Mount collectors in World of Warcraft can celebrate (or weep), as some of the game’s rarest and most unique mounts have suddenly become substantially simpler to get. Mount farming has always been a serious business in World of Warcraft, and since The Burning Crusade added flying mounts, this facet of the game has only grown in popularity. Everyone wanted to show off their unusual ride, since whether won hard or by chance, mounts were just as valuable in World of Warcraft as a full set of tier armour.
Though many mounts in World of Warcraft are uncommon, few can compare to those gained from Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor world bosses, such as the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent, which Blizzard Entertainment considers to be the rarest mount drop in the whole game. It hasn’t stopped gamers from endlessly cultivating the Sha of Anger every morning, always hoping for a lucky break. Fortunately, the most recent adjustments released in last night’s hotfix may make their mount farming a little less stressful.
Blizzard Entertainment has announced broad modifications to the drop rates of all Pandaria and Draenor world boss mounts, dramatically improving the chances of receiving them. The former drop rate probability for the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent was 0.01%, with the additional complexity that players in World of Warcraft could only loot the monster once. The present drop rate is unclear, and it will most likely take at least a month of loot attempts from the World of Warcraft community before database services such as Wowhead can generate an accurate estimate.
This adjustment will likely bring great delight to prominent Twitch streamers like Asmongold, who, with his immensely popular mount and transmogrification tournaments, kept the community together during some of World of Warcraft’s worst days. While it is true that these modifications deprive mounts of their uniqueness, it is a development that is ultimately beneficial to the game. The following mounts are affected:
- Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent
- Son of Galleon’s Saddle
- Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn
- Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent
- Solar Spirehawk
Perhaps the issue isn’t so much with their exceedingly low drop rate as it is with the lack of any poor luck protection systems, like those found in Final Fantasy 14’s Extreme Trial mounts. Fans of World of Warcraft believe that setting a cap on loot attempts, where players would acquire the mount as a guarantee after a specific number of pulls, is the ideal answer. Outlier scenarios, such as farming a 1% drop rate mount over the period of 500 tries, would be prohibited. While the entire implications of these World of Warcraft loot adjustments are unknown, they are unquestionably a step in the right direction.
World of Warcraft is now accessible on PC. Dragonflight will be available on November 28th.
