Few moments in Black Myth: Wukong hit quite like the first time the Destined One kicks off the ground, plants his staff, and whooshes across a mountain pass on a ribbon of cloud. After hours of trudging through the dust of RPG regions, dodging bosses, and tiptoeing around elite Yaoguai, the sudden gift of speed feels earned and almost spiritual. Travel, after all, is the quiet heartbeat of the entire game. Combat is what the marketing sells, but traversal is what makes the world of Journey to the West feel like a living, breathing realm rather than a collection of boss arenas stitched together. The developers at Game Science understood this perfectly, and they tucked multiple layers of mobility options into the experience — some obvious, some whispered about in the skill trees, some hidden in plain sight, and a few locked behind decisions many pilgrims never think to make.
Yet for all of that care, the question of how to actually get mounts fast in Black Myth: Wukong is something the community still debates months after launch. The reason is simple: the game does not treat riding as a binary unlock. It does not give you a horse in chapter one and call it a day. Instead, it weaves traversal upgrades into the story, into exploration rewards, into side content, and even into the post-game cycle. Knowing which order to tackle them in is the difference between a thirty-second jog to the next shrine and a five-minute scenic commute. This guide is written for players who want the fastest path to every riding option in the game, plus the supporting habits that turn those options into a real traversal toolkit. We will walk through the cloud mechanic that practically every player has, the ground mounts you have to earn, the upgrades that make all of them better, and the small, easily missed tricks that double your effective speed without anyone telling you they exist.
The First Step: Mastering Cloud Step Before You Even Think About a Mount
Before any horse, before any fancy reward, every Destined One has access to the cloud. Cloud Step is the first mobility tool the game gives you, and despite how it looks — a quick magical dash — it is functionally the spiritual successor to Sun Wukong's famous somersault cloud. It launches the player forward in a burst of pale, drifting mist, covering a small but respectable distance and consuming a sliver of stamina. Early on, it feels modest. Used carelessly, it feels like a waste. Used correctly, it becomes the foundation of everything that comes later. The reason is that Cloud Step, more than any other traversal tool, rewards players who think in three dimensions rather than two. The world of Black Myth: Wukong is full of vertical layers — temple rooftops, root-choked ravines, cliffside shrines, and the occasional illusory path that only appears when you approach from the right angle. Cloud Step turns the gap between you and the next viewpoint into a single button press.
Why Cloud Step Belongs in Your Fast Mount Strategy
The single biggest mistake pilgrims make is treating Cloud Step as a combat-only tool. It is not. It is your first mount, and arguably your most reliable one for the entire early game. While ground mounts are faster in a straight line on flat terrain, Cloud Step shines in the exact places where those mounts struggle: short gaps, vertical climbs, and enemy-dense corridors where summoning a horse would get you immediately knocked off. Spending a few sparks on its upgrades, found along the skill progression path for the Destined One, increases the distance and trims the stamina cost. Once it is upgraded, the gap between Cloud Step and a fully upgraded mount becomes surprisingly small. For players pushing through chapters one and two, a well-timed Cloud Step chain will easily outpace a horse on anything but open plains.
Unlocking the Red Tides: The First True Ground Mount
The Red Tides is, for the vast majority of players, the first proper ground mount in Black Myth: Wukong. The lore attached to it is appropriately poetic. It is a spirit steed, bound to the pilgrimage, that appears once the Destined One has proven himself capable of handling the wider world. Mechanically, it is fast, it can take a hit, and — unlike Cloud Step — it does not consume stamina per dash. It has a gallop, a trot, and a short-range charge that can be used both for travel and as a quick combat opener against weaker enemies. The unlock is not a quest reward in the traditional sense. It is tied to a specific narrative beat in Chapter 3, and skipping it — either by missing the related NPC or by fast-traveling past the relevant shrine — is a frequent source of confusion in the community.
How to Get the Red Tides as Quickly as Possible
To pull the Red Tides into your hands without wasting hours, focus on three checkpoints. First, make sure you have fully cleared the second chapter's optional Yaoguai boss, which is the trigger for the related story progression. Second, the moment you set foot in the new region of Chapter 3, do not rush the main path. Instead, locate the Keeper's Shrine nearest to the story NPC that introduces the Red Tides quest. Third, complete that NPC's short chain before tackling the chapter's main bosses, because the unlock is gated by story state, not by player level. Players who follow this order typically have the Red Tides within an hour of stepping into Chapter 3. Players who ignore it sometimes play through half the chapter wondering why they still have no horse. If you want a deeper look at the broader exploration order, our armor and hidden location guide covers many of the same map milestones.
Once unlocked, the Red Tides behaves like a classic action-RPG mount: summon with a button, dismiss with the same, immune to most light attacks, and vulnerable to heavy boss stomps. Treat it accordingly. The fastest players learn to dismount before engaging a major enemy — there is a brief, punishing recovery window if you are thrown.
Upgrading Riding Comfort, Stamina, and Gallop Speed
A common misconception is that mounts in Black Myth: Wukong arrive fully tuned. They do not. Both the Red Tides and the later mounts scale with two hidden stats: riding comfort and travel stamina. Riding comfort governs how long the mount can maintain top speed before slowing, and travel stamina dictates how many sprints you can chain before being forced into a walking pace. Early in the game, both stats are mediocre, which leads many players to assume the horse is underwhelming. It is not. It is just unfinished. The relevant upgrades are split across three sources. The first is the general skill tree, where a small cluster of nodes at the bottom of the mobility branch directly boost mounted sprint efficiency. The second is the crafting system, which lets you reinforce saddle equipment using materials from specific regions. The third is a quietly powerful source: certain side bosses, when beaten, drop riding charms that passively raise both stats by a small percentage. They are not flashy, but stacking three or four of them turns a sluggish pony into a true galloping companion.
Materials, Locations, and the Quiet Grind
For players who want the absolute fastest mount experience, a focused upgrade session in mid-Chapter 4 is the sweet spot. By then, you have access to the necessary crafting benches, the relevant smith NPCs have opened their upgraded inventories, and the regions you need to revisit for rare materials are short rides from major shrines. Spend an hour there, and you will feel the difference every time you mount up for the rest of the playthrough. This pattern — short, focused upgrade bursts between story chapters — is a habit shared with our gold farming breakdown and the XP efficiency guide, and it applies to mobility just as cleanly as it does to combat.
The Mind's Eye System: Your Real Fast Travel Mount
For pure speed, no mount beats a teleport. The Mind's Eye system, often referred to in the community simply as the anchor network, is the closest thing Black Myth: Wukong has to fast travel. Once unlocked, it lets you warp between pre-activated anchors scattered across each region. The system is not handed to you on a silver platter. It requires you to physically visit each anchor to register it, which is where mounts become essential. The faster and more comfortably you can move between undiscovered anchors, the faster the network grows. In other words, mounts and the teleport system feed each other. The first unlocks make the second easier to complete, and the second makes further exploration trivial. Players who understand this loop sprint through the late game; players who do not spend a lot of time walking.
Activating Every Anchor Efficiently
The trick to anchor hunting is to approach it in sweep passes rather than point-to-point travel. Pick a region, mount up, and ride a wide circuit, dipping into side paths only when an anchor ping is nearby. The Red Tides, with its upgraded stamina, can chain two full anchor runs in a single chapter without dismounting. Combine this with the cloud for short detours, and you can clear an entire region's anchors in a fraction of the time it would take on foot. Many of the same principles show up in our broader early build recommendations: respect the map, plan routes, and never waste a single stamina bar.
Late-Game Mounts: What Unlocks After the Final Bell
For pilgrims determined to push past the credits, the post-game and New Game Plus cycles offer additional riding rewards. Some come from completing the hardest optional bosses. Others are tied to specific endings. The most exclusive one is the Golden Hoof, a radiant variant of the Red Tides unlocked only by fully upgrading the original mount and finishing a particular chain of side content. Mechanically, it is faster and has a unique mounted charge that deals bonus spirit damage. Cosmetically, it is stunning. The point is not that you need it to clear the game — you do not — but that the journey toward it naturally includes a lot of high-quality exploration, which itself is the real reward. Treat these late unlocks as mile markers, not goals. The world is the prize.
Should You Rush the Late-Game Mount or Enjoy the Ride?
There is no single correct answer, but pilgrims who treat the late-game mount as an excuse to revisit and fully complete each region tend to have a richer experience. The combat in the weapon meta, the synergy in team compositions, and the satisfaction of defeating the final boss all benefit from a fully unlocked traversal kit. Rushing skips none of that. It just rearranges the order.
Hidden Speed Tricks Most Pilgrims Never Find
Beneath the headline mounts, there is a layer of small, almost invisible tricks that, when combined, can dramatically shorten your travel time. They are easy to miss because none of them are advertised in the UI. The first is momentum chaining: if you dismount while sprinting, the Destined One keeps a brief burst of speed on foot. The second is ledge skipping: certain low walls and broken railings, when approached at a gallop, can be vaulted without a button prompt, saving precious seconds. The third is spell-stutter movement: casting a fast spell, then immediately cancelling it with a dodge, produces a tiny forward skip that, repeated, creates a smooth pseudo-dash. None of these are essential. All of them are the kind of detail a pilgrim notices after fifty hours and wishes they had known at ten.
Stacking the Tricks for Real-World Speed
The fastest community routes through the open world combine the Red Tides at full upgrade, the Mind's Eye network fully active, and a confident chain of Cloud Steps for transitions. Add the hidden momentum tricks on top, and you have a traversal style that feels almost reckless, like the original Monkey King tearing across the sky. It is the kind of mastery that rewards the patient, the curious, and the pilgrims who never quite stopped exploring even after the credits rolled. If you have not yet read our broader exploration guides, including the solo build recommendations and the legendary weapon breakdown, this is a great moment to circle back. Each one feeds into the same principle: the game rewards players who move with intention.
Putting It All Together: A Fast-Mount Checklist
To summarize the fastest path to every mount in Black Myth: Wukong, work through the following sequence. First, master Cloud Step and its upgrades before leaving Chapter 1. Second, progress the story through Chapter 2 and pick up the Red Tides quest the moment you enter Chapter 3. Third, fully upgrade the Red Tides at the Chapter 4 crafting benches and chase every riding charm you can find. Fourth, complete the Mind's Eye anchor network in each region as you go, using the horse to speed up the sweep. Fifth, finish the post-game and New Game Plus content to unlock the late-game riding rewards. Sixth, layer in the hidden momentum tricks until movement feels effortless. Done in this order, the journey from a freshly minted pilgrim to a fully mounted, fully upgraded traveler takes far less time than most players expect, and the world opens up in a way that fundamentally changes how the rest of the game feels.
The genius of Black Myth: Wukong is that the developers never once treat mobility as a separate system. Riding is woven into the story, into the skill trees, into the crafting bench, and into the quiet corners of the map. Mounts are not a convenience. They are a promise that the world is meant to be crossed, not merely survived. For more on the systems that shape the late game, including respec strategies, PC performance fixes, and the wider guides archive, Steamoz has you covered. Mount up, pilgrim. The road is long, and the wind is already at your back.