Zen Pilgrimage

Zen Pilgrimage is a monk ability. It teleports the monk to the Peak of Serenity in Pandaria.

Upon completing The Dawning Light it instead teleports the monk to Temple of Five Dawns. However, a portal leading back to the Peak of Serenity is provided on the steps leading from the temple, halfway down on the southwest side.

This is the monk equivalent of Teleport: Moonglade and Death Gate. However, it has some uniquely different subtleties.

The obvious difference is that Zen Pilgrimage has a long cooldown, the less obvious distinction is that it is different from normal travel to the Peak of Serenity.

Attempting to leave on foot to get to another area of Kun-Lai Summit teleports you back inside the building; the only way out is by using Zen Pilgrimage again or by another means of teleportation, such as a Hearthstone. However, players with flying mounts can fly to the Peak of Serenity and are not subject to the same restrictions when leaving it.

Despite the spell referring to "your spirit" and "leaving your body behind", this is a true teleport: you actually disappear at the former location and appear bodily at the Peak, and are not subject to any different game mechanics.

Unlike the Dungeon Finder, which restores your exact location when teleporting you out of the dungeon (including placing you back on a flight path or mount, if any), Zen Pilgrimage does not save your location with such precision. It only saves information about the zone in which you were. When you return from the Peak, you are teleported to the nearest graveyard in the zone.

Since patch 5.2.0, there are portals to Orgrimmar and Stormwind City at the Peak, which can be taken if you get stuck and cannot teleport out by other means. Previously, it was possible for monks to become trapped at the Peak of Serenity, with Hearthstones, Summon Friend and the unstuck suicide feature simply teleporting them to either the Shrine of the Ox or the Peak graveyard. Players were however able to escape by queueing for a dungeon and Hearthstoning from there, or using a mage portal.

For some time, it was possible to use Zen Pilgrimage in such a way that, in practical terms, monks had a second Hearthstone much like shamans' Astral Recall. Blizzard seemed to introduce a fix by causing the buff "Zen Pilgrimage: Return" to be removed if the monk left Peak of Serenity via any means other than using Zen Pilgrimage (which also causes the buff to be removed, once the player is returned). However, the February 28, 2014, hotfix has reverted this; monks can once again use Zen Pilgrimage as a kind of second hearthstone.