Where Did all the Spiderling Silks go?

[Tounses]

Well I'm trying to raise Smithing, so leather padding has become something I need it mass quantities now. Pelts are still pretty abundant, cats bears and wolves are everywhere.

But the Spiderling silks...all seem to have vanished into thin air.

Now of course, before I hunt, I check the bazaar --- I can afford Spiderling Silk, surely. I see only 2 sellers, one with only a few at 10pp each, and one with 100 --- at 15pp EACH silk. I was in shock. 15pp for a drop from a lvl 2 mob? If I ever start over on another server, I know what I'm hunting to gear up. Well, I may have plat but I'm not about to be extorted, so I decide to hunt it on my own.

First place I went to was the most common place I've always known to go --- the Northern Desert of Ro. The Grassy area's of this zone have been home to countless spiderlings, all dropping silk a-plenty...

Or so I thought. I did not, in the entire time in Nro, manage to find a single spiderling. I cleared the trash in the area --- just in case, and yet still I got zero to spawn. I found some "Dune" Spiderlings, however of the dozen I killed, none dropped Spiderling silk. I was in shock. The best place for 'Ling silks no dropped none.

Soooo....at the suggestion of a guildie, it's off to Field of Bone I go, to a small cave there, which, much to my delight, was filled to abundance with Spiderlings...

Few of which know how to spin webs, apparently. Out of 23 spiderlings I took out in a minute or so, only 3 silks dropped. I got an abundance of Spider Thorax's, no drop junk for low lvl armor. None dropped multiple silks either. The respawn rate is low so it woulda been 5-10 mins before more spawned.

So....off to Everfrost next at the suggestion of another guildie. Well, once again, a reasonably large amount of spiderlings...which is great if I want tons of Wooly spider snacks, but utterly useless if I want silks, which they dropped less than 1 per 10 ratio of.

I checked Feerrot out afterwords, once again, tons of spiders, virtually no silks.

Have the Spiderlings of the world forgotten how to Spin webs? Smithing is painful enough as it is without making such a critical way of skilling up so rare.

Anyone else know of any currently-good locations to find these?

[vovinit]

When I was hunting them way back when I had a real hard time getting em as well. I wiped out Ecommons and was lucky to get 3 silks. Had it in my head for awhile that they had nerfed higher lvl players from farming em or something. I dunno but sspiderling silks are now selling for 2 times as much as spider silks in the bazaar now.

[Spirish]

I'm with you. I refuse to be extorted. Thinking perhaps I could raise my tailoring skill with silk tailoring, I thought, I 'll just buy the silks instead of farming them myself and voila ...skillup in tailoring. I almost fell on the floor when i saw that they were going for 10 - 20pp each.

HELL TO THE NO! I refuse to pay that. I will farm them myself. And have been. I haven't tried to farm any spirdlings in particular lately though.
It's sad is all I can say.

[Ixiola]

If you can find rockhopper hides, I recommend you do shadeling silk. I used to hunt the skeles in shadeweavers for swirling shadows for my husband's smith, and in the process of getting a stack of shadows I'd invariably have 3-4 stacks of silk. The drop rate on the shadeling silk seems much much higher than on the spiderling.

[Tweedledea]

Spiderling silk drop rates have been way down since they put in a lot of drops for newbie armour quests. I heard a rumour a while back that someone might be looking into it...

Bearing that in mind, I too would strongly recommend you go with hopper/shadeling paddings. Arf.

[Myok]

It would be interesting to create a level vs. harvest ratio table. I only have data for one hunt in Everfrost last week. Level 33 character, 6 Spiderling Silks from two dozen spiderlings, with one double drop.

--
Myok

[Yitara]

Shadeling silks do you no good when you are trying to make Blessed Fishing Rods. The spider and spiderling silk drop rate has been horribly nerfed, only adding to the inflation in the bazaar. Or was that their point?

[Malathos]

*cough*
innothule swamp
*cough*

Stake out the newbie area just outside gukta and kill crab spiderlings by the score - reasonably good drop ratio there. I think, the spiderlings get replaced by zombies and skeletons at night - no problems there either, just harvest the zombie skins and sell them in the bazaar to poison makers

[Dunthor Warsmith]

It would be interesting to create a level vs. harvest ratio table. I only have data for one hunt in Everfrost last week. Level 33 character, 6 Spiderling Silks from two dozen spiderlings, with one double drop.

I did a little experiment a few years ago, using the "a snake"s in the Butcherblock newbie area. I hunted with a lvl 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 22, 23 dwarven paladin (all with the same base stats and wearing the same gear), and at each level killed ~100-150 snakes, and recorded the loot from each drop (screenshots, transcribed later to text files to input for calculations). The drop rates were very similar across all of the levels - with the data sets so small, the RNG factor could be masking the effect of levels, but its at least some data that favors levels not being a factor.

I've occasionally think about updating the test, with higher levels or more trials, but then I remember how sick of that newbie yard I was by the end, and I decide against doing more

[Ambrya]

The best place I found for Spiderling silks are the two spiderlings in the Brownie camp in Lfay. They drop up to 4 silks each, and spawn fairly frequently. I collected quite a few stacks of silks while I was farming for brownie parts.

[LadyAnnaAnna]

No silks is Everfrost? Are you kidding?
I've got a lowbie shammy hunting in Everfrost and I've got Spiderling Silks coming out my ears. Nearly half that drop the Silks drop two at a time.

Maybe the RNG spawner likes me.

[Draggar]

They're all in West Karana near the bandit farm, that's where I usualy hunt for them and they drop quite frequently.

[Zolina]

Nek forest outside Neriak is supposed to be good too, not as many spiders as some places, but no newbie armor quest drops off the spiders to dilute the silk pool.

Feerrott has tons of spiderlings but only 1/3 of the silks that drop are spiderling silks.

[Maevenniia]

If you can find rockhopper hides, I recommend you do shadeling silk. I used to hunt the skeles in shadeweavers for swirling shadows for my husband's smith, and in the process of getting a stack of shadows I'd invariably have 3-4 stacks of silk. The drop rate on the shadeling silk seems much much higher than on the spiderling.

That's certainly a solution, if you have the LQ Rockhopper hides, and I’m not against hunting for those, but I currently have about 12 stacks of LQ old world pelts (bear, cat, wolf) that I can’t turn in padding.

Since rockhopper hides can be combined with both types of thread, spiderling or shadeling, could SOE please please please allow old world pelts to combine with Shadeling silk thread ?

[Tweedledea]

Yeah, that would be very cool. I have the same problem.