Soto feels bad and the skyscale grind is annoying

[The Sandal Bomber ™©]

Seriously RNG for eggs in soto is cancerous at best. I'd rather grind out the glider with legs again even with the gold requirement.

I'm new this is ♥♥♥♥ it literally is the worst expansion after coming of POF.

[cLoWnHaTe]

Hey there, I understand your frustration with the Skyscale grind. It's completely understandable to feel that way, especially considering it used to be considered a legendary mount due to the extreme difficulty of obtaining one. Even with the improvements, the process can still feel like a slog. There are some add-ons that can help streamline the process, making it a bit less tedious. Perhaps focusing on other aspects of the game while working on the Skyscale, or finding a group to help share the burden, might also make it more manageable.

[RotherHans]

"Bad" is exaggerated,
SOTO is a very mid expansion that kinda hits the wall in the last act.
Like a movie ending on a cliffhanger without a sequel.

And honestly, I was unlucky too on my egghunt.
But if that Kindergarden RNG is too much for you, then maybe MMOs are not your thing.

[Spirit]

could be worse , like , season 4 level of worse to get the scale

[Ranch]

I just finished soto and got the skyscale mount last week. I thought the grind was a bit annoying, and it took a bit longer than id like but this is an mmo. I do understand why its locked behind such a grind. Mounts did not exist until path of fire, so everyone had to manually run around to get places instead of using mounts. I think in their eyes the skyscale was sort of an "endgame" mount that allowed you to get to places easier, but was not needed and they also tried to not make the other mounts obsolete. I wish the grind for it was a bit less involved, but i didnt find it to be terrible.

Soto as an expansion had alot of misses but had some cool things too. I think the expansion was ok. I dont mind grinding it out, but its not my favorite content to grind.

[SinisterSlay]

I still wish they didn't add the Skyscale to SoTO, it pretty much ruined the game. Now we don't get any interesting exploration or puzzles because the designers know we just fly over all of it now.
At least before you basically had to finish the game before you could get the skyscale, or grind yourself to death trying to skip the whole game.

But that's what people are doing now. SoTO Skyscale grind? What? My wife and I did it for fun in like an hour. I think we had to wait 1 day for something, I can't remember what it was. It wasn't hard. One of the easier collections in fact. But probably because we have both 100% all the maps, did as many achievements as we can, pvp, wvw, raids, we had all the materials and money saved up ready to go.

[Ranch]

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

I still wish they didn't add the Skyscale to SoTO, it pretty much ruined the game. Now we don't get any interesting exploration or puzzles because the designers know we just fly over all of it now.
At least before you basically had to finish the game before you could get the skyscale, or grind yourself to death trying to skip the whole game.

But that's what people are doing now. SoTO Skyscale grind? What? My wife and I did it for fun in like an hour. I think we had to wait 1 day for something, I can't remember what it was. It wasn't hard. One of the easier collections in fact. But probably because we have both 100% all the maps, did as many achievements as we can, pvp, wvw, raids, we had all the materials and money saved up ready to go.

I actually refuse to believe you farmed the soto skyscale quest in 1 hour. That is literally impossible. Even if you had all the resources from other areas, even if you got insanely lucky with the egg finding part you STILL needed to grind an entire mastery to level 7. You still needed to run rifts for unique resources, you still had to go run around the entire game world to get those areas to "buff" the egg.

[SinisterSlay]

Originally posted by Ranch:

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

I still wish they didn't add the Skyscale to SoTO, it pretty much ruined the game. Now we don't get any interesting exploration or puzzles because the designers know we just fly over all of it now.
At least before you basically had to finish the game before you could get the skyscale, or grind yourself to death trying to skip the whole game.

But that's what people are doing now. SoTO Skyscale grind? What? My wife and I did it for fun in like an hour. I think we had to wait 1 day for something, I can't remember what it was. It wasn't hard. One of the easier collections in fact. But probably because we have both 100% all the maps, did as many achievements as we can, pvp, wvw, raids, we had all the materials and money saved up ready to go.

I actually refuse to believe you farmed the soto skyscale quest in 1 hour. That is literally impossible. Even if you had all the resources from other areas, even if you got insanely lucky with the egg finding part you STILL needed to grind an entire mastery to level 7. You still needed to run rifts for unique resources, you still had to go run around the entire game world to get those areas to "buff" the egg.

Just follow online guides. Not hard. And we do rifts several times a day. There is almost always a daily rift or weeklies that are easier done with rifts.
And teleporting around the world, again, trivial. We had everything unlocked.

No, SoTO method was trivial, try the LS4 method. That was hard and took us 3 weeks.

[LSD]

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

I still wish they didn't add the Skyscale to SoTO, it pretty much ruined the game. Now we don't get any interesting exploration or puzzles because the designers know we just fly over all of it now.

It's not that they know you can just fly over it, it's that they don't put the time or effort in (nor have they assigned enough devs to do so) any more.
Giving skyscale away was just to gloss over the fact that maps aren't built with any passion now, and are just pumped out to say "here's a new map".

I can't imagine how anyone got through NKC without skyscale, never mind the zones after EoD.

[Ranch]

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

Originally posted by Ranch:

I actually refuse to believe you farmed the soto skyscale quest in 1 hour. That is literally impossible. Even if you had all the resources from other areas, even if you got insanely lucky with the egg finding part you STILL needed to grind an entire mastery to level 7. You still needed to run rifts for unique resources, you still had to go run around the entire game world to get those areas to "buff" the egg.

Just follow online guides. Not hard. And we do rifts several times a day. There is almost always a daily rift or weeklies that are easier done with rifts.
And teleporting around the world, again, trivial. We had everything unlocked.

No, SoTO method was trivial, try the LS4 method. That was hard and took us 3 weeks.

I followed online guides and it is literally impossible to finish this in 1 hour. Now if you lock in and grind it out, ya you can do it in a day for sure. But an hour? no

[Hefutoxin]

Originally posted by LSD:

I can't imagine how anyone got through NKC without skyscale

Setting aside Heart of Thorns maps, Dragonfall is more convoluted than NKC. Did you just buy an account with Skyscale already unlocked or something?

[ebaG-gamma]

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

Originally posted by Ranch:

I actually refuse to believe you farmed the soto skyscale quest in 1 hour. That is literally impossible. Even if you had all the resources from other areas, even if you got insanely lucky with the egg finding part you STILL needed to grind an entire mastery to level 7. You still needed to run rifts for unique resources, you still had to go run around the entire game world to get those areas to "buff" the egg.

Just follow online guides. Not hard. And we do rifts several times a day. There is almost always a daily rift or weeklies that are easier done with rifts.
And teleporting around the world, again, trivial. We had everything unlocked.

No, SoTO method was trivial, try the LS4 method. That was hard and took us 3 weeks.

I'm firmly with Ranch on this one. Claiming that it only took you one hour is just not attributing all the stuff you had to do beforehand.
That's like claiming that it only took you a minute to craft a legendary weapon, cause that's how long it took you to mash everything together in the mystic forge, and assuming "oh, I already had a few gifts of battle and the gifts from map completion lying around."

[SinisterSlay]

Originally posted by ebaG-gamma:

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

Just follow online guides. Not hard. And we do rifts several times a day. There is almost always a daily rift or weeklies that are easier done with rifts.
And teleporting around the world, again, trivial. We had everything unlocked.

No, SoTO method was trivial, try the LS4 method. That was hard and took us 3 weeks.

I'm firmly with Ranch on this one. Claiming that it only took you one hour is just not attributing all the stuff you had to do beforehand.
That's like claiming that it only took you a minute to craft a legendary weapon, cause that's how long it took you to mash everything together in the mystic forge, and assuming "oh, I already had a few gifts of battle and the gifts from map completion lying around."

Scroll up a bit more and read my original comment where I said we had been playing a long time and already had materials and experience in this.

We did the original Skyscale in 3 weeks. Well, my wife did it in 1, I took 3 because I had to farm the hearts more. And I hate grinding so it wasn't fast for me.

Was good too because we made huge profits selling skyscale food.

[LSD]

Originally posted by Hefutoxin:

Originally posted by LSD:

I can't imagine how anyone got through NKC without skyscale

Setting aside Heart of Thorns maps, Dragonfall is more convoluted than NKC. Did you just buy an account with Skyscale already unlocked or something?

Dragonfall has jackal portals, oakheart branches, and WPs. Of course being a LW map, it's barely functional, but compared to NKC, it's a masterpiece in manoeuvrability and design.

NKC is a handful of assets badly copy pasted together with no thought put into them, towering ridiculously high over the map. So many staircases and paths that lead nowhere, and so few paths forward.

Still though, it's funny that you list HoT maps up there, when they're quite literally the most well designed maps in the entire game.

[ebaG-gamma]

Originally posted by SinisterSlay:

Scroll up a bit more and read my original comment where I said we had been playing a long time and already had materials and experience in this.

No need; I read the whole convo before commenting. You wrote that you did the SotO skyscale grind in one hour.
Leaving out the 7 million XP and the 25 mastery points out of it doesn't feel genuine when answering in a new player's topic. I mean, you could buy all the Egg Infusions too to save time on the actual achievement but that means you'd have to have spent the time to grind/buy the mats beforehand.

I do of course agree that the ubiquity of flying mounts is to the detriment of world and sometimes encounter design.
🚧 🗣📣 ban flying mounts in the Domain of the Dragon!! during the event 🚧 … for instance

Originally posted by Hunting Horn Main:

I'm new this is ♥♥♥♥ it literally is the worst expansion after coming off POF.

I mean, that's on you. If you go through the game as it was designed and released and chill, the experience is much better.
Why'd you go from PoF to SotO? Would you also jump from chapter 1 to 6 and on to 10 because someone said it will make reading the book easier?
You're already 12½ years "late", so what does it matter to take a few weeks longer if it means having a consistent experience?

The issue is that new players make themselves believe that they need to grind out these overpowered movement tools asap before they can start having fun, when it achieves just the opposite. Even worse are veterans who tell new players to kit themselves out with all masteries first thing – presumably so they themselves never have to suffer waiting for someone who doesn't have a particular mount unlocked – and don't give a 💩 about how it impacts the flow of the new player's experience.

[Ranch]

I can understand why people think the skyscale takes away from the fun, especially for new players. But for me i just got fed up not having it and the movement system in this game imo is a bit wonky. Getting the skyscale has made me enjoy the game alot more.