Swirling Shadows

[Dragoron]

I've been farming swirling shadows in Shadeweavers being bored out of my mind lately. I thought I read something about there being a better spot to farm them at but I can't find the post. I'm a level 60 mage so anything up to about 40 or so dies in a couple seconds, so I'm not too worried about that.

[Quell]

Shadows

Twilight Sea shadows. The island is south of the port-in location.

Though you shouldn't have many problems, I still suggest a touch of caution the first time you break the island... It's easy to be green-killed as an int-caster, and the 130-150 hp Lifetap they proc can mess things up quicker.

Q

[Arghargh]

I've actually gotten my best drop rate Shadeweavers, but I had to run around like made killing everything. Shades in TS can drop 2 at a time, so I usually hunted there. TS is more consistent for me, plus minor pp and research items.

Arghargh Grumble, Darkblood
57 Ogre Shaman of Rallos Zek
Alchemy – 165
Baking – 200
Brewing - 200
Fishing - 200
Fletching – 200
Jewelcraft –200
Potting - 200
Grandmaster Smith - 250
Tailoring – 159

[BrindalayShadowlace]

I was definitly suprised by the shadows in TS. First pull was the frenzied shadow and he could've taken me down if i hadn't been able to smoke 'em quickly. But swirlings didn't seem to be overly common either. :?

[B_Delacroix]

I've hunted the shadows two times total. First time, they the swirling shadows dropped like candy. Second time, the island was covered in various named shadows and I had to pull teeth to get any swirling shadow.

Its just luck sometimes.

[Arghargh]

Some of the named shades in TS are light blue to 57, so be warned. There is one mob with a human model that is much tougher than most. Some of the named shadows are coarse, dark, disgraced, frenzied, groaning, horrid, lithe, malevolent, mischevious, sinister, soiled, tenacious, viscious, and wretched. Most drop quest pieces.

Arghargh Grumble, Darkblood
57 Ogre Shaman of Rallos Zek
Alchemy – 165
Baking – 200
Brewing - 200
Fishing - 200
Fletching – 200
Jewelcraft –200
Potting - 200
Grandmaster Smith - 250
Tailoring – 159

[eqdoctress]

Swirling Shadows

I quad in Twilight Seas for the swirling shadows.

Usually I am able to clear the whole isle

get a stack in 1 hour

Eeirey Spiritkeeper
Hierophant of Tunare
Moonlite Knights
Quellious Server

[chudd]

i think TS is the best place, i can usually get around a stack an hour and a 60 paladin, only found one named that is light blue to me. plus the cash is nice. make about 50-100pp per hour and you can pick up the weapons that the names drop and give them to newbs.

[Cendorly]

TS is definitely the best place. I'm a 61 mage myself, and I can easily keep the island clear and wait the 7-8 min for repops. The drop rate is good (1-2 shadows about 50-60% of the time) and between island clearings, you can run to the merchants on the nearby island to sell any weapons, words, runes, etc.

As a word of caution, when you first go to break the island, be cautious. The shadows love to swarm, and it's not uncommon to get 1-2 beating on you while your pet is beating on the other. They can take you down to half health pretty fast with their lifetap.

[Mardark]

I get 2 stacks an hour in shadeweaver. I am KOS to merchants in TS. I do not have a way to heal myself when I get on the bad end of a few lifetaps.

What is best for one person, is not the best for another. Arguements for one person do not always hold up for another.

You must figure out what works best for you. If you can kill fast enough, shadeweaver is best. But that also means you need to be able to sense the dead in shadeweaver, to target the ones that stop in rocks and trees. Otherwise it gets real slow there.

I had a ranger try to do shades in shadeweaver, and got 22 shadows in a few hours.

Do what works best for you. You need to try both before you determine what works best. If you are doing full groups killing the Xi's and Vi's in ME, that may be faster even. You never know.

[Arou]

I have never been high enough level to comfortably do the Twilight Sea version of gather swirling shadows, so I have had to learn all I can about doing it as efficiently as possible in Shadeweaver's Thicket.

The Plane of Knowledge book will drop you into the south end of Shadeweaver's Thicket. Run to the north end of the zone. Using loc, this means 1900, -2200. Follow the road from Shar Vahl, if nothing else.

At the north end, you will see a large tunnel leading into the ground. A bit east of this is a small formation of rocks and trees. Kill everything that moves in this area. Range up onto the darker hillsides, especially above the tunnel entrance. You will see lesser shades, skeletal hunters, and maybe the occasional Loda Kai brigand. Simply kill everything; these are all on the same spawn table. Do not bother ranging south of the tunnel, into the tunnel, or to the east edge of the zone... even with tracking, the time wasted running will only slow you down. With some practice, you will get a feel for the area.

Do not bother looting anything that is No Drop here. Such items are used only for newbie Vah Shir quests and are not worth your time. None of the weapons or armor that drop here are worth anything substantial either; they will only slow you down and fill inventory. There will be plenty of shadeling silk, bone chips, and other stacking things that are can be sold for some spare change as you kill the lesser shades. Note that the No Rent armor that sometimes drops here can be used in tailoring, but it really isn't worth the effort in general.

Note that this area can support at most 2 people farming it, probably only 1 if the person is particularly fast and effective. If you find yourself with time on your hands while farming, consider killing any hopper types you see for pelts.

[Ry_Skylark]

In Shadeweaver in the area Arou posted about above is where I get my swirling shadows. I parsed ~two hours worth of hunting here. 77 swirling shadows out of 433 lesser shadow kills, or about 1 in every 5.6 kills. I picked up a swirling shadow about once every 84 seconds or roughly 43 per hour.

I've not tried the TS route, but I'd be interested how these numbers stack up against the yields in TS.

[Iwar_VZ]

One pretty good way to farm in shadeweavers (unless you got track) is if you have the spell "sense the dead", I farm with sk using sense and if sense another undead I just shadow step and try again

[Kingbobb]

TS would be the best place IF you don't have to melee and don't have a healer around. That 150 lifeproc can make it really annoying to take the shadows down. Drop rates per kill are supposed to be better, but if you can't kill them that fast, then it won't matter all that much.

Shadowscream is an "easy" and cheap path to take to get to 250 smithing, so it would make sense that collecting that components would be a pain. There's no "easy" or "quick" way to prepare for large SS combine runs.

[Penrif]

Someone mentioned they wanted to see how numbers stacked up against TS drops. See my post A study on Shadowscream drop rates

I would suggest keeping logs for more then 2 hours...that's small enough that a lucky streak could make your numbers really nice.