I couldn’t just leave it with getting the Skyscale mount in Guild Wars. And on the other hand, I’d feel guilty forcing Team Spode to help me out with every little thing as if I needed to be given anything.
The Skyscale was tough. I wasn’t doing that on my own.
The others, though?
The Raptor was my first mount. I got that one on my own. It’s given to you at the beginning of the Path of Fire storyline; I think you get it just after the opening. So no big deal. But it was my mount, so I brought her everywhere. No matter what mounts everyone else brought — I had the raptor.
We got the Warclaw when we were doing a lot of WvWvW. Getting it was just a matter of doing a lot of it, and we did a lot of it. Then when the Janthir Wilds expansion came out, the bears there also used Warclaws, so I got the cat skin to not seem so much like a n00b with the default WvWvW skin.
The Springer, Team Spode member Jovan got for me when I need a little more spring in my step. I could have gotten it on my own, but it was just a matter of teleporting to the spot and doing a couple quick tasks and then I could just buy it. Or maybe we just bought it — not sure. I went back there after, and did the tasks, but the mastery track is still locked for some reason.
The Skyscale brings us to pretty much the present. I said all along that if I could have just paid $20 and skipped the Skyscale quest, I would have. But since I did not spend that money, when a good Skyscale skin came up in the RMT store, I didn’t hesitate. It’s just perfect for an Asura’s mount. Kinda pricey, and I haven’t spent any money on skins for any other mount, but this was a way of thanking the guild for all their help.
I guess I could just have sent them checks.
The skimmer is another of the three Path of Fire mounts you’re really supposed to have. The Springer is for solving jumping puzzles. The Skimmer is for riding safely through the dangerous sand seas; it’s also super useful for water fights, like the Leviathan I fought this morning in the End of Dragons expansion.
This mount has some cool skins; the future tech hoverbike skin is very cool, but I’ve spent my money. I do tend to use the Skimmer more than I thought I might; the Skyscale is usually better, but not always. If you have to cross long distances without setting down, it’s not going to be good for you.
On the other hand, the Jackal is already cool; it doesn’t need another skin. This is the third mount you really have to have in Path of Fire, if only because there’s a bunch of jumping puzzles you just can’t solve without it. Unless you have a Skyscale. Jackal is faster; it can blink short distances and use sand portals to teleport around the Path of Fire desert.
For the Skimmer, I had to have the Raptor trained up, so that was good because it was already all set. For the Jackal, I had to have either the Springer or the Skimmer trained up. Since I’d just barely gotten the Skimmer, that meant doing a lot of Path of Fire content. Getting the Jackal trained up to use the sand portals was another whole deal, but it’s done now. I did it.
There are a few other mounts I don’t yet have. The Roller Beetle, the Glider, and the Turtle. They’re on the list. The Skiff, however, isn’t technically a mount. You can, of course, buy expensive skins for it, but you can have a mount selected and still use the Skiff, no problem, as it is more of an ability, like placing a door to your homestead. Exactly like that, actually — same menu.
You can take yourself and four other people around, anchor it and go fishing. It’s my first multi-person mount.
I remember back when End of Dragons came out. I was so discouraged about all these grindy quests that when someone said “…..quest……”, I just tuned out. Static. Hit pause on the brain machine.
It was just — go over there, kill a few things, save a villager or two, and you get a skiff. I really should have been more curious about these quests back in the day.
So, plans for the next mounts:
- Turtle — I think you can buy this once you have done more End of Dragons content. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t have one, so maybe it’s tougher than that.
- Roller Beetle — probably do some tasks and then get it. I think this one will be easy.
- Griffon — the fastest mount in the game.
Well, let’s talk about the Griffon. It’s another frickin’ collection quest. It looks marginally better than Skyscale. Jovan cautioned me against getting my hopes up.
Step one is finishing the Path of Fire storyline. That gets you permission to accept the three collection quests for the chance to grind all these things in order to get a mount that is more or less worse than the Skyscale that I already have.
So I guess in the end, we’ll see.
I’d encourage you to try the griffon, if the acquisition doesn’t burn you out. With masteries, it can be a very fun rollercoaster sort of ride when diving from height and after learning how to wing flap for increased speed. Trying the griffon adventures will slowly teach these, between a fair amount of frustration and challenge.
You can also have a look at some of the videos of Griffon Academy [Wing] that demos the sheer potential of the mount. Impossible to get there for me with my ping to the servers and my level of skill, but darned glorious all the same.
I’m going to give it a shot. If the collection is somewhat achievable solo, sure. The Skyscale one from the Obscure expansion was just doing so many rifts and events, and even then Jovan gifted me most of the collectibles required. And I still had to do a fair amount of stuff on my own.
I don’t have many goals in the game — I never bothered with the legendary weapon or armor quests — but maybe this one is achievable enough. We’ll see. I do like the whole swooping in for the kill thing 🙂
I am damn near positive I would like that game. It’s the only big MMO from that time period I haven’t played yet. I did actually buy the “all of it” Guild Wars 1 pack a few years ago, and had good fun with it. I was surprised at how lively some of the player hubs still were.
However, my spare time is only up to one game at a time, and there is a lot of inertia to overcome to try something new. If I have ten minutes, I known I can have fun with my current character in SWTOR. When it comes to a new game, I would need to set aside an afternoon or evening just to properly try it out.
I have never played SWTOR. But GW2 is also a “drop in for a moment” kind of game. They have a website where you can see if there are any public raids going on at the moment; each takes about ten minutes and gives decent loot and xp. Exploring is a thing in GW2, too. Most of the experience I got to level up the mounts in the Path of Fire expansion was just running around, solving jumping puzzles, finding points of interest, helping with tasks and basically just clearing the map. Only after that did I need to supplement it with actually doing the expansion storyline, and I think I am about 75% through it now. Dungeons, Strike Forces, Fractals and WvWvW — the group content — is there but entirely optional.
GW2’s strength and weakness is that good loot rarely drops. Mostly your gear stats are determined by the mods you have inserted into the gear.
And, since GW2 is not a subscription game, the fairly active store means that FashionQuest reigns supreme.
The most fun of all the mounts, in my opinion, is hands-down the Roller Beetle. I disliked most of the others and only used them for practical purposes but the beetle I have spent hours and hours with purely for fun. The races are some of the best I’ve done in any game. It’s also a very easy one to get – a single session even when it was new so probably even faster now.
The griffon collection is absolutely nothing compared to the skyscale. Also absolutely nothing compared to any Legendary weapon. It’s only long by the standards of games that actually value your time, which GW2 patently does not and never has. I actually found it enjoyable to do although it did take several sessions. An awful lot of that was climbing up to griffon nests in awkward places, though. I imagine with a skyscale those parts will be trivial.
Roller Beetle is definitely on the list. The Friendly Necromancer went wild with it — I think he did a bunch of blogs on it.
Just started on the griffon… wish me luck.
Griffon collection isn’t bad, but getting that legendary bounty to show up at the same time there are people available to help is a stretch.