How to get yourself a Water Strider mount, the most useful mount of any expansion

Remember back during the Legion alpha when there was a proposed nerf to WAter Strider mounts? At the time, Blizzard announced the Azure Water Strider would only work in Pandaria, while the Crimson Water Strider would only work in Draenor. People were none too happy about this, and it didn’t take long for Blizzard to revert the restrictions.

No such restrictions were proposed for Battle for Azeroth, thankfully. It’s a good thing, too — I think it’s the one mount I’ve seen everywhere! And it’s not hard to see why. We’re questing around islands and, particularly on the horde side, there tends to be a lot of water to traverse.

Don’t have one, yet? Here’s how to get them.

How to get the Azure Water Strider

This mount requires a reputation grind with The Anglers faction from Mists of Pandaria. Every day, you fly to southern Krasarang and pick up a variety of daily quests which grant reputation. Each daily awards 500 rep, and it takes roughly an hour to complete however many are up each day. There are also three special fish you can catch. These can be turned in once per day for 350 rep apiece!

Of course, there’s a much easier way to get reputation with The Anglers… provided you don’t mind doing some Timewalking.

By that I mean, you can buy reputation commendations with Timewarped Badges and earn yourself an extra 300 rep each. The Mists of Pandaria Timewalking vendor Mistweaver Xia sells these. Even though you can farm Timewarped Badges during any Timewalking event, Xia will only appear during a Mists Timewalking week. War Mode players, take note: It’s probably best to temporarily turn War Mode off when visiting the Timeless Isle.

How to get the Crimson Water Strider

If you want this mount — either because it looks cool or you’re working toward one of the mount accumulation achievements — prepare for a grind. There’s no way around it. You’ll need to go to Draenor and do some fishing. That fishing is tied to your garrison. If you skipped Warlords of Draenor, you’ll need to go to the Blasted Lands and find Khadgar at the Dark Portal.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to do the introductory quests in order to establish your garrison. After that, you’ll have to do the fishing quests and fish up 100 of each fish available in Draenor. Once you’ve done all this and have the Draenor Angler achievement, your fishing shack should be level 3. You can now recruit Nat Pagle to be your follower.

Oh yeah, there’s still a lot more to go. You have to go back to Krasarang Wilds and ask him to come to Draenor. It’s a three-step quest to get him to your garrison.

As if that weren’t enough of a slog, the items he sells in your garrison cannot be purchased with gold. You need the special currency, Nat’s Lucky Coin. You get these when you turn in special fish called Lunkers. It’s a random chance to fish one up out of any fishing pool in Draenor. Each fish is worth one Lucky Coin. There is also a small chance of fishing up coins by themselves when fishing in your garrison. The drop rate in the garrison is about half what it is in Draenor. It takes a lot of casts to earn enough for that mount.

Other wonderful items from Nat

If you notice, there are other items you can purchase off Nat. If you’re going to be doing a lot of fishing, I strongly recommend the fishing raft. You can’t fish from the Water Strider, and I’ve found I do a lot of fishing from off shore, mainly to avoid mob clusters. You are not dismounted when you change from a weapon to your pole if you’re using the Artifact Fishing Pole, nor are you dismounted when you stop to fish. I’m so much faster in fishing up a string of pools when I am on the raft. As long as you don’t take damage from mobs, it lasts for 10 minutes.

I also want to point out you can obtain both the Sea Turtle and the Riding Turtle from Cavedwellers that spawn while fishing in the garrison — but your fishing shack must be level 3. Additionally these Cavedwellers can drop a variety of items, including the strangest hats you might have seen — hats which need to be transmoggable. There are toys and pets to obtain with gold or Nat’s Coins as well.

And there you go! That’s how to get a Water Strider. If you really don’t like fishing, your best bet is to run Timewalking dungeons at every chance and, when Mists of Pandaria Timewalking is up, turn your badges into commendations. Getting a Water Strider is a grind, but I find getting around to be much easier with one.