Albion Online Mount Types Explained (2025 Guide)

Albion Online's mount roster keeps growing, and each family covers a specific job—whether you are sprinting between objectives, hauling tons of resources, or anchoring a ZvZ push. This guide summarizes the major categories of mounts and highlights what they are best at. Information is current with the Mounts entry on the Albion Online Wiki as of October 2025, and focuses on practical, everyday use cases.

Understanding Mount Families

Every mount sits inside a broader family that determines its base movement speed, carry weight, hit points, and spell kits. The wiki groups them into standard riding mounts, transport mounts, gathering/utility mounts, faction and seasonal mounts, and specialized battle mounts. When you pick a mount, think about three questions:

1. Do I need speed, durability, or raw capacity?
2. Will I be staying mounted (transport, scouting) or fighting shortly after dismounting?
3. Am I risking full-loot content where the mount's price matters?

With those questions in mind, let's look at the major categories and standout choices in each.

Standard Riding Mounts – Everyday Mobility

These mounts prioritize speed and quick remount times for traveling between activities.

Riding Horses (T3–T8)

• What they excel at: Fast, inexpensive travel between cities, gathering spots, and instanced content. Higher-tier horses add more gallop speed and hit points, making them safe picks for blue and yellow zone players.
• Best practice: Keep a T5+ horse in your bank for daily errands. They are cheap enough that losing one to a gank is tolerable, yet fast enough to chain multiple activities in a single session.

Armored Horses (T4–T8)

• What they excel at: Balanced mobility with a defensive shield that helps you survive focus fire while escaping or rotating in group fights.
• Best practice: Use Armored Horses when you expect dive attempts during transport runs or when rotating in Faction Warfare. The defensive shield buys time for boots and defensive cooldowns to kick in.

Swiftclaws, Specter Wolves, and Other Dire Mounts

• What they excel at: These “dire” mounts trade some affordability for high top speed and, in the Specter family’s case, temporary invisibility. They shine in black-zone skirmishing and open-world ganking.
• Best practice: Pair a Swiftclaw with budget gank builds, and save the pricier Specter Wolf or Direboar for high-value targets where their abilities (invisibility or charge) justify the cost.

Transport Mounts – Carrying Heavy Payloads

These mounts exist to move resources, trade goods, or loot. They are slow but offer massive carry weight.

Oxen (T3–T8)

• What they excel at: Maximum weight capacity per silver. Oxen are the backbone of gathering runs and local trading because they allow you to extract far more materials per trip than any horse.
• Best practice: Use higher-tier oxen (T6+) when hauling in the Outlands. Combine with defensive gear (Guardian Armor, Cleric Robe) and escape consumables to offset their slow speed.

Transport Mammoth

• What it excels at: The king of hauling, with extreme capacity, a protective aura, and very high durability.
• Best practice: Reserve the Transport Mammoth for guild-level logistics or when moving bulk goods to hideouts. Always travel with escorts—its price tag makes it the number-one gank target in Albion.

Grizzly Bear and Other Premium Haulers

• What they excel at: Hybrid hauling and protection. Grizzly Bears offer solid weight plus a damage-reduction spell that keeps you alive through ambushes.
• Best practice: Ideal for solo gatherers who want more survivability than an ox without investing in a mammoth. Time the damage-reduction skill with enemy burst to survive long enough to mount up again.

Gathering & Utility Mounts – Specialized Workhorses

These mounts provide unique utility spells for gathering routes or niche PvE situations.

Giant Stag, Moose, and Winter Bear

• What they excel at: Blending moderate carry weight with higher base speed, perfect for solo gatherers who value escape potential. The Giant Stag family also offers a short evade dash on activation.
• Best practice: Run a Giant Stag or Moose when transporting medium loads (30–50% of what an ox can hold) through risky zones. Their faster gallop plus utility spell helps dodge roaming gank squads.

Saddled Wild Boar and Spectral Boar

• What they excel at: Fighting while mounted in PvE, letting you clear static dungeons or open-world mobs without constant dismounting.
• Best practice: Use boars for relaxed fame farming loops where you expect little PvP pressure. Their mounted auto-attacks and area taunts speed up low-risk grinding.

Mistwalker Jaguar and Windrider Eagle

• What they excel at: Mist and Roads content. These mounts provide crowd-control immunity or elevation skills, letting you slip through choke points and avoid dismount traps.
• Best practice: Keep a Mistwalker mount in your Roads hideout if you roam the Mists or do crystal spiders. Their mobility tools are tailored for that biome.

Faction, Seasonal, and Event Mounts – Unique Abilities

Each city faction has a signature mount with a faction-specific spell, and seasonal rewards often add limited-edition variants.

• Faction Basilisks (Bridgewatch, Fort Sterling, etc.): Siege-style mounts that petrify enemies or create defensive zones. Excellent for organized Faction Warfare pushes and ZvZ assaults.
• Faction Direwolves (Lymhurst, Martlock, etc.): Enhance ganking squads with slows, roots, or purge abilities. They work best when coordinated with party engage calls.
• Seasonal Challenge Mounts: These rotate quarterly (e.g., Primal Cougar, War Glider). They offer quirky utility—gliding over cliffs, summoning protective shields, or granting additional gathering bonuses. Hoard them if you earn one; prices climb once the season ends.

Battle Mounts – Large-Scale Warfare Tools

Battle mounts are expensive, guild-level assets designed for ZvZ and territory warfare. Losing one is a major setback, so treat them as raid boss cooldowns.

• Command Mammoth: Provides massive protective shields to allies, ideal for stabilizing frontlines during siege pushes.
• Behemoth and Colossus variants: Offer area denial with long-lasting ground effects that slow or damage enemy clumps. Pair them with locus fallbacks to control choke points.
• Fire and Frost Battle Wagons: Deliver ranged nukes that shred stacked opponents. Best used by experienced shot-callers who can line up engages with locust cleanses.

Best practice: Always coordinate battle mounts with shot-callers and support squads. Keep a dedicated healer pocketing the rider and avoid dismounting until abilities are ready.

Choosing the Right Mount for Your Objective

Final Tips

• Match price to risk: Never haul loot worth less than your mount unless you need the mount’s spell. Losing a million-silver mount with 200k of cargo is a rookie mistake.
• Carry repair kits and spare mounts: Hide one in your mount’s inventory during long campaigns. Remount timers are brutal when you are stranded.
• Practice spell timing: Many mounts (Specter Wolf, Basilisks, battle mounts) rely on precise ability usage. Test them in safe zones before risking them in lethal content.

Mastering Albion Online’s mount families lets you pick the right tool for each job, saving time and silver while keeping you one step ahead of the competition.