Bloodling Carapaces

[GraemeFaelban]

100 Bloodlings down, one carapace looted. None on vendors. This has got to be the stupidest quest that SOE has managed to come up with. Fortunately someone has taken pity on me, and will loan me their bloodling carapace mail.

[Boleslav]

I remember hunting for those god-forsaken carapaces. That was well over a year ago. To this day I still have the tunic to spare others that fun.

Of course after you loot your 1,000,000th wailing substance you will pine for the good-old-day that you had to hunt those carapaces.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 60thC ampaign
E'ci - Destiny Awaits

[kiztent]

Rest assured you have yet to see the stupidest part of this quest.

[Rhisk]

Bloodlings

Rest assured you have yet to see the stupidest part of this quest.

Hehe, no kidding. Bloodlings are nothing compared to what comes later.

Rhisk

[Railina]

Graeme Faelban - 61 Barbarian Oracle

This quest was never meant to accelerate high level characters through smithing at low cost. Bloodlings range from levels 1 to 3, from personal experience i can attest that it is both possible and likely to get 16 or more bloodling carapaces before they become completely green. While doing this you will also likely get at least 4 Sharp Bloodling Manadibles, which you can turn in for a rather nice pair of (newbie) gloves. When you finish killing bloodlings, you'll be just about ready to take on lesser shades, who drop swirling shadows, shadeling silks, and Shadowed Claws, which you can tun in for a decent set of boots. They also occasionally drop darkened jawbones, which will get a more castr oriented poair of gloves.
The quest continues from here progressively getting to harder and higher level mobs, with better rewards. The fact that you cannot farm it in a day does not make it broken.
At 61 your totemic armor quests are stupid-hard for the reward you'll never use. They aren't broken either.

[Balkin]

I did 16 carapaces in 3 hours.

No vendor purchases at all. Hunted my own, and paid low levels 5pp each for them. Even offered 25pp for the last one, if someone was lucky enough to get it before I did (and someone did ) All with a 26 cleric.

I didn't count how many I killed, but it was a lot. 100 is barely a scratch on the surface, though only 1 in 100 is bad luck.

[Quesci]

Sadly, no one tells starting players of all of the neat things they will be able to do with the stuff that comes from the mobs they are killing. No starting player even has the containers to keep them, even if they knew what they needed to keep.

There was a thread a while back along the lines of "Do you ever think about all the good stuff you sold as a newbie?"

Unless a new player talks to every NPC and writes down every item asked to collect (or uses the Journal tool ), there is no way to do most of the quests in the manner imagined by the game designers.

[Saleani]

Well, it took me a couple of evenings slaughtering the little munchkins to get all the carapaces. I do not remember buying any at merchants or off other players. If you were on Luclin, you could borrow my tunic, which I passed around to all my characters in the wildly optimistic hope that someday the drop rates of the substances would go up.

I used my ranger to slaughter them all. My PC lags terribly when there are too many kitties in the zone, so it was head down (F9), on track hunting them.

[GraemeFaelban]

Without tracking, I had to just wander around finding them. I spent around an hour or more getting exactly one carapace. I realize the quest was designed for lower level players, however, at the time I was level appropriate, Luclin was not yet around, so I was stuck doing this quest when it was not level appropriate if I wanted to be able to cost effectively advance my smithing skills. Fortunately, thanks to a fellow guildie who did do the quest, I did not have to suffer through getting any more of the carapaces, as he loaned me his mail in order to get the apprentice mallet. Since then, I quickly finished off the rest of the quest to get the mallet and anvil. The bloodling carapaces is by far the most annoying part of this quest, the rest was trivial to get. Swirling shadows in TS are quick and easy to get, owlbear drops, once I go the owlbears to take over the Grimling area were quick and easy to get. The wolf drops I already had from doing the Shield of Bane Warding quest, and killing wolves while I was there.

I looked back at my logs, and I got exactly one carapace off of 94 kills. If I had been level appropriate, it is likely they would green out long before I got the requisite 16. I realize that I likley got quite unlucky in the drop rate.

As far as the totemic armor, the quests were stupid hard for the reward when it was level appropriate too. I only ever bothered with a total of 3 pieces of that, two of which were useless by the time I actually completed the quest.

And just as another FYI, I have shawl 7, and am working on shawl 8, so I do understand about tedious, time consuming quests. Specifically, what I was complaining about is a one in 94 drop rate on the carapaces, that is ludicrous.

[Railina]

Sadly, no one tells starting players of all of the neat things they will be able to do with the stuff that comes from the mobs they are killing. No starting player even has the containers to keep them, even if they knew what they needed to keep.

If you actually talk to them instead of buying a port to EC (booking to PoK now) and twinking them to fight as quickly as possible through the exact same newbie areas you learned as a level 1 player 4 characters ago because 'the game starts at level 50' (not a direct quote, merely a paraphrase of a sentiment issued many times by more than 70% of all players, including those whose only character is below 30), The NPCs in Shar Vahl will give you several containers (Rytan's bag, Aryyad's Clar Bowl, (the tea leaf pouch whose name i cannot remember) Small Hopperhide Sack) and Master Barkhem sells the shield frames in addition to mentioning his quest to anyone who talks to him. If one were to start the game in Shar Vahl and talk (and listen!) to all the NPCs, that person would be better versed on the etiquette, lore, and basic tactics of the game than most level 30 characters are. Some day when you've got a few combines that can be done in a portable container, book to shadeweavers and sit by the class trainers. It will be educational at best, merely ammusing at worst.