Okay so there’s a bug with the Whelp Daycare quest “Blistering Belastrasza”. When you do that race, once you finish you get the “Riding Abroad” buff/debuff which stays with you even in the Dragon Isles until you remount. If you go immediately back into the race, you keep this buff/debuff and Belastrasza goes a lot slower in the race than she should, causing it to be almost impossible to get the Gold time. I was getting 61-63 seconds and when I removed the buff I instantly got 53 seconds.
I also saw another player who was doing the race at the same time and was struggling to time it. I told them to wait, and to mount up on their dragon first and then enter the race. They did so and immediately got 55 seconds when they couldn’t get under 61 before. I’m seeing a lot of people say this quest is hard, and even when it’s working properly it is quite unintuitive but as it stands most people will be going into it bugged (because the first time they go in, they don’t know how it works and so won’t get a good time and by the time they race again and understand the mechanics, the Riding Abroad buff/debuff has attached itself to them and slows down Bela.
I submitted a Bug Report in-game but I thought this might help some people who are also grinding out the Whelp Daycare for the meta achievement and are wanting to Gold the whelp races while they do it.
I KNEW that I wasn’t getting the same kind of speed/distance as the people in the videos I was watching but I just couldn’t understand why. I’m glad I looked further into it.