Crab Toss – Skill Overview

Southsun Cove basically got “relaunched” and for a few weeks, we can enjoy the mini game “Crab Toss”. Unfortunately, this is just a temporary addition to the game. Either way, it’s there now for us to play. In order to enter, you speak with the NPC “Karlotta” on the small island north of “Sawtooth Bay” who will explain to you what the game is about. As seems to be typical for ArenaNet, this is just a very basic explanation with no way to see the skills you will get before entering the game arena. What I knew from others was that it’s a game where you need to carry a crab. That crab will be in the arena-like place you see next to Karlotta and it’s played against other human players. When you enter, you get tossed in an arena with other players randomly and it’s “free for all”. You can and need to steal the crab from whoever’s carrying it. The longer you carry the crab, the more points you achieve. After a certain amount of time, the player with the most points is chosen as the winner.

When I first entered, I just stood there doing nothing while reading the skill descriptions. Then I thought I was good to go… until I had a crab. I clicked something not knowing that my skills had changed and I tossed the crab to another player. Bah. It got really difficult once I saw the crates and the resulting extra items.

That was when I decided to take pictures of the different skills and read about them while sipping on a cup of coffee without playing the game, so I would not have to worry about reading, understanding, memorizing, and playing at the same time.

Regular skills

First, there are the four what I call “regular skills” that you have when the game begins and when you’re not carrying a crab or using an item found in the barrels and/or on the ground.

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Swipe	Swipe at a competitor, and steal whatever they are carrying.	Range: 150 Cast time: 1/2 second Cooldown: 4 seconds
2	Find Rock	Pick up a rock.	Range: 150 Cast time: 1/2 second Cooldown: 5 seconds
3	Dash	Dash at foes. Hold down to increase the length of the dash.	Evade: 3 1/4 seconds Cast time: 2 seconds Cooldown: 8 seconds
4	Punch	Punch a competitor, dazing them and causing them to drop the crab.	Range: 150 Cast time: 1/4 second Cooldown: 4 seconds

After using skill no. 2 “Find Rock”, you have a rock and can throw that one. The rock replaces “Swipe”. Skills 3 and 4 remain the same.

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Rock Toss	Toss a rock, dazing your target.	Range: 600 Cast time: 1/4 second

Skills when carrying the crab – Skills 3 and 4 are identical with the regular skills

The first two skills change when you can grab a crab. This is what confused me when I had first gotten the crab as I accidentally tossed it right to another player. Yeah, smart move. ;)

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Crab Crack	Smash a competitor with the crab’s hard shell, knocking them down.	Range: 150 Cast time: 1/2 second Cooldown: 2 seconds
2	Crab Toss	Toss the crab to another player.	Range: 1000 Cast time: 3/4 seconds Cooldown: 1 second

Skills from crate-items

At some point, crates will be thrown into the arena. The content will be random and I’m not sure I’ve found every item so far – so this part may be incomplete. For your convenience, I will edit it as soon as I find new items. :)

Southsun Punch – Skills 1 to 4 are identical to the regular skills.

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
5	Drink Southsun Punch	Drink a refreshing bottle of Southsun Punch to restore your health and endurance	Cast time: 1 second Cooldown: 4 seconds

Plank – Skills 1 and 2 are different from the regular skills

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Plank Smash	Leap at a competitor, causing knockdown on impact. Breaks plank.	Range: 600 Cast time: 3/4 seconds Cooldown: 6 seconds
2	Swing Plank	Swing a plank at a competitor, causing a blowout on impact. Breaks plank.	Range: 150 Cast time: 3/4 seconds Cooldown: 4 seconds

Karka Egg – Skills 1 and 2 are different from the regular skills

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Throw Egg	Throw your egg at the target area, immobilizing any foe within the blast radius.	Range: 1000 Cast time: 1/2 second
2	Deploy Egg Trap	Deploy your egg like a trap. Immobilizes targets	Cast time: 1/2 second

Conch – Skills 1 – 4 are identical to the regular skills

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
5	Blow Conch	Blow the conch, causing the competitors to flee in fear.	Range: 400 Cast time: 1/2 second Cooldown: 6 seconds

Fishing pole – replaces the first skill, no second skill. Skills 3 and 4 are identical to the regular skills.

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Go Fish	Cast a line at your target, pulling it toward you.	Range: 1200 Cast time: 1 second Cooldown: 2 seconds

Anchor – replaces the first skill, no second skill. Skills 3 and 4 are identical to the regular skills.

Skill number	Skill name	Skill description	Other information
1	Anchor Fling	Throw your anchor high in the air. Knocks down your target when it returns to the ground.	Range: 5000 Cast time: 1/2 second

Last but not least, don’t forget to avoid the big veteran karkas. If they roll over you, you lose all your health and will be unable to play for a few seconds. When you’ve got a debuff from the karka hatchlings (the kind of debuff that doesn’t wear off after a few seconds – see screenshot below), dodge to remove it. When your life would reach 0, you get stunned for a few seconds before getting your life back to 1000 which enables you to continue playing.

Karka Hatchlings Debuff

There can also be more than one crab at the same time, apparently. So choose wisely which player to follow when that happens. Maybe a crab-carrier is right behind you and it’d be a waste to follow the other one instead.

Once the time has run out, the player with the most points wins. This opens a score board right in the middle of the screen. Don’t forget to close this and walk to the middle of the arena because there will be a chest waiting for you to open it! :o) So far, I have only gotten green and blue items from it, but who knows what else can be in there.

Mini Lion Cub – Miiiine!

I admit it, I’m weak! But doesn’t it look great with my warrior?

The mini lion cub is only available for a week (4 more days at the moment) and then another mini will be in the gem store for a week. I don’t like that concept, to be honest. I want to see everything at the same time and not one mini after the other. But I guess they’re counting on that: You can’t compare, so you’ll just buy everything. Besides, they’re time-limited sales. You may never be able to buy them again!

I thought the hippo was cute, then the lion came and I realized this is much cuter! I’m glad I didn’t buy the hippo. ;) So no, I do not just buy everything they offer just because it’s a time-limited mini.

There’s just one question now: When will we see adult lions in the game? :o)

GW2: Customize with dyes

Dyes: Spring Tide, Indigo, Tungsten

One thing that I’m really disappointed with is the limited visual customization of your characters. For example, I bought Flummi a Tiger Charr Backpack. The problem was that I still only had a rare back item. So I spent 5 gold and 5 guild commendations and bought the Guild Assassin Backpack to put the look of the charr backpack on. I liked the look of that one as well, but the charr one was so much cuter. Then April 1 came and with it, the Super Backpack Cover. My problem is that I really love the look of that one as well! But in order to have that look, I would either have to transmute it over the charr (not going to happen!) or buy a second Guild Assassin Backpack… I’m going to do the latter probably. Then I would also want to have the actual look of the Guild Assassin Backpack.

I just don’t think it’s a great design if it means that in order to have more than one look at a time, I have to buy the stats for an item over and over again. I really wish I could move the wardrobe system from Lotro over to Guild Wars 2. This one gives you several slots and you can put items in there that you want to have for their looks. Then in your character panel, you have several cosmetic outfit slots that you can use to put the look of those items in. In the screenshot on the right, you can see the Hauberk of the Mithril Guard. That character isn’t wearing a helmet and the shoes aren’t shown because hobbits don’t wear shoes, after all. ;) With a simple click, you can switch between different looks. You can even enable and disable individual items which can also be seen in the screenshot. Look at the little eyes at the lower right corner of each icon. If the eye is closed, this item’s look is disabled.

The wardrobe slots and the cosmetic outfit slots can be bought in the Turbine shop (including expansions of those slots). So as far as monetization is concerned, it can be used for that as well.

I just like being able to switch whenever I feel like it and Lotro gives me this choice.

Dyes: Butter, Spring Ice, Brick

But I’m trying to make the best out of the current situation. I won’t stop saying that I really greatly dislike the current system, but I’ll try to live with it. Instead of switching between different looks (except for the two backpacks for Flummi), I switch between dyes. Once a dye is unlocked for a character, this character can use it as often as you want.

On the other hand, dyes are unlocked per character and with a lot of alts like I have, this is going to be expensive. That’s why I decided to specialize my characters for now until I can, maybe, buy all dyes for all characters. My sylvari ranger left the dream around noon and she loves vibrant bright colours. My sylvari thief loves the night, so he gets all blue dyes. Unfortunately, there aren’t even that many cool blue dyes as far as I could see. My male asura elementalist feels very sophisticated, so white-ish colours it is. He likes pairing that with green hues because he thinks he looks radiant in them. I try to focus on natural metallic dyes (and red) with my asura warrior, but that’s mostly because I don’t think the other colours look too good on her armour. Last but not least, my charr warrior likes pastels as that fits best with her light fur.

Dyes: Pastel Peach, Stone, Pastel Mint

Dyes: Country Teal, Gray, Afternoon

Dyes: Chalkboard, Wrath, Blue Ice

Dyes: Spitfire, Honeysuckle, Orangespring

Dyes: Midnight Green, Lime Ice, Olive Ice

The winners have been drawn

Good morning!

I have just drawn the winners of our recent anniversary-giveaway.

We had 3 in-game t-shirt codes which have been won by tatu meskanen, Blackheart and H. J. de Bruyn. Congratulations! Then we had one Guild Wars party item giveaway which has been won by Gorzagorz. We will need to schedule a time and place to meet for the trade. :) And our last package was one for a few items in Guild Wars 2 which has been won by Arsenette. Congratulations to you all!

I will send emails to the winners shortly.

And if you haven’t won this time, I’m pretty sure we’ll host more giveaways in the future. I’m just afraid that we’re now all out of items for Guild Wars. ;)

My new love…

I created my elementalist months ago… probably on the day of the headstart launch.

I never got around to playing this profession, but I really love my Gromff – or as I call him, my “Streifenhörnchen” which would be “chipmunk” in English. Those stripes are adorable! I don’t like most of the asura hairstyles for males, so I chose this instead.

It took me a long time to try out the elementalist and give him a real chance. Instead of getting used to two weapon combinations with 10 skills, you choose one weapon set with the four elemental attunements which means 20 skills. Playing him just once every few weeks meant that I’d always forgotten his skills again. I’m currently playing with dagger/dagger, but I’m not sure it’s really what I like the most. The staff was nice but I preferred daggers. I should give the scepter another try as that was really fun to play as well. If only daggers had a tiiiiny bit more range.