What is the most efficent use of karma?

Question

Simply put, what is the most efficient use of karma at level 80?

I've reached 80k karma or so, and I've been looking to turn this karma into gold profits. Most armor and weapons take far too much karma to be useful, so I've started to look into using karma for cooking. As more players raise cooking, however, I find cooking to be fairly unprofitable.

Are there are any armors or weapons that efficiently use karma?

Assuming that I have only 100k karma, how can I efficiently use this karma to benefit a level 80 character?

Answer 1

There is no direct way to convert the karma into coins as all the items you trade with karma are immediately soulbound on acquire. However there are some important uses for karma.

If you ever want to level your cooking you will need to save some to buy recipe items. Although the cooking items aren't worth much on the trading post, the magic find bonus will give you better drops and the stat bonuses could effectively keep you alive when otherwise you wouldn't have. In this way you indirectly make money by not having to fix your armor. A copper saved is a copper earned.

Another important use for karma is to obtain recipes for crafting. With the exception of cooking, you need to buy recipes from all the master crafters in order to reach level 400 crafting. The crafting only reveal insignia/inscriptions up to level 350. Once you reach about level 380, all the recipes are grayed out and you can't earn any experience unless you use the recipes from the master crafter that you need karma to buy.

You can use it to buy armor and weapons and accessories from karma traders around the world to supplement your gear if any of them fall behind.

Please note that you should not use your karma to buy cultural weapons. The cultural weapons do not go towards any title and is only rare not exotic so it is not max stat. Since they cost 63k each, it is not an effective way to spend karma.

However outside the Gate of Arah, you are able to buy maxed Exotic Armor pieces for 42k karma a piece. I find this the most effective way to spend your karma. As of now, a piece of Exotic armor is equivalent to about 2.5g gold coins. If you save up the karma you can buy a complete exotic armor set and save about 15g you would otherwise have to directly spend.

Answer 2

It depends on your current equip. If you got already an full exotic armor, you can spend the karma for obsidian shards. You can use these obsidian shards to create rare crafting materials at the mystic forge. If you still need an exotic armor, you should spend your karma for the orr armor pieces.

Answer 3

You need somewhere between 500k and 1mil karma per legendary weapon creation. That's what you should be saving every single penny for. For the armor, you should just buy a traveler's... lvl 79 set for the magic find and forget getting a lvl 80 exotic set all together until you have that legendary unless you plan on WvWing. Of course my advice is from someone who cares much more about how his weapon looks than his armor. You might be different.

Answer 4

There are ways to convert karma into gold.

You can buy Masterwork items from karma vendors such as Cachistic Gloves from Scholar Merla, forge them in the Mystic Forge and then receive Rare Items (so you can sell them on the Trading Post or salvage them), as you can check in this Karma to gold Experiment. The rate would be something like 1k karma = 3.4silver.

But, as in 28 January patch, players are able to buy Lost Orrian Jewelry Boxes for 4.5k karma each from Orr karma vendors, opening it may gives you karma liquids, lodestones and unidentifiable object.

According to this post, buying Lost Orrian Jewerly boxes is way more profitable (Like 80% more).