Guild Wars 2

Southsun cove? Why are you still here?

That’s the question I was asking myself wandering in Southsun Cove (just to get the true explorer feeling, because there is no one there XD).

There are very few events, and those which are there are undoable because there are literaly NO PLAYERS in the area.

It was supposed to be a new level 80 zone, one full of life and exotic animals, ancient ruins and an extra farming area instead of cursed shore.

But no instead, it became an empty jar full of annoying enemies which are doing a kittenload of damage not even comparable to those in Orr. There are (as said before) not enough events to farm, keeping all the players away, and it still doesn’t count for the map exploration title.
It’s like finding El dorado without it’s famous gold!

Why is this map even there?

Passion Flowers. Karka Shells.

That is all.

So that the marketing department can advertise with steady updates? Other then that, no idea really.

Obviously a lot of work went into it, but then somehow, somebody terribly dropped the ball on that one.

Who need class balancing, bug fixing and problem solving, when you can have a WHOLE ISLAND full of amazing and awesome NOTHING TO DO?

Anet clearly said that SSC will be used in Guild Missions and really all the zone needs are changes to its events and a better meta event to be comparable to the likes of CS or ML.

It’s sort of weird that SC has no people when it has the best loots of all areas.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

It’s sort of weird that SC has no people when it has the best loots of all areas.

I’ve tried grinding young karkas a few time on the northern shores, usually for a few hours, but the drops never turned out very lucrative for me.

Perhaps I was going about it the wrong way, but with guild missions taking place here next month, it seems there will be far more reason to revisit the area and farm the mobs.

I get 20 shells a day per 2 hour farm if I care to do it. And apothecary weapons sell for a lot of gold if you have the ecto made for free from combining all the greens you get.

The map is beautiful and unique, but it just needs some more LIFE. More events. Less difficultly in regular enemies to allow for more playable events. More reason to …. enjoy the scenery.

They need to hide more treasure chests around the island.
Add some world completion bonuses somewhere in there too.
And then add some event chains that lead to a world boss with unique drops.

SSC in another game was a bucketload more fun

But yeah that sort of content would be too ‘elitist’

imo guild missions are going to bring a ton of life back to southsun, of course depending on how exactly they’re implemented.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I get 20 shells a day per 2 hour farm if I care to do it. And apothecary weapons sell for a lot of gold if you have the ecto made for free from combining all the greens you get.

That is a horrible drop rate if you consider that you can get 50 dusts in 45 minutes from different mobs (granted that dust is used in consumeables instead of just equipment so it needs a higher drop rate) but only seeing 20 drops in 2 hours is simply disheartening when you consider that one piece of equipment needs 20 of those drops.

It is my opinion that ANet handles temporary content poorly.

So much work went ito the Halloween, Christmas, and Lost Shores updates, but 11 months out of the year that content is inaccessible. Time spent developing a holiday dungeon could have been spent making a permanent dungeon. In my opinion, holiday patches should not take the place of a month’s permanent content. Especially this early in GW2’s life.

The Lost Shores event could have been set to repeat once a month, instead we were left with an empty island.

Permanent Content > Temporary Content

Ellisande.5218:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I get 20 shells a day per 2 hour farm if I care to do it. And apothecary weapons sell for a lot of gold if you have the ecto made for free from combining all the greens you get.

That is a horrible drop rate if you consider that you can get 50 dusts in 45 minutes from different mobs (granted that dust is used in consumeables instead of just equipment so it needs a higher drop rate) but only seeing 20 drops in 2 hours is simply disheartening when you consider that one piece of equipment needs 20 of those drops.

I have never gotten anywhere near 50 dusts in 45 minutes in Orr.

The zone just need to be improved by making it bigger, adding new events, more types of enemies, and access-able out side LA (3 more gates).

The area could use some new enemies. Crabs get a little tiring. Undead get tiring as well, but you can mix it up by just making Risen Chickens or Risen Moas and Risen Warluses.

I wouldn’t care what was there if the kittening passion flowers would have more than a 1 in 100000000000000000 drop rate. I’ve farmed every node there almost every day since it was released and have gotten…5 flowers. Ever. And you need something like 500 of them to complete a set of apothecary jewelry, ugh. Why punish one stat combo and have the mats and finished products cost 5x as much as every other stat combo its ridiculous.

Needs a Secret Quaggan Level. Or a dragon. Or…cake.

Ellisande.5218:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

I get 20 shells a day per 2 hour farm if I care to do it. And apothecary weapons sell for a lot of gold if you have the ecto made for free from combining all the greens you get.

That is a horrible drop rate if you consider that you can get 50 dusts in 45 minutes from different mobs (granted that dust is used in consumeables instead of just equipment so it needs a higher drop rate) but only seeing 20 drops in 2 hours is simply disheartening when you consider that one piece of equipment needs 20 of those drops.

How does one get 50 dusts in 45 minutes?

I go to farm the karkas on the beach. Left to my own devices, I usually make around 1 gold an hour. With a party, I’ve made around 2 gold an hour. The under-population actually makes the runs kind of peaceful. Yeah, I know I can probably get better loot in Orr, but I’m tired of seeing the death, the decay, and the flocks of exploding, undead chickens.

As for why Southsun is as underpopulated as it is, I think it’s because:

1. The enemies you find there are either hard or annoying to kill.

2. The rewards for killing those hard or annoying enemies don’t really seem worth it.

3. Passion flowers, the resource unique to Southsun, has a drop rate that is better represented in scientific notation, and on top of that are usually surrounded by the aforementioned hard or annoying enemies.

4. There aren’t really any events there that are fun. I help the Sylvari lady with her omelettes because I feel bad for her (and the omelettes are kind of good), I participate in the other collection event because “since I’m here anyway…”, I ignore the kitten out of that one guy that keeps asking if I have a moment because CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SOLOING A VETERAN KARKA AHHHHHH!!!, and the Lionguard event… the last I saw of the Lionguard they were all downed between two veteran karkas. Oh, did I say downed? I meant to say they were putting up a good fight and had the situation totally under control. Yes, yes they did.

The bloody karkas never drop anything, but it’s the best-looking lvl 80 map and one of the prettier maps of the game.

Still, the bloody karka never seem to drop, or maybe I’m just traumatized by the world event.

Bloody karka.

I went back a couple times after the event. I decided, based on the drops and nothing to do that there was no point in going back. With each new 80 I go and get the waypoints just in case, but never go back. This is one of my objections to monthly events. I would much prefer a longer development cycle yielding permanent content that was fun to play.

I never really got why Lost Shores was a one-time event. The way it affected LA, okay, fine, one time’s enough. However, taking down the ancient karka in Southsun shouldn’t have been a one-time event. Continuity shouldn’t be a concern, because… I mean, how many Shatterers and Claws of Jormag have we taken down every day? Even if taking down half a dozen ancient karkas a day isn’t feasible for whatever reason, I’d settle for some kind of champion karka event, because without some sort of central focus in Southsun or rewards in general for going there, there’s just no reason to. It’s really kind of sad.

Exactly, Achen. I think it would have made much more sense if the event repeated once a month. We would continually keep the Karka at bay. Once ANet is ready to introduce the DSD, we could use SSC as a staging ground similar to Fort Trinity. The Pact would create a permanent base of operations there, with lots of Navy vessels and submarines instead of airships.

Bringing SSC into the personal story like this would make its addition to the world seamless.

The map needs to be accessable from the rest of the world – swim through a portal at the mouth of LA harbor, and swim east from Sylvari starting area. That would help a lot.

Another problem with the map that others haven’t mentioned is that its a totally linear U shape. You start at the top right and go around the U to the top left. If you fall off, its paying for the wp, or swimming for 500 feet or more to get back up.

The map needs accessibility, it needs the karka to be rebalanced (less strong individually, more of them for higher total drops), and many more events, closer togather, chaining, and involving the right mix of mob battles and boss battles.

The gold standard for creating an area with draw is the north east quarter of Harathi Hinterlands, where you can easily farm THREE quest chains (Kol, Thunder rock, and the Harathi camps) with only a minutes jog. Each of the chains has at least 3 events, with the right mixes of ‘attack an area’ quests, ‘fight a mob’ quests, and ‘kill a boss’ quests. All the maps need stuff like this, especially this one. They could have a karka quest chain, a pirate quest chain, and a… Inquest chain or something.

An Ancient Karka spawns when all the events are done in order, from boat to cave.
>.>
<.<
;P
/ponder, why that was not setup. If dragons can be repeated, why they didn’t allow for the Ancient Karka to be repeated too? Could there have been/could there be a slow steady stream of Ancient Karkas on a timer peeking out of the mountain cave? /shrug. Guess too many timer based world bosses is a problem? ….If Ancient Karka were repeatable, the loot table would need tweeking. or not.

If Vets & Champs get a good rare+ drop rate with next patch, perhaps Karkas might be hunted, but perhaps Vets and Champs in low rank areas will be hunted instead.

for the few ori ores, that’s all…. i don’t farm karka….

There are simply too many veteran Karkas that are too close to other mobs. Since you are essentially soloing them it makes the area too difficult. It needs to be nerfed like Orr was. Remove some of the mobs so there is more freedom to get around or at least remove some of the veterans and clear the area around the remainder. Maybe remove some Karkas and add yellow mobs.

Also the Passion flower drop rates need to be buffed to encourage more people to go there for that. I never even try for those after I heard my guildies complaining about their bad luck getting them.

The devs have said a few times that recognise lost shores as a mistake, trying to stick to deadlines for new content for the sake for having content ready every month.

It would be pointless to remove the map so heres hoping they have plans to fix it this year.
Like many people have stated, more events, a higher drop rate on flowers and better rewards in general will pull more people over there. I think alot of people are getting bored of Orr, I wonder if anet is actually more concerned about Orr becoming dead if southsun is sorted out.

Orr needs to become as strong as it can it terms of quality. The tweaks to the encounters, mobs and drops have helped alot, however its not perfect yet. Temples still need a stronger reason for doing for example. Once Orr is perfected, they can then look at giving south-sun some much much much needed attention. In this case they need to be tactical in how much they change over a period of time, so theres more of a natural spread of population rather than ‘This map is most efficient, everyone needs to come here otherwise they’re all noobs’.

As for southsun improvements, among the changes everyone is suggesting I would also love to see some unique map mechanic, like Orr has temples, southsun could have event hubs in which successfully holding them will provide a bonus to the whole map in terms of farming ease. For the sake of examples ill say some caves or karka nests or something.
Shells and flowers seem to be a clear reason to farm there anyways (if the drop rate was buffed) so even something as simple as the more event hubs players are successful with the less hp those harder mobs protecting or dropping shells or flowers they have. Very similar to Orr i know but im keeping it simple to show how easy it would be to implement and correct.

As i said before though, anet just needs some time.

its there for bots so they can get T6 mats and sell them to us

franks.1430:

its there for bots so they can get T6 mats and sell them to us

Wow if bots can beat those karka solo and actually farm enough of them to be worth the time and risk then i better stop playing this game, im obviously doing something very wrong.

Think about what you say before you troll it please

I’ve got to agree that there is no point.

Practically no events, check
Very hard to kill enemies, check
Lifeless zone(as in no player characters ever go there), check

Yeah i think ill stick with orr.

I hope anet eventually adds events to this zone. It’s really beautiful but sadly that’s all it’s got going for it.

I hope for some Events that spawn tons of Karka, and a Giant Turtle boss that’s stronger than Jormag. Killing him would drop a chest that can (but wont) drop Precursors, like the Dragons.

Also need a gigantic multi phase event involving Owain.

I also wish the north side ocean was accessible for some underwater content.

I love this zone; it’s incredibly relaxing and fun for me as a player. Oftentimes I’ll be that guy soloing random champions and veterans in the zone just because I can. Let me tell you just how fun soloing the Veteran Reef Drake Broodmother is! I’ve also gotten rather good at soloing the Champion Karka, though that takes like 45m to bring down solo. (The Champion Shark is also excellent for underwater combat)

Anyway, I wander around here when I want to unwind after work, or just do something solo. It’s very satisfying, even if the rewards are garbage. I’m not sure I’d enjoy it as much if there were tons of players here regularly, but that’s just me.

I have no idea what the OP is talking about, I ran SC last night and it was fun it was so easy. I was ONE person doing events and doing stuff and it was easy peasy lemon squezy! So gear up, buck up and stop complaining?

P.S. Can the Champion Karka be a [Group Event], ANet?

For me it is vacation place. When I am too tired to do anything demanding, but don’t quite want to quit the game, I head there for about an hour. Kill karkas (if lucky come away with a couple of shells), harvest the plants and do the little JP since I can.

Not enough incentive to be there. Thus, it’s dead. Like much of the rest of the content.

With my soon to be patented Scaled Entity Automatic Neutralization and Elimination Technology (S.E.A.N.E.T.) on my Asuran Necro I happily clear the sea scorpions and barracudas to keep the shores safe for all consortium guests. The occasional skelk gets caught and usually bleeds all over the place. I am compensated at the rate of approximately 4 gold/hour. (No, I am not a bot)

there are more than Karka on the map. Anticipate seeing bots killing drakes and sharks underwater. I’d guess, after seeing a teleporting ranger in deep water on the edge of an Orr map killing sharks.

Zapan.7460:

there are more than Karka on the map. Anticipate seeing bots killing drakes and sharks underwater. I’d guess, after seeing a teleporting ranger in deep water on the edge of an Orr map killing sharks.

Don’t forget the gathering teleport bots, like the one I just saw and failed to report before he vanished cuz the champ karka was in the way