With the opening of the Alpha of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, a handful of players were able to discover the first treasures contained in the Azure Lane, the third zone of the Dragon Islands. We have chosen to compile in this article the 10 creatures that we particularly liked for various reasons: impressive, fun or even adorable, they all have a little something! However, we will only consider here creatures with an exclusive model, forget here the “redesigns” which will undoubtedly be the subject of a future article.
Important : For obvious reasons, we haven’t mentioned any important elements not officially revealed about the plots of the Travée d’Azur. This also implies that all major pros and antagonists have been excluded from this small ranking even if some would have deserved their place.
Mon-Arc gnoll
This gnoll Friendly actually thinks he’s a monarch with a paper crown on his head. When we talk to him and ask him if he is king or queen, he gets angry and yells at us that he is MONARCH. He engages us through a short series of quests to kick the train of his own people who do not recognize their sovereignty, explaining moreover himself that they understand nothing but violence: “Hit you fools, or me eat you“.
Good… Friendly the bugger, certainly, but not too much all the same. This is a series of very minor and anecdotal quests intended only to amuse the players a little bit between two more serious sequels, of course!
The winged foxes
If they have no real use in the Azure Span since they are not the objective of any quest currently on the Alpha, the Winged Foxes stand out from most of the known creatures by their very surprising appearance. . Extremely discreet and difficult to observe since they are few in number, they seem to come from a cross between a fox and a dragon… A very particular idea, and we will probably want everything except to know the details of the design of such a creature .
They are Neutrals and therefore do not attack player characters if they are not attacked in the first place! Unfortunately for our friends Huntersthey are currently insensitive to taming…
The Mantrahorns
Also few in number in the Travée d’Azur, the Mantrahorns seem to come from a frightening cross between a ray, a dragon and a swordfish. Openly Hostile and even particularly powerful since being Elites, the Mantrahorns prowl in the frozen sea around Iskaar, in the South-West of the zone and are not the objective of any quest for the moment. They’re just there to make you jump when you basically put your head underwater!
The Djaradins
Absolute enemies of Alexstrasza’s Red Dragonflight, the Djaradins are dragon slayers par excellence. Worse still, it is said that they would have even hunted them for their simple pleasure a very long time ago. Now on the verge of extinction, this race of elemental half-giants seeks to recover its power to regain the ascendancy over the Red Flight… A power that Alexstrasza’s followers do not seem ready to grant them.
The Djaradins are currently a very small minority in the Travée d’Azur. There are only a handful of them in an area called “The Fall of the Traitor” where lie the remains of a huge dragon whose identity is unknown to this day, and their name indicates that their development is not finished. Finally they are Hostile to all players!
The Great Mana Wyrms
The origin of these sublime creatures is not entirely known at the moment. Appearing for the first time with the Promotional Pack of July 2022 (which will have made us smile since we discovered them at the same time on the Alpha anticipated at the time of the revelation of the Pack), the Great mana wyrms would be, to put it simply and from what we know, the little mana wyrms that we know (and that we meet in particular in the Wood of Eternal Songs) whose insatiable thirst for mana we would have quenched.
So while they’re supposed to stay rather small, by feeding them enough mana they become so big and powerful that they take on this extraordinary new form that the Sin’dorei seem to have already learned to tame and even ride. Like what, beware of small harmless critters!
Originally Hostile and present in large numbers on the side of the Azure Archives in the Azure Lane, the Great Mana Wyrms subside after a short series of quests and become Neutrals towards the players once the origin of their panic has been brought under control.
The Loutrekes
These little critters are probably not unknown to you as they were talked about during the event that revealed the Dragonflight expansion last May. Eagerly awaited by players, the Loutrèkes will indeed be present in the Travée d’Azur, often near rivers and near beavers, whose model is also completely new (but much less impressive than that of otters) .
The Loutrekes are obviously Neutralsand if we already know that they can be obtained in the form of mounts, our friends Hunters will probably be sad to learn that they are currently not tamable (even in specialization Beast Mastery). At least, for those of the Travée d’Azur, maybe others elsewhere are!
The Armoredons
This thing you see just below is what we call an Armoredon. We’re not quite sure where these creatures came from, but it seems to be a cross (one more) between a direhorn and a dragon. Just like for the other creatures of this classification having the same origin, we will not try to imagine how such an event was one day possible, nevertheless the result is there and looks really good!
Armoredons are Hostile to all players and are among the first creatures encountered in the Azure Lane. And yes, friends Hunterthey are tamable by all your specializations and are of type Ferocity (so they have access to theancient hysteria).
The draconians
Of course, it’s hard to talk about outstanding creature models in Dragonflight without mentioning dragon creatures. Much better defined and “clean” than what we have been accustomed to for far too long years now, these antagonists are distinguished into several clans recognizable by the color not only of their scales but also of their armor. The magic they master also varies according to these specificities, and they are naturally Hostile as you probably suspected.
There are relatively few Draconians in the Travée d’Azur and you have to go far enough in the narrative of the area to discover them. Nevertheless, they are very present and are even particularly numerous and dangerous in the rare places where they gather since they are often Elites!
The Bakars
Broadly reminiscent of our very conventional wolves, the Bakars are however differentiated by their much more imposing and threatening appearance. very clearly Hostile to all players, these “wolf-bears” as they are already nicknamed are tamable by all the specializations of the Hunter and are of type Cunning.
Packs of Bakars are mainly found in the eastern part of the Azure Span, near the Shield of Ronin.
The Sculptes-Cimes
It is difficult to explain concretely what the Sculpte-Cimes are. They appear to be “elementalized” variants of the surrounding Furbolg clansmen who have chosen to join forces with the proto-elementals and draconians of the Azure Span. Hostile, they are quite few in number and tend to prowl around the Vakthros Massif, far to the east of the area. Why did they join these antagonists? Mystery for now…
Bonus: The Elementals
We will cheat a little on this part since there are a total of 5 models that we present to you here. Elemental models that may seem boring said like that but are actually very different from those present in other areas of WoW. They are in fact proto-elementals, creatures that would be, according to what we know for the moment, the ancestors of the elementals… but also of the dragons! Most of them are hostile, and some are even enslaved by nearby humanoid creatures, the Gnolls for example (because yes, they learned to bind elementals but we’ll probably talk about that soon).
Fire, ice, air, frost or even tainted water, these very particular elementals seem to be one of the hearts of the intrigue of the Dragon Islands and we will probably discover much more about them in the coming months. When you were told about “hints of Cataclysm” in our Alpha Preview, they are indeed the ones we were talking about. And it’s rather nice to see that we will probably explore their origins!
mmo
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is slowly but surely approaching. But what do you really think in the end? What is this new extension as expected as dreaded worth? We offer our opinion in our complete preview of Dragonflight after nearly 20 hours on its Alpha!