The SOF Tradeskill Quest!

[Ngreth Thergn]

I finally finished it and I want to thank Ngreth for the fun journey through SoF.

On a side note, Ngreth, I have a second toon that is stuck on the Fletching Task. In my excitement to get done, I unshrouded the 3 boxes and placed them successfully on the alter and got the recipe, mold and gem. Went and actually made an arrow before it dawned on me that my task hadn't advanced. It was still back on getting the last page for the book.

After pounding my head on the desk a few times, I went and got the last page, finished the Book of Shadows. Now Im stuck on the task to do what the book says. I have tried to unshroud several boxes but they disintegrate. I've tried boxes from each zone exactly at midnight.

Ngreth, is there a hidden flag that once you scribe the recipe, you can not unshroud any further boxes? I've petitioned ingame and was told it was elevated to QA. Appreciate if you know of a solution to my self induced stuckage.. Thanks

yup. there is a flag and you are stuck :/ CS has been given the instructions to reset that flag. I will look into seeing if I can add something to the "unshroud" to not allow you to do it if you have not finished the book yet.

[Gaze]

I finally finished it and I want to thank Ngreth for the fun journey through SoF.

On a side note, Ngreth, I have a second toon that is stuck on the Fletching Task. In my excitement to get done, I unshrouded the 3 boxes and placed them successfully on the alter and got the recipe, mold and gem. Went and actually made an arrow before it dawned on me that my task hadn't advanced. It was still back on getting the last page for the book.

After pounding my head on the desk a few times, I went and got the last page, finished the Book of Shadows. Now Im stuck on the task to do what the book says. I have tried to unshroud several boxes but they disintegrate. I've tried boxes from each zone exactly at midnight.

Ngreth, is there a hidden flag that once you scribe the recipe, you can not unshroud any further boxes? I've petitioned ingame and was told it was elevated to QA. Appreciate if you know of a solution to my self induced stuckage.. Thanks

[Aldier]

Finished up this quest the other day and wanted to thank all that helped contribute to this thread and worked to solve this quest.

Thanks also to Ngreth for putting this fun quest in the game for us tradeskillers to work towards and it provides a nice piece that I will probably be using for a long time to come.

Now to just wait and see what kind of type 3 augments they add to make this item even better.

[Jeezu]

Myself and Xcoz were talking through tells trying to figure out the final step on the shadow box part. while both of us were stuck in LP for HOURS waiting on that darn box to drop (this droprate really needs to be upped to match the others). while i was waiting to do the final placing (for the third time) after completing two combinations, and waiting for daytime, the server crashed. when i logged back on, one combination was done, and the other was returned. i tried to do the failed combination, was unable. so i reluctantly destroyed the shadow box and refarmed all three boxes (another 5 hours gone) only to try and fail the first combination on all three boxes.

so ngreth (this post is just for you), i sent in a /bug report, but cannot petition since i crash when hitting P. i know i can go through the SoE website somehow, too bad they don't have a (submit petition) link anywhere, and trying to find any link to get to the petition page only frustrates me even more with EQ's lackluster CS. don't know what you can possibly do, but if someone can look into this part of the quest, and possibly tag the items a special way so that they can be identified... hint hint, yes id love to see an identify tag placed on the boxes themselves and the final combines, something like this items seems to have the essence of the brownies or something to be able to tell them apart. it is now unlikely i will personally ever be able to finish this quest since im bugged.

it was a fun quest, while it lasted.

so basically two months later, i am finally past counting shadows task and onto brewing. after many petitions of some gm's not even knowing about the basics of the new quests system, like task stages.....

[Ngreth Thergn]

well. hrm. I should probably re-write that part of the book.

That ends up being 20 minutes real time...

And that is only to prevent people from griefing others by "holding" the alter. Either purposefully or by mistake.

[KyrosKrane]

20 minutes game time is exactly one minute real time.

[gggrant]

My understanding was that you could do the gem covered combines at your leisure at the correct times, ie. CE at 12 am, Vodka anytime and Juice during the day. Where I may have gone wrong -- does the juice combine and the box placement all need to be done in the same 20 mins (game time)?

I did the Juice combine at 4pm in preperation for my 5pm placements. Next time I will be doing the juice combine in the same hour. Is there any restriction that the gem covered boxes all be combined within a certain time frame. I am a packrat and doing the combines as I get the gem covered boxes makes more sense for me.

Miz

This is quite correct in that you uncover the gem covered boxes at your leisure. After that, you can wait as long as you like (I waited almost a game day) before you place your first shadow box.

From the book:
Once all of the shadow boxes have lost their shroud and the light of day has arrived, you must place them on the altar. Though the steps you must take may seem simple, you have but one third of an hour to complete your task, if you do not then all will be lost and even your life may be forfeit.

You have 20 minutes game time (from the time you place your first shadow box), to place the shadow boxes and open the correct one. How long you wait before you place your first shadow box is irrelevant, what is important is you do NOT have a full game hour to place and open. Once you place the first box, the clock starts ticking. You don't have time to think about what you are going to do next, make those decisions before you place the first box. Be quick as a bunny when placing and opening.

[Prexis]

I just finished the shadow counting a few days ago. I used the gem covered box from the named brownie in dragonscale hills for all 3 box combines. Did 1st combine, killed for 2nd box, did 2nd combine, etc. After 3rd combine I waited until 6am & quickly placed all 3 boxes, rechecked the time (still 6am) and opened center box. Succeeded and went on my way. Waited until 6am to do the box placing/opening because I was reading & rereading all the info trying to get the courage to actually do it.

[mizoto]

My understanding was that you could do the gem covered combines at your leisure at the correct times, ie. CE at 12 am, Vodka anytime and Juice during the day. Where I may have gone wrong -- does the juice combine and the box placement all need to be done in the same 20 mins (game time)?

I did the Juice combine at 4pm in preperation for my 5pm placements. Next time I will be doing the juice combine in the same hour. Is there any restriction that the gem covered boxes all be combined within a certain time frame. I am a packrat and doing the combines as I get the gem covered boxes makes more sense for me.

Miz

[mcdermit]

Several people have posted that they were able to use multiples of the same Gem Covered Box for Counting Shadows.

Were you able to combine the boxes, then farm the others at your liesure, or did you have to quickly get that last box and place and open them all within 20 minutes?

[mizoto]

For counting shadows at 5pm I placed box 1 (CE) from South, box 2 (Vodka) from West and box 3 (Juice) from East and attempted to open the East box and got eaten. Where did I screw up?

Thanks,

Miz

[Saviant]

smithing step

This is the recipe for the brewing step of erons jewelry
Combine 5 Bloodfang spider eggs in brew barrel to get:

Bloodfang Spider Albumen
No trade , quest
Class, race None.
Size Tiny, Weight 0.3
stackable.
trivial 100.

Combine the bloodfang spider aldumen with a Soda water, Vodka and Quinine to get

Eron's Bloodfang Nostrum
Class: all
Race : all
Size : Small
Weight: 0.7
This is a whistle wetter.
Trivial 400.
Stackable.

Btw bloodfang spider eggs drop from "a bloodfang spider" in bloodmoon keep.

[Soltic]

I'd LOVE to have BiC fit in type 3 again, but that's a different arguement for a different message board.

I'm mostly hoping that there will be type 3 augments in the works that will be useful to melee toons. The 8% to dodge aug is nice, but there's not much else... Maybe a few weak resist augs...

[yinla]

I got my last task finished today, and my final reward.

I would like to thank those who posted on the Fletching task, the only task I needed to get help with (I'm still cursing that book) the rest I figured out.

Thanks Ngreth for a great task arc, very interesting storyline.

Good Luck everyone else with these tasks, I feel I have accomplished something. I love getting a long task arc finished.

*HUGS*

Yinla

[Zyeil]

Since the LDoN AC augs had the type 3 removed from them, what about another small increase in AC? (5 more would be good, I'd think.) Or maybe somehow get Merloc to add type 3 back onto the LDoN AC augs (and slip a LORE tag onto them for good measure)?

As far as the click effects go on both, maybe consider changing to Primal Guard (5 hp regen and 5% overhaste; and I'd add a link but this is my first post) for melee, since it's uncommon and is added to tier 3 group content and has been around since PoP: Time; and maybe Maelin's Meditation (+400 to mana pool) for casters since, again, it's on tier 3 groupable loot, it's been around a long time (since at least Hulcror) and it stacks with the mana/hp regen clickies that everyone seems to have that are already better (Girdle of Efficiency comes to mind).

Although the final reward could benefit from a few small changes still, I would like to thank you for the thought and effort you put into the quest and the reward, Ngreth. Complex and well thought out quests definitely add a lot of interest to the game.

5 more ac would be awesome.

Or making a couple 5-10ac slot 3's along with the spell focus augs.

Or returning type 3 to the augs that it got swiped from (like the BiC).

I wouldn't mind the clickies being a bit more useful, but maybe lots of folks that get this don't have alternatives for those effects.

It's a very nice item. It's an awesome quest (though the end is a little off kilter imo)

Although there are alot of well show me an item with more ac than this that is groupable from the past expansion arguements... no one can really point out any item with 450+hme that is groupable from the past either; hme went up drastically with SoF. AC is still stagnating on everything but cultural, and folks are up in arms over that

And this is the expansion that heralds attack is raising and ac matters. Just sort of disappointing.