Overview
Considering Legendary weapons require over 500,000 Karma in total or Tier 3 weapons around 50,000 it can appear a daunting task. Thankfully it’s relatively easy to earn thousands in a very short space of time with a few simple steps.
Karma Items
Karma Items, also known as Liquid Karma are consumable items. Once consumed, they provided an instant boost to your Karma dependant on the item type. Below is a list of the Liquid Karma you can obtain and the amount of Karma they provide.
| Name | Karma Received | Source |
| Drop of Liquid Karma | +400 | Obtained from Bag of Wonderous Goods in dungeons and Lost Orrian Jewellery Box |
| Taste of Liquid Karma | +1,700 | Obtained from Lost Orrian Jewellery Box |
| Vial of Liquid Karma | +2,500 | Obtained from Lost Orrian Jewellery Box |
| Swig of Liquid Karma | +3,000 | Obtained from Lost Orrian Jewellery Box |
| Gulp of Liquid Karma | +3,500 | Obtained from Winter Wonderland Jumping Puzzle during Wintersday 2012 |
| Flask of Liquid Karma | +4,000 | Obtained from Winter Wonderland Jumping Puzzle during Wintersday 2012 |
| Jug of Liquid Karma | +4,500 | Obtained from completing your 'Daily'. Ten are obtained from completing your 'Monthly' and by completing the winter Wonderland Jumping Puzzle during Wintersday 2012 |
| Refugee Child's Drawing | +5,000 | Received after maximizing Refugee Volunteer in Living Story achievement category |
The only Karma Items you should care about, when farming Karma, are the following: Drop of Liquid Karma and Jug of Liquid Karma.
Karma Modifiers
Karma Modifiers are an item that adjust the amount of Karma you receive from events or Karma items. If you’re to truly maximise your Karma gain, you will need several of them running at once.
Karma Booster
The main item for all Karma farming is the booster. Providing 50% extra Karma for 1 hour, it’s incredibly useful. Unfortunately it is only available from the Gem Store or randomly from Black Lion Chests. Luckily they cost as little as 75 Gems, so you won’t have to convert too much money to obtain them. The shrewdest use of Karma Boosters is save all your items which provide you with Karma (Liquid Karma) use the Booster and then consume the items.
Politics Tier 1 Upgrade
A guild upgrade, purchased by spending your Guilds influence (50) When used, the Banner will appear in front of you as an interactable object and lasts for one hour. It provides 5% extra Karma gain.
Economy Tier 4 Upgrade
Another guild upgrade, purchased by spending your Guilds influence (500). When used, the upgrade provides 15% extra Karma for 24 hours.
Ice Cream
This is the only consumable food that provides 5% extra Karma for 30 minutes. All of the Ice Cream foods provide the 5% bonus, so you should always purchase the cheapest from the Trading Post. You can find all the Ice Creams here.
Karmic Infusion
An extravagance many people will never reach is an Ascended backpiece with Karmic Infusion. Purchased for 10 Laurels, the Infusion provides 15% extra Karma permanently. If you can afford it, it’s well worth having.
When farming Karma, you should aim to have active: Karma Booster (+50%), Politics Tier 1 (+5%), Economy Tier 4 (+15%) and Ice Cream (+5%) for a total of 75% extra Karma gain. This would result in 1 Jug of Liquid Karma providing 7,875 Karma and your monthly (10 Jug’s of Liquid Karma) providing 78,750.
It should be noted that the World versus World "Out manned" buff allegedly provides a 33% Karma boost, though it is thought to still be bugged.
Karma Farming
Now that you have your Karma Modifiers activated, it’s time to begin farming. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily a pain free exercise and realistically, there are only three options.
Dungeons
Choosing a dungeon that is quick and easy is a good way to maximise Karma. Each "mini" boss in a dungeon will provide a Bag of Wondrous Goods which contains a Drop of Liquid Karma (+400) with a total of 3 Drop’s per dungeons path. In addition, on completion of each dungeon path and if you’re level 80, you’ll receive 1,800 additional Karma. This yields a potential total of 3,900 Karma per path. I sincerely recommend, if you want to farm Karma using dungeons, that you choose Ascalon Catacombs. Not only is it incredibly quick (as little as 15 minutes per path with the right group) but will also earn you a little bit of money on the side.
World versus World
Some people swear by World versus World as a means of earning Karma, and while it can yield Karma in big numbers, especially when you take Keeps and Outposts, in reality it’s incredibly in efficient. There is a lot of downtime, travel and failure in WvW meaning you’ll use a large amount of Karma Modifiers, gaining little in return for your time. If I’m sick of running dungeons or Cursed Shore events, it never hurts to mix it up just don’t rely on WvW to get you hundreds of thousands of Karma in a hurry.
Cursed Shore
As the western shore of Orr, Cursed Shore is a bustling hive of player activity and provides ripe opportunities for farming Karma. Habitually, players will link in map chat Waypoints where events are taking place. All you then need to do is go and take part. It can cost you a little bit of money Waypointing up and down the coastline (1s per time) but you should break even.
The joy of farming events here is the fact that you don’t need to remain in the event to gain the Karma reward. It’s incredibly easy to arrive in an event, tag the enemy or monsters and leave when the event is 75% complete. When you do this, 99% of the time you’ll receive a gold contribution award and the full Karma amount. Repeating this cycling of tagging to 75% and moving on to another allows you to stack multiple Karma gain events very quickly.
My personal record was "tagging" six simultaneously; to then watch 4,000 Karma arrive in around 10 minutes. The benefit of farming in Cursed Shores is that it also allows for easy completion of your daily quest and monthly. What I would also recommend here is that you "guest" onto a very high population server. This ensures events trigger regularly while giving you enough support to guarantee the events are successful.
While the act of "tagging" sounds particularly selfish (it is), Karma farming is all about being efficient and maximising your modifiers; staying to help others to completion simply isn’t an viable option.
Summary
- Utilise all available Karma Modifiers. Not doing so will protract the process significantly.
- Complete your ‘dailies’ and ‘monthlies’. Dailies provide a single Jug of Liquid Karma and the monthly provides 10, this is invaluable for boosting your total gain.
- Only consume your Liquid Karma when you have all your modifiers active. As tempting as it might be to drink them down, it’s worth waiting.
- Decide which Karma farming method works best for you: Dungeons or Events in Cursed Shore. Both of these approaches can yield large amounts of Karma and are quicker than WvW.
- For Cursed Shore Event farming, ensure you have swiftness and use Map chat to coordinate where events are.
- When Event farming, be sure to only tag events and leave at 75% completion, so you can move on to another.
- Have patience. Amassing Karma in the hundreds of thousands takes time, but obtaining over 10,000+ Karma per hour is more than possible.
