How To Find The Recipe For The Alchemy Mount – Vial of the Sands

This might as well be called the Archaeology mount since you will be spending more time with that profession than Alchemy to obtain the recipe for the Vial of the Sands mount. It has been verified by a GM response that the recipe is a rare drop from Archaeology. We had to do some digging to find all the information that we could, there just isn’t much out there yet. So this information will come from a combination of data mining, forums, and player experiences. The cost associated with obtaining this mount is easily over 50,000 gold this early in the expansion we have come to realize. The last comment brings up a good point, the huge opportunity cost that comes with obtaining one. You are giving up Truegold transmutes, consumable sales, volatile sales, and a lot of time to be one of the first people to craft one. This is why we compared it to the Sea Turtle mount, it is a huge time sink and has an opportunity cost or time that you could have spent making large profits on the auction house. For those that don’t know what opportunity cost is, in short, it is what you give up to get something else. If you spend time doing something for one hour, you have to give up doing other things during that hour. This is a concept understood by a lot of gold capped players.

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One of the first players to have this drop for them only had 465 Alchemy, but maxed 525 Archaeology. The Recipe: Vial of the Sands was contained in a Canopic Jar. The recipe is not guaranteed; various players have reported receiving nothing but vendor trash inside of the jar. The recipe will most likely only drop for players that have Alchemy.

Notes:

• The jar is Bind on Pickup
• The recipe inside the jar is Bind on Pickup
• The crafted mount is Bind on Pickup
• 3 levels of RNG (Project, Dig Site, Jar Contents)

Player Comments:

The goblin racial does work, I went over there on my guildless goblin shaman and was able to buy the sands of time for 2400g each and the pyrium-laced crystalline vial for 4000g, saving a total of 5800g to get all the required mats from her. -EbonAries

I’ve had a few questions asked to me, I got it in the Canopic Jar grey item, which can only be found as Tol’vir artifact in Uldum, it is a common item. My alchemy was only 465 at the time, and my Archaeology was capped at 525. – Lunasea

No, you can’t choose what you get. Once you start an artifact you have to finish it to clear it and then you randomly get assigned another one. I have gotten multiple copies of night elf artifacts in a row without having discovered other items. I’m going to assume at this point it’s RNG on the artifact you discover. I hit max Arch a little while ago, now I have to get lucky on the Uldum digs. – Mekanikos

Its a smart loot, so I am guessing it is actually common from the canopic jar FOR Alchemists. The rarity comes from this: Must have 525 Alchemy to use > Must have 450 Archeaology to get a canopic jar project > Canopic jar project is pure RNG as are all the other multitudes of common grey items > Once you get a canopic jar project RNG determines how often you actually get Tol’Vir digsites. So its a recipe that is buried (pardon the pun) in 2 layers of RNG from a secondary profession for a primary profession that then requires 20-30k gold to make. That is what will make it rare. I doubt the drop rate from the jar for Alchemists is actually all that low. – Leftineus

Got the pattern today, will be able to craft before the end of the week. This is what it cost me (with no outside/guild help).

Time costs:

• 35+ hours leveling/searching archy in order to hit max and find the pattern in uldum.
• 10+ hours herbing to level alch/produce the flasks and violatiles involved.
• 2 hours fishing to get the fish for the deepstone pots

Gold costs/opportunity costs:

• 29k vendor mats
• 16k+ in Truegold (Just post launch prices)
• 2k in flasks
• 160g in oil
• 10 blown transmute cooldowns (around 5.5k gold on my server at the bare minimum)
• unable to sell truegolds for 5k+ first day of expansion.

so just taking these base costs I put my grand total at:

• 52,660 Gold
• if I add Gold per hour opportunity cost from my farmer ( around 500g/hour on average) in order to accuire the pattern/craft it.
• 76,160 Gold!

This mount is a HUGE headache, so causals- think about it long and hard before you farm/grind arch or level alchemy to get this bad boy its the BIGGEST time sink I’ve ever done in this game. – tangless