Griffon Flying

Masteries

Soaring Rescue: With the first mastery, you can mount your griffon midair. This mastery can come in very handy when switching from glider, springer, or skyscale to griffon.

Aerial prowess: This mastery gives you the ability to dive down and pull up. This dive will give u a slight speed boost up to 1200 u/s.

Aerial Finesse: This mastery gives u the ability to wing flap during your dive. This will give u an extra speed boost up to 2000 u/s. This mastery allows you to stay airborne endlessly as long as you are able to manage the speed and height.

Bond of Vigor: This mastery allows the endurance to refill more quickly. If used on a griffon, this will give you extra wing flaps.

Bond of Faith: This mastery allows you to dismount your current mount midair. This is useful if you want to switch from skyscale to griffon.

Aerial finesse: Use spacebar during the dive for a boost.

Keybinds​

Using the proper keybinds is important to be able to use the griffon to its full potential. You will make use of your forward key and strafe keys during the flight. The mount keybinds are also very important. Make sure you have your Mount ability 1 and 2 bound, as you will use these for diving and pulling up.

​You will not make use of your skill 1 (Swoop) and the backward button for diving and pulling up, since they have negative side effects. Skill 1 will drag you way lower than you want and makes doing precise mini dives impossible, this is because skill 1 is meant as a skill to attack/dismount. Using the backward button will slow you down more than you would want during the pull up, causing more height loss and loss of momentum upwards. For this reason, we will only use mount ability 1 (default on V) for diving and only mount ability 2 (default on C) for pulling up.

Camera

For flying it is best to have your field of view to the right, as putting it to the left can mess with your depth. Try not to zoom out too much during the flight since it will be harder to see what you are approaching. Try to not zoom in too much either as your griffon might block your view, so keeping it at a medium distance would be advised. The angle at which you hold your camera is also important to be able to judge your height better.​

Start Height

The griffon is a momentum-based mount. To be able to do the speed dive you will need to have the height to start with. You can either use a structure, the springer, or the skyscale to gain the height needed for a speed dive. During the flight, the griffon will be able to gain a little bit of altitude above the starting height.

If you are using a springer for extra height, try using this trick:

Mount springer and hold spacebar. Right before the endurance bar runs out, press dismount. You will get catapulted into the air. When you reach the highest point, use your keybinds to mount the griffon. This extra starting height will make it a lot easier to take off with the griffon. You do not need to make use of your bond of faith mastery.

If you are using skyscale for extra height, try using this trick:

Mount skyscale and start ascending. Use 2 dodges upwards, then use bond of vigor, dodge twice upwards again, press bond of faith, and switch to griffon. If u do this correctly you will be able to start from the flat ground even. If you are new at flying it is better to start with a bit more height than necessary so you will have more room for mistakes

Mechanics

Once you have enough height to start, you will press your mount ability 1 to start diving. During the dive, you need to do a wing flap to gain full speed. One wing flap is enough for the boost. Try to do this wing flap right after you start diving, and not when you are nearing the ground, as doing the wing flap too late will likely make you crash.

Your griffon can already do a wing flap at 66% of the endurance bar if you tap the spacebar. If you hold your spacebar, your griffon will only do a wing flap at 100% of the endurance bar. For this reason, it is better to tap the spacebar rather than hold it.

After you gain full speed, it is not needed to use the boost again during dives. You will only need to use this boost again once you have fully pulled up.

To go straight, simply release your dive button. Your griffon will be able to hold this speed for a long time. Over time your griffon will slowly lose its height and speed. To be able to fly endlessly, you will need to pull up and redive every now and again. If you lost a lot of height, pulling and rediving a few times in a row will make you regain the lost height.

 

If you are approaching an obstacle, it’s better to approach it a little bit too high up and correct your height using mini dives. Avoid doing small pull ups to correct your height as they will slow you down. If you slow yourself down too much you will not be able to pull up to its full height, which can cause problems when you try to redive again.

If you feel you are too close to the ground, you can use bond of vigor to gain some extra flaps that will keep you off the ground a little longer. If you don’t have bond of vigor, you can tap your mount ability 2 button very shortly during a wing flap. This will give your wing flap a slight bit more height. You can use this trick a few times, but it will slightly slow you everytime u do so, but it slows you down less than straight up using a mini pull up and it’s less clunky.

For turning sharp corners it is best to use your strafe keys. These will help you with taking the corners slightly sharper. doing a wing flap before or in the turn can also help making a sharper angle.

Griffon adventures

In Path of Fire and some of the living world season 4 maps, there are griffon adventures, similar to the ones the beetle has. Outside of the loot and achievements you can get from them, they are also a nice way to train the basics. If you want to be able to get faster times, try to not pull up unless you really need to, this will save a lot of time and makes it easier to get gold. You can also use ‘flying starts’ to shave off some seconds on the adventures. You want to either dive or fly by the start as close as you can and press enter once the starting screen appears.

Extra Tips and tricks

• Holding your dive button while pulling up will give you extra wing flaps upwards since the endurance bar will refill faster.
• Flying close to the ground or water gives you a height lift. this makes it possible to fly close to the surface for a long time without hitting the ground.
• If you have trouble figuring out the hitbox of the griffon, try using soulcakes or strawberry ghosts, they will turn you invisible. Since your character isn’t part of the hitbox while flying, it will be easier to figure out exactly what height is needed.
• Not sure if you did the speed dive correctly? check if u see yellow swirls while diving. They appear once you have done the speed boost. (note, This works on every skin except for the nightfang griffon. For the nightfang they always appear nonetheless and make it harder to judge if you have done your boost correctly.)
• Glowing skins with trails look fancy, but the trails can block the view. Using a skin that isnt shiny might be easier to learn mechanics with.
• If you press the spacebar right before pulling up, your griffon will stretch its wings during the way up. Although it doesn’t do anything speed or mechanic wise, it does look cleaner than the normal animation for climbing.
• Prototype position rewinder is nice to have while you are practicing. You can mark a point, and if you crash within 30 seconds you will be able to teleport back to your starting spot. You can get this item in Sandswept isles.
• Spiral dives/ pull ups. This is mainly a camera trick, but it can be fun to use and sometimes useful in tight areas where you need to spin your griffon. There are 2 ways of doing it.

First version is by holding your left mouse button and turning it in the opposite direction of your spin, then using one of the strafe keys, about face keybind and right mouse button with a certain timing.

The second version is holding your right mouse button, and using both your strafe buttons and forward button with a certain timing.