Credit to Pesach from the Secret Finding Discord for this and our header image!
Originally added all the way back in Shadowlands Patch 9.1, the then Pilfered Gearglider was never actually made available to players. Rebranded as Xy Trustee's in Patch 11.2, the mount remained an elusive mystery throughout Season 3 of The War Within, until our dealings with the Ethereal cartels broke new ground.
Upon reaching rank 8 with the Manaforge Vandals raid renown track several weeks ago, players were given the opportunity to join a Broker Cartel by way of three new inscription recipes, each granting a week long title and buff identifying the player as a member of the specified cartel. Roleplaying opportunities aside, this seemed to be the end of it... though we all know that the secret finders don't give up so easily!
Making a deal with one of the cartels grants a week long title and buff, which signify membership and allow players to find the associated dead drop.
With datamined hints suggesting the existence of related cartel items and spells, Arerinis, XAM, and Mat of the Secret Finding Discord discovered the location of these secretive dead drops inside the Manaforge Omega raid, visible only to members of the associated cartel. Although this should have taken two more weeks to acquire them all, more secret finders on the case discovered a helpful bug allowing players to use the three contracts at once and the mystery was quickly solved: acquiring all three dead drops unlocks a new quest from Zo'turu at Shadow Point, awarding both the mount and toy.
Credit to Goldwyn from the Secret Finding Discord!
Thanks to the diligent efforts of the WoW Secret Finding & Collections Discord, each step towards unlocking the secret has been collected into a helpful comment below, complete with map locations and screenshots.
Requires at least Renown 8 with the Manaforge Vandals.
The Xy Trustee's Gearglider has been found by the WoW Secret Finding & Collections Discord.
In order to obtain the mount you need to join one of three cartels using the Deal: Cartel items crafted by Inscription (they can be sold on the AH). You can only use one deal per week on your account, so this takes 3 weeks in total:
Deal: Cartel Ba
Deal: Cartel Om
Deal: Cartel Zo
Once you have joined a cartel you need to find and loot the dead drop from that cartel hidden inside Manaforge Omega (it can be on any difficulty). The dead drops for Ba and Zo are unreachable if Forgeweaver Araz has already been defeated on your current instance.
Cartel Ba Dead Drop: Located after Plexus Sentinel on the right path before using Phase Warp to cross the gap. (map) (screenshot)
Cartel Om Dead Drop: Located behind the building after Fractillus, on top of a rock. (map + screenshot)
Cartel Zo Dead Drop: Located on the first mana-vent before Forgeweaver Araz on a pipe outside the path, try not to fall down. (map) (screenshot)
You can use the following script to check your progress with the dead drops:
/run for _,a in ipairs({{"Ba",80},{"Om",81},{"Zo",79}})do local b=C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(92000+a)print("\124cffffd000Cartel",a,"Dead Drop:\124r\124cff"..(b and "00ff" or "ff00").."00",b,"\124r")end
Looting all three Dead Drops will make Zo'turu on Shadow Point (the area outside the raid) offer the quest Somebody Like Me, which awards both the Xy Trustee's Gearglider and the Cartel Transmorpher.
