Good Morning Friends! I am so exceptionally happy to announce that I am part of the Skyscale Club as my friend Pixel put it last night. The truth is the entire process was way more of a mental barrier than it actually was to go through the steps to complete it. Had I tried to do this back when the mount went in, I understand it was a bit worse. Leading up to the anniversary of Guild Wars 2 they introduced a number of “return to” achievements for each of the zones that in turn reward you exactly the amount of currency needed to buy your Skyscale saddle. Sure you still need raw gold, but I was also lucky in that department because last year upon returning to the game I lucked into a drop that sold for several thousand and that has largely been able to fund any shenanigans that I want to get up to. Having gold has been a significant benefit to improving my enjoyment of the game because it has allowed me to simply buy my way out of a number of frustrations along the way.
The Jumping Puzzles were far less frustrating than I expected them to be. I thought that step in the process would kill my momentum entirely. I give a lot of credit to BlishHUD and the ReacTif marker pack which you can see marking the path I should take in blue in the above screenshot. Essentially you have to find your wayward Skyscale in 21 locations, two of which are world boss encounters I am exceptionally familiar with, and the rest are generally some sort of a jumping puzzle or in later zones a mount-based jumping puzzle. You have a way of buying yourself out of frustration in the form of an Extra-Pungent Skyscale Treat which summons the nearest Skyscale to your destination. Out of the 21 objectives, I completed 14 of them on my own and bought my way out of 7… after giving them an attempt and deciding it was worth the 4 gold to simply not have to care about it anymore. The game gives you one of the treats for free when you get the recipe and then I crafted 6 more at 4 gold each for a total of 24 gold that I did not need to spend.
I finished up around 7 pm last night and of course, had to spend some time carefully dying a mount skin the way I wanted it. I picked up the Branded skin for Skyscale well ahead of time because I love the other branded mount skins for their ability to have crackling energy in whatever color you choose. Then I spent the obligatory hour just flying around doing stupid stuff and not really making any forward momentum in any direction. It is going to take me a bit to optimize traveling on a Skyscale, because they are very much not just “GM Flight” as Tam calls it. You need to figure out places where you will land to pick back up stamina before ascending higher. At face value, it is much like a glider in that it slowly loses altitude over time. If you land on any flat surface for a short period of time while moving, you pick back up momentum and can ascend higher so you sorta have to plan your path to optimize places to land and places to ascend. What they do excel at however is hovering in place, and so long as you are not moving you are not losing altitude.
What I did not expect was just how attached to the Skyscale I would end up getting. I really wish that we were allowed to name ours and associate some general personalization to them. By the time you get your mount, you have fed them, cleaned up after them, taught them how to hide, and how to play catch. You’ve spent a lot of time getting used to your new friend, and even in the quest chain they become sullen when you are not around… immediately cheering up when you show back up. It is my sweet smushy faced baby, and I sorta wish I could at least bestow them a name. The Skyscale is essentially a Tamagotchi that you get to ride around, and it would be so much more interesting if we could see the names players bestow upon them. What I also did not expect is that I would now look fondly upon the journey I just completed. Sure it was a lot of tedious busywork, but the charm and personality of the quest chain really help to curb the annoyance of having to collect that 20th egg or scale.
The Final step in the quest chain involves riding your Skyscale in 28 different zones scattered around the game and studying reality tears. Essentially this means you need to fly up and hover in a tear until a bar fills, then move to the next zone and do the same thing. I fully expected this last process before you finally get your mount and have full control over it to feel extremely frustrating, but in reality, it felt like a bit of a victory lap. The hard parts of the quest chain were over and now you were getting to know your mount controls before the game truly took off the training wheels. I’d maybe cut the number of zones you have to visit in half though, because like most things in Guild Wars 2… it sort of outstays its welcome. I am looking at you every boss fight in the story quests that lasts two to three times more than it probably should.
Now I set my sights on finishing up my Griffon. I started on this some time back and am in the “Open Skies” meta-achievements section. This will go so much quicker now that I have a flying mount of my own to reach a few of the eggs that frustrated me. I am looking at you “egg at the top of the damned branded pyramid”. After that, I think I will sort out how to get my Roller Beetle and maybe get serious about trying to get my Siege Turtle. I’ve been growing and harvesting Kale in my home instance for a while now so hopefully, I have a goodly amount of that when it comes to feeding my “smol” shelled friend. I suppose after I wrap all of those up, I need to get properly motivated to work on an epic weapon and get one of those under my belt.
Congrats! Scooter and I definitely felt like the Griffon was actually harder than the Skyscale, partly because of a random seeming follow-on event in the Desert Highlands. To me personally, the Rollerbeetle is the most fun mount; the Skyscale is more utilitarian. Even with the energy limitation, it trivializes a tremendous amount of landscape.
Congratulations on the Skyscale! It certainly makes it easy to get practically anywhere, especially on low-level alts trying to reach vistas. I find I do still use the Springer sometimes, just because leaping up ledges is quicker than sloooowly ascending them on the Skyscale.
And if it were me, I’d go for the beetle next, as it’s more generally useful than the Gryphon – it’s great for getting across maps quickly (sometimes even quicker than a loading screen), and personally I find it more fun to, er, ‘drive’.