Everything we know so far about Mount Equipment in patch 8.2

We’re getting customizable mount effects in patch 8.2, but do you know what they are, where you can get them, and how they work? Don’t worry, we have you covered.

How Mount Equipment works

With the new system, you get to choose an effect that will apply to all of your mounts on each particular character. The Mount Equipment system unlocks for the first time with a level-100 character. After that, the system is account-wide and the Mount Equipment items are account-bound. Once unlocked, any character at level 20 and above can use the system. The Mount Equipment slot is unique per character, so that you can choose different effects for each one.

Mount Equipment is like Legion relics or your mission follower equipment. They are consumable items that can only be used once, which you place into the slot on your mount page. If you replace one effect with another piece of equipment, the previous one is destroyed. To get the effect again, just buy another piece of equipment.

Mount Equipment options

So far we have three effects for Mount Equipment: water walking, daze immunity, and parachutes. Other effects could be revealed or added later.

These are the ones we know of:

• Anglers’ Water Striders/Inflatable Mount Shoes: Equip in your Mount Equipment slot to allow you to walk across water while mounted. Any damage will cancel the effect.
• Comfortable Rider’s Barding: Equip in your Mount Equipment slot to prevent you from being dazed while mounted.
• Saddlechute: Equip in your Mount Equipment slot to install a emergency parachute that will deploy when dismounted high in the air.

Mount Equipment sources

We know of one confirmed source for Mount Equipment: water walking from The Anglers, available for 50 gold. Like the Azure Water Strider, this will require reputation with The Anglers (probably Exalted) to purchase. However, it is account-bound, so only one character will need to buy it in order to equip on alts. Another water walking Mount Equipment will be available from one of the professions. This is likely to be the Inflatable Mount Shoes, and some of the community interviews with the WoW devs have hinted that it will come from Blacksmithing. Interviews have mentioned Blacksmithing with regards to being able to craft other Mount Equipment as well.

Side effects and caveats

The Sky Golem will be exempt from the Mount Equipment system, due to its unique effect that allows characters to stay mounted while picking herbs — though that’s always possible it might change if it proves too strong like water walking. Druid forms will also be unaffected by Mount Equipment, and Death Knights and Shamans can use their water walking abilities with the Mount Equipment effects. Vendor mounts, like the Grand Expedition Yak, will be able to use the Mount Equipment slots, simply because the WoW devs believe that “no one really rides on them for real.” That sounds like a challenge.

Right now on the PTR, any character above level 100 receives mail from Nat Pagle containing an Anglers’ Water Striders equipment. Even brand new class trial characters. Unfortunately, any alts under level 100 don’t get anything, and you might have to re-purchase the equipment item if you want to keep water walking on those alts. This, however, could be related to the bug that is currently preventing characters below level 100 from using the Mount Equipment system at all. It’s unclear what alts will get the item in the mail and how much we’ll have to re-buy the water walking Mount Equipment other than for replacing another effect.

Because water walking is being added via an equipment slot, the current passive ability will be removed from the Water Strider mounts. Unfortunately that change is making many players feel they are losing a feature, because they will have to pay to use the ability on new alts when we currently can do it for free. Blizzard could rectify this by making the Water Striders be exempt from the system just like the Sky Golem and hopefully they take all the feedback into consideration.