Ancient Salamanther
Find a character at the top of the page to see whether your account has this mount, and where that character stands on what it asks for.
Look it up on WowheadHow to get it
A rare drop from any of the 16 rare elites of the Forbidden Reach, the ones that show on the zone map while they are up. Each kill is a separate small chance, so a visit is a round of whichever of them are up.
Chance 0.72% once a day, so about 139 tries on average — Wowhead: 1,880 in 260,619 loots, pooled over the 16 rares (item page read 2026-10-11); rare by rare it runs from 0.64% (Ishyra, 139 in 21,677; Reisa the Drowned, 129 in 20,283) to 0.87% (Mad-Eye Carrey, 98 in 11,269). The figure is for one kill of one rare. A round of all 16, each looted once, would come to 1 - (1 - 0.0072)^16 = about 11%, but they are rarely all up in one day
Time there about 1 h a visit
Before you go
- The Forbidden Reach opened at level 70: Hidden Legacies from Kurazidaia at the Seat of the Aspects in Valdrakken and the quests after it (a later character can skip them at Kurazidaia) · about 0.75 h
In all: about 0.8 h of play, starting from nothing.
Getting there
/way The Forbidden Reach 34 59.8 - Take the portal from Wizard's Sanctum to Valdrakken*
- Fly the rest of the way
- Take the portal from Orgrimmar to Valdrakken*
- Fly the rest of the way
/way is for the TomTom addon. Travel times are estimates: flying at 55 yards a second in a straight
line and 30 seconds for a portal. A star marks a portal that needs a quest or other unlock done first.
Notes and sources
The journal and Wowhead's tooltip say only "Drop: The Forbidden Reach"; the wiki has "a low chance to drop from the rare mobs of the Forbidden Reach", and Wowhead's item page lists the 16 it has been looted from. The place given is the isle's village, as for the Noble Bruffalon, not a rare: which rares are up differs from visit to visit. The time on the spot is an estimate for flying one round of the rares that are up.
The rares, from the table in Wowhead's guide (updated 2023), with the wiki's position where it differs:
- Bonesifter Marwak 42.7, 60.9 (Skyfox Den, Aerie Chasm)
- Duzalgor inside the Support Creche, entrance 37.0, 31.8, which is full of a gas that needs the counter picked up at the door
- Gahz'raxes in an underwater cave, entrance 26.7, 41.4
- Galakhad 44.7, 79.1 near a mountain top
- Grugoth the Hullcrusher 43.7, 90.7 on a boat off the south coast
- Ishyra 41.3, 14.3 on a platform over the north coast
- Lady Shaz'ra 61.2, 58.1 in a cave under a waterfall (wiki 59.7, 58.8)
- Mad-Eye Carrey in a cave by Hornswog Hollow, entrance 69.3, 46.2, with First Mate Ovdah and Navigator Bi-Yun, who shield him and have to die first
- Ookbeard 36.7, 11.8 on an islet off the north coast
- Pyrachniss and Warden Entrix deep inside the War Creche, entrance 51.9, 59.7
- Reisa the Drowned in a cave, entrance 46.7, 19.2
- Veltrax 72.8, 67.5 in the naga cave by Stormsunder Crater
- Volcanakk inside the Siege Creche, entrance 74.4, 54.6
- Vraken the Hunter in a cave by the Old Weyrn Grounds, entrance 59.1, 49.7
- Wyrmslayer Angvardi 61.8, 30.0 on the tower over Froststone Vault, who shares health with his companion Nidharr
The guide's body does not name the mount (it dates from the patch's first week; readers added it in the comments), but it is the guide to the rares themselves.
The lockout is what players act on, not something published:
- most commenters hold that each rare can be looted once a day per character (a 2024 comment: 93 kills at one a day per rare; wow.gg says the same), and several count 16 chances a day
- against that, a 2023 comment (+48) had the mount drop from Bonesifter Marwak on a second kill the same day, and a reply of the same year says the rares can be looted more than once a day and only leave the map after the first kill
- a belief that only the first rare killed in a day counts runs through the comments of 2024-2025 and is called a misreading by a 2025 comment; nothing supports it but single reports
The newest reports are of 2026 ("got this today, it was second kill of the day").
How the rares come up is not established: Wowhead's guide says only that they show on the map when available, wow.gg that one appears about every 30 minutes, and a 2026 comment that half of them do not appear once a day, so a full round in one day cannot be counted on.
Reports of the kills it took run from 1 to 962 without the mount (2026). A 2026 comment found the rares at level 90 and hard to kill; the reply says the whole expansion scales when the player's Endeavor is the Dracthyr one.
In 2023 the mount could be handed to another player who had tagged the same rare when it dropped for someone who had it (a 2023 comment, +104, and four replies); it binds when picked up.
The rares also give Elemental Overflow, Zskera Vault Keys and Primalist gear tokens (guide), which the Noble Bruffalon and the Mossy Mammoth draw on. wow.gg's page for the mount (updated 2026) is not linked: it misnames several rares and the vendor of the Stormhide Salamanther, and its drop range of 0.8% to 5% is players' guesses. Added in patch 10.0.7 (wiki).
Confidence in this entry: medium. Looked up in 2026.
Sources