The Skyscale is a GW2 flying dragon mount with the ability to hover and fly vertically. In addition to flying straight up, Skyscale can hover indefinitely in the air.
NOTE: Be considerate if you Skyscale hover AFK. The propwash effect is extremely annoying for players on the ground. Be sure to AFK a little ways away from wherever players are gathering.
How to Unlock Skyscale
To get started with Skyscale, finish Living World Season 4. After you finish the final episode “War Eternal,” return to Lion’s Arch. When you load in to Lion’s Arch, you get a letter from Gorrik. Follow his instructions to meet him at Dragonfall. Talk to him to unlock the collection, which lets you start working towards Skyscale.
Gorrik is west of the Skyscale Eyrie point of interest and north of Dragonfall Insight: Skyscale Eyrie. This is where you borrowed a Skyscale during the Living World story.
NOTE: If you visit Skyscale Eyrie before finishing Living World Season 4, Gorrik will not be there.
Gorrik gives you a series of collections to complete. The official wiki has an excellent set of walkthroughs for these collections, including screenshots and maps marked with the locations of the items.
Step 1: Newborn Skyscales
The first set of collections, Newborn Skyscales, happens on the Dragonfall map. Gorrik gives you Skyscale Scales and Skyscale Medicine to complete first. You can do them in either order.
When you finish the Scales and Medicine collections, it unlocks Skyscale Fever. Completing Fever unlocks Skyscale Eggs.
- Skyscale Scales walkthrough
- Skyscale Medicine walkthrough
- Skyscale Fever walkthrough
- Skyscale Eggs walkthrough
Step 2: Saving Skyscales
After you finish the last Newborn Skyscale collection, Gorrik tells you to meet him in Sun’s Refuge. This starts Saving Skyscales, which is a meta-collection made up of 12 different sub-collections.
Pick up one of the skyscale eggs and carry it around Tyria to expose it to all different sorts of magic in order to get it to hatch. For a walkthrough of this stage of the Skyscale quest, see the wiki article for Saving Skyscales.
Side note: This was my favorite part of the Skyscale process. For each type of egg, you have to do four or five related tasks. These tasks were not too easy, not too hard, and came in small bite-sized thematic collections. For example, for the Water Egg you have to dive to the bottom of four specific bodies of water, some of which are a bit challenging to reach.
Step 3: Raising Skyscales
For this part of the Skyscale journey, you’re in charge of bringing food and treats to the baby Skyscales in your Sun’s Refuge instance. This is the most expensive step, and involves a lot of time-gated items.
For a walkthrough of this stage of the Skyscale quest, see the wiki article for Raising Skyscales.
Step 3: Skyscale Lost
Whoops, your baby Skyscale ran away! For this step, you travel around Tyria completing meta events, finishing jumping puzzles, and arriving at certain locations.
NOTE: If you go to the general area of the target and consume an Extra-Pungent Skyscale Treat it will call the Skyscale to you and complete the objective. This is a time-saver, but Extra-Pungent Skyscale Treats are both expensive and voluntary. You do not need to use them to complete this step of the Skyscale journey. You can find and interact with your Skyscale manually. That being said, it’s nice to have the option – particularly with regards to the jumping puzzles.
For a walkthrough of this stage of the Skyscale quest, see the wiki article for Skyscale Lost.
Step 4: Skyscale Saddles and Riding Skyscales
Now that you’ve found your lost Skyscale, did you think you were done? Ha ha, no!
Next you unlock the Skyscale saddle, and learn how to ride your Skyscale. When you finish that, you can complete the Skyscale Flight achievement, and finish the quest.
How Much Does Skyscale Cost?
Short answer: A LOT.
- 41-120 gold, depending on whether you craft or buy treats.
- 5,390 Karma
- 1700 Volatile Magic
- 520 Trade Contracts
- 260 Mistborn Motes
- 12 Skyscale food – requires 1 Charged Quartz Crystal each
- 1 Grow Lamp – requires 10 Charged Quartz Crystal
- 250 Kralkatite Ore
- 250 Difluorite Crystal
- 250 Inscribed Shards
- 250 Lumps of Mistonium
- 250 Branded Masses
How Much Time to Get Skyscale?
In addition to the gold cost, there are several time-gated elements in the collections. (A time-gated element is something that you can only do once a day, or once every few hours.)
The minimum amount of time to get Skyscale is 3 days + 8 hours. More likely, it will take you at least a week. Most players take between a week and a month to get Skyscale, depending on how much time they dedicate to the task.
Skyscale Masteries
- Level 1: Air Rescue Mount the Skyscale in midair. Cost: 3 Mastery points.
- Level 2: Rift Repair Use Skyscale to close rifts and reveal new flight paths. Cost: 4 Mastery points.
- Level 3: Wall Launch Launch off walls to climb higher. Cost: 5 Mastery points.
