How and where to craft mounts in Zereth Mortis

Shadowlands patch 9.2 brought World of Warcraft players to the new zone of Zereth Mortis, a land of enlightened brokers, automata, and Jiro struggling to fend off the Jailer’s Mawsworn forces, while the heroes raid the Sepulcher of the First Ones to stop Zovaal. As you progress in the campaign chapters you unlock the Cypher of the First Ones, a talent system that can be used to enhance your companion Pocopoc and to provide buffs and assistance to the player. The Cypher also unlocks two Synthesis Forges, ancient devices that lets you craft new pets and mounts in the style of the animal life forms in the zone.

Dealing with extra research if you want a mount

The Cypher is unlocked after completing Chapter 3 of the 9.2 campaign, which is available the first week a character is in the zone. The Metrial and Aealic trees need to be researched before you can start on the Dealic tree, which the pet and mount crafting systems are locked behind. Fortunately it won’t take that long to get there, with the Metrial tree completing instantly, and the Aealiac tree taking 18 hours. Researching these talents also require a new currency — Cyphers of the First Ones — that drop from the various activities on Zereth Mortis, but the cost isn’t prohibitive if your goal is to ignore the other options on the other trees and focus on pet and mount crafting.

The first talent on the Dealic tree, called Dealic Understanding, costs 200 Cyphers and will take 3 days and 18 hours for the research to finish. Once it has completed, you’ll be able to unlock pet crafting and start researching Sopranian Understanding, which costs an additional 220 Cyphers and takes 5 days and 18 hours to complete — when added to the other prerequisites it’ll take roughly 10 days from start to finish to unlock mounts crafting.

Completing the research isn’t enough, though, as there is a much more involved quest line in order to unlock the Synthesis Forge than the simple quest that pet crafting requires. The quests take you all over the Endless Sands in the northeastern part of the zone, and there are a lot of elite mobs and “suggested: 3 players” encounters to overcome. When flying becomes available it’ll be a little easier to get around but the fights won’t be any easier. If you’re on a class that doesn’t solo well, you may want to look for companions to help you out.

Once you have completed the quest you’ll need to navigate back to the mount forge whenever you learn a new schematic or wish to craft a mount, and it’s not recommended you take the road as it’s littered with elites. Instead, the path along the east side of Zereth Mortis is safer — not devoid of mobs, but the ones you may aggro are easier to fight.

Using your Build-A-Helicid Workshop

As part of the mount crafting unlock quests you’ll receive the schematic for, and be able to build your first mount, Deathrunner. This cervid mount requires 450 Genesis Motes to craft, so if you’ve not yet farmed up enough you won’t be able to build it right away. Also note that crafting Deathrunner is not required to unlock the system, so you can delay crafting it until when and if you feel like doing so.

The schematics to build all other mounts are discovered elsewhere, so if there’s a specific one you want (I went straight for the Heartbond Lupine) focus on getting those first — note that you can’t find the schematics until after you’ve unlocked the Synthesis Forge for mount crafting. There are also a couple schematics in the Sepulcher of the First Ones raid, but fortunately they’re both available in the first wing of LFR.

Crafting a mount will require:

• a Lattice, which normally drops from mobs of the same type in the zone. So, for example, a snail will drop the Helicid Lattice, and wasps will drop the Vespid Lattice.
• a unique item, which can be obtained from a variety of sources, including within the raid.
• 300-500 Genesis Motes, which is the grinding currency of the zone.

Fortunately all of these are account-wide and can be transferred among all the player’s characters, so you don’t need to worry about getting a reagent you need stuck in an alt’s backpack. The forge unlock and the schematics are not account-wide — although once you’ve researched Sopranian Understanding on one character it’s an instant finish for others (but with the same Cyphers cost) — so you may want to assign mount crafting to one toon. The Genesis Mote acquisition rate isn’t as bad as Anima was in 9.0, but you won’t be able to craft all the mounts right away. Be sure to focus on the ones you desire first.

Originally published 3/15/2022