Almost a month into DoN...

[wold2]

1) I raised my Smithing to 261 on shadowscream (will make 300 with 15% modifier)
2) I've done 3/4 Barbarian quests (only 15/80 rough goblin patches for the GM one, ugh)
3) I have TWO piles of gravel for the master level combines
4) I have ZERO metallic drake scales
5) I have ZERO crushed diamond dust.

Our regular group is 68 warrior, 70 shaman, 68 cleric, 67 ench and 66 ranger in VT level gear. We raid 4 nights a week and exp mostly on the weekends. We have played for over four years. We have done enough DoN missions to have earned over 1000 crystals.

Old Barbarian cultural used BDs, which were readily available; back then, they could be expensive at times but at least they were on the market.

I think the drop rates for this stuff, especially the master level stuff, needs to be examined!

[Duradam]

1000 crystals each? Or as a group?

Heh, pick your missions diffrently if you want drake scales. Thundercrest is a good place for them. And crushed diamond dust is droping at about 1 an hour for me in Sirens Grotto. Piles of Gravel are droping about 1 in 2 hours for me in rcod.

High dps groups would fare better. Of course, no one wants to join me in SG, its not exp, and not many want to do golem heavy camps in rcod when we could camp 4-5 named instead. So its mostly 3boxing. But hunting the right mobs, I don't find the materials that scarce.

When BD armour first came out, BDs were pretty rare. They became far more common with PoP. On D-ro, BD's were certainly not "readily avlialbe" before PoP came out.

[wold2]

Thanks for the ideas, we'll try thundercrest once we finish the GM quest, which could be a looooooong time!!

I've only found the Piles in RCoD, also.

Can you say which mobs in SG drop the diamond? Is it random zone wide or do you have to go deep underwater?

Thanks,

[Boleslav]

BDs were a lot more common then than metallic dragon scales or piles of gravel are now.

Boleslav

[miakiss]

I had a spell in SG just before Dragons came out - I originally went to get the tooth for the shawl quest, but stayed a while when I realised how easy it was to farm the haste belts...

Anyway - I spent time killing seahorses and swordfish just near the zone-in and also killed Sirens around Mistress Latazura (to get a mask for my warrior) and High Priestess Sercema. All these areas are easy to get to if you have an eb item.

I got about 6 crushed diamond dust, which of course I just vendored (sigh), but I think they were just random off any mobs.

However, as I say, this was before the DoN patch and I don't know if they have changed the drop rate.

[ColdHeart]

I've been farming Velks for Velium and been getting the odd CDD drop as well, but gravel seems a pita considering what mobs you have to kill, can I use Yttrium please?

[wold2]

re: pile of gravel

I got these in Dranik Catacomb (lvl 68 instance zone off of RCOD), off of the big stone like guys.
Fortunately, Guild lobby makes the wipes easier ;0

[Kaycie]

what zone do you have to loot those skins in i see them all over but usually you have to be in xxx zone for the ticker to count