Kalimdor Racing Completionist: Gold

As there is no way to see this achievement as long as you don't have the silver nor bronze one, here is a quick macro to allow you to have an idea on what's missing :

/run for _,a in pairs({17714,17717,17720}) do for i=1,GetAchievementNumCriteria(a) do local n,_,d=GetAchievementCriteriaInfo(a,i) print(format("%s %s",n,d and "\124cFF00FF00Done\124r" or "\124cFFFF0000Missing\124r")) end end

Some general tips

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• Momentum is key. I know this seems obvious, but consider that, the faster you're going, the sooner you reach green spheres, which you can in turn use to keep your speed up, which in turn gets you to the next one faster. This feedback loop is critical for getting good times. Once speed is lost, it's often hard to regain. You'll also find that, once you do keep your momentum up sufficiently, you'll destroy even the advanced and reverse timers - it might just take a few tries to figure each course out.
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• Sometimes a small deviation to grab a green sphere is worth it. This has probably been more true in previous courses, but in Winterspring (which might be the hardest overall course this time around), there's a notable part where this is really helpful. There may be others which I missed, don't be afraid to deviate a little to grab a green sphere.
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• Turning costs you some speed. Because of this, try to avoid using surge forward into a turn. Make the turn, then surge forward.
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• Do use skyward ascent where appropriate. Don't just angle up and hit surge forward when you want to gain a non-trivial amount of height. Skyward ascent is a great ability that gives you a ton more momentum than you might expect. Make sure you don't under-utilise it.
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• In the same vein, there are vanishingly few opportunities for whirling surge - at best a couple in the thousand needles course, but even there it's not really good. The vigor cost is just too high, you're always better off using that same vigor for 3 spaced out surge forwards.
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• Bronze timelock doesn't currently work in Kalimdor. Obviously you can't place it prior to a race, but interestingly it's disabled during races as well. You don't really need it, and beyond very occasionally getting a small skip to the end, it was rarely used in races anyway.
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• Aerial halt has no use for races and should be avoided.
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Some race-specific thoughts

I found that there were:

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• 3 harder courses, Winterspring, Ahn'Qiraj (reverse only), Feralas - these took a good few tries and decent optimisation. These generally have both a somewhat challenging design and a tight timer.
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• 5 medium-difficulty courses, Durotar, Ashenvale, Hyjal, Desolace, Uldum - I couldn't on-sight these, and it took 3 or 4 tries to get them right. These generally have had a tight timer or a challenging course, but not both.
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• 8 easy courses, Felwood, Un'goro, Barrens Razorfen, Nordrassil, Stonetalon, Azshara, Thousand Needles, Barrens Divide - these took 1-2 tries, and usually took a significant mistake a fail.
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Your mileage may vary, I might've had a lucky or unlucky run in a few places, but if like me you prefer to get the hard ones over with first, this might give you something to start from. I recorded how many tries each race took and some course-specific thoughts and tips for anyone interested. Ordered by how difficult I found each course.

Course

Normal

Advanced

Reverse

Comments

Winterspring

1

5

4

Grab the green orb slightly off the route. I had several tries at least 0.5s off before I did this, then went 3s under. This one is tight and a bit unforgiving.

Ahn'Qiraj

1

1

8

Normal and advanced were easy, reverse took a ton of tries. In the end, I saved some vigor to get up the stairs (you'll see where this is) to blast to the end. There might be some better tech.

Feralas

2

4

4

Medium-hard - the timer is actually OK on this one, but it's easy to make a mistake and lose all your momentum or clip something. Be especially careful around the colosseum.

Durotar

1

4

1

Medium difficulty, generous timer but quite a tight course, lots of winding turns in the first half on advanced. Actually far easier in reverse.

Ashenvale

1

4

2

Medium difficulty, timer is not entirely free, but not too bad either. Quite a few obstacles for you to snag yourself on if you aren't careful, several gates to go through, which include a long horizontal.

Hyjal

1

4

4

Medium difficulty, easy to make a mistake on, reasonably tight timer.

Desolace

1

3

3

Medium difficulty, reasonable timer, but quite a few opportunities to mess up the course.

Uldum

1

3

1

Medium difficulty with a moderately tight timer.

Felwood

1

2

1

Fairly easy, timer seems generous enough, but a few things you can catch yourself on.

Un'goro

1

2

1

An easy course with a reasonably tight timer.

Barrens Razorfen

1

1

2

Fairly easy, a generous timer, but a couple of tight turns.

Nordrassil

1

1

1

Very easy, short course with a generous timer, just watch out for the branches. Easily got gold first try with a not especially good performance.

Stonetalon

1

1

1

A medium course with an extremely generous timer.

Barrens Divide

1

1

1

Very short, not a difficult timer, just dodge lava.

Azshara

1

1

1

A very, very long course, with a generous timer. I made a really bad mistake on reverse and still got it in one try. As an aside, despite being insanely long, I love this course, maybe the most fun one they've ever made.

Thousand Needles

1

1

1

An extremely easy course - just keep pushing forward - more than you usually would, you can't really run out of vigor.

This achievement really makes you appreciate every tree branch across Kalimdor.