A concern about the Journeyman Researcher Test

[EnasYorl]

As I work my way through the Journeyman Researcher Test and investigate the items requested and the ingredients required to make them, I find myself wondering if one of the items is appropriate. Specifically, the item that concerns me is "Create 1 Highland Sludge Drying Powder". From what I have read, this requires 1 sample of highland sludge which is a rare drop in GoD and may or may not require a raid force. And, there aren't any for sale in the bazaar. Of course, if there were any for sale, I'm sure they'd be going for ridiculously high prices.

This step seems like it is going to be a road block, maybe a permanent one. I am a little annoyed that my Journeyman Researcher Trophy is going to be significantly more difficult to attain than my Expery Pottery Trophy.

[Dranul]

It doesn't necessarily require a raid force, though it does only drop from KT+ mobs. It's not super rare, I see usually two or three drop in a given night just clearing to Uqua or Ikkinz, and that's maybe twenty or thirty mobs, tops. In fact, I got my Sample of Highland Sludge just be vendor diving last night and am now the proud owner of the Journeyman Trophy. The real hard parts are the priest spells you have to make, if you ask me.

[Llientylln]

/agree - the priest spells are definitely the roadblock for me heh. I thought I had a huge collection of random research components, but I managed to have none of any of those ROFL. At least with the sludge, if it's not something we can pick up ourselves, it's something that we can get assisting on that's distinctive. I tell my hubby to keep an eye out for a rune of flash, and every 10 minutes after that I get the "which rune was that again?" "is this it?"

Still and all, well worth spending the time to do it, and if it was too easy, where would the accomplishment be I'm still just so excited that we actually GET a trophy now heh.

[EnasYorl]

If I could just find the left side of yaeth pg 50, I'd be done with the priest spells, assuming a sucessful combine. I may just have to try and grind my 55 beastlord in FG hoping for a drop.

I have no familiarity with most of the GoD zones. Can a 70 necro solo in the zones where the sludge drops? Or do the mobs summon and hit painfully hard as I suspect they do?

[Dranul]

I honestly don't remember if KT mobs summon, but I think they do. There isn't much room to kite either and, as you guessed, they all hit painfully hard. I would just try vendor diving at the Natimbi Magus for the Sludge and any other research components you'll need.

[Carlo the Curious]

Yaeth 50 left proving a pain for me as well. I may just get 2 skill points to 250 and see if expert test is easier .

[Zacatac]

The Highland Sludge Drying Powder is also in the expert level quest. So you won't get out of doing that part by skilling up to expert first.

The stuff is rare. You'll want a full group with at least 5 of them KT flagged. I'd say probably 1 in 20 mobs for the drop rate. I only see 1 or 2 a night when guild raids does Ikky raids. Problem is nobody does xp groups in KT anymore, it's just a hub that people cross through to get to other places.

[Carlo the Curious]

You will get out of combing bazaar for word/rune/etc drops you probably binned weeks ago though, which was my point .

EDIT: Incidentally, guild was doing some backflagging in Ikkinz/Uqua the othe week and quite a few highland sludge dropped.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I will look into changing the highland sludge combine. I was not aware at the time that that was beyond a keyed zone. (My Guild disintegrated in PoP, and I never found another that matched my schedule)

[marmaladeX]

I'm sorry to sound dumb, and I certainly am not intending on attacking you Ngreth...but can't you use your Dev Powers to see loot tables for mobs?

hmm..I need to look up whatever recipe we need for it. I thought all that was needed was a shaman to put it in their Alchemy bag.

[Dranul]

A shaman that has done the alchemy freebie quest in Abysmal Sea. Similarly, you can turn in the Sample to the male barb alchemy vendor in Abysmal Sea.

As for using his dev powers, the man's swamped as it is with thereotical stuff involving DoN, just got off doing PoR, still monitoring bugs and problems...I don't blame him for not knowing the Sludge only dropped from KT+ mobs.

[EnasYorl]

Thanks for looking into it Ngreth. I wasn't aware that you needed a flag to get to the appropriate zones either.

[Llientylln]

I really don't understand the KT hate Any good group can get Tipt and if they can get Tipt their KT. And once there finding sludge isn't hard or grabing from a vendor.

It's a whole lot easier to get any of that stuff than it is to find all these crazy rare pages for the old spells. I have like > 5 full trader satchels over several chars of pages I've been collecting for longer than I can count, and none of them are ones we need. At least with the sludge you know where and how to find it, instead of having do to a crapshoot for it.

[Lyssabeth]

I really don't understand the KT hate Any good group can get Tipt and if they can get Tipt their KT.

My mage is level 55 with 182 skill and one of her tasks uses the highland sludge. It isn't KT+ "hate", it is just innappropriate to expect a level 55 person to be flagged for KT. The sludge may be appropriate for a Master task, certainly not for an Apprentice/Journeyman task.

[Krioni1979]

/agree lyss

Although I am level 70 myself and I have had the opportunity in the distant past to complete a TIPT trial my guild is not up to par to be able to form a group capable enough to go to KT. Groups, on my server at least, are not forming up just to do TIPT trials or even KT anymore as they wish to do other things; so trying to put something together in that respect was a flop.

With all the patches in the last few days along with the plethora of other researchers trying to complete these quests the option of farming vendors or even the Bazaar has become pretty nil. Besides, I doubt these quests are meant to be a test of our vendor farming skills.

I'm not complaining that there is a hard to find tradeskill item on the list but really that that item is hard to get to. I would be perfectly happy having to farm a zone which was readily accessible to many people. Make the item no drop so we cant just vendor farm because that makes perfect sense for something of this caliber but don't make it so unreachable by those of us who aren't in the high end.

In fact, I think these quests should be nominally harder to do. Aside from this one item the rest of the items were relatively easy to make and it took me maybe 3 hours total to track down what I needed and make. There were too many vendor items. There really should be more no drop items on the quests so it makes it a little more of a personal challenge. I spent too much time purchasing items from the spell research robot in Corrathus for this quest.