Guild Wars 2 mounts - the Griffon

This is a mount that is in the MMO Guild Wars 2. I had mentioned before that this game is free to download and free to play (no monthly fee,) and this is true. However, while the free version of the game gives you an absolutely immense world to get used to the game in it does NOT include mounts. The mounts (and a whole lot of other content) is contained in one of the game's two add ons, which cost about $40 each. This isn't a bad price when you consider that you will never have to pay a monthly subscription.

Moving on...

When Arenanet first announced the addition of mounts they only told us about 4 of them. The Raptor, Springer, Skimmer, and the Jackal. The Griffon was a "hidden" mount that is considerably more complicated to acquire and it wasn't evident that it was an "ownable" mount. There are certain very difficult to reach portions of the game that will have a griffon lying about that you can ride for a bit, but as soon as you dismount (or are knocked off) you no longer have access to it.

Getting your own griffon involves a bunch of running around to various maps and completing objectives, some of these objectives there is no chance you are going to succeed on your own as it involves the slaying of a "Legendary" opponent, which as the name would suggest, is one of the toughest enemies in the game. You also need to spend 250 gold, which wasn't a problem for me but some people don't have this level of money because they are constantly buying stuff - which is something I rarely do.

Once you do go through the various tasks that must be completed (there are only 8, but they are tough) you will acquire the griffon mount.

What does the griffon do for you? Well it gives you the ability to fly.... kinda. You can't just cruise all over the place because your abilities (once fully powered up) allow you to "flap" which gains you just a little bit of altitude and kind of just slows your decent rather than keep you in the sky. Some people complained that this was breaking the game, but these same people said that about all the other mounts and well, these people tend to put way too much of their lives into a video game and will complain about any changes that are made.

Thanks to WoodenPotatoes for this and many other fantastic vids on his channel

Is the Griffon worth it? Well are any of the mounts WORTH it? You don't need them in order to do a vast majority of the game's content and if you have the 1st expansion pack (called Heart of Thorns) you already have a glider, so in that way the griffon is kind of redundant. Mostly i think it is showing off because everything this mount does can already be done with the other mounts. Don't get me wrong, I really like my griffon, but if you don't have 250 gold (which can take some time to acquire) don't sweat it, because you don't really need the griffon and to be honest, i rarely use mine.