Armored Skyscreamer

The Armored Skyscreamer is a flying mount shaped like a pterrordax clad in blue armor with golden tack. It is the reward for the Glory of the Thundering Raider meta-achievement, which requires completing 23 feats of strength in the Throne of Thunder raid from the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The raid is long outdated: it is now soloed, so most feats boil down to simply walking in and killing a boss on Heroic difficulty with the correct extra mechanic.

Besides the mount itself, Throne of Thunder drops plenty of valuables for collectors:

• Tier 15 sets for every class
• The rare Crown of Lei Shen from the final boss — a top transmog helm for plate wearers
• Weapon transmogs from the raid bosses
• Achievements and achievement points
• Hidden toys and pets from some bosses

The most common motive is exactly the mount and the plate crown.

• Minimum character level: 30 (formally). In practice the raid is soloed at any current level without issue.
• Flying: you cannot reach the raid on the Isle of Thunder without flight, and access is opened through a quest chain.
• Intro quest Call of the Thunder King from Captain Elsia at the Shado-Pan Garrison (Townlong Steppes).
• It is recommended to install the Instance Achievement Tracker addon — it tracks all raid feats automatically and tells you what to do on each boss.
• On Heroic difficulty the raid is no longer weekly-locked for outdated content, but the general ID lock still applies — you cannot kill the same boss twice per ID.

The raid is located on the Isle of Thunder in northern Pandaria. You can get there two ways.

Path One — Through Townlong Steppes

1. Fly to Pandaria (via the portal in Stormwind/Orgrimmar or through the Valley of the Four Winds).
2. Head to the Shado-Pan Garrison in the northern part of Townlong Steppes.
3. Pick up the quest Call of the Thunder King and complete the short intro scenario with Captain Elsia — it opens access to the Isle of Thunder.
4. After finishing the scenario you arrive on the island. Move to the northern part toward the huge pyramid — that is the Throne of Thunder.

Entrance coordinates:

Path Two — Directly

If the access chain is already done on your character, you can fly straight to the Isle of Thunder from the Pandaria mainland. You cannot fly on the island itself — part of the way must be covered on a ground mount through hostile mobs, but solo they pose no threat.

The meta-achievement Glory of the Thundering Raider consists of 23 separate feats. They are all done inside the Throne of Thunder on Heroic difficulty (since they include Heroic: ... feats). It is recommended to set Heroic difficulty right away — then the Normal-difficulty feats are credited automatically too.

Heroic Feats for Killing Bosses

The simple part — 12 bosses just need to be killed on Heroic:

• Heroic: Jin'rokh the Breaker
• Heroic: Horridon
• Heroic: Council of Elders
• Heroic: Tortos
• Heroic: Megaera
• Heroic: Ji-Kun
• Heroic: Durumu the Forgotten
• Heroic: Primordius
• Heroic: Dark Animus
• Heroic: Iron Qon
• Heroic: Twin Consorts
• Heroic: Lei Shen (included in the feat list through separate sub-entries — see below)

On outdated content all these bosses die solo in a few seconds. The exception is Ji-Kun (see the section on tricky feats).

Additional Mechanical Feats

The remaining 11 feats require performing a specific action during the fight rather than just killing the boss:

• Ahead of the Curve — Tortos: destroy both dangerous bats before they transform.
• Chalkboard Collector — Horridon: catch all drum directions in a single fight.
• Gentle Hands — Ji-Kun: kill the boss while keeping the golden egg intact.
• Genetically Unmodified Organism — Primordius: kill the boss without taking a single mutation.
• Do Not Touch — Durumu: pass the maze of beams without a single hit.
• Full Circle — Dark Animus: activate all animus types before the boss dies.
• Overload — Lei Shen: a specific lightning mechanic.
• Caged — Lei Shen: a feat on the cages between phases.
• Heads Will Roll — Lei Shen: a feat on the statues in the center of the arena.
• I Thought You Said Don't Cross the Streams — Lei Shen: a feat on the lightning.
• A Ritualist, You Say? — Council of Elders: kill the bosses in the correct order.
• From Dusk Till Dawn — Lei Shen: a feat on the phase transitions.

The list above gives the general picture. Before each boss read the exact wording of the feat in-game or in the Instance Achievement Tracker addon — it shows exactly what needs to be done in that fight.

Most feats are closed out solo in a single run. But there are bottlenecks.

Ji-Kun — Gentle Hands

One of the main stumbling blocks of the whole meta. The feat requires killing Ji-Kun with the golden egg preserved. The solo problem is damage balance: hit at full strength and the boss dies before the egg appears; hit too weakly and the egg appears but the boss does not fall after you catch it, and the feat is broken. Practical tips:

• Play a class without permanent pets so you can precisely control your damage.
• Calculate your DPS: first bring the boss to ~25% health, stop, wait for the golden egg to appear, catch it, then finish it off with controlled damage.
• The alternative is to go in as a duo — one player controls the egg, the other handles the damage.

Feats on Lei Shen

Four feats are tied to different phases of the Lei Shen fight. Solo the boss is killed easily, but the phase mechanics must be done strictly by the script — otherwise the phases skip too fast and the feat is not credited. Sometimes it is easier to deliberately hold back damage so the boss survives to the needed phase.

Council of Elders — A Ritualist, You Say?

The feat requires killing the bosses in a specific order. Solo this comes down to a fast damage split: you need to finish the right target before the others. It is easiest on classes with strong single-target damage (Fire Mage, Rogue, Hunter).

• Best class for farming the meta: the Ji-Kun and Lei Shen feats are most convenient to close out on classes with high damage control — Rogue, Hunter, Mage. The absence of permanent pets is a plus.
• Time for a full run: if you go in only for the Heroic kills, the raid is cleared in 15-20 minutes. If you take all feats in a single ID — plan for 40-60 minutes accounting for the time on mechanics.
• ID lock: you cannot kill the same boss on one character twice per ID. Feats broken on a given ID will have to be redone the following week or on an alt.
• Alts: the meta-achievement and mount are personal — they can be earned only once per account (the mount goes into the shared collection). But while the meta is not complete, you can grind broken feats on alts in parallel to hedge your bets.
• Instance Achievement Tracker addon: it greatly eases life — it displays the current status of each feat on screen and warns about actions that would break the task.

• Before your first run, read the description of EVERY feat in-game — some are broken by innocent actions (for example, accidental damage to the wrong target).
• Don't rush to kill bosses before you complete the feat. On outdated content damage is so high that the mechanics simply don't have time to trigger — hold yourself back.
• Saving the ID: if a feat is broken on some boss, leave the raid BEFORE killing the boss — then you can re-enter, reset the instance and try again. After killing the boss the feat is closed for that ID.
• The meta grants 50 achievement points and counts toward the overarching Glory of the Pandaria Raider meta — it makes sense to close it alongside the feats of the expansion's other raids (Heart of Fear, Terrace of Endless Spring, Tomb of Ordos).
• If you are stuck on a specific feat for several weeks — call a friend. Almost all solo-problematic feats are easily done as a duo.