Master Chef Lachaidh?

I am new so unclear if this is now the place for suggestions. I am finding Master Chef Lachaidh very, very frustrating. In particular, failing because of the long cast time and him moving out of it is especially frustrating. I would normally skip it but my XP bar is full and I don't want to waste XP by continuing on with the story. And the next two MP I found seemed to be for jumpers and skimmers. So I am back here. I have a couple of other MMOs to play so it is no problem to walk away from GW2 for a couple of weeks. If it turns out PoF is about Nintendo puzzles, then I have chosen poorly but bought some experience.tl;dr: IMO, this mastery point is gated too hard for the initial zone.

Here is the method that worked for me in beta:

• Set your ground target to auto snap to target (in Options)
• Ctrl T to set a target on the chef.
• Start the event
• While he babbles, get to the middle of the room next to the shark meat for the least run to anything he calls for
• The moment you see/hear the key words for what he wants (speech bubbles help), run to it and get it.
• Run over near the chef but don't toss while he's moving, he'll evade the throw.
• The moment he stops, toss.
• Rinse and repeat. It might not work first run (if he sends you for Orrian Gulper while he's over by the sundries table you might run out of time) but it shouldn't take too many tries.

Try it a few more time. The chef always follow the same path.It took me about 10 time to get it during the demo because I have audio in french and text in english and I always ran out of time trying to find things.

You can also get the quicksand mastery without a skimmer, you just need to walk on top the big pyramids north of amnoon (the one with the hero point) and glide to the cliff on top of the mine, then glide again to the mastery point from there.

I failed a lot because of ping spikes (thanks Vodafone and Telia) and I agree that they should either change the cast time of the throw or make your throw hit while the npc is moving.

How many ingredients must one fetch?

Edit: In case anyone else has this question, I'm not sure that a specific number of items is the victory condition. I completed it while on my way to a seventh item several seconds after hitting him (and kitten, did I want to hit him) with the sixth. I suspect that the victory condition may be still having time on the bar when a timer runs out. That would mean that those who are really good it it might end up needing to throw more items to him.

I recall this from beta/stress tests. I hated it because it is another darn mastery behind a timed mini game made to frustrate that can be affected by ping (I thought Anet might have learned from HoT adventures) and other people in the area getting in the way. I saw it was still there today and will refuse to even attempt it as my vote against such things. Yeah, I know no on cares and it doesn't matter, get gud and so forth. But hey it is my vote when Anet looks at numbers of people that spend their time on it.

• Start with an easy one: stand near any set of ingredients while waiting for the initial dialogue; re-try immediately (by pressing '0') if you get a bad roll.
• Don't toss if you haven't seen him stop; wait for him to move again and either toss into his path or wait. You have time, especially if you start with an easy one.
• Re-roll in the middle if it's going poorly — better to try again with the odds in your favor than to try to play catch up.

Mind you, it still annoyed the skritt out of me, but in the end, it was just a matter of taking it slow & steady rather than trying to rush to finish.