Good Morning Folks. Last night I spent most of the evening chipping away at my Griffon mount quest. This is the only mount that I had not unlocked, and given that I did not have other pressing matters I figured it was time to quit stalling and knock it out. I was on the step where I had to complete each of the Open Skies achievements per Path of Fire zone. These involved some rather costly expenditures at 25g per pop, collecting griffon eggs, and knocking out a few specific event chains. Many of these had a Champion or Legendary mob at the end of it, which is when I learned the magical power that is the commander tag. There were several times when I tagged up, shouted to map chat that I was on an event chain for the griffon, and shockingly … people would just materialize. Hell, there were many times when I was thanked after the fact because apparently there were folks milling around in the zone who needed it but did not know how to get started. One can get used to having the power to herd cats… literally.
As of this morning, I am on the step “Sunspear Wisdom” which involves going into a story instance and collecting a bunch of tomes. I am not sure I can do this step yet on my Ranger, because I have not completed Path of Fire. I will have to do some further research to see if it actually works. After that I think all I have to do is return the writings to the Sunspear Sanctuary and then pick up my shiny new Griffon mount. I’ve put this off in large part because it was a good chunk of gold to spend on a mount that I was not sure I would actually use much. I use my Skyscale all the freaking time, but Griffon in general just seems like a less good version of that. Griffons however are MUCH faster and there are times when it would be handy to zip across a zone quickly when chasing a meta train.
I wish that Guild Wars 2 had something akin to the Fantasia’s from Final Fantasy XIV. My Guardian is an Asura and quite honestly… no matter how much time I spend on them I cannot get into them. There is just something about the movement being jerky similar to the World of Warcraft Gnome, that I cannot abide. So this morning I decided to use one of my spare character slots and create a brand new Guardian with the purpose of making it a Heal/Alac Hammerbender. Right now I am leveling the old-fashioned way because it has been ages since I did any of this content “legitimately”, once I get closer to the later levels I will use my boost on the character and run around in a full set of celestial gear which should be reasonable enough to at least get started. Then the question is whether or not I buy one of the Hero Point boosts so I can dive straight into Willbender or if I try and join one of the Hero Point trains. Hell, I guess if I so desired I could start my own…. given that I have that Catmander Magic.
Recently I kinda got back into playing the Warrior given that I was using it for unlocking a Gift of Exploration. I gave him a bit of a facelift the other day, and this morning I decided to continue that glow-up with a bit of a dye session as I have begun to lean into the whole fire aesthetic. I really love what you can do with the branded-themed mount skins and the color trails. I wish there was a branded Warclaw and Turtle so that I could just keep with that same theming. Springer is probably the mount that I like the least but even it looks cool with the branded skin. Right now I am playing around on Spear, which is to mean that I am not actually using a spear at all given that I spend most of my time in gunblade stance.
The other thing that I am trying really hard to get used to is making sure that I have parked my characters in my Homestead before I leave for the night. The experience buff is just too good to ignore, and given that I want to try and grind out another Gift of Battle this weekend, I am hoping to go into that adventure with as much rested experience as possible. I think the anniversary buff ends on Sunday at some point, so that means Saturday is going to be WVW central for me. All in all, I am having quite a good time in Guild Wars 2, and am hoping to maybe get some fractal and maybe strike groups going. If you are playing right now and interested in doing some group content, hit me up. Maybe we can figure out a time when it works for everyone.