The Azure Span Advanced Tour

i might've missed something, but the Iskaara Tour was by far the hardest race to get gold out of all of them.
Usually i beat the timer by 2-3 seconds in 2-3 attempts, on Iskaara Tour i needed about 15 trys to get it to 70.519 or just 0.481 seconds below the gold timer!

Guide to complete every Advanced race at Gold time

In the last few weeks of beta i have been doing all the dragonraces at both normal and advanced, here are a few tips & tricks to get to gold times:

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• Upgrading your dragonriding talent tree by collecting Dragon Glyph Embers is necessary for the Advanced races, however i did not unlock any extra dragonriding abilities for this guide.
  
• Try to fly close to the edges of the golden circles instead of flying through the middle, this saves a little bit of time.
  
• Try to use Surge Forward to gain Thrill of the Skies before using Skyward Ascent or any other dragonflying ability, Thrill of the skies makes your abilities a lot more impactful.
  
• Try to pick up as many green swirlies as you can without going off trail too much, these give you one charge of Vigor.
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  Below are a set of video's in which you can see how i completed the races within gold time.
  
  
  
  Race/Coordinates

  Required time for Gold

  Youtube Guide

  Archive Ambit Advanced
  /way 42.1, 56.8 Archive Ambit

  81 Seconds

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoh62XRraqE

  Central Circuit Advanced
  /way 48.2, 57.3 Central Circuit

  72 Seconds

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrAArs4N448

  Iskaara Flyover Advanced
  /way 16.6, 49.3 Iskaara Flyover

  70 Seconds

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY3iFfjRwr0

  The Azure Span Slalom Advanced
  /way 20.9, 22.5 The Azure Span Slalom

  56 Seconds

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lKBGIAsLyU

  The Azure Span Sprint Advanced
  /way 47.9, 40.8 The Azure Span Sprint

  58 Seconds

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW2ASCbKrPU

  The Vakthros Ascent Avanced
  /way 71.4, 24.6 The Vakthros Ascent

  56 Seconds

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIa3qUqC4jo
  
  
  All coordinates:
  /way 42.1, 56.8 Archive Ambit
  /way 48.2, 57.3 Central Circuit
  /way 16.6, 49.3 Iskaara Flyover
  /way 20.9, 22.5 The Azure Span Slalom
  /way 47.9, 40.8 The Azure Span Sprint
  /way 71.4, 24.6 The Vakthros Ascent

Overall I found this to be pretty enjoyable. Mechanically it's not perfect (it's in the WoW engine, not a racing game), but they did a pretty solid job of risk/reward on the advanced series that made it a fun playthrough.

If you're having trouble with the Advanced runs remember that you can bind the timepiece to your Dragon Riding bar and it will reset you back to the beginning (you need to be on the ground to do so, so just crater and hit it, aggro doesn't matter). It's not quite a one button reset like Trials or TrackMania but it's close.

As far as tips, I blew through this with both mouse buttons held for every race for real time turning and movement. The dragon's "bank" unlike standard flying mounts, but you can lift click to turn more aggressively which may help you in the races with hairpins and switchbacks.

On the Advanced series you'll get less air boosts but more skill boosts, so having all your Dragon Riding glyphs will help substantially. I did the first series with almost no upgrades, the Advanced could be done as well but you'll be hamstringing yourself mostly on the Vigor regeneration talent in the last row. The number of Vigor points you have is less important overall since it resets you to three (and slightly ticks up) at the start.

I'd like to see global and friend based leaderboards for this in the future, when the quest/achievement series ends it just kind of... ends. Would be nice to see comparisons to this for bragging rights.

The shoulders reward for completing them all is kind of meh, the pet is pretty neat. The cosmetic rewards are minimal enough to where no one will probably ever notice.

This can also be easily knocked out in a day or two, I've completed the full achievement tab on day two of the expansion. Hope to see more of this added (similar to Thorgast) as the expansion continues on.

Some helpful tips if you're struggling:

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• Be tilted slightly down as much as possible, only up when you're ready to boost
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• You're only generating Vigor if your wings are lit up/shining, if you're going through sections where you need Vigor and aren't getting it you need to change your angle of attack
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• Don't push for Gold on the first run every time, it'll just lead to more frustration - get a path of the course and then push it (as much as I loved the triple achievement spam for most of them it'll just cost you more time in the long run)
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• The Gold times on a few are fairly tight, but on most of them they're more generous than you'd think (I ended up with somewhere around 70% first run Gold on Advanced)
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• This means for a lot of courses it might be faster overall for you to go around things like the Stun Orbs or trees that are in your way - while trying to min/max my last course I hit the same tree branch 5+ times
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• Things like fire orbs/flame geysers do slow you down (you'll see a visual impact on your rider), if you're going for Gold times you can just reset if you get hit in most cases - you may be able to pass with one but two is likely too slow - swing wide when possible and just time your Boost
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• Some of the other guides below say you have to hit every boost for Gold on Advanced, this is absolutely not the case. I only came across one or two instances where deviating off path for a Boost or Vigor was worth it - flying as straight as possible as fast as possible will be your most viable route more often than not
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• Timing your Surge Forward will be important, mashing it isn't effective, and timing it directly into a corner will require wider turns. Use it in downward flight to cycle back Vigor quickly if you have the last row regen talent (At Home Aloft), and use it in the straightaways - motocross style racing (dig hard out of corners)
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One last note after a discussion with some of my guild mates, you can absolutely clear the non advanced races without completely upgrading your Dragon Riding. You can likely clear every Advanced race as well (but there are a few I would argue would be incredibly difficult to hit Gold time, I think if you really wanted to though you could do almost all of them with enough practice). With that being said, the time you save by upgrading your Dragon fully will make it absolutely worth it.

More than anything the time you save riding from one race to the next with a fully upgraded dragon is massive, even if in the race itself the upgrade isn't huge. The biggest one for actual races will be At Home Aloft which is the middle talent of the last row.

You can get all of the Glyphs and talents before 70 to make transport easier, I actually dinged 70 finishing the last round of the non-Advance races.

Good luck everybody!
- Isles Racer Gruntly