Windsteed

Swift Windsteed.

Windsteeds are elusive flying beasts native to Pandaria. Vaguely resembling large goats or stags, they can gallop through the sky on magical clouds. They are incredibly gentle and easy to train as mounts, if they can be caught. The swift windsteed is one of Pandaria's very rarest creatures and is said to bring good fortune to its rider. Forest windsteeds live in woodlands and have dark brown fur containing pieces of bark and leaves to match. A spurious legend claims that daystorm windsteeds emerge from the heavens when lightning strikes the sun.

Known

• Crimson Windsteed
• Jade-Scaled Windsteed
• Serene Windsteed
• Shimmering Windsteed

As a hunter pet

Windsteeds are tameable by hunters as part of the Stag pet family. The only windsteed enemies that can be tamed are located on the Wandering Isle during the pandaren heritage armor questline. Non-pandaren hunters can access the island from a hot-air balloon in Stormwind City or Orgrimmar after they have finished the questline on a pandaren on their account.

As a mount

•  [Swift Windsteed] was formerly available from the Battle.net Shop and In-Game Store.
•  [Reins of the Dashing Windsteed],  [Reins of the Daystorm Windsteed], and  [Reins of the Forest Windsteed] could be purchased from mount vendors in Pandaria Remix for 6,600 [Bronze].

Trivia

• Windsteeds are based on the qilin (麒麟), a Chinese mythological creature often colloquially called a "Chinese unicorn" in the west. The similarly-named quilen in World of Warcraft bear little resemblance to the mythological qilin and are instead based on Chinese guardian lions. The vorquin introduced in Dragonflight are likewise based on qilin.
• The  [Swift Windsteed], added as a store mount in January 2013, was the only creature to use the windsteed model in World of Warcraft until the addition of more windsteed mounts in WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria, nearly 12 years later.
  • Similarly, no Windsteed creatures existed in the game for many years, with their only representation being as mounts. This changed in patch 11.2.7, when some were added to the Wandering Isle as part of the pandaren heritage armor questline.
  • During the Shadowlands alpha, the cloudstriders of Bastion were called "kirin" and used windsteed models, but they were renamed and changed to a unique model later in development.
• Windsteeds uses the horse skeleton with the /mountspecial twirl.