Crimson Deathcharger is a striking undead horse mount from the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. It’s not a direct world/dungeon/raid drop — instead, it’s a special reward for completing the legendary Shadowmourne questline in Icecrown Citadel!
Obtaining the Crimson Deathcharger rewards players with one of the rarest and most prestigious undead mounts, along with serious bragging rights among collectors. Stay tuned as we walk you through a full step-by-step guide to help you add this crimson beast to your collection!
The primary method to obtain this mount is by completing the Shadowmourne quest chain and obtaining the Unsealed Chest after killing the Lich King, which yields the Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger. Only certain classes (the ones that could originally wield Shadowmourne) can undertake this quest chain: namely Death Knights, Warriors, or Paladins. If you’re not playing one of those classes, you cannot personally do the quest.
However, since the mount is Bind-on-Use, an alternate route is to buy it from another player or the Auction House. Buying it outright can cost a lot of gold (prices vary by server, but expect a hefty sum, often millions of gold, given its rarity). There’s also the Black Market Auction House (BMAH) way of buying the mount, but since it is tradable normally, it’s not a common BMAH listing (BMAH mostly offers no-trade mounts). So the focus of our guide here will be on earning it yourself through the questline.
Note: The questchain itself is rather long and tedious, so if you’d rather skip it entirely and get the mount without any hassle, consider letting our PROs get you the Crimson Deathcharger in less than 2 days!
Head into Icecrown Citadel and set it on 25-player mode. At the entrance area of the raid (Light’s Hammer), you’ll find Highlord Darion Mograine – he’s the quest giver for the Shadowmourne chain. The first quest is usually to prove yourself and then obtain the initial weapon Shadow’s Edge. To get Shadow’s Edge, you’ll need to collect 25 Primordial Saronite and some other minor materials and gold. Primordial Saronite was a currency from ICC; you can still acquire them either from ICC boss drops or buy them off the Auction House nowadays (they’re usually inexpensive on the AH due to age, but if not, you can farm ICC a bit for some or use emblems if you have old ones). Turn those in to Mograine and he’ll give you Shadow’s Edge, a purple 2-handed axe. This axe is crucial – you’ll use it for the upcoming infusion quests.
With Shadow’s Edge in hand, you have to complete three challenging sub-quests, often called the infusion quests. The first is Blood Infusion, which involves Blood-Queen Lana’thel, the boss of the Crimson Hall wing in ICC. Important: You typically need to do this in 25-man mode (normal or heroic) and you must be wielding Shadow’s Edge during the fight. The objective is to get bitten by the Blood Queen’s vampire debuff "Essence of the Blood Queen", and then bite three other players before the fight ends. Here’s the tricky part: since you’re likely solo, you won’t have other players to bite. This is the only truly troublesome step to solo. Many players solve it by bringing along friends or using multiple accounts/characters.
Essentially, you need at least a few extra players in the fight that you can "bite" when you’re a vampire. As the fight starts, let Lana’thel bite you (she bites the highest threat target that isn’t already a vampire, usually about 15-20 seconds in). You’ll gain a debuff that allows you to bite others after a short time. Bite your friends (you need to bite 3 different people total). If you manage to bite three people, you’ll complete the quest objective “Blood Infusion”. If you fail (didn’t bite enough people), just reset and try again with more helpers. After successfully doing the bites, defeat Lana’thel while you still have the Shadow’s Edge equipped. With that, return to Mograine and turn in the Blood infusion quest.
Next, you’ll tackle Professor Putricide in the Plagueworks wing. This quest requires you to infuse Shadow’s Edge with unholy power by wielding it during the Putricide fight and performing a special action. Specifically, you must use Shadow’s Edge on Putricide’s green slime pools by transforming into a monster. Here’s how: engage Putricide and during the fight there are potions on a table that normally a player can drink to become an Abomination (a vehicle-like pet) to handle the slime. For the quest, you have to be the abomination.
So, after pulling the boss, quickly click the potion table (with Shadow’s Edge in your inventory; it’s okay if you can’t "wield" as abom). As the Abomination, use its ability to soak up slime pools on the ground – this will slowly charge Shadow’s Edge with unholy power. You need to fully charge it before the fight ends. Typically, this means let Putricide spawn some ooze pools (don’t kill him too fast; maybe wait through a phase or two) and use the abom’s ability to drink the ooze. Once you’ve got the quest credit (the weapon will get the infusion – there might be an emote or just check quest log), you can finish off Professor Putricide. If you accidentally kill him too fast before charging the weapon, you’ll have to try again next lockout, so be cautious not to burst him until you’re sure it’s done. After completing this, turn in the Unholy infusion quest to Mograine.
The last infusion involves Sindragosa, the frost wyrm dragon boss. For Frost Infusion, you need to survive Sindragosa’s attacks while having Shadow’s Edge equipped. Specifically, you must get 4 stacks of a debuff from Sindragosa’s breath attack called Mystic Buffet or just survive her Frost Breath multiple times. In practice, this is the easiest of the infusion quests to solo. Make sure you’re wielding Shadow’s Edge as your weapon. Don’t kill her instantly; let her do her Frost Breath attack on you at least 4 times. Each time it should give a stack toward the quest. You might need to let her cycle through air phase or just take some breaths in ground phase. At level 80, you won’t die from her breath; it’ll tickle, so just be patient and let the debuff stack. Once you have the required stacks, finish Sindragosa off. That completes the Frost infusion. Return to Mograine and turn it in.
With the infusions done, Mograine will now give you a grindy but straightforward quest: collect 50 Shadowfrost Shards. These shards drop from ICC bosses on 25-man (they only drop in 25-player mode, and drop rate is much higher on Heroic). At this point, you should clear Icecrown Citadel fully each week on 25H difficulty to maximize shard drops.
Drop chance: Each boss kill on 25H is almost guaranteed to drop a shard. In practical terms, expect about 5–8 shards per full clear on 25H. With 12 bosses in ICC, it will likely take you around 6 to 10 weeks of clears to get all 50 shards, depending on luck and if you do heroic mode. Tip: Lich King can be skipped for now - he doesn’t drop shards anyway until you have the quest done. You can actually stop at Sindragosa each week if you only care about shards, since Lich King doesn’t drop a shard, but you’ll eventually need to kill him for the final step). Also remember that you must have Shadow’s Edge equipped while killing bosses to get shards. Also, make sure to loot each boss – the shards are personal loot for you and won’t appear if you don’t loot.
After some time, once you collect all 50 Shadowfrost Shards, turn them in to Mograine. Now comes the satisfying part: you’ll complete the quest and Shadowmourne, the legendary axe, will be created and given to you! Congrats, now you have Shadowmourne. Even though our goal is the mount, having this legendary is a nice accomplishment in itself (and you get a Feat of Strength achievement for it as well!).
With Shadowmourne in hand, the final step is to kill the Lich King (Arthas) on 25-man mode. Upon defeating the Lich King with a Shadowmourne wielder present, an NPC will appear during the post-fight event – King Terenas Menethil’s spirit will show up and present an Unsealed Chest on the ground. Make sure to loot this chest as it will start a quest and give you a bunch of epic items: Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger (our desired mount), plus other rewards like a Tabard of the Lightbringer, Sylvanas’s Music Box and Jaina’s locket. These were designed to be distributed among raid members originally, but since you’re solo, you get them all!
The chest starts a quest (if it didn’t automatically, the quest starter item is inside of it). The quest basically asks you to bring the items to their respective owners or something along those lines. Specifically, Mograine’s Reunion will have you return the Crimson Deathcharger reins to Darion Mograine (but don’t worry, you actually get to keep it!). Head out of the raid and find Darion Mograine again at Light’s Hammer. Turn in the quest. The reward for completing Mograine’s Reunion is the Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger itself (though you already looted it – now it becomes formally yours and doesn’t disappear). Since the item is not soulbound until used, at this point you can either learn it to unlock the mount or if you for some reason wanted to sell it, you could trade it away instead of learning. But since our goal is to obtain the mount, go ahead and use the reins to finally add the Crimson Deathcharger to your mount collection!
Congratulations! You now have the Crimson Deathcharger mount. It’s a 100% guaranteed reward for completing the Shadowmourne questline. The mount itself is a ground mount, usable by any faction (despite its Scourge look, both Horde and Alliance can ride it). It’s quite rare to see, since few people go through the whole questline nowadays or they choose to sell the reins. So enjoy the prestige!
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