Collector's Bounty Roundup

The Collector's Bounty event has come to an end in World of Warcraft, and during it a stack of mounts were given an extra 5% chance to drop.

Now, that in all honesty doesn't sound like much, but when some of these mounts have a 0.21% chance to drop at all outside of the event, it's actually a huge boost to some of their drop rates.

I went into the event hoping to get two mounts: G.M.O.D. (from Battle of Dazar'alor) and more importantly, the Ny'alotha Allseer (from Ny'alotha: The Waking City). If I got those I'd be happy.

But it pays off to double check which boss actually drops the mount you're after!

I ran multiple Jaina kills in Battle of Dazar'alor via the skip I had. Thing is, I already have the Jaina mount, and I was after the G.M.O.D. mount. It does drop from Jaina, but only in LFR difficulty - on other difficulties it drops from Mekkatorque!

So I wasted a couple of weeks' worth of runs with Jaina only kills attempting to get a mount she'd never drop... 🤦‍♂️

Anyhow, once I realised that then that meant I had to run virtually the entire raid to get to Mekkatorque - no shortcuts to him, and you can't back track from Jaina sadly.

Slow Start

My event got off to a slow start. Despite making many runs, I saw no drops for the majority of the event. It was only 8 days from the event ending that I saw my first mount drop.

The first mount I received was the Underrot Crawg Harness from Underrot:

Next up was the Swift Zulian Panther from Zul'gurub:

Next up was Inarius' Charger, which technically wasn't from the Collector's Bounty event, but the simultaneous Greedy Emissary event:

A few days later I picked up the Blue Proto-Drake from Skadi:

Then came a bit of a weird one. I had run Sanctum of Domination for the Sanctum Gloomcharger mount quite a lot of times, and I had run all 4 difficulties on my Paladin the night before I went off on a break for a few days to see my daughter's graduation.

That was fine, but when I logged back onto the Paladin 5 days later to do an Allseer run after coming back, I happened to look in her bags and lo and behold:

Complete surprise, and I obviously missed it dropping in amongst the plethora of transmog that was dropping during the event as well!

Clearly dancing for The Nine helped:

Then nothing for a few days, until the day before the event ended.

And it was a biggie!

G.M.O.D.

Obviously this was one of the two mentioned that I really wanted going into the event. To see it drop, especially after screwing up for weeks with previous BoD runs was a huge relief. It's such an awesome mount, and is one of my now two permanent daily drivers...

Then came the final day, sitting at 6 mounts in total from the event.

It was fortunate that I was home, and able to run multiple instances over the course of the day, because it was well worth the time and effort, as I managed to rack up an incredible FIVE mounts in one day!

First up was the Mummified Raptor Skull (Tomb Stalker) from King's Rest:

In the very next run, I decided to nip over to the Isle of Quel'thas and have a stab at getting the Swift White Hawkstrider, and BOOM! Two mounts in a row!

After this I took a run to Throne of the Four Winds and had a go at Al'Akir, and got the Drake of the South Wind:

Following on from that success, I decided to try to round out the Zul'gurub mounts and got the Armored Razzashi Raptor:

And that was it.

Or so I thought.

Earlier in the week I'd tried killing N'Zoth in Mythic Ny'alotha for the Ny'alotha Allseer on my DK, but she kept dying for seemingly no reason. She was horribly under-geared and I thought I just didn't have the damage to beat the encounter and gave up, even after killing the rest of the raid. I'd already killed N'Zoth on my other available level 80 characters, so that was it.

However after getting the last two mounts above on the DK, I realised that I had been playing as Frost with a 2h weapon, whereas it should be using 2 x 1h weapons! 🤦‍♂️

So I thought, I wonder if this would work any better than last time...

So I bought her some cheap gear from the Auction House, including a new trinket, a neck and 2 x 1h iLevel 597 weapons. I then Runeforged both weapons and went back to Pandaria, where Ny'alotha was located that week.

I still had my lockout from earlier in the week, so I spawned in right in front of N'Zoth. And I literally had to play the entire fight properly, and saw every phase, having to dodge mechanics and do all the things.

This time I didn't die.

Bear in mind that this was the last chance I had during the event. With the raid being in Pandaria, if your character didn't play during BFA there's a long list of quests you have to do as a pre-requisite to be able to even see the raid entrance. Several of my level 80's didn't have this, so I was sorely limited in the number of characters I could run through Mythic Ny'alotha with during this final reset.

And the DK was the last character I could possibly run it with...

BEHOLD HIS NOODLINESS AND BULBOUS EYES

Getting this on a hail-mary attempt, on the final day of the event, with the only character I had left that could even enter the raid...

Glorious.

Such a satisfying feeling getting this mount in particular, as this is now my new default mount.

I don't know exactly why I love it quite so much as I do. I think it's a combination of the bright colours, the contrast of the eye colour against the skin colour, the oddly soothing bobbing motion it makes when travelling, especially along the ground, or the way it's noodles flap when surging forward when using Dynamic Flight 😂

I just know that I adore this mount and it's one of my favourites in the entire game.

Overall thoughts on the event

Despite a late start to drops, the event for me was a raging success. The only mount I didn't get that I really wanted was Mimiron's Head, but with G.M.O.D. and the Ny'alotha Allseer, even it wouldn't get much of a look-in!

The event also saw a double-drop rate on transmogs, which was hugely welcome. I managed to round out quite a lot of transmog sets during the event while mount hunting, and thanks to the fact that characters can now add armour outside of their own class to the account-wide wardrobe I picked up a lot of plate, cloth and leather for my other characters while in the main doing these runs on my Hunter.

It was nice as well to have a good reason to go back to some of these instances, because some of them I hadn't been back to for years. Zul'gurub for one, I hadn't stepped foot in that place since it was last in the seasonal dungeon rotation several expansions back.

And I think Ny'alotha: The Waking City is a raid with one of the best internal environments in the game. I love all that old, ancient, creepy stuff, with dark depths and unfathomable obelisks with strange writings and weird looking eyeballs constantly watching over everything. Once through to the outside portion of the raid it becomes less interesting, but certainly it's a strong start to the instance environmentally.

Overall it was a nice reason to login every day, and with the new patch dropping a week after it ends, it was good to have reason to play and bolster the transmog and mount collections. I'm certainly very happy with it, and hope they do it again next expansion. I know they won't do it in patch 11.2, as we're instead getting Legion Remix, probably around November time.

This is the reason I didn't bother running any Legion stuff during the Collector's Bounty event, because I assume, that much like with Pandaria Remix, that we will be able to purchase all of the mounts and transmogs that we want. I certainly did that during Pandaria Remix, and have no reason to go back to Mists content, other than for Garrosh's shoulders that I didn't manage to get during Remix.

But yeah, overall a great event for transmog and mount collectors, and here's looking forward to Season 3 of TWW and Legion Remix!