Reins of the Albino Drake

• Reins of the Albino Drake
• Item Level 60
  Disenchants into:
  Not disenchantable
• Binds when picked up
• Unique
• Requires level 60
• Requires Riding (300)
• Use: Teaches you how to summon this mount. This is a flying mount.

A blood elf riding his Albino Drake.

An Albino Drake and a Black Drake doing mountspecial.

Source

Albino Drake is a swift flying mount (base 280% flying speed, if you have the appropriate Riding skill), and the reward for the  Leading the Cavalry achievement.

Letter

The drake and the following letter from Mei Francis are immediately sent to players who complete the achievement:

Leading the Cavalry

I couldn't help but to notice how good you are with the livestock. With all of the activity around here, business has been better than ever for me.

I don't suppose you'd mind looking after this Albino Drake for me? I simply don't have enough spare minutes in the day to care for all of these animals.

Yours,

Mei

Notes

• It uses the white drake model that was originally thought to have been used by Proto-dragons. Whether the Albino Drakes will just be used as a mount or will have some lore associated with them in-game is yet to be known.

• This mount was released with patch 3.0.2, the patch before the beginning of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

• The icon that the mount uses is the same as that of the blue drake. However, players who look in the icon list of the macro interface can find the icon meant for the Albino Drake. The reason it does not use this icon is likely to be merely a minor oversight by programmers.

• Effect text was simplified in and the mount now scales speed based on rider (see [Albino Drake]).

Speculation

This article or section includes speculation, observations or opinions possibly supported by lore or by Blizzard officials. It should not be taken as representing official lore.

There has been some speculation that, due to the tinges of blue on various parts of its body, the Albino Drakes could have been some sort of creation of the Azure Dragonflight. In a way, the Albino flight could be seen almost like Malygos' version of the Chromatic and Twilight Dragonflights.

There is another possibility: They are focus of an unformed dragonflight, with very few individuals to form one. As exist other colors of the ancestral proto-dragons, like violet and white, still possible of some evolved dragonkin from proto-dragons of different colors. This open the possibility to types of unformed and/or uncomplete dragonflights, such as the Violet Dragonflight.

An additional possibility is that, as its name indicates, it is simply an albino individual from one of the existing dragonflights. Albino animals (and humans) are simply deficient of the pigments required to give them their appropriate skin, hair, scale, and eye coloration. Therefore, firstly, it would be impossible to determine which flight an albino drake is from, since the only differences between flights is in their colors, as they share the same model (with the obvious exceptions of flights which clearly use different models, like the Netherwing drakes). The blue markings on the drake may be there simply to try to make the model more aesthetically pleasing, and if we follow the definition of "albino" have no usable bearing on which flight it could be from, regardless. Secondly, because it is impossible to tell which flight its from, it could potentially be a new type of drake, but it is equally as likely to be an individual from any of the existing dragonflights that was simply born with the 'albino gene.'

Patch changes

• / Patch 4.0.1 (12-Oct-2010): Speed scales with rider ability (increases ground speed by 100%; increases flight speed by 150%/280%/310%).
  
• / Patch 3.0.2 (14-Oct-2008): Added.
  

External links

• Battle.net (EU)
• Wowhead
• Thottbot
• WoWDB