For as long as I’ve known about its existence, I’ve wanted to get the Vial of the Sands so my World of Warcraft characters could become a Sandstone Drake. Transforming into a flying dragon is cool enough, but the ability to carry a passenger as a dragon is even cooler! Mind you, I’m not fond of flying mounts with wings because of all the flapping noises, but I figured being a dragon was worth the sound.
The reason I hadn’t purchased the Vial is because I couldn’t justify spending at least 65,000 gold on it in the Auction House or taking the time to create the Vial myself. That all changed when Warcraft introduced the Impressive Influence reputation boost last month. Thanks to an account I follow on Twitter, I realized that Sriset had exalted rep with several BfA factions and could therefore work toward paragon chests that contained large amounts of gold.
In a single day of playing and by questing around to get my reps up, I took Sri from 400 gold to over 14,000 gold thanks to paragon chests. I also finally earned exalted reputation with the Tortollan Seekers, which made me very happy. I’ll never get exalted with the new factions introduced in Visions of Nope, but I’m okay with that.
As I continued earning paragon chests, doing world quests, and so on, I realized I was getting pretty close to the amount of gold required to buy the Vial of the Sands from the AH. I still waffled a bit for a while, but I eventually relented and robbed Sri and a few other toons to buy the coveted item. As soon as I transformed into the Sandstone Drake and took the skies over Orgrimmar, I knew it was worth it!
Shortly after purchasing the new “mount” I used it on my void elf priest Zari to carry my daughter’s void elf rogue to Uldum so we could take a balloon ride. I also stopped at flight points along the way so my daughter could pick them up since she’d just made the rogue the day before. I loved how being in my shadow form on my priest made the drake and my daughter’s rogue all shadowy too!
Since purchasing the Vial of Sands, Sri has made up a bit of the gold she spent through additional paragon chests and I’m content that she won’t go broke anytime soon. I’ve also used the Drake to carry a couple more of my daughter’s toons where they need to go and that makes me happy beyond words!
I’m pleased that I finally acquired something that I’ve wanted for a rather long time and now I look forward to 60 and flying on all my toons with new excitement! The Sandstone Drake and it’s flapping wings is most definitely worth all the…well, flap!
Srinity 