The Netherwing drakes are technically free mounts. In practice, the grind from Neutral to Exalted is a twelve-to-fourteen-day commitment with real gold costs hiding inside it — worth counting before you commit.
The structure of the grind
Netherwing reputation comes almost entirely from dailies on Netherwing Ledge: egg collection, mining and gathering imitations, peon management and racing quests. The daily set awards a fixed chunk of reputation, which is why the timeline is so predictable — roughly two weeks of full clears, slightly less with lucky egg finds.
The hidden requirements
- Epic flying is mandatory. The questline gates on a 280% mount — so the real price of a free drake starts at 5,000g if you have not bought training yet.
- Egg competition is brutal on populated realms. Eggs spawn across the ledge and mine, and every rep grinder wants them; off-hour sessions double your finds.
- Opportunity cost: forty-five to sixty minutes daily that displaces your normal gold routine for two weeks — call it 2,000g of foregone daily-circuit income.
Is it worth it?
Aesthetically, absolutely — the drakes remain some of the best-looking mounts in Classic content, and the questline's disguise gimmick is genuinely fun once. But go in with accurate expectations: the drake costs epic flying plus a fortnight of scheduled play. Players short on schedule sometimes cover the epic flying requirement directly and treat the rep dailies as their only grind, which cuts the total project from months to weeks.
Efficiency notes
Stack the Netherwing dailies with a Shadowmoon herb or primal route since you are already there, always clear the mine egg spawns at reset, and remember the final Exalted turn-in day feels genuinely triumphant — few grinds in TBC end with a better payoff screen.