Every mount, what it costs, and the order that makes sense

Mounts in Guild Wars 2 are not cosmetics, and they are not about running faster. Each one opens a different way to move: one jumps straight up, one skims water, one glides across a canyon. A map you crawled over on foot stops being the same map once you have three of them.

The awkward part is that they are scattered across expansions and seasons, cost wildly different amounts, and demand different things. Here they are together.

The table

Mount	From	Cost	What it buys you
Raptor	Path of Fire, first chapter	free	long forward leap, baseline speed
Springer	Path of Fire	50 Trade Contracts + 1 g	vertical jump
Skimmer	Path of Fire	50 Trade Contracts + 4 g	gliding over water and lava
Jackal	Path of Fire	200 Trade Contracts + 20 g (same day as the heart)	blink through portals, sand travel
Warclaw	PoF or Janthir Wilds	free	speed in WvW, now in PvE too
Roller Beetle	Living World 4, episode 3	no gold, three collections	fastest thing on flat ground
Griffon	Path of Fire, story complete	250 g	long dives and gliding from height
Skyscale	Living World 4 or SotO	41 g long route / 15 g short one	hovering, vertical walls
Siege Turtle	End of Dragons	Turtle Egg + collections	two seats and cannons

Trade Contracts are a Crystal Desert map currency handed out by renown hearts. So the first three mounts after the raptor are gated less by gold than by walking the expansion’s maps.

The order that makes sense

If you have just bought Path of Fire and your wallet is thin:

1. Raptor. Arrives on its own during the first story chapter, “Sparking the Flame”. Nothing to do.

2. Springer. One gold and 50 Trade Contracts from Stablemaster Unja at Highjump Ranch. Best freedom-per-coin purchase in the game: vertical movement opens half the places that were previously closed. Needs the Canyon Jumping mastery.

3. Skimmer. Four gold from Skimmer Trainer Ardra. Water stops being an obstacle, and on later maps so does lava.

4. Warclaw. Free now: one World Ability Point in WvW, or the Janthir Wilds story. Both routes in detail.

5. Jackal. 200 Trade Contracts and 20 gold, but only if you buy on the same day you finish Drojkor’s heart. A day later it is 30 gold 40 silver. Vendor names and the right order are in the Path of Fire mounts guide.

6. Roller Beetle. Asks for no gold at all, only time. Requires the third episode of Season 4, “Long Live the Lich”. Starts by talking to Spearmarshal Zaeim in the Domain of Kourna, then Gorrik, then three collections back to back: Beetle Juice, Beetle Saddle, Beetle Feed. Fastest mount on flat ground, and the one the races are run on. Step by step.

7. Griffon. 250 gold, and the Path of Fire story finished in full. The money is paid in ten instalments of 25, so there is nothing to save up in advance. The details are here.

8. Skyscale. With Secrets of the Obscure: 15 gold and one evening. Without it: the long Season 4 route with a three-day time gate. The two routes compared.

9. Siege Turtle. Needs End of Dragons. First a Turtle Egg, either from “The Battle for the Jade Sea” meta in Dragon’s End, or from the Peddler for 200 Writs of Dragon’s End. Then collections in Arborstone with an NPC called Rota. It seats two and carries cannons, so it is for specific content rather than for getting around. How to get the egg without suffering.

What the mastery tracks cost, side by side

Every mount guide tells you how to unlock the mount. Almost none add up what it costs to finish it, and the totals turn out to be strangely tidy.

Mount	Track total	Mastery points
Roller beetle	1,879,600 XP	12
Griffon	1,879,600 XP	12
Skyscale (Season 4 track)	1,879,600 XP	12
Siege turtle	5,715,000 XP	20

Three of those are identical to the last digit. The beetle, the griffon and the skyscale each run three tiers of 571,500, 609,600 and 698,500 experience, and each pays back twelve points. ArenaNet clearly built one template for a single-mount track and reused it, and nobody puts that in a guide because nobody looks at two mounts at once.

The turtle sits in its own bracket at three times the cost, which is what a two-seat artillery mount is apparently worth. For scale, that is also exactly what the fishing track costs.

The tiers nobody tells you are global

The detail that changes how you spend those points: some mount masteries upgrade every mount you own, not the one whose track they sit in.

• 🔴 Well Rested, in the warclaw’s Janthir track, raises endurance regeneration on every mount by 20%
• 🔴 Sharing Is Caring, at the end of the siege turtle track, applies the turtle’s health boost to every other mount
• Bond of Vigor, Bond of Faith and Bond of Life are on the skill bar of every mount in the game and most players never bind them

So the sensible order is not “finish the mount I use most”. It is: take the global tiers early, wherever they happen to live, and let the mount-specific polish wait. Two of the most valuable upgrades in the whole system are buried at the end of tracks belonging to mounts many players never touch.

If you own no expansions

The base game has no mounts, but the raptor can be tried: from level 10 there is a trial that lasts ten hours of play time. That is enough to feel how differently the maps read, and to decide whether an expansion is worth it.

What not to do

Do not chase the griffon first. 250 gold at the start is months of saving, while a Springer for one gold makes your life easier tonight.

Do not buy an expansion for a single mount. Count what else comes with it: story, maps, elite specialisations. The mount is a bonus, not a reason.

Do not put off the Warclaw. It is free now, and one World Ability Point is a few minutes in WvW.

Why mounts here are not a speed stat.

A closing thought, because this is the part the genre keeps getting wrong.

In most games a mount is a multiplier. You move at 100%, you mount up, you move at 160%. The world stays the same shape; you cross it faster.

Here every mount changes which shapes exist. The springer does not make you quick, it makes cliffs stop being walls. The skimmer does not outrun water, it deletes water as an obstacle. The skyscale turns a vertical face into a road.

That is why players who own four of them describe old maps as feeling new. The terrain did not change. The set of legal moves did.

It also explains the ordering advice above. A cheap mount that removes a category of obstacle beats an expensive one that removes the same obstacle slightly more elegantly. Buy the springer, then argue about griffons.