Now that the Beetle can crush everything in the Wintersday Race

[Dezzie.5903]

Can the mount rental person be switched from Raptor to Beetle next year? Or at least add a Beetle rental option?

The Beetle isn't winning by a slim margin. To paraphrase a well-known quote from horse-racing: "Beetle first, the rest nowhere."

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Personally, with all the super-tight turns, I get a much faster time on a Raptor than a Roller Beetle.Heck, I get a much faster time on foot than with a Roller Beetle. Lol.

[Randulf.7614]

Beetle isn't an auto win. Most people I bet can't use the beetle to great enough effect to make a difference as the track very much isn't well designed for it. Seeing so many people try and fail, I think it is better to leave the raptor there.

An extra option of beetle I would not be against.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Personally, with all the super-tight turns, I get a much faster time on a Raptor than a Roller Beetle.Heck, I get a much faster time on foot than with a Roller Beetle. Lol.

Me trying this on a roller beetle would have me botching a tight turn and flying off the side of a ramp to end up on the other side of town from the race. :)

[Aaralyna.3104]

Beetle is available to all plays that bought an expac and unlocked related living world episode. The upgraded raptor is from expac purchase too. The rental raptor (non upgraded) is there for rental purposes for the f2p player that otherwise could not race at all... Its only there to be able to participate (not to win in a top 3). Beetle indeed is no auto-win as mentioned either (I also prefer raptor and did get top 3 with it this year).

[tinymurder.5791]

I prefer the raptor for this race, but I use the beetle. Even though I clip walls or even ram into a full stop on turns, the beetle kills on the straight-aways & downhill sections. I thought the raptor would be a no brainer, but I got smoked by two beetle riders by at ~20 seconds. So I tried the beetle on a time trial and bettered my best time by about 16 seconds. That was with a great deal of crashing and overshooting. There really isn't a race anymore that the beetle doesn't own, unless it involves flying, vertical jumps, or sand portals.

[DaFishBob.6518]

Rental beetle would most likely be very bad due to lack of a certain mastery that enables endurance regeneration based on sudden collisions. Yes, smashing into walls at full speed on a fully mastered beetle regenerates endurance which enables more boosting on a track with no endurance boost power ups at all.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Beetle goes fast enough that nothing loads other than the ground when I go for multiple laps to get dailies. You can imagine the annoying sign posts.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Personally, with all the super-tight turns, I get a much faster time on a Raptor than a Roller Beetle.

It takes practice to run the whole thing on the beetle - but once you know how, it beats everything else. So super fast!

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

No kidding! I'd never have guessed.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

There's no point, you can get gold (2:30) even on Jackal, as long as you have Bond of Vigor, albeit just barely. And Raptor is even faster than that , though possibly not in this race specifically due to how many uphill areas there are..

Galaxy brain is that you can switch mounts mid-race. If you can get them to actually load, at least..

[Blocki.4931]

I think the real thing that "breaks" it is the mastery that allows you to jump and dismount. That one saved my bacon countless times + a quick remount into the desired direction without having to deal with drifting or tight corners.

[Taygus.4571]

@"Jaquelidor.2618" said:Can the mount rental person be switched from Raptor to Beetle next year? Or at least add a Beetle rental option?

The Beetle isn't winning by a slim margin. To paraphrase a well-known quote from horse-racing: "Beetle first, the rest nowhere."

its only doing so...with masteries...the basic beetle would likely not be able to take the turns well at all as you can't drift.

[Airdive.2613]

Yeah, there was a reason why beetle's endurance bar defaulted to zero before one of the latest patches.

[Ashantara.8731]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:No kidding! I'd never have guessed.

Then why advertize the Raptor, which is a worse choice than the Jackal on most sections of the race track?

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Pretty sure this thread is about the Raptor being the rental Mount.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

With some fine tuning I managed to get 2:28 on Jackal by literally just using Bond of Vigor and dashing through circles, nothing special.

When I tested the Raptor it was still faster despite the upper inclines, just don't waste endurance on them unless you're full, and try to only leap when you're at least half endurance, because if you leap too often you lose forward momentum.

[Aaralyna.3104]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:No kidding! I'd never have guessed.

Then why advertize the Raptor, which is a worse choice than the Jackal on most sections of the race track?

I guess that when they added this race (and halloween lab one) they liked to include as many pof players as possible. I don't know if I already had access to the jackal when wintersday festival popped (as you did need to progress in story and get masteries (rapter> bunny > skimmer > jackal) and pof content wasn't out long yet). Since raptor is 1st mount I guess they chose for this mount on purpose. The 1st year we did not have rental mounts yet if I'm not mistaken but I'm not 100% sure on this).

As for Inculpatus choice of mount, I guess thats personal. I also tend to pick raptor as 1st choice unless the rental mentions another mount.

[whoeverxwins.1279]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:Beetle goes fast enough that nothing loads other than the ground when I go for multiple laps to get dailies. You can imagine the annoying sign posts.

I get the same on jackal. It has the 3rd endurance bar section, so I get round the corner and... nothing there. Yay.