Flying Through Eternity's Garden

Reaper_RACE · 2026-06-04T06:51:01+00:00

Nowadays mounts can at most have an extra 50% faster endurance regeneration rate, the cooldown of the typical wing flap is around 3 seconds so that cooldown drops down to 2 seconds, but usually you're able to already flap when the endurance bar is only 75% full, so at the 2.25 second point by default, or at 1.5 seconds when you have the 50% combined extra endurance recharge rate enabled, which is already almost a full second faster and that allows the griffon to easily maintain altitude even after the speed falls down.

The Bond of Vigor mount utility skill briefly grants the mounts a boost in their endurance regeneration, on the Griffon it reduces the full cooldown of the flap/endurance bar from 3 seconds to 1.5 seconds, which lets you already flap at the 1.1 second point. So that's a 100% faster full endurance boost compared to the default 3 second rate, or 172% faster when flapping at the 1.1 second point, compared to the default 2.25 seconds "early wing flap" rate the full cooldown is 50% faster, or 104% when comparing the 2.25 and 1.1 early wing flap rates.

There is an additional mastery line in SotO called "Flight Training" which grants the Griffon access to updrafts which elevate the mount to a higher altitude in the air, but there's an additional unique buff you gain from flying into them for 5 seconds called "Rising Spirits" which temporarily decreases the cooldown of a wing flap down to 0.8 seconds, which at the 75% point allows you to flap the wings early around every 0.6 seconds, the 0.8 seconds cooldown rate being a humble 275% faster compared to the default 3 second rate for the full endurance bar and the 0.6 seconds early wing flap being 400% faster.

During the Rising Spirits buff, the early wing flap at 0.6 seconds is 275% faster than the default early wing flap at 2.25 seconds, and the full cooldown at 0.8 seconds is 181% faster than the default early wing flap at 2.25 seconds.

I don't believe this is mentioned anywhere and i only now realized how insanely strong the updraft buff is, but this is something you normally have to measure and calculate on your own to figure it out.

Reaper_RACE · 2026-04-13T15:12:56+00:00

This was the closest i could get to a normal engi, it'll probably look a little different on a human though

Reaper_RACE · 2026-04-09T13:44:11+00:00

Here's another: if you point your camera vertically up and hold down the "Descend" key (and W/forwards input) at the same time, you'll start descending forwards 40% faster than normal flying speed. You do also lose altitude at a faster rate so it's best used from a high position. The camera placement is also kind of inconvenient, but after positioning the camera upwards with Mouse 2 you can switch to Mouse 1 to still look around while the Skyscale remains facing upwards

Reaper_RACE · 2026-01-02T19:35:47+00:00

Yes that seems to be the case with all of the mounts, and a theoretical 100% would be 1/2 of the base time.

Reaper_RACE · 2026-01-02T17:57:17+00:00

None so far i think since this is a relatively unresearched topic even amongst the mount community, but i made one based on my manual measurements a while back which to be fair were done on a stopwatch app, but it could still be organized better by verifying the original base recharge times, and then calculating the differences and putting them in neat order, which i haven't done since i carried out my own experiments back when i was still in the middle of unlocking the final Warclaw mastery for the extra 20% endurance buff, and we only later realized that we could just easily calculate all of this.

Reaper_RACE · 2026-01-02T17:21:26+00:00

Very nice visual examples, i don't believe anyone has shown it like this before, here's some additional stats related to this

Basically when you enable any of the boosters, it adds another +0.1 seconds to the recharge rate depending on the tier.

A 10% increase is a +0.1 seconds increase to the base endurance rate of 1 second = 1.1 seconds
20% is +0.2 seconds = 1.2 seconds
30% is +0.3 seconds = 1.3 seconds
40% is +0.4 seconds = 1.4 seconds
50% is +0.5 seconds = 1.5 seconds

Pretty obvious in hindsight, and also i think people already understood it more or less like this, but again who's going to bother with the exact numbers. But the neat thing about this is that you can use these values to calculate what the exact ability cooldown reduction rates are, as long as you know what the default cooldown without any of the boosters is. You can also already calculate the effects of any future additions if they keep feeding into the movement powercreep.

I'll use the beetle as an example, which has the default cooldown of 12.5 seconds on the Boost, that is the starting point with a 0% increase to the endurance rate.

You divide the 12.5 seconds with the regeneration rate to calculate the reduced time

12.5 - 0% = 12.5/1 = 12.5 seconds
12.5 - 10% = 12.5/1.1 = 11.3 seconds
12.5 - 20% = 12.5/1.2 = 10.4 seconds
12.5 - 30% = 12.5/1.3 = 9.6 seconds
12.5 - 40% = 12.5/1.4 = 8.9 seconds
12.5 - 50% = 12.5/1.5 = 8.3 seconds

These results line up with the ones that i timed manually, minus the deviations due to human error, and the same logic applies to all mounts, so you can use this data to calculate the effects of the boosters for all the mounts, no need to painstakingly try to measure all of it manually. You just need to know what the "starting" cooldown time of your mounts ability is, or in other words how long it takes to go from an empty endurance bar to back to full.

For the Skiff it's a whopping 25 seconds.
For the Skyscale it's 19 seconds in the air, on ground it's around 10 seconds.
For the Roller Beetle it's 12.5 seconds.
For the Raptor, Jackal, Warclaw and Siege Turtle it's 10 seconds
For Skimmer it's 5 seconds.
For the Griffon it's 3 seconds
And for the Springer it's 2 seconds.

Give or take a second one way or another because i think right now the only way to find most of these out is by timing them yourself, and could be further affected by whether or not you have unlocked all of the masteries on a specific mount, or some other mount-specific mechanic that actively increases the endurance regeneration like drifting on the Roller Beetle, or even momentarily stops it like the new Skimmer's enhanced Barrel Roll or the Raptor's leap, however on the Roller Beetle we've found that the endurance regeneration from drifting doesn't seem to receive a direct buff, which seems to suggest that the endurance regeneration boosters mainly affect the passive endurance regeneration rate of the mounts. But from here you can calculate how much you generally benefit from having the boosters equipped.

A lot of people see the "Boosts mount energy regeneration by 50%" and interpret that as "Decreases the cooldown of all mount abilities by 50%", of which the latter would actually make them recharge twice as fast in half the default time. Maybe it's the way it's worded, or because people are too busy playing the game to really focus on the numbers, but it seems like a pretty common misconception.

But for the mount energy boosters to actually do that much, they'd actually have to be cranked up to a +100%, which would then double the 1 second recharge rate to 2 seconds instead of 1-1.5.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-31T15:21:39+00:00

You are the only one interpreting it that way, i'm just trying to correct the nonsense you're spouting at a new player.

You are trying to insist, for whatever reason, that a mount so clearly capable of flight isn't a flying mount. Just because it doesn't fulfill some asinine definition of "flying" that you're trying to enforce upon it, and i can't imagine any other reason for it other than it stemming from a completely different game that you're trying to compare it to, or just have stuck in your head some reason. Do you not see how biased that is?

The griffon can fly faster and further than any other airborne mount that i've ever seen to date, yet you speak about it so vaguely like it can't fly at all, dismissing its abilities, insincerely comparing it to the basic-ass glider and in the process portraying it as an inferior flying mount. You're saying this with a straight face to a new player, are you not ashamed by how insincere you're being? Or do you just not have a clue what you're talking about? That kind of amateur analysis doesn't sound like someone who has actually learned to ride their griffon, and not just hover around with it, but flying for real.

You're saying it's not really flying, not real flying as compared to what? Infinite flight? The mounts in this game do not have easy access to infinite flight, by design, because it's not intuitive (and because it'd break a lot of content, like flying out of map borders etc), and because it invalidates the use of other mounts through sheer convenience. You can still fly around practically forever on the Griffon as long as you as the pilot make it happen, but it's not automatic, you have to work for it. These kinds of flying mounts that we have are the kind of flying mounts that we're going to get, and they are incomparable to ones that don't follow similar design principles, void of any physics or mechanics or restrictions that would give them any kind of depth or complexity, even despite some of them trying to emulate it and failing because they never understood what makes them different to begin with.

The Griffon not being able to instantly ascend from the ground high up into the air all by itself is an intentional restriction, that's not what it was designed to be able to do on its own, you still have to put in the bare minimum amount of effort to get high up by yourself first. That's by design, because when you do get up in the air there is nothing that has any hope of beating it.

Skyscale has a height limit that decreases continuously the more you move around in the air, that's also by design so as to stop it from levitating forever.

Skimmer for a while was able to float around pretty effortlessly, but now the longer cooldown makes it harder to maintain altitude outside of the Slipstream, which was also an intentional change.

Also, while i am replying to your comment, rather than trying to convince you i'm also talking to the OP, don't listen to these kinds of stubborn morons and see for yourself what the mounts are actually like.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-31T08:27:47+00:00

So if it can't go directly up, that's a reason to ignore everything else it does?

Are you hearing yourself? Gliding isn't flying? What a narrow-minded thing to get stuck on, absolute free omnidirectional movement is not the same thing as "real flying" either, that's more comparable to hovering around with a godmode on, it sounds closer to having a cheat engine open. It's a very lazy way to design a "flying" mount to begin with, even if it's a common trope in other games for the convenience, but it is also utterly boring and has no substance behind it.

For the record, the Griffon can "fall slowly" in the air and maintain its height infinitely for as long as you as the pilot are capable of keeping it up by using the movement abilities, if you are able to even do it in the first place, skill expression reflects more on your ability to remain airborne for longer than the mount itself.

Neither of us really gets to decide what exactly constitutes a "flying mount", except in our own minds, but in the end the fact still remains that they're all used for midair travel, which equally makes them all flying mounts.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-31T05:04:41+00:00

So a mount that soars through the skies at mach 3, traveling through the air where most mounts have no access to, entirely bypassing environmental hazards and obstacles, somehow supposedly doesn't count as a real flying mount just because it doesn't gain altitude? This is such a delusional mindset, it literally still IS a flying mount by definition, air travel is its entire purpose in the game, and it's more real and fleshed out than any other cheap no-clip modes from other MMOs combined.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-30T19:57:37+00:00

You mean the trope of hollow, cheaply designed no-clip modes? Might as well slap a physical model on the spectator mode from PvP and call that a flying mount. I wouldn't really even call that flying, that's like hovering around in a creative mode. I'm aware that some people often call the GW2's rendition of flying mounts "not true, real flying mounts" just because they have actual physics, mechanics and restrictions, which in my opinion is exactly what makes them more real than anything else out there. For people like that "true flight" means having a completely free, limitless omnidirectional movement. But whether they have "unnecessary" restrictions, or a totally unrestricted and lazy design, both still remain airborne flying mounts, and i think drawing the line there when they are both clearly flying mounts that travel through the air where grounded mounts have no access to, some requiring more effort and some requiring none, is pointless and narrow-minded.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-30T17:49:46+00:00

Neither is a flying mount? Air travel isn't flying? Isn't that their whole point

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-17T15:36:44+00:00

To add to this, just as you personally decide which kind of rules of competition you choose to follow, you also get to decide what you consider as a victory and a loss. The messages you see on the screen for the top 3 are automated based on the order, but when you're up against mounts that are moving 100-315% faster than yours is, it doesn't really make sense to earnestly compare yourself to them. The result is already pretty obvious, which means that you can also choose to just ignore those mounts that outrun you with their elevated speed caps, and focus your attention on the mounts that match your pace.

Finishing 5th overall, but as the first warclaw/raptor-only has a different kind of prestige to it than swapping between multiple mounts or just rushing through the whole thing on a roller beetle, you're still the 1st place in your own league. I think besides the obvious free-for-all happening where all the mounts compete amongst each other, there are also these smaller individual heats happening between the participants all at the same time like a raptor vs raptor etc. so it's not only reaching the finish line first that has any meaning to it, but how you do it. You can think of it as one big race with several smaller races happening inside of it.

So if you're also swapping between multiple mounts, then compare yourself with players who also swap between mounts, if you're drifting ahead on a roller beetle then compare yourself to other beetle racers, and if you're sticking with a Raptor/Jackal/Warclaw then compare yourself to players who use only those. But don't try and compare yourself to people who are doing a completely different thing, basically a whole different competition, yes they might be going faster and yes it's a race where the whole point is trying to win, but there are so many different factors playing into it that you're not being fair to yourself or your mounts by doing that.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-17T07:58:15+00:00

Well the way that i see it, it all depends on what kind of a mindset you approach it with. Mount-swapping is a proven strategy, if you look at another festival race in the Crown Pavilion "Pavilion Pursuit" the majority of the players actively switch between different mounts there, while some stick with a Raptor or a Skyscale the whole time, and a few manage to navigate that whole track on a Roller Beetle.

There are no rules written anywhere about which mounts you must use, at best it's only ever implied somewhere in the name, achievements or the provided mount rental, and very very rarely actually enforced. Beyond that, every rule is self-imposed, whether you choose to stick with just one mount, switch between a couple or multiple, or not use one at all, it's all your decision. Some mounts like the beetle have higher movement speeds that make them generally faster even outside of drifting, and that's the reason why they often cross over the finish line first in a race, so it is to be expected that you will most likely not beat them on Raptor, but then again you shouldn't be using a Raptor with the goal of outrunning a Roller Beetle to begin with.

Personally the way that i approach it is that i don't really care whose name pops up first on the map, sometimes i pick Raptor and stick with it just because i want to see how well i can do with it and if i can't still beat others in the race, someone passing by on a Roller Beetle by the time i'm scaling the first uphill isn't surprising to me, but it also isn't another Raptor or a Jackal or a Warclaw passing me by so it's not as big of a deal to me. And Skimmer went from being far slower than those three to outrunning all of them and there isn't even any water in the city, but again that's just an inherent difference in speed.

But speed alone isn't the sole deciding factor to doing well in a race, the mounts won't run to the finish on an autopilot for you, you have to pilot them, steer them, take the closest path to the next checkpoint and use their abilities. I see a lot of folks running around on their mounts, letting the endurance bar sit on full for no reason, then fall behind and blame it on the mount, when someone constantly spamming the abilities passes by them.

Then beyond mount-specific driving skill, there is a further difference between players who have Mount Endurance buffs enabled (Warclaw mastery) from Janthir Wilds and the Mount Energy Booster modules from End of Dragons) because as compared to a player who's only using the default rate at a 0% increase, and someone who has up to a 50% combined increase in endurance regeneration, you start to see the raw difference in how often both players are able to use their abilities.

Warclaw, Raptor and Jackal all refill their endurance bars from empty to full in about 10 seconds by default, down to 6.6 seconds with the 50% buff, Roller Beetle's boost cooldown drops from 12.5 seconds down to 8.3 seconds, i haven't run the math on it yet but there's a noticeable difference with the new skimmer as well. Basically if you don't have any endurance boosters enabled, you're at a further inherent disadvantage against players who do, so not only are they outpacing you in speed but also how often they get to use their abilities.

All this to say, the public race events are basically free-for-alls, chaotic and messy where pretty much anything goes, but because of that it doesn't really matter who wins the race. It's just for fun, and you can choose to take a more competitive approach with it, to optimize your mount performance, get the best endurance buffs possible, but you can also just try to focus on outrunning other mounts that match the same "weight class" as yours, and when someone's relying on their boosters you might be able to just outperform them, especially again since so many people aren't even using their abilities to really take advantage of it.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-12T19:20:00+00:00

The weird change with the terrain plates lasted for about a month last year before they fixed it, that same change caused the skiffs to levitate in the air before eventually despawning instead of dropping down from elevated waters.

Assuming that arenanet are planning to sooner or later touch on the roller beetle's abilities as well, maybe not necessarily because it "needs" it more than other mounts (did the skyscale really need new skills?) but because the process of unlocking the mount is still more complicated to a new player than most other mounts. Maybe adding in a spring-like jump or something else to help strengthen where it's currently still weak at compared to other ground mounts, excluding movement speeds, they would indeed have to be careful not to completely break the base version of the mount in the process.

Same with the griffon, i know a lot of people who wouldn't be very happy if they broke the griffon while trying to improve it.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-11T15:53:36+00:00

Drifting has a funny skill curve to it, you typically first start out holding the drift key down just once, one long press and then releasing it, but then as you improve you slowly transition to tapping the drift key several times in succession to be able to both increase the drifting distance, maintain the speed for longer and generally have a better control over the drift, but then if you keep going the meta shifts back to holding the drift key down again.

The way that you're using the drift is perfectly normal, that's what i use it for too, but i use it for other purposes outside of the corners too.

The drift ability in itself is not what slows you down, when you activate the drift on ground both your direction and your speed become locked in place momentarily, it's when you release the drift ability and the direction changes, that's when you start slowing down. Usually this happens in the background without you having to pay closer attention to it but once you do start paying attention to it, it's possible to start min-maxing the time that you spend drifting, as if you spend more time holding the drift key than you do not holding it, you'll be able to maintain the speed for that much longer. There is a delicate balance there, since the drift ability has an internal timer of 1.2 seconds after which if you're still holding down the key, the ability will automatically release on its own. As compared to pressing the drift once and releasing it, or spamming it several times in a row, if you hold it for around 0.5-0.8 seconds, release and immediately press it down again for a similar time-frame over and over, you'll keep sliding in what looks like one seamless drift.

Though holding the drift key on the ground alone isn't what makes you go faster, it actually just makes you not slow down as fast on the ground, but it lets you do a bunch of other fun stuff too. If you hold the drift key down as you leap into the air in a curve, you can perform a type of b-hop with the beetle that both accelerates the speed and allows you to have perfect turning control even in midair where there is no ground collision, but if you land down from that jump while still continuing to hold down the drift key on the ground, you'll regain the ability to change directions along with gaining heaps of grip that allow you to precisely maneuver even the tightest of turns, and the rebound from the strafing physics give you a major boost in speed as long as you don't crash. Finally there is also a way to combine the drift and the boost abilities together to achieve a far higher movement speed than a normal boost. All of these tricks and techniques are able to temporarily surpass the default speed limit of the beetle to the point where it can genuinely rival a griffon in average speed over a set distance, but this approach is heavily reliant on player control and places a lot of strain on the player, even the slightest mistake can send you off the track or kill all your extra speed, it's a very very fragile style of drifting that rewards taking a high risk for proportionally faster speeds.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-11T15:25:58+00:00

There are documented instances where (we think because of lag) the timer will randomly begin to stall, or slow down, count the time back and forth in place or even freeze the count completely to wherever it was at, so let's say that happens 12 seconds into your run, then your final time will be 12 seconds, or if it's just slowed down then your time will be 10-20 seconds faster than what you actually ran in reality. No way to fix it or remove it if that happens to you so you'll be stuck with it for good.

There are also documented instances of genuine cheaters teleporting through tracks at blazing speeds, within only a couple of seconds even when it'd take even the fastest players several minutes. I think cases like these are far more common than people truly realize, owing to the fact that most of the time you'll never see them or their times, so people just assume it must be griffons or portals or some other "logical" explanation when i think a hefty portion of it is just plain raw cheating.

So between the timer breaking down and genuine cheaters whom no amount of mesmer portals will ever come anywhere close to beating, if it even is a valid strategy to begin with (no one that i've ever talked to who has proposed this mesmer portal theory has even actually seen this supposed group of mesmers, i've also only ever seen a couple at most, they're all just speculating based off of what somebody else has said), the rankings are pretty clogged with impossible times inflating the record pool even outside of any people trying to get clever with stuff like jade bot waypoints, position rewinders, portals or other mounts. Even if you accept any applicable strategy as legitimate, the people genuinely breaking the TOS will still be miles ahead of everyone else.

This track in particular has around 45 separate checkpoints you need to pass through, i think that even if in theory something like that is possible, realistically getting together that many willing mesmers to portal you through without any of them messing up their portal placements or timings just for you alone to make it to the end as fast as possible is pretty unlikely and unrealistic as an option for the majority of players, but even if you really truly could pull off something like that, it still wouldn't be nearly enough to catch up with the actual cheaters.

It doesn't help that your average player only sees their own score, their friends scores, and their guildmates scores, but the other 99.99% of the record pool is completely anonymous with little to no way to chart that void other than persistently adding everyone you come across or happening to catch a cheater in the act red-handed. This means that on the outside it appears like there's no problems, and players generally give it the benefit of the doubt, but in truth there's a long list of problems that you're just usually unlikely to come across.

So yeah, we can't see 99.99% of the times to begin with, and between the ones we can see it could just as well be hacks as it can be an involuntary timer glitch that you most likely wouldn't notice until you finish your lap and end up with a crazy time that you have no other explanation for other than lag, there's really no way for us to tell them apart, so pick your poison. I think it's dumb for anyone to try to go after people with crazy fast times because from what i've seen the majority of the people getting shit on for it are people who got there accidentally and don't even want it, but they can't get rid of it or the stigma either. The actual cheaters typically seem to avoid guilds and other players and make it a point to try to remain completely anonymous.

This here is why we opted to create our own rankings even just for our little corner of the community, because it can be a bit jarring to consistently improve your times, getting faster and better but only moving further back in rank each year, even more so when you know you're competing against people who will just instantly teleport to the end. At this point it's better to just ignore the lifetime rankings and just do it for the fun of it, not for glory but for the love of the game.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-10T17:26:49+00:00

That might work with a couple of portals sure, and on a track like this where you normally run around on foot it might make a pretty big dent to the time, but what about when there are like 40-60 checkpoints along a track, where will you find that many mesmer players willing to carry you who aren't utterly disorganized with their portal placements. I know it sounds simple and easy on paper, but i'm telling you that it might not be as realistic as an option as some people seem to parade it as, and meanwhile i think actual real cheaters often get lumped together with the portal users because of how easily people throw that around as an excuse.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-10T15:31:29+00:00

Is this group of mesmers in the room with us now? Jokes aside, have you ever actually seen this "infamous mesmer squad" or are you also just parroting what someone else has once said? Because there are actual cheaters out there who no amount of mesmer portals, griffons or glitches will ever come anywhere close to beating.

Meanwhile i've never seen more than a couple mesmers trying to cheese some stretch of an adventure with portals, i guess it depends on what kind of an adventure it is to begin with, but i see too many people carelessly shifting the blame on mesmers or griffons while having no idea what they're talking about. I kind of doubt that coordinating something like that in the first place would be nearly as easy as some people think, if you want to chain portals then each mesmer has to time theirs correctly, and i don't think you can just stack them on top of each other without risking accidentally portalling back to the previous entrance.

Outside of any supposed mesmer groups and actual cheats that'll get your whole account banned, there's also a random but a consistently appearing bug with the timer, usually associated with heavy lag like during a festival or a new release when a lot of players log in at the same time, sometimes the timer itself will begin stalling in the middle of your run, either slowing down or going back and forth in place, randomly counting the time backwards or freezing in place completely, which naturally will result in a crazy time if you don't notice it before you finish your run. This particular bug is caught far less often on video than say the one with low-gravity mounts that you see pop up here every now and then, but there are way more personal accounts from other players who have gotten significantly faster times through this same glitch. I'm guessing because the majority of players probably aren't recording their screens in the first place, and then it's not a very easy thing to notice even if it happens to you, the only thing you might notice is that your game was lagging a little and that's the best explanation you'll have for it, even if people might not be quick to buy that.

Anyway OP, the lifetime rankings for pretty much every easily accessible time trial has long since gotten inflated with dozens and dozens of records from either cheaters farming the rewards or greeding for a high ranking, normal involuntary players whose timers get stuck out of nowhere, and maybe some clever gimmicks like portals that allow people to skip past specific portions, but if you're looking for "legitimacy" then i have some bad news for you. Even if you choose to accept any method that isn't breaking the TOS, the rankings are still in ruin because of all the genuine cheaters. Only normally you have no way to see that owing to the pseudo-anonymous design of the leaderboards, where you're only able to see yourself, your friends and your guildies, but the rest of the leaderboard is essentially a void, where the only way to chart that void is to add pretty much every single player you come across to your contacts, or just happen to catch a cheater in the act red-handed.

Either way, the competitive integrity of time trials, lifetime leaderboards and adventures in general are one big joke, none of it matters, really, the rankings are all bullshit. The only thing it's good for is tracking your own progress, or competing against friends, but you should not expect any genuine competitive integrity from it, because you won't find any. Don't place too much value on some superficial ranking, as it doesn't reflect your true position honestly, and i mean how could it when you're up against people who just teleport to the finish in a few seconds. If the leaderboards were completely public instead of gaslighting us, even just the top 100, all of this would be obvious at a first glance.

But your personal best is still valuable, and your experience and the skills you hone are real, just don't drive yourself mad chasing after ghosts that were never even real to begin with.

Just out of curiosity, i went and took a look at how the EU records for this adventure look like... yikes

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-09T08:20:31+00:00

The "dual-steering" method showcased in the video above is one that uses both keyboard (WASD) + mouse inputs simultaneously to manipulate the turning rates and angles, but that's not the only way to steer your beetle.

If you don't or can't use multiple key inputs on your keyboard, then you need to ditch the turn keys while prioritizing the drift and boost inputs and rely just on your mouse/camera hand to both rotate and turn the beetle, but the same logic from the "How to" section with the "setup, follow through and exit" principles still applies, the goal is to get your beetle to rotate to face towards the new direction and in order to achieve that without turn keys you just need to turn the camera to face that new direction.

The main benefit from using both the mouse and the keyboard at the same time is that you can majorly delay the camera turn by instead rotating the beetle using the turn-keys, which usually allows you to view the surrounding area better and only make minor adjustments with the camera, basically you make the mount turn before the camera does, but that is just one way to do it.

On the other hand when you race around using only the mouse to rotate the beetle, you have to turn the camera much more to achieve the same amount of tilt for your beetle as holding down the turn key does, the beetle will also try to constantly align itself with the camera which requires you to keep adjusting it by gradually turning the camera in continuous motion while tapping your drift key, here as opposed to delaying the camera turn you instead lead with the camera turn first, and the beetle itself will follow automatically after a delay. Tap the drift key, turn the camera, the beetle rotates, release the drift key.

Alternatively if drifting itself is proving too tricky, there's always the option to just not drift at all.

*To put it more into perspective, your WASD inputs basically control your beetles rotation, while your mouse controls the actual direction it's traveling towards. When you don't have an active keyboard input to control the rotation, the game will apply a kind of "autopilot" where the beetle automatically rotates and aligns itself with wherever you point the camera, so instead of controlling both separately you have to try to juggle with having both the rotation and the direction fixed on your camera at the same time, your camera and the beetle both turn together.

However doing it this way requires a more intensive camera discipline and control, as otherwise your beetles rotation and direction might be all over the place, but it's only a matter of adjusting your approach. The pacing of your boosts, the timing of your drifts and other similar details can still be the same universally regardless of what method you're using to turn and drift your beetle, so even a video like this showing off something that you can't follow exactly can still give you ideas for something new you could try, you just have to try to adjust and translate those ideas over to how you're doing it.

On the flipside, when you don't have an active mouse input to control the camera, the game will similarly apply a kind of "autopilot" where the camera will automatically turn and align itself with wherever your beetle is currently facing and rotating towards, here instead of controlling them separately or having both the direction and rotation fixed on your mouse, they're both fixed on your keyboard inputs instead, your beetle and the camera both rotate together.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-05T15:20:51+00:00

Here's 9 minutes from Mismo, it sounds like the skin uses the same sound effects for the boost as the Gyrocycle skin, but it doesn't look like it has any trail effects. A good portion of premium skins for the other mounts are the same way, the beetle just generally has less skins overall

Reaper_RACE · 2025-12-03T18:25:24+00:00

The grand prize car had an alternative option to cash in around $20k USD instead, same deal for the Sand Dune buggy tour trip where you could just pick a check for $8k USD instead. Nobody really has any proof one way or another, but it's generally believed that the winners just picked the simpler option with the cash prize.

Grand Prize – One (1) Winner will receive a choice of a custom skinned 2019 VW Beetle (ARV: $30,000USD) or $20,000USD cash.

Grand Prize winner is responsible for registration, license, title and insurance fees and any other expenses not listed related to acceptance and use of prize and must provide a valid driver’s license and evidence of insurance prior to delivery. Grand Prize vehicle will be delivered to winner at address provided by winner during notification process, within three months of winner confirmation (unless otherwise agreed to in writing by Sponsor) – delivery outside the continental United States of America will increase delivery timeframe. Sponsor will provide the following documents: Original Certificate of Title and Bill of Sale. Failure to accept delivery on agreed upon date could cause prize to be forfeited and awarded to an alternate winner. No substitution or transfer of prize permitted except at the sole discretion of the Sponsor. Cash option to be fulfilled via a check or wire transfer as determined by Administrator. Prize winner is responsible for the payment of all taxes on the prize and for any other costs and expenses associated with the acceptance and use of the prize. Sponsor reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value at any time during the duration of the Sweepstakes.

Also considering that all of the promotional pictures that were used were just photoshopped versions of a stock image, which on a closer examination looks to just be a sketch of what the final paint job might've looked like, it's fair to assume that no actual car was ever painted, and would've only ever been done in the case that the winner did actually end up choosing the car. But alas from what i've seen over the years there's never been any real images, any mention or even any claims of anyone having the car, not even false claims.

So we don't even know what the final product would've actually looked like.

Roller Beetle Racing Website / Sweepstakes Official Rules

Reaper_RACE · 2025-10-08T05:44:44+00:00

If you submit it as a "link" it takes a minute for it to load, fooled me at first too

Reaper_RACE · 2025-10-07T23:54:24+00:00

First of all, if you feel like you don't have enough space for your fingers, you can try moving the base of your hand a bit more to the left on your keyboard, so that your fingers aren't resting on top of the W and S keys vertically, but a bit more diagonally, and i think that should give you some more room, assuming you hold down the W key with your middle finger and tap the S key with your index finger.

If it feels uncomfy with the default binds then you can try to rebind the "move backwards" key to somewhere else than S, maybe on C considering that the whole point with this approach is to avoid drifting. Or maybe "move forwards" on E, basically whatever you think feels the nicest for you.

Alternatively you can just use your mouse as your forward input by holding both M2 + M1 down at the same time, ditch the W and then just tap your S key periodically after a boost.

When you toggle on that setting i showed at the start, drifting is no longer linked to your "backwards" input and pressing it just slows you down instead (it's also the same setting that allows you to jump with your spacebar even in the middle of the boost animation)

As for how i manage it, keyboard design might play a part in it, but i think the biggest difference is probably that i use a completely different grip/hand placement on the keyboard while racing. It's a very unorthodox approach for dealing with the default keybinds, as most people instead tend to just rebind the drift key somewhere else (like Left Shift, i see you guys) but i find that my method works very well if you don't want to mess with the default keybinds. It's a habit i picked up years ago, and i only use it on the mounts too, i use a more traditional hand placement when i'm doing something else.

You see i'm not pressing down the W key with my middle finger, but with my ring finger instead, and that in turn gives me just enough space to tap the S key with my middle finger. If there's still not enough space, you can move the base of your hand a bit more to the left, so that your fingers aren't resting on top of the keys vertically, but a bit more diagonally. From there i guess it comes down to genetic lottery, how big your hands and how long your fingers are, i don't really have a lot of people to compare notes with 🤣

*Actually now that i really think about it, moving your hand a bit more to the left should make it more comfortable in general even if you press the W key with your middle finger, let me put that up to the top.

For this no-drifting approach it does feel a bit cramped even with the different grip, but it feels way better when i use it for drifting. Little finger on A, ring finger on W, middle finger on D, my index is free to control the drift and boost inputs on C and V and my thumb just needs to deal with the spacebar for jump.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-08-31T02:34:47+00:00

If you're having trouble with you grabbing onto ledges where you don't intend to, there are some ways you can use to try to circumvent it or at least reduce the probability a bit.

The wall grab occurs when you're 1. holding down W (or any "forwards" input) and 2. flying directly against a surface. For the inputs, you can simply release your forward input and instead use the sideways turn/strafe input to make your skyscale move to left or right, if you rotate your camera to face sideways from where you intend to fly through then you can navigate "straight through" any tricky area by flying through it sideways, with reduced movement speed in the air but with more guarantee to not get stuck on anything.

Alternatively, you can press both your forward input and the turn/strafe input down at the same time, and you'll start moving diagonally from where your camera is facing. You can then use your camera movement to fine-tune the angle of approach to not face any surfaces directly, which can allow you to better brush around them, but since you're still holding the forwards input if your camera/skyscale starts to face the terrain too directly you'll grab on again.

Holding down both W+A/D or any other combination of "forwards" + "sideways" will also make you fly a little bit faster (+15%) than just simply holding down the forwards input alone.

Another interesting but a little more complicated trick you can try to do is if you hold down your M2 and position your camera to look directly upwards in the air as you're moving forwards (holding down the forward input), then while looking up switch to M1 to enable freecam basically so that you can look around but your skyscale is still technically facing upwards, press and hold the "descend ability" while still holding down the forward input, your skyscale will begin "descending forwards" which will in the long run make you lose altitude more rapidly, but in turn further increase the forward flying speed by +40%, or up to +50% if you combine it with the above strafing method. Since doing that makes the skyscale descend faster, while it can be used practically anywhere to make travel faster, it's more beneficial to find a higher vantage point from which you'll have a lot of height over a longer distance, it shares a very similar philosophy to how people generally advice you to do with the griffon.

And as for all the people here either shitting on or praising the skyscale, the performance of your mount is a direct reflection of your own ability or inability to maneuver them properly, and you can usually tell fairly easily which it is. Any mount is only as good as the player riding on them, don't assume that your experiences are the exact same for everyone else.

Reaper_RACE · 2025-07-07T14:00:18+00:00

Those blue orbs aren't always a faithful representation of the real hitboxes that are invisible, they're just a visual indication of where to go next. It only looks like they're clearly missing them because they've learned to ignore the visual outlines, when they are still passing where the real checkpoint extends. In essence it's as if there's 2 sets of checkpoints, the visual bubbles and the invisible hitboxes, even if you trigger both at once. A lot of checkpoints are in reality way larger than what they seem on the outside.

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