Cobalt Shalewing
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
Rare drop from Karokta, a rare elite shalewing that flies in over Glimmerogg in the south-west of Zaralek Cavern, north-east of the Dragonscale camp. It respawns 45 minutes to two hours after a kill, is away one day in four, and gives a character loot only once in each four-day rotation of the cavern's areas.
Chance 0.82% once a week, so about 122 tries on average — Wowhead's NPC page (read 2026-10-11): 217 mounts in 26,503 recorded loots, the same 0.82% as its tooltip. The count takes in kills from before the hotfix of 7 June 2023 that raised the chance, and may take in kills by characters who were not eligible for loot, so the chance today is probably somewhat higher. Lockout: neither daily nor weekly. Since the hotfix of 22 May 2023 a character can loot Karokta once per four-day rotation of the cavern's areas, so about twice a week; 'weekly' is the nearer of the two values
Time there about 1 h a visit
Before you go
Nothing to unlock first: go there and take your chance.
Getting there
/way Zaralek Cavern 42.2 65.4 - Take the portal from Wizard's Sanctum to Valdrakken*
- Enter Zaralek Cavern through the tunnels
- Fly the rest of the way
- Take the portal from Orgrimmar to Valdrakken*
- Enter Zaralek Cavern through the tunnels
- 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
At 0.82% about 120 loots are expected, and players in the comments report anything from a first kill to 86, 189, 207 and over 350. Coordinates: Wowhead's tooltip (42.2, 65.4); a comment gives /way 42.56 65.72. Before he appears a zone-wide line reads "A flash of teeth and wings darts across the cavern ceiling" and a Loamm explorer spawns at the spot, though comments say the line does not always show.
How the lockout works (Wowhead comments of 2023 to 2026, quoting Blizzard's hotfix note): Zaralek Cavern is divided into areas, and each day one of the four outer ones is inactive, in a fixed order. On the day Glimmerogg is inactive Karokta does not spawn; that day resets the loot lockout, and the next kill counts. So he is up three days in four, and a character's kill pays once in that span, after which he gives grey items only. Players keep a calendar of the rotation in a Google spreadsheet linked from the top comment.
The lockout is per character, so several characters multiply the tries; comments of 2023 to 2026 say the mount drops for characters from level 60 up. Since late 2025 Karokta scales with the character (Wowhead's tooltip shows level 82, comments report 82 for a level 80 and higher during a Niffen neighbourhood endeavour).
Respawn: 50 to 55 minutes in 2023, 45 to 120 minutes in reports of 2024 and 2025. The 60 minutes on the spot are an estimate of the wait for one spawn; the fight itself is short. Since patch 10.2 rares despawn when nobody is near, and the cavern moves players between shards, which resets the wait; players recommend an addon that shows how long a creature has been alive. A 2024 comment warns to stay in the zone for five minutes after looting the mount, after it vanished from a collection.
Karokta also drops the pet Ridged Shalewing (1,527 in 26,503) and counts for Adventurer of Zaralek Cavern. The journal's "Drop: Karokta" is right; during the test realm the creature was called Kairoktra (wiki).
Confidence in this entry: medium. Looked up in 2026.
Sources