If you have any physical limitations I highly recommend looking up accessibility features. Note if you have motion sickness there are options to turn off elements which can make you motion sick. Also note there is a Ride Along option you need to enable which allows u to follow someone dragon riding as a whelp so don’t fret, speak to the dragon riding trainer to enable it. As a whelp u can also earn the glyphs so if you are lazy and have a friend who can help that’s one way of getting them. Now for the tips.
For starters I’m a keyboard turner and don’t move with my mouse. Try using your mouse if it’s just only dragon riding it makes it easy. Also you can use your spacebar and other key bindings to launch yourself.
Explore and grab glyphs ASAP: Once you unlock dragon riding I highly recommend garbing the glyphs they drastically improve the experience. Only took me less than 2 hours and I did it immediately after getting my 1st mount. You can access all other zones immediately with dragon riding and there isn’t really any story spoilers when you flying around for a scenic tour to grab all 48 glyphs. So go out and go through all the zones and get the glyphs. You can find their locations on WoWhead
Spending Glyphs: (EDIT: you can spend the glyphs on the UI where the renown is) I recommend grabbing 6 glyphs then going back to a trainer to spend them, there are 12 glyphs in each zone and 48 glyphs in total. Each talent acquired makes riding so much easier. When you max out the glyphs u go from 2 vigor and flight that lasts an ok time to 6 vigor extremely fast recharging and the ability to pretty much stay in flight indefinitely.
When collecting Glyphs it’s ok to need to wait for vigor to recharge when you are going up a mountain. There are a few glyphs in very high places that you may need to ledge hop, make sure to spend glyphs before trying it for an easier time, don’t be discouraged, swap to a Youtube video for 30 seconds or so. Remember you only need to collect the glyphs one time only, it’s account wide!
Jump off ledges!: Practice makes perfect and just getting glyphs has helped me significantly improve my skills. Look for high points if you haven’t gotten all the glyphs and soar off it. When you are maxed out on glyphs it’s far easier and ledges aren’t really needed, just fly upwards spending 3-4 vigor and your gold.
If you get frustrated take a break, there is a learning curve but for me and many others flying around collecting all the glyphs helps so much.
Unlike with regular flight, you have momentum and weight when dragonriding.
Dragonriding is like flying with an airplane. You need air blowing over your wings to provide lift. You get this air by always moving forward. If you slow down too much, your wings can’t generate enough lift. The result is you stall and gradually fall out of the sky.
Unlike an airplane, you do not have a propellor. To generate and maintain forward speed you have the activated dragonriding abilities which cost Vigor, and you have Gravity.
You cannot hover and always move forward while dragonriding.
Your flight path relative to the ground matters. If you’re pointing at the sky, gravity will cause you to bleed off forward momentum. You’ll rapidly slow down and stall.
The same happens in level flight, just more gradually.
Tilt downwards and gravity comes to your aid. You will maintain or even increase speed depending on the angle of tilt.
How to tell your speed:
The white lines of rushing air on the sides of the screen show when you’re going fast.
When those lines turn more solid blue you’re going at maximum speed.
There is no visual effect indicating when you’re slowing down and about to drop to a slower speed category other than watching the terrain move slower under you. However, if you play with sound you can hear the sound of rushing air diminish before you slow down.
If you find yourself going to slow and in danger of stalling, point yourself at an angle towards the ground so gravity can help you speed up.
Ascend:
The activated dragonriding ability “Ascend” is by far the most important dragonriding ability. With that one ability and a mouse you can fly anywhere in Dragon Isles without landing (once you have all the dragon glyphs).
Surge Forward and the other activated abilities are unnecessary.
It is not necessary to ever press “2” to activate Ascend. Pressing the spacebar does the same thing and is usually much more convenient.
All the other dragonriding abilities are optional. They’re fun to use, but not really necessary for anything except maybe dragonraces.
How to dragonride without ever running out of Vigor
Obtain most of the dragon glyphs.
Or at least up through the one that gives you 1 vigor regenerated every 5 seconds while going fast (bottom-right most dragonriding talent in the tree).
There are mods you can download that can show you where all the uncollected glyphs are.
Most of the time keep your flight path at a downward or gradually downward angle. The goal is to maintain maximum speed.
When altitude gets too low, tilt your view at a steep upangle to look at the sky. Then press the spacebar to activate Ascend.
After a few seconds tilt back towards the ground before gravity causes your speed to slow below max. If you do it right, you’ll gain considerable altitude and will regenerate the lost vigor without losing the speed buff.
Using this technique, it is possible to fly from sea level to above the tallest mountain in Dragon Isles, all without ever losing vigor or touching the ground. You could dragonride literally for hours without landing.
You can also use this technique to regenerate vigor if you make a mistake. Don’t have enough vigor to get up that mountain? Switch to a slight down angle and regenerate vigor this way faster than you could by landing on the ground.
Motion Sickness
Some players complain of motion sickness when dragonriding. Fortunately, Blizzard thought about you and added accessibility options to assist.
Alternate Screen Effects - activating this gets rid of the lines around the edges of your screen. Instead you’ll see muted wind effects just around your mount.
Screen Centering / dynamic camera movement - select options from the dropdown menu in the same screen to always keep your view centered and turn off dynamic camera movement. This disables the stretch zoom effects that occur when you go fast.
With these options activated, what you see on your screen while dragonriding looks exactly the same as regular flight, with the exception that speed is higher and there are muted wind effects around your mount.
Some players have also reported that using one of the smaller dragonriding mounts helps (either the green or bronze ones).
Controls for Disabled People and Keyboard Turners
One player reported that he or she was unable to dragonride due to only having one hand.
It is quite possible to dragonride with just one hand. All that is needed is the mouse and the jump button (spacebar).
A one-handed player could bind “Jump” to the middle mouse button. Pressing it would activate Ascend, while moving the mouse steers.
Pressing both the right and left mousebuttons simultaneously walks the player forward, which could be used for activating dragonriding off ledges without using Ascend.
Dragonriding may be difficult for players who only use their keyboard (“keyboard turners”). If these players are used to keeping their view perfectly neutral relative to the horizon they may not be used to angling their view up or down. Since angling the view up and down is critical to dragonriding these players are likely to have trouble.
It maybe necessary to practice with an alternate key setup practicing with tilting the view up and down. This will probably feel a lot less natural and take more practice than players using a mouse.
Dragonriding can be used to travel very short distances.
Need to get to a quest giver 100 yards away? Don’t want to walk? No problem. Hit “Ascend”, then immediately tilt your view down so you are looking at your target destination.
Not sure if someone mentioned it, but you don’t need to go to the trainer to slot the glyphs in. Just open up the dragon rising menu from that dragon button and you can slot them in mid flight
Was about to say the same thing. Which makes it even better for alts as an alt has dragonriding the moment they get to the isles no need to quest all the way to ruby lifepools area
Im at the trainer and Im not seeing the option for that.
I still have to find 4 glyphs…do I have to wait for maxing talents out or should it be showing already?
The first of the smaller mounts is the green dragon. You get it after completing the campaign quests in the second zone (Ohnoran Plains).
But yeah. Using flight points and ground mounts works until regular flight is released in a year.
Additional suggestions:
Try is adjusting your graphics settings. Perhaps a faster framerate might help.
Try flying SLOW - Dragonride in short hops using just Ascend without looking up and keep your flight path either level or at a slight up-angle. The idea being to keep your speed very low while still staying airborne as long as you can.
If you fly slow enough you shouldn’t get any graphical speed effects on your screen.
You won’t be able to stay airborne indefinitely this way and will eventually run out of vigor and have to land, but
This will provide a welcome change from riding on the ground and is still probably faster than a ground mount for short jaunts. It may also help you bypass some unnecessary monsters and reach hard-to-get-to locations.
