Glory of the Cataclysm Raider is the tier 11 legacy meta-achievement from Cataclysm, added in patch 4.0.3a and worth 25 achievement points. Finishing it mails you the Reins of the Drake of the East Wind, an epic storm-dragon flying mount. It is not the Firelands meta and not the Dragon Soul one: timesaver.gg sells Glory of the Firelands Raider for the Corrupted Fire Hawk and the Experiment 12-B mount farm separately, and neither shares a single criterion with this page.
Three raids, not one - that is the real difference. Glory of the Ulduar Raider sits inside a single instance; Glory of the Cataclysm Raider is spread over Blackwing Descent in Blackrock Mountain, The Bastion of Twilight in the Twilight Highlands and Throne of the Four Winds in Uldum. Three instances means three independent raid lockouts, so a blown hard-mode trigger in one raid never stalls the other two, and all three can be worked in the same week.
The 24 criteria split evenly. Twelve are plain Heroic boss kills - Magmaw, Omnotron Defense System, Maloriak, Atramedes, Chimaeron, Nefarian, Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Valiona and Theralion, Ascendant Council, Cho'gall, Conclave of Wind and Al'Akir. The other twelve are mechanic feats: Parasite Evening, Achieve-a-tron, Aberrant Behavior (12 Aberrations dead inside 10 seconds), Silence is Golden (no sound bar over 50%), Full of Sound and Fury (no more than 2 deaths), Keeping it in the Family, The Only Escape (two of Halfus's drakes killed within 10 seconds of each other), Double Dragon (6 Twilight Fiends in the Twilight Realm), Elementary, The Abyss Will Gaze Back Into You (Cho'gall down before anyone passes 30 Corrupted Blood), Stay Chill (7 stacks of Wind Chill on the raid) and Four Play. Heroic: Sinestra is not on the list.
The criteria that fight a solo player. Most of the work is throttling damage, not dealing it. Four Play wants Al'Akir killed while a Feedback stack from a dead Stormling is still running, which means reaching his second stage instead of deleting him on the pull. Stay Chill wants 7 stacks of Wind Chill still on you when the Conclave of Wind encounter ends. Keeping it in the Family asks for Nefarian pushed under 50% before he lands, so Onyxia and the pillar adds have to be paced around him. Achieve-a-tron is the one that punishes a spec with no interrupt.
Reward and booking. The mount has needed only level 27 and Apprentice Riding since patch 9.0.2, and meta progress has been account-wide since patch 5.0.4. Blocks run 2 hours at $26.99, 4 at $53.99, 6 at $80.99 and 10 at $134.99. A clean 24-criteria clear realistically wants 8 to 14 hours of in-raid time, so anything past the 10-hour block is booked as repeat blocks at the same hourly rate rather than promised inside one. Orders open on the US ladder and EU carries its own. Piloted is included, Self-play Remote adds 30%, Express 20% and Super Express 40%.
