Guild Wars 2

Before I begin, let me say this entire post hinges on two assumptions:
1. The price in karka shells will be higher in price in dungeon tokens. I think they’ll be higher because karka shells are faster to accumulate since they have no max per day, and a well-built farm team can average a dead young karka every 10 seconds.
2. The demand for the karka shell armor from the temporary Southsun vendor will be similar to other exotic armors. I think I’m being very conservative here. If the armor looks cool, 8s for karka shells now will be a bargain a week from now.

Right before ANet announced the temporary vendor that’s part of the Southsun finale will use karka shells for currency, the price of karka shells was hovering between 1.5-2s. Given the limited uses for karka shells, that was a fair market price. Speculation has now doubled that price.

I don’t think it’s high enough. I think it’s going to double again in the lead up to the June 5 patch.

Karka shells are much easier to accumulate than dungeon tokens, and it takes 1380 tokens for a full set of armor. You can also buy armor of the TP in one of the standard looks that goes for about 3g per piece. Those combine to give a pretty good indication of what players have valued a full set of exotic armor at as well as what value ANet puts on fixed price exotic armor. You can also look at the prices on guild and WvW items to see that ANet is definitely on the side of grind is good for their bottom line.

So, put all that together, and it gets pretty obvious that karka shells are going to spend the entire next week going up. After that, it comes down to how ‘cool’ the armor you can buy looks. If it’s good, it’ll spike in the aftermath of the release (as in, does it go with tentacles) If it’s lame, the price will prolly plummet.

Either way, there should be a definite week of gains to be had, and possibly more.

Anyone disagree before I go convert all my T6 mats into karka shells?

healing/toughness/condition damage and has the same skin as regular rares, assuming of course nothing changes and the vendor sells settler’s armor.

The price will probably continue to rise until the vendor comes out or the speculator’s decide the word’s out and begin to sell.

This is assuming that

1.) the skins are the new, which is highly unlikely. Item sets keep getting added but the skins themselves are the same. In fact, we haven’t got any new item sets since release

2.) Lots of people desire that item set. I don’t think healing/toughness/condition is a hot commodity

The skins aren’t new. They’re already in the database, and they use the rare skins for heavy/medium/light, so the skin is basically worthless. See them all here. This stat combination is also very limited in its use, so don’t expect any of this to be very valuable.

Don’t take the bait for an obvious pump.

still… so long as the items aren’t at a ridiculous exchange rate… good exotic forge fodder.

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

still… so long as the items aren’t at a ridiculous exchange rate… good exotic forge fodder.

That is kinda what happened with the settler’s exotic trinkets given the stat combo and the fact they drop like rain.

‘Course, if they keep the skins the database currently has for them, it’s going to have at least moderate interest as those aren’t horrible skins, just not original. On the other hand, if those are just placeholders and they go with something that matches either of the back pieces, then the price on shells is prolly going to spike.

Either way, between people buying up shells now and holding the shells they have to wait and see what comes out on the 5th, prices should see a steady climb.

p.s. This isn’t a pump. This is me giving my honest opinions on what I think will happen. Yes. I bought karka shells. I bought some as soon as I read that bullet point on the main article. I bought more just after I made the first post in this thread. I’m pretty sure I now have enough shells to buy a full set of the armor if it’s something I want, and I paid less than I believe I would have if I’d waited till the 5th.

Whatever. I bought about 500 just in case. Even the rumour of a new set is more than freaking Anet have given us so far.

There’s no question about what the skins will be. They’re already in the database, and they use the same skins as the rares you can get from anywhere in the game. You further make the assumption that ANet will let items obtained with karka shells be put into the Mystic Forge. It’s entirely possible that won’t be the case.

Rising Dusk.2408:

There’s no question about what the skins will be. They’re already in the database, and they use the same skins as the rares you can get from anywhere in the game. You further make the assumption that ANet will let items obtained with karka shells be put into the Mystic Forge. It’s entirely possible that won’t be the case.

And you’re making the assumption that the vendor is going to be selling Settler’s gear.

They’ve already added Island shoulder pieces with new skins. Why is it out of the question that the new vendor will be selling the rest of that set?

Did the two Divinity Royalties have new armor on when they first were introduced? I’m just saying….

/em passively whistles to himself.

Xavori.3768:

They’ve already added Island shoulder pieces with new skins. Why is it out of the question that the new vendor will be selling the rest of that set?

Because of this (which I alluded to earlier, but you missed):

Robert Hrouda.1327:

no new armor models in the southsun shore story stuff.

Although looking like a crab would be pretty sweet.

Xavori.3768:

2. The demand for the karka shell armor from the temporary Southsun vendor will be similar to other exotic armors. I think I’m being very conservative here. If the armor looks cool, 8s for karka shells now will be a bargain a week from now.

I seem to recall hearing that a) the vendor is part of the new meta event and b) the new meta event is permanent.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xavori.3768:

They’ve already added Island shoulder pieces with new skins. Why is it out of the question that the new vendor will be selling the rest of that set?

Because of this (which I alluded to earlier, but you missed):

Robert Hrouda.1327:

no new armor models in the southsun shore story stuff.

Although looking like a crab would be pretty sweet.

Can you link the thread with that? I’d like to read the whole thing (not so much about karka shells, but other info and what brought it up). I went through twelve pages of Dev Tracker searching for Robert’s posts and couldn’t find that one.

Rajani Isa.6294:

Xavori.3768:

2. The demand for the karka shell armor from the temporary Southsun vendor will be similar to other exotic armors. I think I’m being very conservative here. If the armor looks cool, 8s for karka shells now will be a bargain a week from now.

I seem to recall hearing that a) the vendor is part of the new meta event and b) the new meta event is permanent.

Ya, that was brought up in one of the threads. It doesn’t change my thinking on the price tho. If the new armor is cool, it’s only going to dampen demand a bit as the vast majority of people will want it right now, and since for many players gold isn’t really an object anymore, they’ll just buy enough karka shells to get it without thinking about cost.

Longer term tho, the price of karka shells is going to remain higher than the 1.5-2s it was it. That price was a result of the demand generated by their use in mystic forge recipes. With a new permanent source of new demand from the addition of a vendor the price will factor that in. I also suspect that supply will decrease because while I’m sure the meta events on Southsun will remain popular, especially if they get added to the various GW2 timers, you won’t have the hordes of people farming Southsun that we have right now. Add together a slightly higher demand and lower supply, and I’d guess that the long term price of shells will be 2.5-3s after the inital spike with the caveat they might bump as high as 4s long term if something on the new vendor is really cool, or maybe only 2-2.5s if there are better sources of the items on the vendor.

Xavori.3768:

Can you link the thread with that? I’d like to read the whole thing (not so much about karka shells, but other info and what brought it up). I went through twelve pages of Dev Tracker searching for Robert’s posts and couldn’t find that one.

It’s automatically linked by quoting him. Click Rob’s name in my previous post.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Xavori.3768:

Can you link the thread with that? I’d like to read the whole thing (not so much about karka shells, but other info and what brought it up). I went through twelve pages of Dev Tracker searching for Robert’s posts and couldn’t find that one.

It’s automatically linked by quoting him. Click Rob’s name in my previous post.

Ah. Thank you. Learned something new

‘Course, it doesn’t explain the fact that we already have two new back pieces and three new shoulder pieces. I’m going to be a sad panda if I have to stick the shoulder skins I’ve gotten farming Southshore next to the fused gauntlet ticket I’ve never used in the same forgotten bottom tab of my bank.

(the back pieces, on the other hand, are easy to use. The flower is an obvious choice for any Sylvari cultural or TA armor wearer. I’ve also seen some really cool uses of it with some of the other light armor female sets…and one very ‘odd’ male. As for the tentacles…I made a Sailor Moon-ish looking toon to go for the obvious Japanese school girl tentacle joke…because when it comes to actual gaming, I have the maturity of a toddler)

U guys should consider that some people sit on very huge stacks of karkasheels they bought the last weeks….(there was even a gw2tradingpost blogthread about the recommandation to buy it) Im not sure about Karka and rising prices….in the very longterm yea maybe but I would let my fingers off them….

the stats on the armor and weapons are not really worth it anyway in my opinion

I stick with settler rings, accesoirces and amulets, even if there are 100 new supply every day, u could easily buy some hundreds near the end of the event (I prefer ring and accesoirce, cause they can buy it twice, amulet only one use, so there will be higher demand) …and they are removing the passionflower ressource nodes probably(because in the update notes its under " Still in Southson")
this means higher craftcosts for apothecary items(nearly same stats like settlers) and if they rise again settlers will too…

and theres still the ecto limit…exotics items most times have at least the prize of 2 ectos..

Ultimately, that’s what I ended up doing. I bought a thousand or so before posting, and when nobody immediately chimed in with reasons not to, bought a couple more thousand.

The price made it above 4s before it started dropping. I sold out just below 4 figuring the initial spike on the news was over. I’m now slowly accumulating a new pile o’ shells figuring that when the vendor actually makes an appearance, there’ll be another spike, and I’ll prolly sell again then.

Whether the prices hold or not long term depends very much on what’s on that vendor. But even if it just rehashed armor, if it’s a way for people to pick up exotics rather than straight gold, it’ll still have some permanent effect on the price. Not that I care much about that. By then some new shiny will have caught my eye and I’ll goof around with that.