as simple as paying a few gold and taking to the air.  I don't know about you but I kind of like that.  There is nothing hard about any of these requirements and there is nothing overly time consuming, at least if you are currently playing and not trying to catch up months from now, which I can see as being annoying later on playing catch up to everyone else that is flying.

If you are behind and need to do it, this is my suggested path.

Step 1: Do the lorematster achievement which will take no more than a few hours at most at max level even if you have only done a little or no questing previously.  Finish off the treasure gathering and exploring while doing loremaster, which means no additional time spent on those at all.

Step 2: Check the daily table in your garrison every day, do the mission if you need that one.  Or just buy the missive for it and get it done.

Step 3: When 6.2 comes out, to those that do not like to grind or just so you do not burn yourself as 6.2 is not adding flying yet, I say take your time.  Seriously, take your time.  Do the dailies when you wish to, send all the medallions you come across to your main, and let the reputations build up on their own.  With a trading post level 3, a few dailies for each faction and a few medallions along the way you will be to revered with all three and never even need to grind anything at all.

Step 4: When 6.2.x comes out.  Congratulations everyone, you are now ready to fly.  Enjoy, we earned this.