Flying Speeds in Burning Crusade Classic: Regular and Swift Mounts
The default flying mounts available to TBC players fall under two classes:
·Introductory Rare quality mounts (such as Golden Gryphon) with 60% increased movement speed on both land and in the air
·Advanced Epic quality mounts (such as Swift Blue Gryphon) with 100% speed on land and 280% speed in the air.
The "Swift" mounts require an additional level of riding skill to be trained, on top of the base flying skill, before they can be used. The 60% speed of the Rare flying mounts means that these mounts are actually slower than the Epic ground mounts you acquired at level 60! As a result, you should stick to your ground mount when traveling on land, and only use the flying mount (a) when it is required to access new areas, or (b) when it speeds up your travel by allowing you to short circuit windy paths.
TBC Classic: Riding skill & mount gold costs
Unlike in World of Warcraft: Classic with ground mounts, the riding skill gold costs in Burning Crusade classic is quite high, compared to the mount cost. We are just going to pull off the bandaid quickly, as Expert Riding and a Rare flying mount will set you back 900 gold. If you want to get up to maximum speed, however, you will have to fork out a whopping 5,200 gold. The Riding skill and mount gold costs can be viewed in full below.
·Expert Riding - 800 gold for skill, 100 gold for Rare mount.
·Artisan Riding - 5000 gold for skill, 200 gold for Epic mount.
Most players heading into Burning Crusade Classic will, therefore, probably need to farm for quite some time to start flying.
Where to train flying in Burning Crusade
Once you hit level 70 and have enough gold, head to Shadowmoon Valley to find your flying trainer. Note that you will need to have trained previous levels of riding skill before you can train flying. You're looking for these these NPCs:
·Ilsa Blusterbrew in Wildhammer Stronghold for the Alliance
·Olrokk in Shadowmoon Village for the Horde
