Combine rumor mill

[Asolandri]

I am not in the beta for The Combine, this is second hand info...I hear that blue diamonds are dropping from newbie mobs, you know...< level 5 bats and skellies. Also there are lots of new mobs and new drops of nice items. Way better items than were available during original EQ. So I guess then it doesn't pay to worry about if BD cultural is going to be possible. They are going to make progression easy anyway.

[Maevenniia]

if that's happening it's likely a bug, they just "nerfed" the goblin heads/blood, plague rat tails & other "newbie" cash loots to less than 1pp selling price (in ALL servers) so I doubt they'd deliberately put Blue Diamonds on level 1-5 mobs, lol

[KyrosKrane]

One of the devs did post that there will be ultra-rare high-value drops like diamonds off mobs in Hot Zones, even on the Combine server, and even in low-level zones. Apparently these will be so rare that they have a negligible impact on the economy, which means you can't exactly go to a newbie zone and farm them. They're supposed to be a bonus to help attract players to those zones.

[Asolandri]

Example

Your likely right on the BDs from newbie mobs, but in the Swamp of no-hope their baby Iksar got a 25 delay 9 damage (magic) 1hb from a totally new mob. That is a hot weapon for a level 5. =)

[Maevenniia]

One of the devs did post that there will be ultra-rare high-value drops like diamonds off mobs in Hot Zones, even on the Combine server, and even in low-level zones. Apparently these will be so rare that they have a negligible impact on the economy, which means you can't exactly go to a newbie zone and farm them. They're supposed to be a bonus to help attract players to those zones.

Wow, now that's cool.