Mudback Riverbeast

Reward of the rare naval mission It's a Boat, It's a Plane, It's... Just a Riverbeast. (South Sea; two ships, 18 hours, 150 Oil), sent from the garrison's shipyard. It turns up at random on the shipyard's naval map; send two ships that answer its threats and collect the mount when they come back.

Chance Never published. This is the chance that the mission is offered at all; it is one of the rare treasure missions the naval map picks from at random. Players in Wowhead comments of 2015 with many garrisons went months without seeing it; a hotfix of 1 December 2015 raised the chance of rare naval missions by an unstated amount, after which several saw it within days

Time there about 5 min a visit

Guides Wowhead: Warlords of Draenor Shipyard Guide · Wowhead: Starting Questline for the Garrison Shipyard

• Draenor garrison founded and raised to tier 3 (the last upgrade costs 2,000 Garrison Resources and 5,000 gold) · about 4 h
• The shipyard built: the garrison campaign quest War Council, which appears in a tier 3 garrison, leads by way of the Iron Docks in Gorgrond (We Need a Shipwright, Derailment, The Train Gang, Hook, Line, and... Sink Him!, Nothing Remains) to All Hands on Deck, which builds the first level of the shipyard for 150 Garrison Resources and 150 gold · about 1.5 h
• Naval missions opened: after the first Transport (Let's Get To Work, Shipbuilding, Ship Shape) the quests land in Tanaan Jungle and set up the base there; Shipyard Report then brings you back for Naval Commander, Destroying the Competition (the Destroyer's blueprint), Equipping Our Fleet and A True Naval Commander · about 1.5 h
• The South Sea open on the naval map. The mission sits in that quarter of the map, which stays closed until the mission Blockade: South Sea has been won; A True Naval Commander sends you on it the first time, and blockades come back after a week
• Two ships fit for the mission and 150 Oil to send them. Its two enemies are a Destroyer with Evasive and Expert Captain and a Submarine with First Strike and Swift; the mission starts at a 30% chance of success. A Battleship answers the Destroyer and a Destroyer the Submarine; of the equipment, True Iron Rudder answers Evasive, Felsmoke Launcher First Strike and Blast Furnace Swift, and nothing answers Expert Captain directly. A Destroyer costs 25 Garrison Resources and 75 Oil to build, a Battleship 50 and 100; the Battleship's blueprint comes from the quest I Sunk Your Battleship, at Friendly with the Hand of the Prophet (Alliance) or Vol'jin's Headhunters (Horde) in Tanaan Jungle. Oil comes from the shipyard's own quests (300, later 1,000), Tanaan Jungle's daily quests, rares and objectives, and garrison missions · about 2 h
• The 18-hour mission timer · 1 days

In all: about 9 h of play, spread over 1 days, 5,150 gold, starting from nothing.

/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.

There are two rolls here: whether the mission is offered, and whether the ships succeed. Once offered it stays for 21 days (Wowhead's mission data gives 1,814,400 seconds; a 2026 comment saw 20 days 23 hours left). A failed mission is not the end: a 2026 reply says it comes round again.

Wowhead comments have it failing at 97% and at 94% and succeeding at 60%. One player reached 100% with an epic battleship (Undead crew, True Iron Rudder, Blast Furnace) and a rare destroyer (Pandaren crew, Felsmoke Launcher). Wowhead's Shipyard guide adds that a failed mission can cost the ships unless the chance of success was above 90%, and that Expert Captain is offset only by stacking two general bonuses (a Human or Undead crew, certain equipment, an area buff).

The mission still appears: comments of 2025 and 2026 report it. No requirement beyond a working shipyard was found by players: it has appeared at shipyard level 2, within weeks of building, and before 50 missions were done (comments of 2015 to 2020). How often the naval map rolls a rare mission was not established, so the daily lockout only means the map is worth a look once a day. Nothing was found from after Midnight on whether the shipyard quests changed.

The shipyard's levels (Blizzard Watch): level 2 after the quest A True Naval Commander and 15 naval missions, for 1,000 Garrison Resources and 1,000 gold; level 3 after Naval Domination and 25 treasure missions, for 2,500 and 2,500. Neither is needed for this mission.

The wiki and the guides give no coordinates for the shipyards. Those here were worked out from the game's quest marker tables (QuestPOIBlob and QuestPOIPoint, from wago.tools), from the hand-in points of the shipyards' own quests: Naval Domination for Lunarfall, Let's Get To Work and Ship Shape for Frostwall. Each shipyard is a private area like the garrison itself.

Wowhead's Shipyard guide (a player's guide, updated 2020) is the source for the quest names, the blockade and the ship costs. It and Wowhead's own Starting Questline guide put the shipwright's rescue at the Iron Docks. Whether the South Sea blockade has to be cleared again every week before this mission can show was not confirmed beyond that guide's one line.

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

Sources

• Wowhead: mudback riverbeast
• Wiki: Mudback Riverbeast
• Wiki: It's a Boat, It's a Plane, It's... Just a Riverbeast.
• Wiki: Town Hall (garrison)
• Wiki: Lunarfall Shipyard
• Wiki: Frostwall Shipyard
• Blizzard Watch: getting started with the garrison shipyard and finding oil
• wago.tools: QuestPOIBlob
• Wowhead tooltip: quest 39242
• Wowhead tooltip: quest 39236
• Wowhead: shipyard
• Wowhead: starting questline