3.2 Kaineng City
Making the Most of Imperial Commendations

If you decide to gain extra experience for your character by doing the dozens of quests in Kaineng City, you gradually will acquire a large stock of Imperial Commendations. Like the Monastery Credits earned by native Canthan characters on Shing Jea Island, you can turn these commendations in to Imperial Quartermasters in Kaineng Center for a variety of useful and sellable items. To make as much money as possible from this feature, find the Imperial Quartermaster who offers to trade one Superior Salvage Kit for 5 commendations. These kits sell to merchants for a platinum, or 1000g, and offer the most gold value per commendation. This is a

handy way to pick up 3-4k of extra money late in the campaign when the cost of paying for additional skills at trainers becomes a burden.
Farming Daggers of Xuekao: Up to 15k/hour Grouped (~5k/member), or Soloable
Placing this farming spot under Kaineng City may sound like an error, but it’s placed here because the outpost you’ll be using (Maatu Keep) is technically part of Kaineng. Your target is Xuekao, a level 24 assassin boss in a building in the northeast part of Pongmei Valley, who drops the following green (unique) item:
Daggers of Xuekao:
7-17 piercing damage (requires 9 Dagger Mastery), damage 15% (while enchanted)
20% armor penetration (20% chance); Enchantments last 20% longer
These daggers are very popular weapons among A/Mo characters and are selling for about 15k each at the time of this writing. Given the massive supply of assassin role-playing characters Factions has generated, these daggers should continue to sell well in future months. The ease of farming them, however, could easily be nerfed by adding more enemies to the area involved, so using this method soon is highly recommended.
The ideal setup for farming Xuekao is in a small (2-3 member) group of friends or guild mates. In this case, have one person bring a blinding skill or other anti-melee skill while the other(s) deal damage, or just bring a tanking warrior and a healing monk or ritualist. In any case, with a few people in the group, each Xuekao run only takes 2-3 minutes, especially if everyone carries a movement speed boost. Once your group actually gets the daggers from him, one of you can sell it via the trade channel in a large city like Kaineng Center. If you’re in a smaller guild looking for ways to gather cash for buying a Guild Hall or merchants for the hall, this setup works especially well, since all of the money will be going to the same cause. Otherwise, you can split the proceeds from the sale.

Soloing Xuekao takes 8-12 minutes per run for most professions, mainly because you’ll have to divide your attributes and skills among ways to keep Xuekao from hurting you and ways to hurt him in return. Bringing a skill that can interrupt spells can also help, since Xuekao will cast Shadow Refuge to heal himself when he gets low. Casters who have mesmer as one of their

classes and access to the Prophecies campaign can use Spirit of Failure Mantra of Inscriptions Signet of Midnight [Elite] with Inspiration Magic at around rank 11 to generate an infinite supply of energy and keep Xuekao blinded for the entire fight (the mantra is needed to make the signet recharge fast enough to keep him permanently blinded, since bosses recover quicker than normal from hexes and conditions). Melee-punishing hexes like the necromancer’s Spiteful Spirit [Elite] or Insidious Parasite, or the mesmer’s Empathy, Clumsiness, and Images of Remorse all work very well against him. Warriors can specialize Tactics and Sword Mastery and use Riposte, Deadly Riposte, Gladiator’s Defense [Elite], and/or “Shields Up!” to protect themselves while hurting Xuekao in return.
Whether you’re grouping or soloing, reaching Xuekao will require that you defeat or outrun three sets of enemies: a single warrior just to the east of the entrance from Maatu Keep, another single warrior near him, and a warrior plus a caster near the building up the hill further to the east. You also might aggro another single warrior next to Xuekao’s building, but that foe can be avoided by hugging the wall. Xuekao himself is alone and only uses melee attacks. His attacks are deadly, but bring something that can shut down a melee attacker (blind, for example), plus some effective damaging skills, and he’s as good as dead. His daggers are somewhat rare, so you’ll need to keep returning to kill him until he actually drops them.
Drop rate and changing market value of the daggers are the main variables in how much money you’ll be able to make farming this spot. Also, be aware that since Guild Wars has anti-farming code in place, you’ll find Xuekao’s drop rates greatly reduced if you return more than ten times in a row (or so) without spending some time offline or in a different area. In other words, farming him for hours at a time isn’t very efficient, but doing so in short bursts is very profitable indeed.
Pongmei Valley Rot Wallows (up to 4k per hour solo, easy mobs, 1-2 at a time)
This location works especially well for players on the Luxon faction because it makes resurrecting at the nearby shrine convenient in the event of a death, but it can work for anyone. The simplest way to get here is to map travel to Boreas Seabed and exit west into Pongmei Valley.
Your main targets here are the Rot Wallows, level 24 necromancers with a very limited arsenal of spells and no especially dire hexes. Their skills include Weaken Knees, Fetid Ground, Jaundiced Gaze, and

Vampiric Bite, and you will usually see them cast them in that order. They usually come single or in pairs when pulled, although you may need to run around a bit with the larger groups in order to split them up. If you ever get in trouble, you can run to the generously placed Luxon Priest, who will cast Word of Healing and other goodies on you to keep you alive, even if you are a Kurzick. The wallows drop around 100 gold when killed, or an item of similar value. Weapon drops are common, so this can also be a good place for unlocking weapon upgrades or farming them for selling to other players.
If Mesmer is one of your professions, you can have a blast here by putting a lot of points in Domination Magic. Activate the Hex Breaker stance, then initiate combat by casting Backfire on one of the wallows. While it blows itself up by casting its first three spells, throw on another hex and Accumulated Pain (or better yet, Phantom Pain Shatter Delusions) and watch as your target manages to die in less than ten seconds. In the event that something goes wrong with the combo, a hex like Empathy can help finish the job once the wallow closes to melee range. Necromancers can pull off similar fun with Spiteful Spirit and Insidious Parasite.
The only other two mob types you will encounter in this part of the valley are the Isle Guardians (level 28 smite monks) and Yetis (level 24 ritualists with a very weak skillset). Defeating the yetis is basically as simple as casting an attack-punishing hex (like Empathy) and watching them kill themselves. Isle Guardians require more thinking, since they will use Signet of Judgment to knock you down and interrupt you, and Spear of Light to deal heavy damage if you try to attack them directly. On top of that, they can cast Healing Breeze to recover health. Backfire will help against them as well; just be sure it doesn’t get interrupted by Signet of Judgment. Likewise, anything you can do to interrupt their own abilities will make the fight easier.
Once you have cleared out the first few clusters of Rot Wallows, and any Isle Guardians and Yetis supporting them, map travel back to your merchant of choice to sell your loot.