ErrantQuest

Public perception is that Karka are hard to kill.  So hard that people in my guild have stated, “I’d rather have my gums scraped than fight karka in Southsun”.  The truth, however, is that karka are fun, easy and profitable to fight.  You can make more than 3gp+ an hour from Potent Blood, Powerful Blood and Karka Shells.  All it takes is a coordinated group with the right set of skills.

What people find brutally difficult about the Karka is their ranged Spit attack.  It can kill an unprepared player.  It can also be reflected and be used to knock 50% or more of the life off the Karka with an ability that reflects projectiles.  The Guardian, Engineer, Ranger and Elementalist all have an ability that can be used to reflect projectiles.  The Mesmer, however, doesn’t have just one, she has seven.

Here’s an example of the Engineer’s reflect ability:

And with a Mesmer:

The last video shows just how poorly my mesmer buddy and I fought (we are out of practice!) but still managed to slaughter 7 Karka at the same time!

Mesmer

Prior to the last patch, the Phantsmal Warden was the most powerful mesmer reflector.  It is capable of reflecting an number of Karka attacks and nearly killing all of them.  Since the latest patch, iWardens have a small delay from when the start protecting and can be killed by an angry karka before spittng.  Feedback has since become the mesmer reflector of choice.  Simply aggro a group of Karka, cast the Feedback in your own area and watch as the Karka murder themselves.  The trait Warden’s Feedback allows all focus abilities to reflect.  There’s a huge arsenal for the Mesmer to reflect and farm.

Other classes that can reflect ranged attacks and their abilities:

Guardian

Wall of Reflection [utility] – 40s cooldown (32s with Master of Consecrations)

Engineer 

Magnetic Shield [shield 4]- 30s cooldown (24s with Reinforced Shield)

Ranger

Swirling Strike [spear 2] – 8s cooldown

Elementalist

Magnetic Aura [staff 3] – cooldown 30s (24s with Geomancer’s Alacrity)

OR

Magnetic Wave [focus 4] – cooldown 25s (20s with Geomancer’s Alacrity)

Weapons

• Giver
  • +Condition Duration % [+10% on rare and exotic level 80s]
  • +Precision
  • +Vitality

Armor

• Giver
  • +Toughness
  • +Healing Power
  • +Boon Duration % [+1% on rare and exotic level 80s]

Trinkets

• Snowflake
  • +Healing Power
  • +Magic Find %
  • +Boon Duration % [+1% on rare and exotic level 80s]

Runes

• Minor Rune of Altruism
  • (1) +10 Healing Power
  • (2) Give might to nearby allies when using a healing skill
• Major Rune of Altruism
  • (1) +15 Healing Power
  • (2) Give 2 stacks of might to nearby allies when using a healing skill.
• Superior Rune of Altruism
  • (1) +25 Healing Power
  • (2) Give 3 stacks of might to nearby allies when using a healing skill.
  • (3) +50 Healing Power
  • (4) +15% Boon Duration
  • (5) +90 Healing Power
  • (6) Give fury to nearby allies when using a healing skill

Food

• Bowl of Saffron-Mango Ice Cream
  • Gain Healing Power equal to 6% of your Vitality
  • Gain Healing Power equal to 4% of your Toughness
  • +5% Karma
• Bowl of Candy Corn Ice Cream
  • Gain Healing Power equal to 1% of your vitality
  • +15% Experience
  • +5% Karma

You can find crafting recipes for most of the above here.

Yesterday, at about 5:00pm, posted a guide to the Chef Profession on Reddit.  I was expecting, at most, 1,000 people to view it, and perhaps 100 to actually follow through with it.  It appears I was off by a factor of 10.  That guide has now been viewed over 9,500 times.  Yikes.

In addition to stoking my ego (people like what I wrote!  They really like it! [No, moron, they like charts, now get to work on artificer, you silly excel monkey]), posting the guide has also caused prices of certain goods on the Trading Post to go off the rails.  The one that I’m most concerned about is Tarragon Leaves, as it is still the cheapest and most accessible route to leveling chef at T5.  It increased in price by 145%.

The most notable increase was Pile of Tangy Seasoning.  It increased in price by a mind-boggling 3,733%.  When I posted the guide, there were 15,000 Piles of Tangy Seasoning available on the TP.  Now there are less than 5,000 (and priced highly to boot).  I should get an achievement for that.  ”Inadvertently caused market bubble of tulip proportions” or something.  Whoops.  Sorry about that guys.

Here’s a breakdown of all price changes: