Several years ago when I first played in the area of Nagrand in Outland, I fell in love with the look of the talbuks there. I didn’t use them as hunter pets though because…well, I have no idea why. Then I learned that there were talbuk mounts and I thought that was cool and started grinding rep with the Mag’har orcs there for a while.
But as I tend to do when playing World of Warcraft, I got distracted by other things and grinding rep for a talbuk mount fell by the wayside. I would periodically look for the rare in Shadowmoon Valley of Draenor that dropped a talbuk mount, but I never had any luck there either. I think there’s a way to get a talbuk mount through garrison quests, but I tend to run my toons through Draenor pretty quick and such quests get forgotten.
My desire for a talbuk mount always lingered in my mind but I kind of decided there was no “easy” way to get it so I mostly gave up. Then when I was leveling my void elf hunter Val in Pandaria I realized she needed a tank pet instead of her void warp stalker. Wanting to keep with the purple theme, I looked online for tank pets and saw that talbuks were tank pets and there was a black talbuk in Netherstorm that would suit Val perfectly.
I took Val to Netherstorm, found a black talbuk, tamed him, and named him Loki because my girl cat Loki has long fur that gets kind of tangled and resembles sheep wool after a while. Plus the name Loki just seems to suit a black talbuk.
As I quested with my new black talbuk Loki, I realized how much I loved having a talbuk as a hunter pet. I’m not sure why I never used talbuks on my blood elf hunter Sriset, but they seem to suit Val quite well. Having Loki as my pet also made me want a coordinating talbuk mount so I once again started investigating ways to acquire such a mount.
It didn’t take much digging to see that I could buy a talbuk mount, called a Ruinstrider, from the Argussian Reach quartermaster if I had exalted with them. I’d earned exalted with the Argussian Reach way back toward the end of Legion on my blood elf pally Solunai and I could’ve slapped myself upside the head for not realizing sooner that I finally had the ability to acquire a talbuk mount.
Ecstatic with this new knowledge, I hopped on Sol and headed to the Vindicaar to buy a Ruinstrider mount. There are six Ruinstriders to choose from but I could only afford one. After some input from my oldest daughter, I decided on the Umber Ruinstrider mount. I’ll definitely be saving up gold to buy more of them, but I’m happy that I finally have at least one!
Once I logged back onto Val, I mounted the new Ruinstrider and giggled with girlish glee! She now had a talbuk mount to coordinate with her talbuk pet and I enjoyed riding it around Twilight Highlands for a bit. Now Blizz just needs to make it possible for talbuk mounts to fly and life will be grand!
I’d become so fond of my talbuk pet Loki by the time Val finished Twilight Highlands, that I decided to tame more when I went to Draenor. I tamed three more talbuks, including an updated black model for Loki, a purple one I named Sif, and a red one I named Thor.
I wasn’t in Draenor long before I hit 98 and headed to Legion with my talbuk pets. Talbuks have officially become my new favorite hunter pet on Val. They’re tough and adorable and glitch in amusing ways sometimes but I love my triumphant talbuks!
Srinity 