The key to getting gold in advance and reverse races is the Skyward Ascent trick (the flap upward ability). In short, using Skyward Ascent while angled up will massively increase your speed- faster than even the most well timed Surge Forward chain can get you. Then you simply angle back below the horizontal line and use Surge Forward to maintain that heightened speed. You NEED this extra speed to make the timers. Watch some videos of people clearing these races and you can tell when they flick their mouse upwards then aim back down and seem to speed up really fast- that's the trick. Once you get the hang of that technique, all that's left is fine control to ensure you're hitting every ring without smashing into something or the ground (I give up if that happens, since I won't make the timer), and ensuring you're using the Skyward Ascent trick at the appropriate places.Once I internalized this I managed to get gold on most races within a few full attempts, though there would be at least twenty abandoned runs due to poor timing or *!@#ups. If you're really having a hard time make sure to check videos to see when exactly people are Skymaxxing.
for anyone who doesnt know, once you pickup the quest in Valdrakken (where you change your dragon's appearance) you can also change what dragon you want to use for the Kalimdor races~ Otherwise it defaults you to the Blue Dragonflight one
Thank you for the guide, I was having trouble with the Un'goro Advanced but I finally got it down, and my time was 84.788 ! Super helpful :D
Thousand Needles and Azshara were definitely unforgiving, given the sheer length of them.Feralas and AQ were both fun and relatively easy- as long as you respected the intention of the race path it'd only take a couple tries to get gold on each one. I actually got gold first full try for all three AQ races.Uldum advanced took a couple tries (to know when to Skyward Ascent hop) but it's pretty clean. Reverse is a lot harder since it needs more SA hops and you have to save a vigor for the very end to SA to the last ring, but it's pretty reasonable. I can definitely see people having trouble with the section inside the mountain- I personally didn't but it's something that looks daunting unless you're used to how long SA lasts.Un'goro advanced wasn't too hard, but it did require a LOT of SA hops. Reverse was bit easier than that.Like I said before, most of these are nearly impossible to time without SA hops, but trivially easy if you get a good feel for the hopping technique and have good control. I'd also recommend doing them all on the Winding Slitherdrake- It's small so it's easier to avoid obstacles (though I'm pretty sure the hitbox is the same for all of them). It's also a shame that you have to do it on more than one character if you want to buy all the rewards, since even getting Kalimdor Racer leaves you about 90 tokens short.