Wintersaber Trainers

The Wintersaber Trainers are a small band of night elves who tame the frostsabers of Winterspring. They are an Alliance-only faction with no town, no vendor and only three repeatable quests, and they exist for a single reward: the [Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber], a white-striped epic tiger that no other faction offers. Reaching Exalted with them was the longest and most monotonous reputation grind in Classic, which is exactly why the mount was a status symbol.

Who they are

Frostsabers are the great white cats of Winterspring's high snowfields, and the night elves have long ridden saber-cats. The Wintersaber Trainers are the handful of elves who have made a craft of breaking the wildest breed. Their leader, Rivern Frostwind, lives at the top of Frostsaber Rock in the far north of Winterspring, surrounded by wild Frostsaber Stalkers. The faction has only two named members: Rivern and Chal Fairwind.

The trainers ask nothing of the Horde, who are hostile to them, and little of the Alliance beyond food for their cats and help keeping their land safe. Their quests are short errands, repeated hundreds of times.

Where to find them

Frostsaber Rock is a high ridge north of Everlook, reached by a winding path from the Winterspring road. Rivern stands at the top. Players usually set their hearthstone in Everlook while working on the faction, since the three quests send them around the zone: to the bear and chimaera grounds, to Winterfall Village east of Everlook, and to the giants of the frozen south.

Earning reputation

Alliance characters start at Neutral, and every point after that comes from three repeatable quests from Rivern. In patch 1.12, each is worth 50 reputation:

The quests need level 58 to pick up. Neutral to Exalted is 42,000 reputation, so a character without reputation bonuses had to finish about 840 of these quests to reach it. Most players did Frostsaber Provisions and Winterfall Intrusion together: they collected meat on the way to Winterfall Village, cleared the furbolgs, and handed in both. The village is shared with players working on Timbermaw Hold, whose bead turn-ins need the same Winterfall kills, so many Alliance players earned both factions at once.

Rewards

There is nothing else: no tabard, no recipes, no quests that open along the way. The mount is a fast epic ride, as fast as the [Reins of the Swift Frostsaber] sold in Darnassus, but its white and violet stripes are unique to the faction.

Because the climb took most players weeks of evenings, a Winterspring Frostsaber in Ironforge or Stormwind told everyone who saw it exactly how its rider had spent their time. Guilds sometimes ran Winterfall Village in groups to share the kills, and some players split the work across several weeks, collecting meat whenever they passed through the zone.

History and trivia

• The faction was a long-running grievance among Horde players, who had no equivalent. Blizzard finally answered in patch 3.2 with the Venomhide Ravasaur, raised from a hatchling in Un'Goro Crater.
• Later patches raised the reputation from each quest several times, which made the grind much shorter.
• In Cataclysm the reputation system was replaced: players now raise a Frostsaber cub through 20 days of daily quests in "They Grow Up So Fast", which rewards the mount and the reputation together.
• Players who declare war on the trainers and kill them drop to Unfriendly, and there is no way to win the faction back.

Sources

• Wintersaber Trainers (Warcraft Wiki)
• Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber (Warcraft Wiki)