Volcanic Stone Drake

GuaranteedAbout 3.9 h to unlock firstDungeon · Heroic

Cataclysm · Achievement

The game's mount journal

Achievement: Glory of the Cataclysm Hero

Category: Dungeons & Raids

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 Wowhead

How to get it

Reward of the achievement Glory of the Cataclysm Hero: 25 achievements in the nine dungeons Cataclysm opened with, all on Heroic difficulty. One is Cataclysm Dungeon Hero, for finishing each of the nine on Heroic; the other 24 are special achievements on bosses in eight of them (Throne of the Tides no longer has any). The Reins of the Volcanic Stone Drake then come by mail.

Inside The nine Cataclysm launch dungeons, a dungeon (Heroic)

Guide Wowhead: Glory of the Cataclysm Hero (comments; the one of October 2020 is a dungeon-by-dungeon walkthrough)

Before you go

Deadmines on Heroic, finished, with six achievements: Ready for Raiding (not hit by Fire Wall at Glubtok), Rat Pack (20 Mine Rats killed during Helix Gearbreaker), Prototype Prodigy (the Prototype Reaper kept from falling below 90% health during Foe Reaper 5000), It's Frost Damage (three Freezing Vapors allowed to cast Coalesce during Admiral Ripsnarl), I'm on a Diet (no more than one stack of Nauseated during "Captain" Cookie) and Vigorous VanCleef Vindicator (Vanessa VanCleef engaged within 5 minutes of being given the Nightmare Elixir) · about 0.6 h
Blackrock Caverns on Heroic (entrance inside Blackrock Mountain, Burning Steppes 27.5, 27.8), finished, with four achievements: Crushing Bones and Cracking Skulls (Rom'ogg Bonecrusher killed after his Skullcracker has killed 10 Angered Earth elementals), Arrested Development (all three of Corla's zealots allowed to evolve, the evolved zealots killed, then Corla), Too Hot to Handle (Karsh Steelbender killed after he has reached 15 stacks of Superheated Quicksilver Armor) and Ascendant Descending (Ascendant Lord Obsidius without any party member reaching 4 stacks of Crepuscular Veil) · about 0.6 h
Halls of Origination on Heroic (entrance in Uldum at 69.1, 53.1), finished, with four achievements: I Hate That Song (Temple Guardian Anhuur without his singing Reverberating Hymn for more than 15 seconds), Straw That Broke the Camel's Back (Earthrager Ptah killed while mounted on one of the camels that stand before him), Faster Than the Speed of Light (the Vault of Lights completed within 5 minutes of entering it) and Sun of a.... (Rajh killed before he completes an entire recharging phase) · about 0.5 h
Lost City of the Tol'vir on Heroic (entrance in Uldum at 60.6, 64.4), finished, with three achievements: Acrocalypse Now (20 Frenzied Crocolisks killed within 10 seconds of each other during Lockmaw), Kill It With Fire! (3 Burning Souls killed during High Prophet Barim: the soul fragments of his second phase, led through a patch of fire and killed while they burn) and Headed South (Siamat killed while carrying 3 stacks of Lightning Charge) · about 0.5 h
Shadowfang Keep on Heroic (entrance in Silverpine Forest at 44.6, 67.7), finished, with three achievements: Pardon Denied (Baron Ashbury without letting him heal with Stay of Execution), To the Ground! (Commander Springvale without allowing him to receive Unholy Empowerment) and Bullet Time (12 Bloodthirsty Ghouls killed by Lord Godfrey's own Pistol Barrage, then Godfrey) · about 0.4 h
The Vortex Pinnacle on Heroic (entrance high above Uldum at 76.8, 84.6), finished, with two achievements: Extra Credit Bonus Stage (5 Golden Orbs collected in a single visit) and No Static at All (Asaad without anyone taking the Static Cling effect) · about 0.4 h
The Stonecore on Heroic (entrance in Deepholm at 47.8, 51.9), finished, with one achievement: Rotten to the Core (60 of her followers killed within 10 seconds during High Priestess Azil; the wiki's wording is '60 Disciples') · about 0.3 h
Grim Batol on Heroic (entrance in Twilight Highlands at 19.1, 53.7), finished, with one achievement: Don't Need to Break Eggs to Make an Omelet (Erudax without letting a Faceless Corruptor begin to cast Twilight Corruption on any of Alexstrasza's eggs) · about 0.3 h
Throne of the Tides on Heroic (entrance in the Abyssal Depths of Vashj'ir at 69.6, 24.9, under water), finished: it counts for Cataclysm Dungeon Hero only, since its two special achievements were taken out of the list · about 0.25 h

In all: about 3.9 h of play, starting from nothing.

Getting there

Deadmines entrance, Westfall (six of the 24; the other eight dungeons are in Burning Steppes, Silverpine Forest, Twilight Highlands, Vashj'ir, Deepholm and Uldum)

Westfall · 38.2, 77.5

/way Westfall 38.2 77.5

From Stormwind (Alliance) about 0.9 min of travel

Fly there

From Orgrimmar (Horde) about 2.1 min of travel

Take the zeppelin from Orgrimmar to Stranglethorn Vale*
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 reins arrive by mail when the meta-achievement is earned (wow.gg). Progress is account-wide (the wiki: since patch 5.0.4; Wowhead's tooltip, as read in 2026: 'Account-wide progress'), so another character can make up a miss. Wowhead's tooltip and the wiki list the same 25 criteria.

The list has shrunk three times. Old Faithful and Prince of Tides (Throne of the Tides) left it in patch 10.2.0, and Umbrage for Umbriss (Grim Batol), which could no longer be earned once patch 11.0 reworked that boss, was taken out by a hotfix of 27 February 2025 (wiki; a 2025 Wowhead reply confirms the meta can be finished again). Guides older than that list 28 or 26.

The wording given for each of the 24 achievements is the wiki's, page by page. The Kill It With Fire! detail (there is no creature called Burning Soul; the soul fragments of Barim's second phase are led over a fire patch and killed while burning) and the camels are from the wiki and the Wowhead walkthrough.

Heroic is set from the character portrait before entering; an achievement earned on Normal does not count (wow.gg). The common trouble at the level cap is too much damage: a boss that dies in one blow never does the thing the achievement wants (Rom'ogg's Skullcracker, Karsh's 15 stacks, Ripsnarl's vapors, Godfrey's barrage, Barim's dark phase, Siamat's adds), so commenters take gear off or use their weakest attack.

No player count is given: none of the 24 was found to take more than one player by its own mechanics. Two come close and were checked.

Crushing Bones and Cracking Skulls: an Angered Earth appears for each player Rom'ogg's Quake hits, and a 2013 Wowhead guide comment said five players were needed. A hotfix of 2014 changed how they appear (wiki), and the 2020 walkthrough and a 2022 comment both do it with one character: sit down (/sit, back turned) as Quake lands so that it hits, five times in a row before the boss is brought to about 60% and again before 30%, each Skullcracker then killing the five. Each elemental is gone after two minutes (2022).

I Hate That Song: the wiki's strategy has one player on the two switches below while another stays up to interrupt the hymn; the 2020 walkthrough says only to kill Anhuur quickly, before the hymn matters. Neither of these reports is from Midnight.

Other points from the 2020 walkthrough:

Rat Pack: the rats come after Helix throws the player against the logs
I'm on a Diet: eat one good and one bad piece of food, then kill Cookie
Vanessa's event starts from the letter on the ground, and the run back to her is the part against the clock
Headed South: let three of Siamat's large adds die beside the player, whose deaths put the three charges on
Acrocalypse Now: gather 20 crocolisks before killing them
Rotten to the Core: the 60 followers are killed while Azil is engaged
the Golden Orbs: one behind the first boss, two left of the bridge, two reached on the whirlwinds of the second fight, with more further on

From the wiki: progress on Extra Credit Bonus Stage is shared by the group and survives leaving and re-entering the same instance. If Faster Than the Speed of Light fails, the instance has to be reset from outside before the event is finished so that Brann comes back.

Whether a boss killed without its achievement can be fought again the same day was not checked for the current game: Heroic dungeons have kept their bosses dead until the daily reset, and the times given assume no repeats.

There are nine entrances on two continents and in Deepholm. The place given above is the Deadmines, which has the most achievements; the other eight, from the game's own table:

Blackrock Caverns: 27.5, 27.8 in Burning Steppes
Throne of the Tides: 69.6, 24.9 in Abyssal Depths
The Stonecore: 47.8, 51.9 in Deepholm
The Vortex Pinnacle: 76.8, 84.6 in Uldum
Halls of Origination: 69.1, 53.1 in Uldum
Lost City of the Tol'vir: 60.6, 64.4 in Uldum
Grim Batol: 19.1, 53.7 in Twilight Highlands
Shadowfang Keep: 44.6, 67.7 in Silverpine Forest

The time on the spot is left at 0, and the whole of the work is counted in the hours given, as for this guide's other glories. Medium confidence, because nothing found is from Midnight and the times are estimates.

Guides: Wowhead has no staff guide for this. Its achievement page links a user guide, 'Glory of the Cataclysm Hero Guide!' (wowhead.com/guide/glory-of-the-cataclysm-hero-guide-674), which was not opened; a search result describes it as a player's guide of about 2012 that rates each achievement's difficulty. The 2020 comment on the achievement page (+43, written on the 9.0.3 test realm) is the fullest current walkthrough; the newest comment there is of 2023.

wow.gg's page for the mount (updated 2026) is cited for its times and the mail only and is not linked. It has the wrong boss or dungeon for several achievements (Rat Pack at Glubtok, I'm on a Diet in Grim Batol, Kill It With Fire! in the Vortex Pinnacle), and says five of them need other players without saying why: Arrested Development, Ascendant Descending, Rat Pack, Prototype Prodigy and Faster Than the Speed of Light. The 2020 walkthrough, done with one character, does not bear that out.

Confidence in this entry: medium. Looked up in 2026.

Sources