First Mount at Level 40: A Gold Plan for a Fresh Realm

Level 40 is where a vanilla-era character either rides out of the capital or walks for another ten levels, and the difference is decided between 20 and 40, not at the trainer. The mount costs 80 gold and the riding skill 20, less a tenth of each once you are Honored with the city that sells it, so the level 40 mount gold most characters need is 90 to 100, on top of the trainer visits at 30 and 40. This guide is a plan for exactly that: which zone to farm in each bracket, what to sell and what never to buy, how many hours each bracket honestly needs, and what to do if you reach 38 with half the money, for either faction on a vanilla-era realm such as WoW Forever.

Where and what you need

Levels. The plan starts at 20 and ends at the riding trainer at 40. The brackets are 20–30 in Duskwood or the southern Barrens and 30–40 across Thousand Needles, Stranglethorn Vale and Arathi Highlands. Start wherever your level puts you.

Professions. Skinning is the profession of this plan: every cat, raptor, hyena and kodo between 20 and 40 skins into Medium Leather and then Heavy Leather, and leatherworkers on a fresh realm buy both by the stack. Pair it with Mining for Tin, Iron and the first Gold veins, or Herbalism for Kingsblood, Liferoot and Fadeleaf.

Gear. Quest rewards, dungeon drops and greens you farm yourself. The only purchase in the plan is a weapon around 30 if quests have not given you one, bought as a green on the auction house. Repairs are the one gear cost you cannot avoid; keep them small by replacing white pieces instead of repairing them.

Bag space. Four bags of eight or more slots, Woolen Bags from the auction house at roughly 1–2 gold each. Leather, cloth, ore, herbs and greens all stack separately.

The number. Write it down before you start: 90 gold for riding and the mount at Honored, roughly 5–8 gold for the level 30 trainer and 10–20 for the level 40 one, so about 110 gold earned between 20 and 40 on top of whatever you carry in. The first 100 gold guide gets a fresh character to 20 with a purse to start from.

The route

The numbers are the order of the plan; the dotted line is the Horde alternative for the first bracket.

1. Darkshire or the Crossroads, level 20: the count. Empty the bank, add the bags, write down the total and the target. The plan needs about 110 gold more by 40, roughly five and a half gold a level; keep that pace and you never have to stop and farm at the end.
2. Raven Hill, Duskwood (20–26). The Duskwood farming guide is the Alliance bracket: Raven Hill undead for Wool Cloth and Grave Moss, spiders and worgen for leather and the first Silk. Horde characters run the southern Barrens from Camp Taurajo: bristleback quilboar for wool, kodo and lions for Medium Leather.
3. The southern wood and the level 30 visit (26–30). Finish the bracket on the worgen and ogres in Duskwood's east, or on the Stonetalon harpies and goblins for the Horde, then make the trainer trip. Pay only for ranks you press, roughly 5–8 gold, and sell everything before you buy. The halfway check: 35–45 gold in the bank at 30 is on pace.
4. Thousand Needles and the Shimmering Flats (30–34). Both factions reach it through the Barrens. Hyenas and crag stalkers skin into Medium Leather, the centaur camps drop Wool and Silk, and the basilisks and scorpids of the flats add leather and vendor scales.
5. The northern jungle of Stranglethorn (34–37). The Stranglethorn Vale skinning route is the heart of the plan: tigers, panthers and raptors for Medium and Heavy Leather in quantity, Liferoot by the lake, and no troll or naga pulls to slow you down. Most of the level 40 mount gold is made here; a skinner can expect roughly a third of the total here.
6. Booty Bay: sell and count (37). The neutral auction house takes both factions' leather and the goblin vendors buy the scales. Post Heavy Leather and Silk in stacks and greens one at a time. The three-quarter check: 65–80 gold in the bank after this trip. If you are below 50, read the rescue plan in the FAQ now, not at 39.
7. Arathi Highlands: ogres and the Syndicate (37–40). Boulderfist ogres around the ruins and the Syndicate camps in the north drop Silk by the stack, and Mageweave begins to appear. Refuge Pointe and Hammerfall both sell and repair. Finish the level here with the last stacks posted at the capital before you ring the bell at 40.
8. The stable at 40. Riding skill from the trainer first, then the mount from the vendor beside it: 20 gold and 80 at full price, 18 and 72 at Honored. Keep 10–20 gold back for the level 40 trainer visit the same evening, and leave with the bags empty.

What you get

Source	Drops and nodes	Why it sells
Duskwood undead and worgen, Barrens quilboar	Wool Cloth, Silk Cloth, Grave Moss, greens	Tailors and First Aid move from linen to wool and silk at exactly this time
Kodo, lions, hyenas, crag stalkers	Medium Leather, Light Leather, the odd Thick Hide	Leatherworkers' 20–35 recipes eat Medium Leather by the stack
Stranglethorn tigers, panthers, raptors	Heavy Leather, Medium Leather, Heavy Hide	The 35–45 recipes want Heavy Leather, and few characters farm it before 40
Boulderfist ogres and Syndicate rogues	Silk Cloth, the first Mageweave, greens, silver	Mageweave is the first cloth that sells for gold a stack on a fresh realm
Tin, Iron and Gold veins; Kingsblood, Liferoot, Fadeleaf	Ore, herbs, the odd Citrine or Jade	Iron bars and the 30–40 potions are the backbone of mid-level crafting
Dungeons on the way: Deadmines, Razorfen Kraul, Scarlet Monastery	Greens, blues you cannot use, Wool and Silk	A boss blue sells for 2–10 gold on a fresh realm

Time it takes

Count hours rather than gold per hour. From 20 to 30 a questing character makes roughly 1.5–3 gold an hour between quests and farm loops, and the bracket takes roughly 15–20 hours of play, so arriving at 30 with 35–45 gold needs no extra farming at all, only discipline at the vendor. From 30 to 40 the same character makes roughly 3–5 gold an hour, 4–7 with Skinning in Stranglethorn, over roughly 20–25 hours of play, which is 60–120 gold if every stack is posted.

That is why the plan works without a grind at the end: a skinner who sells everything reaches 40 with the mount paid for out of ordinary levelling, and ForeverBot's Time and Gold counters make the arithmetic easy to check at the end of each evening. A character without a gathering skill is usually 20–30 gold short and needs roughly 6–10 extra hours in Stranglethorn or Arathi; the FAQ has the version for someone who finds that out at 38.

What moves the number: whether you skin, whether Heavy Leather goes to the auction house in stacks or to the vendor in handfuls, and how often you die in Stranglethorn, since every death is a repair bill.

Tips

• Learn Skinning at 20 if you have not; it catches up with your level in two evenings and pays for the mount on its own.
• Repair only green and blue pieces; a white item's repair bill is often more than its replacement.
• Keep the bank honest: one stack of each material in reserve, everything else posted the same evening.
• Run dungeons for their quests and blues, not their gold; a Scarlet Monastery run beats an hour in the Needles only when a boss drops.
• Never buy a mount-level upgrade before the mount; a 5-gold weapon at 38 is the mount at 42.
• From 34 onward set your hearth in the auction house city rather than the zone; the bags fill faster than you can walk.

Running it with ForeverBot

Open ForeverBot's Farming section for each bracket: pick a route from the Route list or walk your loop once with Record loop, then add each beast type with + Current target, leaving the troll camps and elites unticked in Stranglethorn. In Loot and bags tick Sell gray items and Auto loot, and in Farm route keep Go to a vendor when bags are full and Repair at vendors on; the vendor trip is where leather turns into gold, so watch Free slots. In Professions tick Skinning and whichever of Mining or Herbalism you carry, keep Remember nodes on and switch on Skip nodes above your skill so a Mithril vein in Arathi does not pull the route off course.

In Settings set the Navigator Route mode to safest for Stranglethorn so the path skirts the troll villages, and lower the Arrival radius in the Needles where the trails are narrow. For the questing evenings open Leveling, set Eat below HP and Drink below mana to numbers your class likes and keep Use flight paths on once you are past 30. The Gold/hour counter in Current status is the honest judge of each bracket, and Save profile once per bracket means next time is Load profile and Start. Farming, Professions and Settings are part of every plan; see plans and pricing.

FAQ

I am level 38 with 50 gold. What now?

Stop levelling and go to the northern camp in Stranglethorn with Skinning, even if you learn it today: two evenings of tigers and raptors sold as Heavy and Medium Leather bring roughly 20–30 gold on a fresh realm. Post everything in the bank, sell the blues you are hoarding, do not repair whites, and take the level 40 trainer visit after the mount rather than before. The mount is then a day late, not ten levels late.

How much does the level 40 mount really cost?

At the trainer and the vendor it is 20 gold for Apprentice Riding and 80 for the mount. Reputation with the city that sells it cuts both: Friendly takes 5 percent off and Honored 10, so the usual price for a character that has quested at home is 18 plus 72, or 90 gold. Paladins and warlocks learn a class mount from their trainer at 40 for a few gold and can skip most of this plan.

Is it worth buying the mount at 40, or should I save for 60?

Buy it at 40. The extra speed makes every quest and every farm loop between 40 and 60 a shorter trip, and the gold you make across those twenty levels with a mount is far more than the 90 you spend now.