How has your experience with Dragonriding been so far?

When I roamed the Azure Span for the first time during the Dragonflight beta I had some issues with Dragonriding. A large part of the problem was that the feature was in its infancy; there were no glyphs yet, so vigor maxed out at three and slowly regenerated. Most of the time it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I foolishly tried to fly directly from Iskaara to the Azure Archives and ended up stuck on the side of the mountain. I tried waiting for vigor to regenerate, but even then it was such a struggle I ended up using my hearthstone back to Iskaara and took the flight path instead, a valuable lesson learned.

Or maybe not, because I just did the exact same thing yesterday. Fortunately the addition of the Dragonriding skills meant I didn’t have to give up but could still reach it on my dragon, and now I should be a little bit wiser about what my dragon can or can’t do — until the next time I get stuck trying to reach an Explorer’s Scout Pack or Draconium mining node.

Overall though I’ve found Dragonriding an enjoyable experience. I haven’t spent much time pushing the limits of skills in courses yet, but when I do get a chance to take off cross-zone it’s fun to let the mount hit turbo speeds with the wind rushing by. It’s not perfect, mind you: if I’m not careful my motion sickness can kick in, and I wish the glyph were more obvious when your dragon “spots” one (maybe highlight its location on the minimap?). I know I could follow an addon and unlock all the glyphs before doing anything else but I prefer to knock them out as I find them. On the plus side, I’ll only have to gather them once, which is a fantastic benefit for altoholics like myself. I think I still would prefer the normal flying mounts simply for maneuverability and hovering purposes, but Dragonriding has proven an acceptable solution to the perennial issues regarding how soon players can take to the skies in an expansion.

How’s your Dragonriding experience been? Do you find yourself satisfied with the system, or would you rather have normal flying? Did you work on unlocking all the skills first, or are you getting the glyphs as you organically discover them? And which of the options is your favorite? I like the Highland Drake the most so far.