Guild Wars 2: My Life As A Hylek

In Guild Wars 2 there are amphibious animals known as hyleks and there are potions in the game that enable you to turn into things, called tonics. What happens when you combine the two together? Let’s find out!

So ever since a guildie of mine got his hands on a Kraitkin, I’ve been wanting to organise a WvWvW event where [RPS] take over a Borderlands by turning into hyleks and setting up a defence in the lake in the middle of the map. We would swim around, killing krait and anything else that dared enter our watery domain – all while being directed by the Kraitkin-wielder à la Poseidon. 

We’ve actually sort of done this before after completing the Quaggan Paddle Guild Rush, as demonstrated here…

But you can understand that transforming into random animals is all-so-much better when in WvWvW!

It’s time for a spot of preparation. 

You see, although I had been aware of the existence of the Potion of Hylek Transformation and I knew that it actually gave you attack abilities, I was unsure if it would be viable to use it in WvWvW – especially if there was going to be a group of 10 or so of us roaming around as giant frogs. 

So I set out on my quest to become a hylek!

First stop: The potion vendor!

Tucked away deep in the heart of the Brisbane Wildlands…

…there lives an asura, obsessed with changing the skin colour of hyleks.

By completing his renown heart, you can purchase potions from him using karma. 

Please be aware that the consumables are soulbound upon acquire and only last for about five minutes. While that’s not a huge amount of karma to be spending to transform into such an awesome creature, if I was to organise an event I’d have to somehow get everyone participating over to Brisbane Wildlands and then have them all complete the heart before we headed into WvWvW. That is a bit of a ball ache and not really worth it for 30 minutes or so of buggering around in the actual event. 

So, as you can see, after transforming, I was gifted with three new abilities. These can be quickly summarised as ‘shite,’ ‘shite,’ and ‘transform back to normal.’ It’s cool to be able to do poison damage for once as a guardian, but the DPS is pretty terrible. 

I actually believe that the poor damage may be due to getting turned into a blue hylek, which apparently have quite weak poison – as this video mentions. Of course I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with blue hyleks, it’s just that they come across weaker than other ones (according to this asura!). 

I mean, how can an NPC judge someone just based on the pigment of their skin!? Isn’t that… racist!?

Er… 

 

Uhm…

 

(ArenaNet how did you even manage to get this in the game!?) 

So after funding a crazy bigot with karma, I headed off to our WvWvW Borderlands!

Time to visit our Garrison!

Turns out we had a waypoint there so it was pointless for me actually running all of the way. Just as well, because hyleks seem to run at about 75% of normal speed and, of course, you are unable to use any swiftness abilities while transformed. 

Now you would think that hyleks would perform very well underwater, but if you try to attack while swimming, something very weird happens…

Although the game thinks I’m still transformed, I’m quite clearly not. Despite this, I can still use the only underwater ability available to me – which consists of licking my enemy until it dies or gets grossed out enough and flees.

I rapidly discovered shoving my tongue at krait doesn’t do a huge amount of damage, which forced me to stage a ‘tactical withdrawal’ to my quaggan friends on a nearby island.

(I would like to mention that the swimming animations for hylek are very nice!) 

It’s pretty cool to be on the same level as a quaggan for once. I guess this is what asuras feel like.

Well, maybe they feel a little differently but I digress…

I ran south in the hopes of finding a zerg to join up with, so I could use my poison powers against the AG forces that were constantly terrorising our Borderlands. 

I’m walking in the aiiiiiiiiiiiir.

It wasn’t long before my huge, buggy eyes discovered the legendary commander Starhejm leading a tiny zerg between the two southernmost towers in an attempt to discourage enemy players spawning on to our map.

I grabbed some supplies and helped to shore up our defences over at ‘briar…

…And then joined a small raiding party to help cap back the nearest camp!

Certainly, this may look like jolly good fun to you sitting at home – but trust me, I was doing terrible damage.

I tagged pretty much every NPC in the camp but didn’t come out with any loot bags at all. 

Disgraced (and a bit bored), I took to trying to kill some spiders just south of the camp after it was captured. 

You can guess what happened next… 

 

No, I didn’t suddenly get bitten by one of the spiders to become a half-hylek, half-spider superhero. Instead, I died and in the process I discovered that hyleks don’t have downed animations or abilities. 

All the same, I had a nice little adventure and I hope this post was at least a little informative. Personally, I learned lots of things and the most important lesson was probably that a WvWvW event dressed up as hyleks would likely end in a massacre. 

(Unless we were playing against Whiteside Ridge.) 

Thanks for reading!

NB: This article was a more polished re-post of an older entry on my blog – although by putting up on GameSkinny I give permission for the editors here to do what they like with it.

The blog itself is exclusively about Guild Wars 2 and is updated daily. While there is a focus on commanders and WvWvW, there’s something on there for every lover of GW2. You can follow me on Twitter or on Tumblr. 

 

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