I have successfully farmed the mount and I decided to give the farmers some tips. Some of these tips you may already know, some you may not. While there are countless threads about this topic, I have yet to see a thread which lists all the tips to make the run the most efficient.
First there are 2 pre-requisites:
1. You have to have the Stratholme Key (drops from Magistrate Barthilas)
2. You have to be level 75+ to be able to efficiently farm this. The higher the better ofcourse, but aggro range wise, I noticed that being level 75 has almost the similar aggro range of a level 80.
Now with some probability:
1. Drop change is 1% as already known
2. This stays at 1% no matter how many runs you do. However, the probability of you seeing the mount drop atleast once increases with the number of kills. Roughly:
23% chance after 25 kills
40% chance after 50 kills
52% chance after 75 kills
62% chance after 100 kills
76% chance after 150 kills
87% chance after 200 kills
It is very unlikely for you to not see it drop after 200 kills, but there is always the possibility. On the flipside, you may get it on your first 10 runs. What is important to understand is 'consistent running increases overall chance of seeing the mount' - So keep at it
Now that you are aware of the background information, here are some important things to remember.
1. Skip all possible trash pulls
This is definitely possible for any character above level 75, so avoid pulling adds if possible at all times.
2. Fastest route
This appears to be going from Spider to Baroness to Maleki. It could be done in any way, but I found that skipping the rat trap saves me atleast 30s of the running time. You can skip Magistrate since he is a optional boss, and it is recommended that you do.
3. The abominations
The venom dudes are the same for any class, but for the Bile spewer, it is better to save your Aoe attack to use after he dies. If you have multiple aoe attacks it is fine, but for melee classes especially, it is better if you do.
For example, my char is a fury warrior. If I use whirlwind while I kill the bile sewer, I end up having to individually kill of the bile slimes one by one. But if I save whilrwind while I kill the spwer, I can simply use it right after he dies and it cleans up all the adds instantly.
4. The slaughterhouse
After you kill all the abominations, Ramstein will come out from the slaughterhouse. Do not let him walk fully out, but rather, go in there yourself. This allows you to be locked into the slaughterhouse and you will be able to avoid the zombie Aoe trash after Ramstein. Also, the black guards spawn near the door as soon as ramstein dies, so if you are running low on HP, kite ramstein downstairs near baron's chamber and you will not aggro the black sentry guards when they spawn.
5. After killing Baron
Fastest way out isn't the way you came from. Rather, it is much faster to invite someone to your party, and log out. When you log back in, you will be ready to go again in a fresh stratholme instance.
If you follow the above rules, you should be able to pull off good 5~10m runs, doing all loots. Infact, it is pointless to go any faster because of the 1 hour max instance cap.
About looting:
Some people suggest you do not loot anything from the instance to save time. I tend to disagree on this for these two reasons:
- This grind could be a long-term grind with over 100 kills. If you do not loot anything in that 100 runs, you have potentially lost thousands of gold. There is no guarantee that it will drop even after 500 runs, so not looting anything is rather wasteful.
- Anything faster than 7m runs tend to lock you out of the instance, and this figure is definitely doable even by looting.
So you should loot what you can. Some tips for here too:
1. Only loot blues/greens + runecloth
Looting grey items tend to fill up bags real quick, even if you are equipped with 22 slotters. The greys here do not vendor for much, therefore it is much more profitable to just stick to looting greens+ and runecloth.
2. BoE items are worth tons of gold
With the release of heirloom items and also twinks, the level 50~60 enchanting mats are high in demand on any server. A greater eternal essence on my server sells for more than 10g per piece. Therefore, if you are an enchanter - then great, DE everything possible for sale. If you are not a enchanter, simply save all your BoEs and send them to an alt. Selling them to vendors would net you 1~2g, whereas disenchanting them first and selling enchanting mats would net you 10~20g.
Thats all the tips I can provide to make this grind a bit more worthwhile. If there is one last tip I could give:
MAKE THE RUNS ENJOYABLE
Well I don't know how enjoyable it could get after doing 100+ runs, but doing 20 runs a day feels much worse than doing 1~2 runs per day. Making it a long-term process actually lessens the feeling of the grind, and would probably increase the chance of you seeing the mount since you are less likely to give up after a burnout.
For myself, I simply left my char in strath and leveled my alts. Every time I would log on, I would do a quick 8m run then do stuff on my alts or raid. Then I would repeat before I log off. That way, I only spent couple of minutes per day which made it a breeze. On top, I got 2 BoE epics, enough runecloth to raise 3 alliance repuations to exalted and 10k+ worth of enchating mats and gold.
Finally, good luck!