Trade Skill Pattern Book Quest Issues

[Boleslav]

Dwarf Quests

Journeyman level
I had to kill about 40 Tormented Dead before looting my 4th mushroom.

Expert level
Cauldron Sharks drop a LOT of skin, so you will probably loot 10-20 Shark Skins by killing the 5 sharks (I guess that's not a problem then, heh).

Master level
I am not done yet, but am gathering Though Horror Fangs from the correct mobs at a rate that indicates it will take over double the number of kills required (80). Garndart reported needing over 200 kills to get his 40 fangs (report is in the Smithing forum).

Additionally, the choice of Thought Horrors seems to be a bit unbalanced against some of the other mobs folks are tasked to get. Especially because only mobs with the words Thought Horror in their name count toward the quest. So a Thought Horror counts, as does a Thought Horror Evoker. However, a Horror Gurad, which shares the same model and spawn table does not count.

There are lots of mobs using the Thought Horror model in The Deep, but the ones that count toward the quest are the most difficult in the zone, and located well beyond the bridge. And once you find the right area, only about half the mobs that spawn there count. Meanwhile, all those mobs drop the fangs, but only the fangs dropped from the correct mobs count.

When you compare that to killing shrooms in FG (dead easy) or rats in DN (remote, but not so bad), you can easily see there is a wide range of difficulty in these tasks. Making someone go that far into The Deep and only counting half the mobs they will encounter seems out of line with many of the other quests at this level.

If you changed to Dwarf master's level task to include any kill of a mob with the Thought Horror model and reduced the number of drops required to 20 it would be more in line with the others I have seen.

Bolelsav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 66th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Oshran]

Thanks all! We're getting some great feedback. Please keep the posts coming!

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

Erudite - Paineel

My roommate working on the Erudite quests in Paineel had the following drop rates with the Journeyman task, "More than one way to skin a cat" in Kerra Isle zone -

kill 20 catmen, loot 4 skins (he was 0 skins for 20 kills, about 60 kills for 4)

kill 10 pumas, loot ? MQ cat pelts (only 1 in 10 dropped)



Wood Elf journeyman task in Crushbone, which I did, instead reflected 3 out of 4 skins collected after killing 20 legos, which was "perfect," and illegible note dropped on the first oracle kill (and several times more although I didn't count them all).

Froglok journeyman task - friend had enormous problems with the sand giants spawning during his collect in South Ro, and was of a level where he needed assistance. The second part required a Torn Sash which apparently only drops from a "young ronan" which must be spawned evidently by repeated killing of dervishes in Oasis. Seems a bit harsh to require a drop from a mob that is not a regular spawn.

Barbarian journeyman task - Everfrost Peaks, 2nd part - half the mammoths a friend tracked for him were "under the world" and not targetable, which made this much harder.

Kemie Dreamshadow

[Laliana Silverfangs]

Wood Elf Expert Symbol quest in CoM.

Spent around 8hrs to kill 50 plaguebones (they simply weren't popping for me), and 10hrs to collect 20 bone chips. On average I was getting 2 or 3 plaguebones per round of undead, and there were a couple of rounds that yielded no plaguebones. When I kill the last needed plaguebone I still needed 3 bone chips and it took 2hrs to get them.

Laliana Silverfangs

[waldora]

Human expert DON quest over 200 Chetari/chalaki killed 1 horn aquired.

[Remi]

Hope this is the right place to post this.

Wood Elf Grandmaster cultural quest says "Zone - ALL" for the collection of the 80 Drake claws and killing of 120 Isle drakes. However, only the kills and collection in Thunderous Isles gives credit toward the quest. (e.g. looting the appropriate claw in Stillmoon does not count)

However, I've heard from other cultures (e.g. halflings) that they are able to kill drakes and collect claws in ALL zones, just as the quest shows, and get credit toward their quest completion.

Wood elves being limited to only one zone to complete this quest seems harsh and inequitable if other cultures are given credit in ALL zones.

[varran]

Looking into Soluseks Eye (Expert)
Number of gnomish miner kills reasonable, got 14 gnome meats when I had done the 50 kills, but only took 10 mins to get the rest so I was probably just unlucky to start with.
Number of CWG Model kills probably a bit easy, and the broken frost module seemed a little too rare (got a couple of other modules before the frost one dropped). But overall I think they were acceptable.
My only problem with this bit was the faction hit I had to take, would have prefered not to have done that, but can't be helped.

I had exactly the same result (character Varran on The Nameless). After my 50 Gnomes were done, had 14 of the 20 meats, and had to waste another 20 or so Gnomes to complete. Had I actually been of the appropriate level, rather than pushing 60, this would have been a great hardship. As it was it was merely incredibly tedious.

The "level" of the quests seems appropriate all in all, however, since the mahjority of the characters doing this are already high level, it would have been nice to have a shortcut. For example, if you are already past level 50 you should be able to go directly to the expert task and recieve the earlier rewards as well as the expert reward. Setting up a situation where high level characters must go into low level hunting grounds and slaughter creatures en masse is potentially unfair to lower level characters who might want to EXP there. Particularly when a zone is currently a "hotspot"

Farming say, silks or bone chips is one thing. Yes, you need to go to a lowbie zone and kill everything in sight. But if there are actual lowbies present and exping in the zone you can leave and go do your farming equaly well in another location. With these quests, you must dominate a specific zone, and have no alternative. So a "challenge" that lets you bypass the lower quests would be good; 50 gnomes OR 10 Forest drakes in the Broodlands, etc.

[waldora]

I don't like the step by step aspect. You send me to a remote zone, to kill xx and loot bb, then after I finish, you tell me to return with a few items, then you send me BACK to kill yy and loot zz (that I could have killed in in my previous trip, and probably did, but they don't count because the task wasn't active.

For Humans DN is a bit remote, for a return visit, especially considering the rarity of the old dragon horns. I don't know what part 2 is, but I prolly already killed what I needed to and looted at least 1 of them.

[Veril]

Xegony Server, Character = Veril (Barbarian Shaman) Smith. Doing the 3rd series of quests (Master), killing 80 Xi Vius or Xi Xaui and looting 40 Essence of Darkness.

By the time I had killed 80 the 80 mobs I had looted 18 Essence of Darkenss. It took me over 200 kills of the Xi mobs before I had acquired all 40 Essence of Darkness.
If the drop to collect was Swirling Shadows instead of Essence of Darkness, I would have been OK, and would have gotten the 40 drops off the 80 mobs.


Xegony Server, Character = Veril (Barbarian Shaman) Smith. Doing the 4rd series of quests (GrandMaster), killing 120 Stillmoon Inhabitants, and looting 80 Rough Patch of Goblin Skin.

So far I have killed 104 of 120 inhabitants of Stillmoon, and I have looted 13 of 80 Rough Patch of Goblin Skin
There are several problems with this section of the quest:
1) It lists the zones for both bits as ALL - I suspect they should both be flagged as Stillmoon.
2) It seems as though the only Goblin Patches that count are those I collect in the Stillmoon Instances (not the regular zone). I've looted 20+ patches in Tirranums Delve and they have not been counted.
3) I don't think I have had a single Patch drop in the regular stillmoon zone (and I have killed a fair few goblins all over in that zone), I have only seen them in the instances.
4) It's taken me 3 stillmoon missions to collect the 13 I have gained so far (although I have been doing the mission for points and success rather than specifically farmin it for skins).

[Taushar]

Some people may have trouble with second high elf quest, the one in Lower Guk, because not all ghouls drop the powder. None of the ghoul wizards do, and the wan ghoul knights don't seem to have any either. You could easily kill all 40 ghouls and still have zero drops. But once you figure out the right ghouls to kill there's more than enough drops.

I found that only few of the ghouls downstairs drop the powders. I was told that only ghouls with titles Zol, Dar and Kor drop powders and it seems to be true. Even so, I found that the powder does not drop enough for the quest. I have killed about 60 mobs before I got my powders. Also, the tongue drop is way too low for the kills. There are way too many Warriors and not enough Wizards in the zone. I needed to kill 4 Wizards and loot 1 tongue but it tooke me about 25 to 30 Wizards before a tongue dropped and it dropped off a named Wizard.

Taushar

[Menellinde]

Wood elf quests:
Journeyman seemed easy, I got my pieces pretty much in the time that I got my kills.

Expert - skipped it

Master - Spent about 8 hours PBAEing in AC to get my drops. By the time I had killed my 80 mobs I still needed over 40 toes.

Grandmaster - 120 kills complete, still needing 47 fractured claws.

My other issue with this is that when someone else in my group loots the claw I don't get credit for it. More than once now in groups, even though I've mentioned to my group mates that I need these pieces, they still accidently loot them from time to time which is very frustrating indeed.

[Koutarou]

The Human Master quests have two problems.

1) The Qeynos Master quest starts with kill 80 chetari/chelaki in DN and loot 4 Old Dragon Horns, while the Freeport version is kill 80 rats and loot TEN horns. Obviously one is incorrect.

2) The drop rate on Old Dragon Horns appears to have not been changed, and a player can easily finish the 80 kills with zero drops. This has been reported by several players in the serverwide.eqtraders channel over the weekend.

I was at 3 horns when I hit 80 kills. The fourth one came sometime after 120.

In terms of the first 3 quests, I mix-and-matched the easier ones. Two of the first three required killing primarily underwater (sharks in erud's crossing and something in kedge). I don't know about you, but in my experience most people dispise hunting underwater and will do just about anything to avoid it.

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

I'll add my 2cp to the problems with the Wood Elf Dismantling Golems task (Expert level). Whoever came up with this one evidently hasn't been in City of Mist since the zone revamp. Many of the skeleton spawns have been replaced with human or golem models and just don't ever respawn as undead types.

Four hours = 19 plaguebone skeletons killed out of needed 50 (one of which was named but still counted) and 7 bone chips out of needed 20.



Kemie Dreamshadow, Lanys

[Elyssanda]

Thanks all! We're getting some great feedback. Please keep the posts coming!

If killing XX number of mobs does not drop the XX number of parts, can the parts be bought? for example, zombie skins are often found on vendors, so are recondite insignia rings. That would allow for those times when you've killed the prescribed number of mobs but the drops haven't happened.

[Ngreth Thergn]

there is another thread here: http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=20060

that has much information also on "issues" with quests. I could not properly merge them becasue the first post is older than the first post in this thread