How to get your own Jellyfish Mount in Shadowlands Patch 9.2

The arrival of Shadowlands patch 9.2 and the new zone of Zereth Mortis has resulted in a wealth of new mounts and pets to collect. While most of them are acquired via crafting, the three “Aurelid” mounts resembling automata jellyfish — the name is based on Aurelia, the genus name of moon jellies — are acquired via achievement or Fishing (although there is also a low percentage chance to acquire via drop).

While the mount form isn’t new — Fathom Dweller, Hivemind, and others use a similar model — the Aurelid versions are the most jellyfish-resembling of them. They’re also quite versatile, being both flying mounts and increasing swim speed when underwater.

Have I mentioned they’re jellyfish?

Get out your fishing pole for Hirukon

The easiest of the three Aurelids you can acquire drops from the rare Hirukon in Zereth Mortis. Hirukon itself hangs out in a cave under Dimensional Falls (located south of the Forge of Afterlives), and the pond fed by the falls is where you want to fish. The item you’re fishing for is called Strange Goop, and it’s an extremely rare catch — on average between 1250 to 1500 casts, governed by normal RNG distribution, so you could be extremely lucky and get it under 200 casts, or extremely unlucky and take 2500 casts to get it. On the plus side, it’s not soulbound on pickup, so if you’d rather not fish you may be able to find it on the AH for a few hundred thousand gold.

Once you’ve acquired the Strange Goop, you need to find Baroness Vashj where she’s fishing in Maldraxxus. From the Plague Watch flight point head south to the lake at the far edge of the map (if you’re unable to fly yet, there is a cave you can go through as well). She’s present on the eastern shore, and showing her the Strange Goop will prompt her to send you out into the world to acquire three items with which to make a lure.

Note: you must have the Strange Goop in your bags or you will not be able to acquire these items:

• Coilclutch Vine, located in the Shimmering Expanse in Vashj’ir, amongst the vines on the Nar’shola Terrace. This one is a little tricky to find, so before you get too frustrated check out the information on Wowhead.
• Flipper Fish, fished up from a Flipper Fish pool in Nazjatar. This pool is found in the northeast part of the zone in Zin-Ashari; if you use Find Fish it’ll be visible on your minimap. When it’s fished up it starts flopping around, you’ll need to click on it to grab it.
• Pungent Blob, fished from a Pungent Blobfish Cluster in Coilfang Reservoir in Zangarmarsh. Note that this is inside Coilfang near the dungeon entrances, so you’ll need to swim down to it.

Once you’ve acquired all three, return with them and the Strange Goop to Baroness Vashj and she will make you the Aurelid Lure. Return to Dimensional Falls, apply the Aurelid Lure — it’s a buff that last 15 minutes — and then fish in the small Aurelid Cluster pool near where Hirukon is hiding. This will lure Hirukon to the surface where it can be killed (you’ll need help) and you’ll loot the  Deepstar Polyp which in turn rewards you your first jellyfish mount, the Deepstar Aurelid.

A couple notes: if you’ve already looted Hirukon that day, you can’t get the Deepstar Polyp; you’ll need to wait until reset and try again. The buff doesn’t disappear on logout, so you can fish it up repeatedly, or visit Baroness Vashj for a new Aurelid Lure. You can also visit her after the weekly reset to get a new one even if you have the mount — this is a helpful way to bring up Hirukon for other players to kill.

Finally, if you don’t want to do any of the above, you can simply wait for others to fish up Hirukon and kill it. There is a low chance (around 1 in 100) for the mount to drop, but for some people repeatedly killing Hirukon with a small hope is vastly preferred over having to fish.

Acquiring the Cryptic Aurelid mount is as easy as A to Zereth

A to Zereth is the zone meta-achievement for Zereth Mortis, and while it will require you to spend a substantial amount of time in the zone, none of the requirements are particularly complicated. As it’s an account wide achievement — you can complete each of the criteria on different characters — however it’ll likely be easiest to focus on working on it with one character.

The requirements are:

• The Enlightened is the achievement gained by earning Exalted status with the new Enlightened faction. Because of the way reputation is rewarded in Zereth Mortis, this will very likely be the last achievement you complete for the meta as it will require close to a couple months to reach Exalted.
• Secrets of the First Ones is the reward for completing the campaign storyline, and can already be completed. It does not require you do any raiding in Sepulcher of the First Ones.
• Treasures of Zereth Mortis requires you to unlock every one-time treasure in the zone. While some of these can be a little complicated, none are particularly hard to get to now that flying is unlocked in the zone. Domination Cache will likely be the biggest roadblock, as it can require extensive farming to get the key.
• Dune Dominance is pretty straightforward, needing you to kill three special rares that spawn in the Endless Sands, located in the Arrangement Index in the northeast of the zone. There is a long respawn timer for the rares — between 45 minutes and 2 hours — and there does not appear to be a set order that they spawn. The easiest way to complete this achievement is stay in the Endless Sands and search the group finder for Iska, Damaris, or Marzan, but since it’s going to take awhile to finish the meta due to the Enlightened requirement it’s possible just to kill them when they spawn.
• Adventurer of Zereth Mortis is obtained simply by killing every spawning rare in the zone. The biggest impediment to completing this achievement is the fact that not all of them are up every day, but simply killing rares as you go about any other activities in the zone should get you the achievement long before you’re Exalted with the Enlightened.
• Cypher of the First Ones is rewarded when you completely upgrade the Cypher console to unlock all skills; as you receive the currency of the same name for doing any activity in the zone completing this is just a matter of time.
• Synthe-fived requires you to craft 5 pets or mounts with the new crafting system. This achievement is account wide, so you don’t need to craft them all on the same character, so don’t despair if a desired recipe drops for a rarely-used alt. The material drop rate is high enough that if all you care about is getting the achievement as soon as possible you can simply craft the default unlocked pets based on which Glimmers drop for you first. However, since the reputation achievement will take months to complete you can feel free to simply target whichever pets or mounts you want.

The reward for completing A to Zereth is the Cryptic Aurelid.

Earn Glory — and a jellyfish mount — in the Sepulcher of the First Ones

The Glory of the Sepulcher Raider achievement rewards the Shimmering Aurelid, and this will be by far the hardest way to acquire a jellyfish mount unless you already raid with a group that focuses on the Glory achievements. If you’ve never completed a Glory achievement, the goal is to perform unusual and sometimes even counter-productive feats during raid fights that reward an achievement. For example, for the Wisdom Comes from the Desert achievement in the Skolex fight, the goal is to lure Skolex to each of the Memorial Pylons in the room so that they are destroyed when it burrows. Since this requires coordination beyond that of standard raiding, it isn’t typical for raid groups to work on these when progressing on Heroic or Mythic difficulty, and it is very rare for a Glory achievement to be earned during a fight without deliberately targeting it.

If you’re not part of a raid group that targets the Glory achievements as part of their goals, your best bet is to look for one of the more event-focused raiding teams such as Perky Pugs to see if they’re doing Glory runs. It’s not always easy to find one, so this may be an achievement you return to in a future expansion with a group of like-minded players.