Did you get your Venomhide Mount yet?

Hello you!

When leveling my shaman I stumbled upon a really fun and interesting quest chain, or rather chain of daily quests - the quest to get the Venomhide Raptor Mount in Un'goro. I knew it existed, somewhere in the back of my head, but since I am no collector (unless you count collecting alts) I had just filed it away under information I wasn't really going to need or use. I actually tend to avoid Un'goro when questing all together, mostly because the quests require you to completely cram your bags full with quest items so that you can't go and do anything else (instances, quest in other areas) until you're absolutely done in Un'goro. But I generally like the area. It has a nice feel to it, and I don't even hate the Devilsaurs as much anymore. I don't know if Blizzard has done something to them, but I am sure that when I used to quest in Un'goro those huge bastards were following me around (just as the Fel Reavers in Hellfire Peninsula). Lately I've had no trouble with them (I still hate the Fel Reavers though).

So back to the Venomhide Mount. I might as well go and say this at once, before any of you alliance playing readers send me hate mail for having you run all the way to Un'goro for nothing - the quest (and mount) is horde specific. It was implemented in the game as a counterpart to the alliance quest for the Winterspring Saber that has been around since Vanilla days. Unfortunately for you alliance, that quest was designed when Blizzard still didn't know much about how to make interesting and fun quests and so it requires a whole lot of tedious grinding. So does the Venomhide Raptor quest in a sense, so what are the differences?

The biggest problem with the alliance quest chain is probably that you need exalted (yes you read that correctly) with the Wintersaber Trainers in Winterspring to take it. Becoming exalted with this faction requires weeks of extremely boring grinding of mobs in Winterspring. You don't need any kind of rep with any faction to start the horde-quest however, Mor'vek the quest giver stands by the entrance of Un'goro ready to give anyone of level 48 and above the first quest (and all subsequent ones too).

I asked Love if he had done this quest, since he actually is a collector of mounts. He has done about 50 runs to Sethekk Halls for the Raven Lord Mount (and got it the other day, I was just thinking he might go crazy in his efforts to get that bird...). To my suprise, he hadn't done this quest. I asked him why and he told me it was just too horrible. As I so far completely love this quest, and I'm the one who usually hate to do dailies (I never ever do them unless I really have to) except the fishing daily, I asked him what he didn't like about it.

The first part of the quest chain is to obtain blood from different venomhides in the area. As a level 50 ish shaman, getting this blood was extremely easy. Killing the mobs took some 15 seconds or so, and I usually got 2-3 splashes of blood on myself per mob. The quest took some 5 minutes to get done, tops. Love on the other hand had tried this on his main - a level 80 druid. To get any splashes of these raptors you will have to keep them from dying long enough to splash you with some blood. Not an easy task for a level 80, even when naked. Love had struggled to get some splashes, it had taken him far longer than 5 minutes and in the end he gave up since he thought that if this was the repeated daily quest he had to do for the next coming 20 days, he wouldn't bother.

Fortunately for him, I knew that he was wrong (this is very often the case actually). Getting those splashes of blood is just a one time quest to get your very own little Venomhide Hatchling. And now we're getting to why this quest is completely awesome. You're going to raise your own mount. Blizzard has actually managed to make a quest where I as a player feel a connection with the quest. After some start up quests you're handed a little Baby Venomhide, whom you have to raise over 20 days until he's big enough (and trusts you enough) to be ridden. The daily quests are ordinary enough and primarily focus on feeding the little thing, but since you engaged in taking care of that cute little thing, staring up at your with huge raptor eyes, you gladly do them.

I find myself actually looking forward to doing this daily quest each day!

The quests are done in Un'goro and Tanaris, and that is also the only areas you can summon your Baby Raptor (and Silithus for some reason). The mount can of course be used anywhere regular mounts can be used. As far as I know there are four different quests, of which I have done three so far and they all take about 2-5 minutes each. The real trouble is getting to Tanaris/Un'goro every day, but not even that is much of a hassle since you can take the teleport in the Violet Citadel that takes you directly to Tanaris. Or you can take the teleport in Scholazar Basin that takes you directly to Un'goro.

If you want something to do for a couple of weeks before Cataclysm, I can't recommend this quest chain enough. To quote Signalfirefly from wowhead.com
"If you're not in love with it by the time it's all grown up... well, I'm afraid there's just no hope for you."

Hmm, did you grow?