Mounts in Skyforge are useful for transversing open world maps and for moving around the Aelinar. Mounts are a very simple system with only a few parts to it, but let's go ahead and dig right in. Mounts increase your movement speed by around 80%, are customizable, and easy to obtain. They're also very much unnecessary, there is little need for mounts due to the smaller map sizes and the ability to teleport to various nodes on a map once they're unlocked.  

Mounts 

You'll obtain your first mount, the Gravicycle, at around 1,000 prestige during the main story quest. You'll have one license to use it, which grants 60 minutes of total mount use time. After you use a total of 10 temporary licenses, you'll be able to keep it forever (210k credits per license). There is a variety of other mounts that are also available in the game, including the Founder's Pack, and will come in various events. 

Mounts have health, that once depleted, it will de-summon you (and since you're in combat you'll need to either leash or fight the enemies to get out of combat). They also have a speed stat, as of right now the Hornscute is the only one slower and a summon time (all of them are at 2 seconds). 

For free-to-play players, as of right now, the only available mounts are the Gravicycle and Horscute, both of which you'll get a temp license for through questing. The Moah is from the collector's edition and the Stormbringer comes from the founder's pack.

Mounts are somewhat useful, but in no way required. If you want a mount, the best cheapest option to purchase a pack from the store that has a mount included, otherwise you're looking at around 2.1 million credits for a Gravicycle. 

You can change the style of the mount after choosing a mount.

While I don't want to hawk the founder's pack or any packs thereafter that contain a mount. It's probably the cheapest route to own one until a racing event happens or something more permanent comes to the game. 

Obtaining Mounts

Gravicycle: Purchase from the market, becomes perm after 2.1 million credits.

Hornscute: Purchase argents for the first time (basically a mount for $2.99).

Moah: Collector's edition.

Striker: Founder's pack.

Alternate Methods of Travel 

If you need to go somewhere in a hurry, there are a few ways to get there. First you can transfer maps on the Aeliner by using the big spinning globe. From there you can travel to any map you've unlocked. 

On open world maps, there are various quick-travel terminals. Unlocking one of these terminals will allow you to teleport to them for a fee (free for premium). 

Dashing 

You can dash to move forward a bit faster. You can double tap any movement keep in order to dash forward, left, right, or back. This is useful in combat and useful in any of the rare areas mounts aren't allowed.  

In general, transportation throughout the game is rather easy, the maps are generally small.