Guild Wars 2

I noticed something odd in Southsun Cove tonight. While approaching the mouth of the cavern that is the lower level of the Karka Hive, I saw what APPEARED to be a Veteran Karka, made entirely of fire, standing upright in the lava pit. As I drew closer it sort of collapsed upon itself and vanished.

I tried to recreate the occurance and by running far enough away and coming back, I was able to. It took me two tries but I managed to get the enclosed screenshot, which is a little far away…but as I said, it vanishes when you get closer.

Has anyone else ever seen this before? I spend a pretty good deal of my time in Southsun and I certainly haven’t. I can’t help but notice that directly next to the lava pit is the petrified, permanent corpse of a vet/champ karka. One that perhaps fell into the lava and died shortly after crawling out…and with Halloween drawing near, the veil between the living and the dead is sufficiently thinned to make itself known to us? :P

Interesting find, not seen it, but that is the legendary karka queen from the huge living story battle that opened up Southsun.

The loot was great…

i’ll see your ghost karka
and raise, mesmer yaks

If you have your WvW model limit set to lowest, it may be possible you saw the process used to place the husk while loading in. For instance I can hear the dozens of dead asuran bodies dying repeatedly in CoE on this setting when I swirl my camara.

Basically you are seeing the dead Karka Queen spawn, and then being posed in it’s death position.

Bluefox.9580:

If you have your WvW model limit set to lowest, it may be possible you saw the process used to place the husk while loading in. For instance I can hear the dozens of dead asuran bodies dying repeatedly in CoE on this setting when I swirl my camara.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Basically you are seeing the dead Karka Queen spawn, and then being posed in it’s death position.

But why is she made of fire? o_O

I suspect the NPC that spawns has something like 1HP and the fire effect is actually the result of some spell that actually kills the NPC, which then turns into the husk. Though I have no idea why this would be, as the husk might as well just be the same thing as a rock methinks. Someone more versed in meshes/collision/spawning would be more help.

ElforTheLandStander.7052:

I noticed something odd in Southsun Cove tonight. While approaching the mouth of the cavern that is the lower level of the Karka Hive, I saw what APPEARED to be a Veteran Karka, made entirely of fire, standing upright in the lava pit. As I drew closer it sort of collapsed upon itself and vanished.

I tried to recreate the occurance and by running far enough away and coming back, I was able to. It took me two tries but I managed to get the enclosed screenshot, which is a little far away…but as I said, it vanishes when you get closer.

Has anyone else ever seen this before? I spend a pretty good deal of my time in Southsun and I certainly haven’t. I can’t help but notice that directly next to the lava pit is the petrified, permanent corpse of a vet/champ karka. One that perhaps fell into the lava and died shortly after crawling out…and with Halloween drawing near, the veil between the living and the dead is sufficiently thinned to make itself known to us? :P

I’ve been seeing that ever since the event ended. Whenever i go into that area and look in that direction i see that image in ur screenshot. I always assumed it was done like that deliberately to remind us of that event as part of the Living Story.

We pushed the queen into the lava to finish her off. That was her death scene. I don’t know if it is deliberate.

As someone else mentioned if your computer is slow to load you can see this with many dead/downed NPCs.

The model will load in a ‘starting’ position (for humanoids this is upright with their arms out to their sides) and then go through the death animation and fall into position.

I assume the fire is part of the death animation – because the Karka Queen only appeared once and the only way to finally kill it was to lure it into the larva they probably only made the one death animation for it.

I don’t know why it’s still being loaded that way though. It’s a permanent part of the area, not something that comes and goes with events, never appears alive or moves and we can’t interact with it in any way so it doesn’t really need to be a separate object. It seems like it would make sense for one of the artists to work it into the scenery.

The Karka Queen was at the end of a single time event with Ellen Kiel leading the Lionguard across Southsun slaughtering the karka. As you can imagine, the server loading was dreadful and the designers haven’t repeated single occasion events since.

Like it was said, its just a glitch with the Karka Queen you are not supposed to see… its like watching the card up the magician sleeve.

I kept a screenshot of my warrior stomping that Karka into the lava, pressing F to jump on its body while it was dying; it was a fun event. I would share it but I’m not at home now

Stooperdale.3560:

The Karka Queen was at the end of a single time event with Ellen Kiel leading the Lionguard across Southsun slaughtering the karka. As you can imagine, the server loading was dreadful and the designers haven’t repeated single occasion events since.

I am personally very glad of that.

I had assumed that that karka was just some random asset, as others have mentioned, like a rock or some such.

This reminds me of all those “phantom candy corn nodes” that sometimes appeared, then disappeared up to a month after the Halloween events. Just stuff left in the game that glitches into viability sometimes.