Getting around Azeroth can be a bit of a hassle. With over twenty years of content behind it, WoW has a really massive world full of continents, zones, and realms, which just keeps growing with every new update. Players like to joke that half of your time in the game is spent walking from one place to another, and honestly, they’re not entirely wrong. But thankfully, WoW gives you far more than just your character’s two feet, and there are dozens of ways to move around much faster.
In this guide, we’ll break down all the main travel options, so you can spend less time on the road and more time actually playing. And if you want to speed up not only your travels but also your progress, feel free to get yourself a WoW boost to level up faster, unlock better gear, get as much gold as you want, and even raid with pro players, all quickly and absolutely stress-free.
Mounts and Riding Skills
Mounts are your primary means of transportation in WoW. You’ll unlock your first riding skill at level 10, which allows you to ride basic ground mounts at 60% speed. Riding works just like any other trainable skill, and you can upgrade it by paying a small fee to a Riding Trainer. Upgrades unlock new mount types and increase your travel speed up to 310%.
Once you reach Expert Riding, you’ll gain access to flying mounts. In the current expansion, The War Within, there are actually two distinct flight styles available: Skyriding and Steady Flight. You can switch between them in your Mounts tab within the Warband Collections menu.
Mounts can be bought from vendors, dropped from dungeon or raid bosses, earned as PvP rewards, or even unlocked via a WoW boost.
Portals
Portal Rooms
Major faction cities like Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Dazar’alor, and Boralus all have dedicated portal rooms with gateways leading to different parts of the world.
In Stormwind, for example, the portal room is located inside the Mage Tower, offering connections to places like The Jade Forest, Shattrath City, and The Caverns of Time, among others. Most of these destination areas also have return portals that take you back to where you came from.
The recent Patch 11.2 also added a new portal room in Tazavesh, with gateways to each of the Bountiful Delves, plus one leading to the Delver’s Headquarters.
Mage Portals
If you happen to be playing a Mage, congratulations! You’ve got yourself a built-in fast travel option.
Mages can learn a whole bunch of teleportation spells that allow them to instantly move between major cities. These spells can be learned at different character levels from Portal Trainers found in capital cities.
The Teleport spells will send you to the destination, and the Portal ones will create a clickable gateway that lets your whole group travel with you. Many players even hire Mages specifically for their teleport services, which gives them a quick and easy way to make some extra gold.
Boats and Zeppelins
If you’re playing Alliance, you’ll find your main docks in Stormwind Harbor, where ships regularly arrive and depart for places like Borean Tundra, Boralus, the Dragon Isles, etc. There are also other docks across Azeroth (for example, in Menethil Harbor or Ratchet), each connecting to different regions.
Horde players use zeppelins instead of boats. You’ll find several zeppelin towers in Orgrimmar, with regular routes to destinations like the Dragon Isles, Stranglethorn Vale, Borean Tundra, and more.
Both boats and zeppelins work in the same way: once you board, your vessel will travel for a short time, then you’ll see a quick loading screen, and after that, find yourself in a new zone.
Deeprun Tram
Exclusive to Alliance players, the Deeprun Tram is a kind of underground subway that connects Stormwind and Ironforge. You can find it in the Dwarven District in Stormwind. Just head down the stairs and hop on the tram, which will carry you through an underwater tunnel straight to Tinker Town.
Back in the day, this was one of the main ways to travel between the two cities, but now that there are faster alternatives, it’s more of a fun throwback and a neat piece of WoW history. Still, it’s completely free, surprisingly quick, and worth checking out at least once just for the experience.
Flight Paths
Another classic way to travel around Azeroth is through Flight Paths that connect almost every major zone and settlement in the game.
You’ll find Flight Masters scattered all over the in-game world. They’re marked by a green exclamation mark the first time you encounter them. When you talk to the Flight Master, their location will be added to your map as a new flight point. From then on, you can pay a small fee to fly between any two connected flight points you’ve already discovered. The more routes you unlock, the easier it becomes to travel between regions.
You can discover flight paths the old-fashioned way by exploring the world and finding each Flight Master yourself, or you can automatically unlock numerous flight paths for a specific continent or zone with Scouting Map toys. Those are sold by the main heirloom vendors in Ironforge and Undercity for 10,000 gold each and are account-bound, meaning every character you create has access to them via your Toy Box. There are also a couple of cheaper maps (100 gold each), but those are character-bound, so you’ll need to buy them separately for every alt.
Hearthstones
A Hearthstone is a special item that sends you to the inn you’ve set as your home location. You can change that spot anytime by talking to an Innkeeper.
Using a Hearthstone is much quicker than taking a flight path, and it’s also free of charge, but it does come with a 30-minute cooldown.
Apart from the usual Hearthstones, there are several cosmetic variants with unique visual effects, as well as special versions that teleport you to fixed locations regardless of your current home inn (such as the Dalaran Hearthstone or Garrison Hearthstone).
Other Teleportation Options
If you’ve already got your Hearthstones set up but still want a couple of extra ways to travel around, here are a few teleportation items and methods that can come in handy:
- Faction Cloaks take you straight to your capital city. They come in green, blue, and epic versions, available from guild vendors once your guild unlocks certain achievements.
- Engineering Wormhole Generators open portals to different continents and zones. They are crafted by Engineers and usable account-wide by any character with the same profession.
- Time-Lost Artifact sends you right to the Timeless Isle. You can buy it from Mistweaver Ku once you reach Honored with Emperor Shaohao.
- Mythic+ Teleports. Completing a +10 key or higher in time unlocks a teleport straight to that dungeon’s entrance. Pushing a +10 is quite the struggle, but you can always grab a WoW boost to take a nice and easy shortcut.
- Violet Seal of the Grand Magus is a special ring that teleports you to Karazhan. You’ll earn it by completing a very lengthy Karazhan-related questline and defeating a secret boss inside the instance.
- Band of the Kirin Tor teleports you to Northrend Dalaran. Buyable from the jewelry vendor in Dalaran.
- Scroll of Teleport: Theater of Pain is a consumable that drops you right into Maldraxxus. Sold by One-Eyed Joby near the main Maldraxxus arena.
- Potion of Deepholm instantly sends you to Deepholm when used. Can be crafted by Alchemists or bought on the Auction House.
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