East Freeport, Neriak A and Grobb are comming down

[Cigarskunk]

Just saw a system wide message on Xev saying that "East Freeport, Neriak A and Grobb are comming down sometime tonight."

Now, if this is also happening on all other servers then that sounds to me like something is definately happening involving the story line and my precious trolls - especially when one considers the fact that they said "Grobb" and not whatever the hell those slimey amphibians are calling Grobb now adays.

Big hopes, big hopes, big hopes... :shock:

[Shjinn]

Yep

Yep, Cigar. I can confirm that they were downon Saryrn tonight also.

Shjinn

[Lilosh]

Maybe the Dark Elves Living in Freeport (DELF) will be assisting the Innoruk Necromancers Killing Yelniak (INKY) in finally remove those pesky trolls from the face of the planet.


The victory party would also be taking place in Grobb, mind you.


-Lilosh

[Aandaie]

I think it might just be patching stuff to do with the exterminator quests more.

[Cigarskunk]

Sigh, well, checked all the NPCs in Neriak with no luck - no new ones and no one had anything new to say or sell.

It must be the exterminators - I tried doing that again and they seem to have nerfed the rats - whisker rates were terrible (took 20 minutes to get 4 whiskers?!?) and they don't drop the plague rat tails or any other rat style loot.

The exterminator was DB and indifferent, so I thought I'd give him a swat to see what was up with him - he hits pretty hard and fast and is either bugged or a new pattern for quest NPCs - I fought him till I was down to 50% and I wasn't able to get his hitpoints to drop below 99% - I easily put about 5k damage into him between melee and spells - even a unresisted HT didn't dent him.

[Aandaie]

I'd not try to get the whiskers from rodents.

Do like I do if doing the quest, go and buy 225 rat whiskers at a time in the freeport area. Then my dark elf took them to kaladim and did the quest there.

You would not think it, but newbies still don't bother to do the quest with the exterminator 3 inches away. The exterminators give one gold, 1 silver or so per 4 rat whiskers while npc vendors sell them for like 1 silver 4 copper. So even buying them off npcs you are making a profit from the quest. So I find it amazing that newbies are selling them to vendors for what must be something like 7 copper? Every day I easily buy a couple hundred more rat whiskers.

I think I'm at around 80 or so turn ins (4 whiskers each)
Though she is now warmly to stormguard I'm still stuck in threaten to the stupid miner's guild 249 people around the bank, and scowl to the banker (Kaladim merchant faction) She must have really been in the sewer.
She was amiable to stormguard when I started the rat whisker quest there. The rat quest guy himself is on stormguard faction.

Wow, though they nerfed the plague rat tail drops on the rodents in neriak, I think plague rat tails were dropping lots from regular big rats in freeport. Those are pretty low level and there are tons of them.

My 56 druid tried the one in kaladim, he does hit quite hard and resisted many spells. They made them buff.

[Cigarskunk]

I think I'm at around 80 or so turn ins (4 whiskers each)
Though she is now warmly to stormguard I'm still stuck in threaten to the stupid miner's guild 249 people around the bank, and scowl to the banker (Kaladim merchant faction) She must have really been in the sewer.
She was amiable to stormguard when I started the rat whisker quest there. The rat quest guy himself is on stormguard faction.

Uhm, there's no faction for turning in the rat whiskers - that's probobly why you haven't seen an increase - all you get is your 0.111 plat per 4 whiskers.

[Eumerin]

If VI does do something to allow the trolls to retake Grobb (probably only temporarily, though, as some sort of "kill the switch mob" sort of thing - like with the rockhoppers and sambata in DSP), they're going to need to do something with the frogs, though. So in addition to Neriak and Grobb, you're going to need to see some changes in zones to accomodate the suddenly homeless frogs.

And since Freeport East is the ONLY Freeport zone that doesn't have any guild trainers useable by the frogs, it seems to me that this patch doesn't have that change.

My guess is that if the devs ever put something like that in, they'll also patch NFP to include trainers for all of the frog classes - or possibly all but wizards and warriors, with the latter two getting refugee frogs in WFP.

[Silound]

Cigar, if you turn them in in Rivervale, you do indeed get a fation increase with Mayor Grubbin, Guardians of hte Vale, and one other. You get a decrease with Dreadguard Outer.

Silound
Exterminator of Prexus

[Niellya]

In Felwithe you get a positive faction hit for Merchants of Felwithe.

[Cigarskunk]

Hmm, then the Neriak rat guy is doubly broken - no faction hits and enough hitpoints that 5k damage isn't even 1%.

[DragonFodder]

Well, I know one thing that both East Freeport and Grobb/Gukta have in common is that both zones have merchants in them that sell rusty weapons (Hallard's Resales in EFP and the frog merchant next to the forge in Gukta). I had to check Illia's Everquest Bestiary to see if there was a rusty weapon merchant in Neriak, and it turned out there is (or rather was) one named Thrack.

Head down to any of those cities and look for the rusty weapon vendors. As of last night, they were missing from the game when I checked. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I really don't think the zones came down for any storyline changes.

SoE was simply removing another money-manufacturing method from the game (roughly 1pp 1gp vendor profit for two combines in a forge, but thankfully there are a limited number of forges in Norrath and the vendor items are rather heavy and non-stackable). Expect to see either rusty two-handed swords removed from the merchants (or their price increased), the sell-back price of a large brick of ore reduced, or maybe the combine will simply yield a different quantity of ore after the next patch.

[Eumerin]

Hmm...

Wasn't the rusty weapons merchant in Freeport involved in the Shield of the Silent Watch quest?

[Myrron]

The exterminator in Felwithe increases Felwithe Merchant faction with the whisker turn-ins. Might be something for me to do to decrease the cost of mithril for my wood elf someday.

--Myrron

[Cigarskunk]

Well, I know one thing that both East Freeport and Grobb/Gukta have in common is that both zones have merchants in them that sell rusty weapons (Hallard's Resales in EFP and the frog merchant next to the forge in Gukta). I had to check Illia's Everquest Bestiary to see if there was a rusty weapon merchant in Neriak, and it turned out there is (or rather was) one named Thrack.

Head down to any of those cities and look for the rusty weapon vendors. As of last night, they were missing from the game when I checked. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I really don't think the zones came down for any storyline changes.

SoE was simply removing another money-manufacturing method from the game (roughly 1pp 1gp vendor profit for two combines in a forge, but thankfully there are a limited number of forges in Norrath and the vendor items are rather heavy and non-stackable). Expect to see either rusty two-handed swords removed from the merchants (or their price increased), the sell-back price of a large brick of ore reduced, or maybe the combine will simply yield a different quantity of ore after the next patch.

That's interesting - I knew that you could buy the rusty axes for the warrior weapon quest and make a few plat for self twinking in the bazaar a bit, but I wasn't aware of any other tricks - do the tarnished 2H sell for that much?

Also, what's the deal with the large bricks of ore - broken down, do they sell back to vendors for more than purchase? Based off of my busting down velium blocks, even with a 184 skill and geerlok, I'd think that ore busting would be a bust if you're only making 11gp per break down?

But fret not Dragon - the bubble was busted as soon as I got to log back on - I hadn't found anything new so had to assume nothing relavent had happened. Still though, you've gotta admit, it did look like a promising combo of zones comming down.