Guild Wars 2

Tequatl is getting a revamp for its game mechanism.
However will this also reflect from lore side?

A dragon champion suddenly becomes more formidable one day.
Thoughts on it:
1. It breaks free from Zhaitan’s control so it behaves differently.
2. It absorbs magic from Zhaitan’s defeat.
3. Modified version by Scarlet/Inquest
4. It is that strong since the begining.

5. It has been holding back for just s & g.

It is indeed quite likely that there will be an actual story behind the new fight, if not it would be quite weird to have it as the main selling point for a living story chapter.

It is likely there will be a story involved. When watching the reveal, I noticed Rox in the background with some dialogue (which unfortunatly I couldn’t catch in time). Also Arenanet have stated multiple times that revamps to bosses and dungeons would be done with stories that give reason for such things.

What’s interesting to me is what the story will be about. Since the Living World occurs after the personal story. Or would they simply force us to suspend disbelief and think that Tequatl was always this way.

Maybe they’ll tie him to Rotscale somehow

I’m having a hard time seeing how they can tie this revamp to the lore. The world as it is (except Living Story) all happens prior to Zhaitan’s defeat. Hence all Orders’ camps on all maps etc. Maps represent one point in time, that is before we enter Arah with Trahearne and the Pact. Living story is what’s been going on after Zhaitan (and presumably his minions) are “forever dead” as the trophy item says.

Well, they plan on revamping Zhaitan at some point, too…so they’re either going to have to just not tie that to a Living Story release, or actually go, “he was never dead, you just injured him when he fell, and now he’s actually angry!!”

I’m assuming there’s more to Tequatl Rising than just his fight, though. The achievements they showed were permanent boss related achievements. There’s going to be a meta (I assume) tied to it that’s in a Living World category, too.

JayMack.8295:

Well, they plan on revamping Zhaitan at some point, too…so they’re either going to have to just not tie that to a Living Story release, or actually go, “he was never dead, you just injured him when he fell, and now he’s actually angry!!”

I’m assuming there’s more to Tequatl Rising than just his fight, though. The achievements they showed were permanent boss related achievements. There’s going to be a meta (I assume) tied to it that’s in a Living World category, too.

that is only if all minions of a elder dragon dies when the dragon dies else it could be some freed tequatl we are facing

It wouldn’t be. The only way to free Tequatl and give him free will is by cleansing it via the Forgotten ritual that removed Kralkatorrik’s yoke from Glaust (Glint).

I think this will be post-Battle of Arah and we have to figure out why this champion became stronger even after its master’s alleged death. (Hopefully this is a prelude to an extra Arah path where we will deal with Zhaitan’s remains permanently.)

Lol, you are still looking for lore in the “living story”? Naive you

I don’t thing the change to Tequatl requires any new lore. Because I don’t feel that he’s really gained any new powers. He still does the bone wall thing, and spits poison. His behavior is more challenging, but I don’t see a change in his powers really. What I mean is, all he does is pretty much in line with what he did before. The only real big change seems to be this vortex he summons, that sucks players in. But we already saw him emerge from the water, so I don’t see that as something that needs to be explained.

Absorbing Zhaitan power and become new great dragon is nice choice to move.

Thalador.4218:

It wouldn’t be. The only way to free Tequatl and give him free will is by cleansing it via the Forgotten ritual that removed Kralkatorrik’s yoke from Glaust (Glint).

This may not be so if the Elder Dragon dies. Though they seem to remain loyal to Zhaitan, given the Arah explorable, that doesn’t exclude them from having a free will now.

Personally, my hope with this storyline is that it’ll be confirmed to be post-Zhaitan, and Tequatl (we never do see his body upon death, do we… unlike the Shatterer who’s death is confirmed and the Claw who’s said to be killed iirc) will have been absorbing the remaining corrupted magic of Zhaitan off-screen.

It could prove interesting for that theory on Zhaitan’s death that was posted a while back – over time, a champion can rise up to take Zhaitan’s place. Tequatl may turn out to become this champion. I think it would be awesome if they pull out Zhaitan’s old model for a future Tequatl-related update, giving Tequatl a visual upgrade as well.

I don’t think Tequatl’s gotten to Zhaitan’s corpse or anything, but I do think it’s possible that the Risen are starting to absorb the corruption of the land itself, or perhaps there are more “sources of Orr” like scenarios in places other than Orr that we’ve missed – after all, while the land-based corruption is strongest in Orr, it wasn’t limited to there.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I don’t thing the change to Tequatl requires any new lore. Because I don’t feel that he’s really gained any new powers. He still does the bone wall thing, and spits poison. His behavior is more challenging, but I don’t see a change in his powers really. What I mean is, all he does is pretty much in line with what he did before. The only real big change seems to be this vortex he summons, that sucks players in. But we already saw him emerge from the water, so I don’t see that as something that needs to be explained.

New powers != new abilities

He’s gotten stronger, gained strength and become harder to kill. It doesn’t matter if he has new skills and abilities to use, though there’s the Hardened Scales you forgot to mention (though that’s how he uses the bone walls now). It’s just simply that he has gotten more powerful.

Zhaitan IS dead. Confirmed (perhaps not strongly enough for some apparently) in-game and by devs.

In the video it says he’s been gathering power and that it has returned. Ignoring that it spawns every three hours… the first time we confront Tequatl, we defeat him and he returns to the water, as seen upon his defeat. But not killed.

Probably meaning all this time he has been harnessing power from something, perhaps Zhaitan’s renmant magic, magical artifacts in the depths or something else to be thrown at us.

I do hope there’s a logical explanation to this change and not just a random buff.

Honestly I doubt there’s going to be any serious lore behind it, any more than there’s lore behind changes like making the Fire Elemental in Thaumanova Reactor not so deadly to fight.

New Elder Dragon lore would be nice. I really think they should really show them as more scary and unstoppable force, since they’re constantly described as something like “forces of nature”.

As for what I think about his upgrade, I’m thinking that he became the center focal point of Zhaitan’s corruption. Zhaitan’s minions are still active in the world, though they are getting fewer and fewer, but they are still doing their job and devouring magic. Zhaitan use to be the center of the corruption, but now that he is dead; that position is getting moved to the next strongest. Which I’m guessing is Tequatl.

I doubt it will happen, but i’m kinda hoping that Teq escapes again. It would be nice for him to take up Zhaitan’s old spot as Elder Dragon, and for him to learn from Zhaitan’s mistakes. Don’t be an arrogant kitten, just because you woke up under an already dead kingdom. Teq would have to start from scratch, all the while trying to stay under the Pact’s radar.

Eluveitie.1290:

Zhaitan IS dead. Confirmed (perhaps not strongly enough for some apparently) in-game and by devs.

In the video it says he’s been gathering power and that it has returned. Ignoring that it spawns every three hours… the first time we confront Tequatl, we defeat him and he returns to the water, as seen upon his defeat. But not killed.

Probably meaning all this time he has been harnessing power from something, perhaps Zhaitan’s renmant magic, magical artifacts in the depths or something else to be thrown at us.

I do hope there’s a logical explanation to this change and not just a random buff.

Of course the devs will say Zhaitan is dead if they want to surprise us!!

The title “Tequatl Rising” clearly says to me that the Risen’s power is increasing once again. Maybe future update will revamp Orr and extend the personal story with a proper final battle against a risen Zhaitan (raid-like content).

Zaxares.5419:

Honestly I doubt there’s going to be any serious lore behind it, any more than there’s lore behind changes like making the Fire Elemental in Thaumanova Reactor not so deadly to fight.

Difference between this and that is that the Elemental change was not part of a huge living story update. It didn’t have a whole living story chapter named after it.

I think this new underwater vortex is a strange skill for an undead dragon, even if he likes swimming
Maybe Tequatl had a little run in with the underwater elder dragon and got corrupted by it or he just gets controlled by it, so that this elder dragon can control parts of Zhaitans army through Tequatl.
Or this new Tequatl is just one that escaped from Orr. Because the strongest Minions stayed near Zhaitan, while he was alive, if i remember correctly.

SoulyD.9125:

I think this new underwater vortex is a strange skill for an undead dragon, even if he likes swimming
Maybe Tequatl had a little run in with the underwater elder dragon and got corrupted by it or he just gets controlled by it, so that this elder dragon can control parts of Zhaitans army through Tequatl.
Or this new Tequatl is just one that escaped from Orr. Because the strongest Minions stayed near Zhaitan, while he was alive, if i remember correctly.

Elder Dragons cannot corrupt other Elder Dragon’s minions, much less a champion, so that’s unlikely.

And, as far as we know, all the champions like Tequatl have a different name and are unique. So I doubt there are several Tequatls around.

Eluveitie.1290:

Elder Dragons cannot corrupt other Elder Dragon’s minions, much less a champion, so that’s unlikely.

False. Minions are susceptible to additional sources of corruption. See CoE, story and explorable modes.

Rather an ED would try to subvert the champions of another, and what the result of such an attempt might be, are still open questions, though.

That would be interesting, having territorial entities wage one another, because one tried to subvert minions of the other.

A Destroyer made of ice?

Eluveitie.1290:

Elder Dragons cannot corrupt other Elder Dragon’s minions, much less a champion, so that’s unlikely.

And, as far as we know, all the champions like Tequatl have a different name and are unique. So I doubt there are several Tequatls around.

You should replay Crucible of Eternity.

Because we have three cases in which a dragon minion has been affected by 3+ Elder Dragons – Kudu, Kudu’s Monster, and Subject Alpha.

So you’ve got it wrong, at least somewhat.

Though the question is: would the Elder Dragons corrupt other dragons’ minions? We know they’re not allies, but doing such may prove to be unbeneficial – all three of the above cases appear to be uncontrollable (more or less), at least by the Elder Dragons. Then there’s the fact that each Elder Dragon corrupts differently (whether by choice or default is still unclear; but that’s one of the things that “differentiate one Elder Dragon from the next” that Jeff Grubb has emphasized in couple times).

About “multiple Tequatls” – technically speaking, Tequatl the Sunless’s name is hylek, translates to mean “One In the Darkness Risen” (“The Sunless” is the hylek term for Risen, Tequatl means “one in the darkness” iirc). So it’s a title like The Shatterer and Claw of Jormag, unlike the other Zhaitan champions (as far as we know) such as Blightghast the Plaguebringer (“Plaguebringer” seems to be the kind of risen these champions are – akin to Eye of Zhaitan; these are all Plaguebringers, and Tequatl the Sunless is the hylek name for them).

Anyways, from what I observed, the “water vortex” skill is simply Tequatl creating a sinkhole that pulls folks into an underground chasm full of water. So it doesn’t seem so water-related to me. I’d consider it to be rather undead-like, personally, as it’s a skill that pulls folks underground. It “just so happens” that there’s an underground chasm full of water there.

Tequatl is likely trying to take Zhaitan’s place as ruler of the Risen and is drawing as much magic as possible into himself.

I disagree with the notion that they’re all "Plaguebringer"s- there are five different titles we see attached to Zhaitan’s pet dragons, of which Plaguebringer is only one (Plaguebringer, Sunless, Moondeath, Heartslayer, Soulbreaker). This is my personal gut feeling, so I’m not going to bother trying to win anybody over… but I think the names reflect what each champion has done. They feel very much like unique sobriquets to me. The Sunless attacks hylek (as Konig said, Sunless being a distinctly hylek term for undead, and perhaps also ties in to his being the only one to attack from under the water), and a major part of Blightghast is his pestilential breath- hence ‘Plaguebringer’. Obviously we don’t have anything to work with for the other three, but their names definitely reflect some measure of hidden depth. (Ogravros, in particular, fascinates me… what did it do to get tagged with ‘Moonslayer’?)

There are some NPCs in the personal story who refer to the champions as a group as “Plaguebringers.” At the end of Retribution, there’s even some dialogue going “I can’t believe we defeated a Plaguebringer.”

What we see in CoE, as far as I can tell, is Inquest messing with the corruption using technology. I know Subject Alpha. I know the giant at the end of story mode. But they’ve all been product of the Inquest and their methods.

I have not seen a case where an Elder Dragon goes about corrupting minions of another Elder Dragon.

Regarding Tequatl, I agree with Aaron.

Plaguebringers could be the term The Pact and others use to refer to that type of champion, not the champions themeselves.

@Konig Can you source those lines? I find it curious that I have not seen any of them.

@Eluveitie The argument wasn’t that EDs do it, but rather that they can do it, in theory. In practice, there is not a single spot in the current game where the territories of separate dragon minions overlap, so those Inquest experiments are all we have to go off of.

@Aaron, doing a quick GW2W it seems they don’t have the lines I recall. That or I recall incorrectly. It is lacking a lot of dialogue from the personal story though. I recall mentions of “Plaguebringers” at the end of Retribution, at the beginning of Forging the Pact, and during The Source of Orr (if your ally from Retribution is there, or certain ones at least – so many dialogue alterations in that one depending on your PS choices ~_~).

@Eluveitie: What Aaron said about the corruption bit. It isn’t that they have, but that they can. Being a dragon minion does not make you immune to other Elder Dragons’ corruption. It’s all a choice of whether they choose too – just like Primordus corrupting living beings. We never actually see such, but it is possible for a destroyer to be a corrupted living being instead of merely corrupted rock and lava (as confirmed in the latest interview between GM and Anet).

Re: Tequatl – logically, he’s probably just free of his master’s influence. He’s a rogue agent now, but one who’s amassed quite some power. He’s Subotai, operating independently of Genghis Khan.

Since he’s been harassing the coast of the mainland, he was spared the slaughter of the Pact’s invasion of Orr and the destruction of the other champions. It makes sense that, as an intelligent creature, he would seek to amass his own power.

I really hope they do play up that angle… because discounting a few mentions of how Blightghast was leading or commanding the Risen, there’s no indication that any of the lesser dragons we see in the game are intelligent. At this point, that’s just a conclusion that the player base has drawn from perhaps a couple dev interviews, a vague grasp on how dragon lieutenants work, and prior experience with Glint.

Yesterday I was thinking about this and had an idea:

We know Zhaitan is made out of more dragons, so what if Tequatl originally was a part of his body that became too strong and become his champion? But he is still considered part of Zhaitan’s body so he could regenerate his essence using Tequatl’s body (sort of like Wolverine or Deadpool being able to regenerate from parts of their bodies in Marvel), so until Tequatl isn’t really killed (instead of just fleeing to the sea) Zhaitan has a chance to come back. And this is why he is featured in a LS specifically for him with a redesign of the fight.

i’ve read about tequatl getting a revamp, where is it written? i know the queen made a speech after all but you have to be out of game in order to read it… so i guess tequatl revamp will be out of game too… unless it involve jumping

They did a prevew during PAX and showed the new achievement list for the event.

An interesting part is that it was in the “bosses” section instead of the “living story” section.

@Aaron and Konig

But it is still, as far as we know due to current lore, only because there has been technological interference by a third party. Humans (us) can grow a cut off finger tip theorically, but not without technological intervention. Elder Dragons theorically might be able to corrupt other minions, but perhaps can’t naturally do it without some kind of third party intervention.

I do agree with the fact that corrupted minions can be corrupted by another source (in this case, thanks to the Inquest), there’s no doubt regarding that, but no one can know for sure yet if they can be naturally corrupted.

In which case, my first post was wrongly worded. Elder Dragons might not be able to corrupt other minions. But, in my opinion, they can’t, and much less a champion.

The point, Eluveitie, is that you said it was impossible.

We know it’s not impossible for a dragon minion to be corrupted by multiple ED energies. The question is whether or not the ED would/could do it themselves. You said it is impossible, but that’s not necessarily so. Nothing indicates such, and the presumption you make is what lead people to believing sylvari are ED minions because they’re immune to corruption. There is in fact more to indicate that it is possible and can happen without third party interference than without – after all, we’ve yet to see Elder Dragons minions mix outside of CoE.

My thoughts, at least, is that the magitechnical aspects of the Inquest experiments isn’t that great- there’s certainly a limit to what can be portrayed in-game, but all the Inquest experiments we see effectively come down to putting a subject (usually a quaggan) in a pod and bombarding it with dragon corruption. The Elder Dragons seem to corrupt, at least in the larger scale cases, by saturating an area with their energies (the Dragonbrand, for instance, or Zhaitan’s ossuary.) The only observable differences between the procedures seems to be a matter of scale- the Inquest opt for controlled environments, where the EDs have no such handicaps.

I think It’s worth noting that while most dragon minions are corrupted forms of other creatures, the big champions we see as world bosses and the like don’t have any non-minion counterpart in the world. In fact, they are all basically miniature dragons. I don’t think they are corrupted creatures. Glint was capable of reproducing, so I think you know where this is going.

Teq is a child-Zhaitan. So he’s probably still growing and getting stronger.

The wording around Glint’s obtaining free will is done in such a way that it seems she was a corrupted former living creature. The Claw of Jormag also seems to have an actual skeleton that’s corrupted – similar to the Dragonspawn from Edge of Destiny which was made from minotaur skeleton, fog/mist, and ice. The Shatterer is hollow and its “skin” seems to be rock (as opposed to the typical crystal bodies of Branded).

So I wouldn’t say that the dragon champions are “children” of the Elder Dragons. Technically, we don’t know that Glint reproduced per se – she could have simply made another “dragon champion” since we know that dragon champions can do such (Drakkar turning Svanir into a dragon champion, for example).

Zhaitan is not dead he is PRESUMED dead…
Big difference.

Which is still ridiculous in terms of writing.

“This dragon who’s been terrorising us for 100 years is finally defeated!!”
“Shouldn’t we check if he’s actually dead, though?”
“…nah.”

As far as I’m aware, they give no lore to whether they even attempted to check if he died but couldn’t for (x) reason. Having said that, the Orr tokens seem to imply he has.

I believe it was confirmed in a “recent” (e.g., less than a month old now) interview that Zhaitan is dead.

Tequatl’s body has been corrupted by bubbles creating a hybrid Undead/Water dragon which could explain some of his tsunami/whirlpool abilities. When the patch comes live it will turn out that tequatls model has been changed to reflect this and the devs have been hiding it from us. Or it could just turn out that none of this is true.

I would really like to see the dragon’s lieutenants made more prominent parts of the story. Like Drakkar, he has a history already(even if a very limited one) but I feel they could make great compelling villains. Even if its just in a “not seen” capacity.
One example, how much cooler would the end of the PS have been if the dragon we faced there was the Lt, and not Zhaitan. It wouldn’t have felt as underwhelming, esp if the explorable paths involved fighting Zhaitan instead. We could still have learned what we do now, just in the context of using that knowledge to destroy the dragon itself. Even if you would’ve had to finish all exp paths before facing him.
That being said, I wou love to Tequatl take on a larger role story/game-wise, and the others too. I’d love to see the claw set it’s sights on HotW, and have a 3 path quest to get him to leave. Or the shatterer attacking Ebonhawk, or better yet have the minion a rank ahead of them create agents that go out ala Scarlett and attack outposts and such.
Ok, done daydreaming.

I want to point out lore form 4 winds. That dragons are like sponges that soak up the magic around them. We know when dragons die there magic is released into the world. Hense glints death and increased power of the zepherites. Most likely through Ziatans death all dragons will become more powerful. Do you really think the 5 races couldn’t kill elder dragons before and we can now. They probly chose not to due to the exponential growth of dragon power that would occur would cause an enemy that could not be defeated. Teq being the closest dragon to Zitains death would make sense he is first to see an increase in power due to his death. If this is true hope of defeating all 6 is probly impossible. Also would explain why Primortus hasn’t risen, waiting for use to kill off the rest of the dragons and his power to increase.

Sorry typos

milton.1796:

Zhaitan is not dead he is PRESUMED dead…
Big difference.

I really hope Zhaitan is dead. I just wouldn’t see the story appeal of fighting the same monster again and again – and who is to say his death would stick the next time, either? It would make the whole thing seem pretty pointless if our efforts never had real, permanent consequences.

The method of Zhaitan’s defeat could have been better, but I’d rather see ANet take that feedback and make future Elder Dragon fights more epic, rather than have them retcon the personal story into irrelevance by bringing our first nemesis back.

haven’t the devs said that Zhaitan is really dead?

smekras.8203:

haven’t the devs said that Zhaitan is really dead?

Yes, and it says so on the tokens you get from the exploration mode Arah dungeon.

So with the update out I thought I’d ask, how does no one notice a giant undead dragon flying around almost all of Tyria. I mean seriously Sparkfly, Blazeridge, and Frostgorge you think someone would have see teq flying to and from those zones.

Er…

Blazeridge is about The Shatterer (you see branded crystals called “Dragon Shards”). Frostgorge is about Claw of Jormag (you see ice shards called “Dragon Scales”).

Tequatl wasn’t flying across the continent. Hunting signs for him is only in Sparkfly.

And about them Dragon Shards, I was about to make a post regarding them…

Is this further proof that the Dragonbrand is spreading? There’s 7 crystals you hunt down that’re outside of the Dragonbrand, and 4 (arguably 5) aren’t exactly close to the Brand either.