How to Get Ashes of Al’ar

Barring a few exceptions, there wasn’t a whole lot of variety in mounts during the early days of World of Warcraft. The Burning Crusade gave Blizzard the opportunity to add a great deal of variety so that not everyone was riding the same mounts, and they certainly delivered. Over the course of the expansion, players could acquire all sorts of unique mounts like the Netherwing Drakes and Nether Rays.

Then there were flying mounts that could be seen as prestige mounts for those who were on the cutting edge of endgame content. This included the gladiator mounts from Arenas and the famous Ashes of Al’ar from Tempest Keep. If you want a miniature version of Kael’thas’s pet phoenix, here is how you can get the Ashes of Al’ar mount.

How to Get Ashes of Al’ar in World of Warcraft

In order to get the Ashes of Al’ar, you must go to Tempest Keep. This giant floating fortress can be found in Netherstorm, the northernmost zone in Outland. The best way to reach Netherstorm is to take a portal to Shattrath City and then fly northeast.

Tempest Keep consists of three dungeons and a raid. If your goal is to obtain Ashes of Al’ar, you will want to go into the raid. The entrance can be found directly in the center building that is connected to the pipe. Make sure you are at least Level 45+ before attempting to solo this raid.

Tempest Keep, also known as The Eye, consists of four bosses. Unlike most other raids, you can ignore all the bosses and head right to Kael’thas. While Al’ar is a boss in Tempest Keep, the mount does not drop from that encounter.

When you reach Kael’thas and start the encounter, you will have to fight his four advisors one at a time. Try to keep all the advisors near each other when they die, as this will help you later on. Once they are all dead, Kael’thas will then summon a bunch of weapons. Back during The Burning Crusade, players would need to loot and equip these weapons to be able to beat this encounter. However, that is no longer necessary, so just ignore them since they are conjured items that despawn after 15 minutes.

At this point, there will be a roughly one-minute pause where nothing happens. Don’t worry, the fight hasn’t bugged. The next phase will begin shortly.

As the next phase begins, quickly head to the corpses of the advisors. Kael’thas will revive them, and you will have to fight all four at once. Each advisor has some form of nasty crowd control, and while it is very unlikely that they will be able to kill you if you are above Level 45, they can stunlock you for a while.

The best way to avoid this situation is to make sure that all four advisors are near each other when they died at the start of the encounter. Then, once they have been revived, immediately use an AoE ability to take them all out at once. At this point, you will finally get to fight Kael’thas. As Kael’thas gets low on health he will become temporarily unkillable as you transition to the final phase of the fight. Once Kael’thas is back on the ground, you will be able to kill him and finish the encounter.

Ashes of Al’ar is one of the items that Kael’thas can drop, but it has a drop rate of roughly two percent. As such, it may take a long time to get the Ashes of Al’ar mount depending on your luck.

Tempest Keep can be cleared once per week per character. If you have multiple characters, you can farm Tempest Keep more than once per week.

Other Methods For Acquiring the Ashes of Al’ar

If you are getting sick of seeing the inside of Tempest Keep, there are a couple of other methods for acquiring the Ashes of Al’ar. Ashes of Al’ar has a chance of being sold on the Black Market Auction House, and it is a potential drop from the Unclaimed Black Market Container.

This method also relies heavily on RNG. Even then, desirable cosmetics like mounts tend to cause expensive bidding wars. While it is unlikely that Ashes of Al’ar will go all the way up to gold cap like some of the rarer mounts would, obtaining the Ashes of Al’ar via the Black Market Auction House will put a significant strain on your gold reserves if not outright deplete them. If you’d prefer to save some gold, you are better off just parking a few characters outside of Tempest Keep and farming it on a weekly basis.

Alternatively, there is a chance you can get Ashes of Al’ar from the Cache of Timewarped Treasures, which is received as a reward from completing the quest for the Timewalking version of the Black Temple during a week where Burning Crusade Timewalking is active.