* None of the mounts are faction-specific.
* There is no time limit to get the two achievement mounts--you can do them at any time after unlocking the prerequisite items (level 2 and level 3 Stables).
* You cannot upgrade your Stables to level 3 until your Garrison itself is level 3.
1. Building the Stables in your Garrison gives you access to a Stable Master, as well as six mounts which you train over time. These mounts are as follows; links are to screenshots:
- Trained Riverwallow (Riverbeast) -
- Trained Icehoof (Clefthoof) -
- Trained Snarler (Wolf) -
- Trained Rocktusk (Boar) -
- Trained Meadowstomper (Elekk) -
- Trained Silverpelt (Talbuk) -
2. In addition, unlocking the Level 2 stables will allow you to pick this item, the Black Claw of Sethe, up from the ground inside your stables. Likewise, at level 3, you can pick up the Garn-Tooth Necklace up. These items reduce the movement spead and increase the damage taken of your mount-in-training by 25% for the Claw, and 50% for the Necklace.
So how does the training work?
* Initial Quests: Upon building your stables, you'll be given quests to go out and lasso a wild animal. You must be mounted, use the item at close range, and then follow the beast around for awhile without getting too far away. The mounts are unlocked in a certain order, which despite the Icy Veins info, varies by faction. You'll still get the same 6 (8 if you include the achievement mounts) mounts in the end, though.
* Taming: Getting too far breaks the lasso-rope, and you'll need to find another beast and start again. Some tips: for the Riverwallow, clear the Noxious (hostile) frogs in advance, and use a Water Strider mount, or water-walking spells or potions. For the Snarler, do not use your zone-specific "special" mount if you have it (the Frostwolf/Talbuk), as that tends to bug the quest--and be good at jumping Once you return the beast to the stables, you'll shortly be offered a quest to tame another, and so forth. Within a day or two you should have all six beasts in your stables, ready to be trained.
* Quests: Each day you'll be given a daily quest for each beast, which will progress that mount's taming as well as rewarding a small amount (20) of Garrison resources. All you need to do is go out there, use the quest item--a whistle--to call your beast, and then while mounted, kill the quest mob. Different quest mobs have different tactics; some need to be kited, others are very easy to just sit back and nuke. Note that for these quests and for the achievements, some classes have mechanical advantages or disadvantages. Hunters cannot use their pets, mages cannot use time warp once mounted and cannot use mirror images for the quests (they don't attack), etc. Lone Wolf adds to a hunter's damage without the pet out, and you can place aggro totems down which will keep the boss attention briefly. However, any abilities that heal a "pet" (make a mend pet macro, talent Ysera's Gift as a druid, or talent and use Exhilaration as a hunter, etc) supposedly work to heal the mount. Outside of the achievements, however, such healing should be entirely unneeded.
* Progression: You'll kill a different quest mob each day, until the mount is tamed; at that point, you'll be awarded both Garrison Resources, and the mount itself. Icy-Veins has an excellent full guide here, links included, which I highly recommend. For the sake of convenience:
* Achievement Mounts: Part 1 Once your Stables are upgraded to level 2, you can begin on the first achievement, which awards the Armored Frostboar, shown here:The mobs to kill are the same for all mounts and they all come in the same order:
Rakkiri;
Great-Tusk;
Riplash;
Gezz'ran;
Bulbapore;
Gorian Beast-Lasher;
Darkwing Roc;
Moth of Wrath;
Thundercall;
Ironbore;
Karak the Great Hunter;
Maimclaw.
Clefthoof and Talbuk training quests go all the way from Rakkiri to Maimclaw, while:
Boar training quests skip Rakkiri and Great-Tusk;
Riverbeast training quests skip Rakkiri, Great-Tusk, and Riplash;
Elekk and Wolf training quests skip Rakkiri, Great-Tusk, Riplash, Gezz'ran, and Bulbapore.
In order to do this, you'll need to pick up the Black Claw of Sethe from within your stables (DON'T forget this) at the same time as you grab your six mount dailies for the day. It's best to open up your Achievements pane: Garrison, Buildings, then track "Advanced Husbandry." You'll need to go to Nagrand, while carrying the Black Claw, and defeat the six listed mobs with -each- mount, for a total of 36 kills. In other words, you'll need to kill, for example, Ironbore, with the Riverbeast, Elekk, Boar, and the rest, before continuing on to the next mob. Each one has a respawn timer of only a few minutes, so it takes a couple of hours, tops. Note that it is best to do this achievement -before- you finish your quest chains and learn the actual mounts, for reasons I'll go into below. Upon completing the achievement, the Frostboar will appear in your Mounts pane.
With only a 25% debuff to damage taken and speed, this achievement is not particularly hard for most DPS to accomplish--I did it on a fire mage in PvP gear without much issue, and fire is currently dead last in terms of DPS.
Note: If you have a friend with the level 3 stables, you can pick up both the Garn-Tooth Necklace and the Black Claw of Sethe from their Garrison, and killing a boss will count toward -both- achievements. The buff, however, appears to stack, at least visually. Update: "Stables: Corrected an issue where players could complete The Stable Master achievement without owning a Level 3 Stable." This hotfix was applied on December 17th.
You can supposedly pick up the Black Claw of Sethe from a friend's stables if yours is only level 1. However, to pick up the Garn-Tooth Necklace, you have to do a quest (which only involves listening to a one-page 'story' about it), so you -may- not be able to get this one from a friend's level 3 stables. TRY IT, though; it'd be far easier to complete with whistles that do not have limited charges--see below.