Skimming the Depths
On 25 August 2020, Guild Wars 2’s eighth anniversary patch quietly changed how the Skimmer fits into Tyria by letting it leave the surface and go fully underwater. Up to that point the mount had been a specialist for skimming over water, quicksand and other low-lying hazards; after the update, it could dive and move freely beneath the surface as well, turning long swims and awkward submerged routes into something closer to normal mounted travel.
Unlocking that change is wrapped up in a short collection and story, rather than simply dropped into everyone’s mastery panel. Players who own Path of Fire and have a Skimmer can start the “Finding Sibaha” achievement from mail or by visiting Ardra at the Skimmer Ranch in Elon Riverlands, then follow a trail of clues that leads from Amnoon and the Crystal Desert out into Central Tyria. The collection sends you to talk to NPCs such as Miyani in Lion’s Arch, quaggans in Frostgorge Sound and a largos in Malchor’s Leap, and finally to Mount Maelstrom, where you rescue the skimmer trainer Sibaha from krait before meeting her again in Lion’s Arch and proving yourself on an advanced Skimmer race.
Completing that collection unlocks a new tier on the Skimmer mastery line, Skimming the Depths. As with other mount masteries, you still need to earn the associated experience and spend mastery points to train it, but once done, pressing the usual “dive” input while on a Skimmer takes you under rather than knocking you off. From there the mount handles much like it does on the surface: forward glide, banking turns and a gentle vertical drift, only now in three dimensions instead of skimming a flat plane.
The impact is most obvious in older maps where underwater sections used to be a slow, slightly awkward punctuation between land-based events. With a Skimmer you can now cross deep lakes, follow sunken channels and reach submerged points of interest and gathering nodes much more quickly, often bypassing clumps of hostile fish or krait that would previously have been hard to avoid. That convenience has nudged more players back into content that leans on underwater spaces, from Orr’s coastal stretches to deeper pockets in maps like Frostgorge Sound and Mount Maelstrom, and it makes routes that mix land and water feel less like a series of stops and starts.
Tying the new ability to a small, self-contained story in Elon Riverlands and Central Tyria also fits the way Guild Wars 2 likes to handle expansions and anniversaries: a bit of scavenger-hunt structure, a few revisited locations, and a clear sense of having earned a small but tangible change in how you move through the world. After Skimming the Depths is unlocked, the Skimmer settles fully into its new role – still not the fastest or flashiest mount, but now equally at home above the waterline and below it, quietly smoothing out some of the game’s most awkward stretches of terrain.
