Shar Vahl fletching quests

[Nihixul]

I have had more than the occasional long-term stretch recently where I haven't been able to get a guild group (and I don't like pickup groups all that much), so I decided to practice my throwing skill. I realize it isn't the most useful skill, but as one of the rogue's "specialties", I figure I should learn it nonetheless. Now that I have raised it to a reasonable level, I started looking for some nice ammo. Consequently, I came across the various fletched throwing darts and the associated quest to get the dart tool. For those that aren't familiar with it, you do the Shar Vahl citizenship quest, hand your acrylia slate to one of the fletchers in Shar Vahl (I am sorry, but I forget his name... near the south gate), and go about collecting 4 batches of Xarka Teeth, 6 teeth per batch.

These are found (per Alla) on the Xarka Silkworms in the Shadeweavers Thicket as well as their larvae in the pit.

I have killed about 10 or 12 in the Thicket and gotten very few drops of *any* kind: silk or anything else, and no teeth.

I have killed many, many, many Larvae and averaged about 1 tooth in 8-12 larva kills,... maybe even rarer than that. So far, I have 13 teeth (a little more than halfway through). I am a 55 rogue, so I can tear through these guys and their PH's. (I try not to do so when there are lowbies trying to hunt there.) This is over the course of a few hours, though, so I have a few of questions.

1.) Are the larvae indeed the better mobs for this drop (and other xarka drops)?

2.) Do the larvae spawn mainly around the bridges (as I have noticed) or is this just a fluke?

3.) Has this taken others as long as it has me?

You can imagine my exasperation when I realized I had to fill *4* pouches with these silly teeth. That said, I have plenty of shadeling silk and bone chips for faction and exp for an alt.

Thanks in advance!

[Krazick]

When I started up Krizick (my Kitty Tank) I thought this would be a neat quest to help get his fletching skill up. And like you I was rather annoyed by having to fill 4 bags with these useless teeth.

I did one when I was low level... and went back for the other 3 bags worth when I was in low 30s.

And what I have found is that only the larvae in the pit actually drop the teeth. And the rate you specified agrees with my recollection. At any level above 10, this is just pure drudgery.

I do believe I had finished the first phase... and was getting on the 2nd when I got distracted back into leveling my monk. I have to see what attachment tools I have now.

Is it worth it? Not in my opinion. One bag... or maybe 2... but 4 bags each requiring 6 teeth is just a royal pain for no appreciable benefit.

[Aerinha]

I did the entire quest for the dart tools, and I have to agree that is is annoying, even for a fletching obsessed person like myself. I can tell you that all the drops for this are rare to annoying levels, including the final ones, the owlbear feathers.

If you are looking for something you can fletch yourself to throw, look for a fishbone dart tool and start boning fish. It is easier to get a usefull amount of darts to actually USE that way.

If you are like me and simply need to finish it now that you have started though...
The Xakra teeth drop only in the Shar vahl pit. The xakra there spawn in waves, and sometimes there just aren't any there. Be patient, they come back, and it IS a pain to get all those bags of them.
Grimling darts are next. Collect the femurs and fangs in the pit NOW, while you are waiting for the xakra. You don't want to spend more time in that dark hole than you have to. =)
Rockhopper darts are after that, and the talons you need are(again) a rare drop, but this time in Hollowshade. Keep an eye out for the named that come by here, though. Dirtchomp is a named rockhopper that dropped nothing I was interested in, but Gorehorn is a rather tough named beetle that drops a nice mask if you can kill him(he is a pretty magic resistant level 33 if I recall....but he hits like a 38th level)

Don't use the quest items to skill up on, please. Skill up on arrows, even if you can't use them. You will drive yourself nuts trying to skill up on the no drop quest fletching.

[Enchanter]

Another alternative is...

Forged Javelin
Slot: RANGE
Skill: Throwing Atk Delay: 33
DMG: 7
WT: 2.0 Range: 205 Size: LARGE
Class: WAR RNG MNK BRD ROG
Race: ALL
stackable

Far more easily smithable than the fletching quest, especially since the low end darts are kind of craptastic for the amount of effort it takes to collect components.

That being said, I've done the first part of this quest, and yes, the larva seem more common under the bridge nearest Chaille. Also, killing beetles seems to encourage larva spawn, so if you decide to go this route, I'd kill pretty much everything in sight.

[Nihixul]

Right after Krazick posted the reply, I tried to post again, but then eqtraders seemed to be down (at least for me) for a few hours. :P

Something I had just realized, and was so very annoyed about was that the fletched darts you make in these quests are only usable by larger races! Why is that? I mean, I would think that, at the least, any rogue race could use them, as throwing is supposed to be a rogue "specialty" (yeah, we got the short end of the stick on that one, but hey, it's fun). I sent a /feedback to Sony regarding this issue. The kitty that I started to MQ the citizenship slate for Urnihixul is a shaman, and I have been playing him a bit lately. He is only level 13, but is now working on the sonic bane weapon (something he will not be able to do, on his own at least, for quite some time). At any rate, I noticed that all items which are:

1.) part of the SV quests
2.) usable by players
3.) NOT Vah Shir only

seem to have the same race restrictions (i.e. large races only). It's a bit depressing, really, to think Urni went through all that trouble to do this and get nothing of it. Anyhow, his fletching was already 150-something, so once I got the first tool, I just kept handing it back until I got the last one.

Anyhow, if any of you feel the same about these race restrictions (or any other such in game issues), I urge you to use /feedback. That's what it's there for, and I get the feeling many people are reluctant to use it. :\

thanks for the info

[metopu sureflight]

I have completed this quest to get the tool so that I could help a young ranger increase his skill fairly cheaply, or possibly sell the darts for a little bit of coin. I was very dissapointed to only get one dart for each Xakra tooth while I got three dart vanes from one femur. Not very profitable for my time along with the fact that only certain races can even use them, so I moved on to better things.

If anyone is still interested in making the darts you can increase the spawn rate of the Xakra Larvae by killing pretty much all creatures within sight it seems everything is a placeholder for them. However as it was said before this is practical if there are not any young ones around trying to get experience.

[metopu sureflight]

It seems that things have changed since I made my last post here. The translocators seem to be gone from Butcherblock now, I noticed this a few evenings ago while helping a friend.

[Gilgam]

Actually I think the forged shuriken are a better deal if you are going to smith up some items to raise your throwing skill. Each combine will make 10 shuriken rather than the 2 javelins as posted before.

[Enchanter]

The count on shiruken is better, but geeze the range is awful. A rogue in my employ said the range was so bad that their use was extremely limited, whereas the javalins at 205 range were ideal. YMMV

[InvisiBill]

Update

Just some more information to add to the recipe. The Grimling Fang Dart and Rockhopper Talon Dart both appear trivial <=50. With 50 in fletching already, I simply kept trading my tool in until I ended up with the Owlbear Dart Crafting tool. Either they all trivial <=50, or you can upgrade before the darts are actually trivial.

I too went back at 50+ with my main and MQed the citizenship quest, and did the fletching quests. I had the best luck killing xakra larvae under the south bridge, while lots of newbies were around killing stuff. With them killing things on a regular cycle, it seemed like a new larva would spawn almost continuously. Being a ranger, I just set Tracking to Normal mode, and hunted them down as they spawned. There were generally only a few newbies around, so I wasn't taking away needed kills or anything. As usual, buffing them gave me a few bonus points as well, and I made sure to /ooc that I was looking for the teeth, so that others didn't destroy them. Without newbies around, I'd kill all of them, then go to another zone for a while, as they seemed to take forever to respawn.