Drake of the East Wind

GuaranteedAbout 2 h to unlock firstRaid · Heroic

Cataclysm · Achievement

The game's mount journal

Achievement: Glory of the Cataclysm Raider

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 Raider: 24 achievements in the three raids Cataclysm opened with, two for each of their twelve bosses. One is the kill on Heroic difficulty; the other is a special achievement on the same boss. Blackwing Descent has six bosses, The Bastion of Twilight four (Sinestra is not part of it) and Throne of the Four Winds two. The Reins of the Drake of the East Wind then come by mail.

Inside Blackwing Descent, The Bastion of Twilight and Throne of the Four Winds, a raid (Heroic)

Guides wow.gg: Drake of the East Wind · Wowhead: Glory of the Cataclysm Raider (comments; the top one is a boss-by-boss walkthrough of 2016)

Before you go

Blackwing Descent on Heroic, twelve achievements: the kills of Magmaw, the Omnotron Defense System, Maloriak, Atramedes, Chimaeron and Nefarian, and on the same bosses Parasite Evening, Achieve-a-tron, Aberrant Behavior, Silence is Golden, Full of Sound and Fury and Keeping it in the Family · about 1 h
The Bastion of Twilight on Heroic (entrance in Twilight Highlands at 33.9, 78.1, on a platform high in the air), eight achievements: the kills of Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Valiona and Theralion, the Ascendant Council and Cho'gall, and The Only Escape, Double Dragon, Elementary and The Abyss Will Gaze Back Into You · about 0.6 h
Throne of the Four Winds on Heroic (entrance in Uldum at 38.2, 80.7, a floating platform high above the south-west of the zone), four achievements: the kills of the Conclave of Wind and Al'Akir, and Stay Chill and Four Play · about 0.4 h

In all: about 2 h of play, starting from nothing.

Getting there

Blackwing Descent entrance, Blackrock Mountain (half of the 24; The Bastion of Twilight is in Twilight Highlands, Throne of the Four Winds above Uldum)

Burning Steppes · 22.9, 26.5

/way Burning Steppes 22.9 26.5

From Stormwind (Alliance) about 1 min of travel

Fly there

From Orgrimmar (Horde) about 2.9 min of travel

Take the portal from Western Earthshrine to Vashj'ir*
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 come by mail with a letter from Thrall (a 2011 Wowhead comment quoting it; wow.gg). The 24 criteria are the same in Wowhead's tooltip for the achievement (as read in 2026: 'Account-wide progress'; it calls the Omnotron kill 'Heroic: Golem Council') and on the wiki, which has it account-wide since patch 5.0.4. The wiki says the twelve kills have to be Heroic, the twelve special achievements count on Normal or Heroic, and 10 and 25 players are not told apart. So one Heroic visit to each raid can cover both kinds.

One thing to know before going: in 2026 a Wowhead comment reported Heroic Cho'gall bugged, coming back to full health at the kill. The writer got the achievement only with a friend who pulled the boss and then left the fight (Shadowmeld, then a hearthstone). A later 2026 comment from a guild party said it died normally and asked whether the glitch had been fixed. Nothing later was found, so whether it still happens is not established; that is why the confidence is medium.

Heroic is set from the character portrait before entering (10 or 25 Player Heroic; wow.gg). Many of the twelve ask for a boss to live until something has happened (12 Aberrations out, 7 stacks of Wind Chill, the Stormlings at Al'Akir, Nefarian's phases), which a strong character has to hold back for; wow.gg suggests taking off gear. An achievement missed on a boss that then died has to wait for the raid to reset, weekly by wow.gg.

What the twelve ask, in the wiki's wording. Blackwing Descent:

Parasite Evening: Magmaw without anyone in the raid becoming infected with a parasite
Achieve-a-tron: the Omnotron Defense System with no player hit by Static Shock, Arcane Annihilator or Poison Bomb and no more than one player hit by each Flamethrower
Aberrant Behavior: kill 12 Aberrations within 10 seconds, then Maloriak
Silence is Golden: Atramedes without any raid member's sound bar going over 50%
Full of Sound and Fury: Chimaeron with no more than 2 raid member deaths
Keeping it in the Family: Nefarian damaged below 50% health before he lands for the final confrontation, then killed

The Bastion of Twilight:

The Only Escape: Halfus Wyrmbreaker after two drakes are defeated within 10 seconds of each other; the Emerald Whelp pack counts as one drake
Double Dragon: 6 Twilight Fiends killed in the Twilight Realm, then Valiona and Theralion
Elementary: the Elementium Monstrosity allowed only a single Liquid Ice patch
The Abyss Will Gaze Back Into You: Cho'gall before any raid member earns more than 30 Corrupted Blood

Throne of the Four Winds: Stay Chill (the Conclave of Wind while everyone in the raid has at least 7 stacks of Wind Chill) and Four Play (Al'Akir while he is affected by Feedback).

No player count is given: none of the twelve was found to take more than one player by its own mechanics. wow.gg writes every boss up for one player, and the walkthroughs in Wowhead's comments (2013, 2016) do the same. Older trouble that is over: Stay Chill could not be earned for some months after the Shadowlands pre-patch and was fixed in patch 9.0.5 (comments from 2020 to 2021).

Entrances, from the game's own table:

Blackwing Descent: 22.9, 26.5 in Burning Steppes
The Bastion of Twilight: 33.9, 78.1 in Twilight Highlands
Throne of the Four Winds: 38.2, 80.7 in Uldum

A 2016 Wowhead comment puts Blackwing Descent at 26.1, 24.6, on a terrace on the outside of Blackrock Mountain, three quarters of the way up; wow.gg sends the reader in through the mountain's main entrance to a balcony.

The place given above is one raid entrance of three, so 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 dungeon glories; how those hours are split between the raids is this guide's own.

Guides: Wowhead has no guide of its own for this achievement; the one English guide its page links, 'A Month in the Maelstrom: Farming Cataclysm Mounts and Pets' (updated 2020), mentions the drake only in passing. wow.gg's page is current and goes boss by boss, though its wording of some achievements is loose (it says 'at level 80' in one place and 'level 90' in another). The top comment on Wowhead's achievement page (2016, +100) is the fuller walkthrough, written for level 100.

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

Sources