High Elf - fastest route 188+ ?

[Taushar]

According to what I've read, dire sonics in TM are a better source of Shrieking, and grimy owlbears in Paludal are better for Wailing. Hollowshade has the convenience of having both mobs in one zone, but drops are worse...

Hmm, what makes you say that? I have hunted in all 3 zones for a while and the drop rates are not much different on 3 zones. Besides there are only 4 spawns of paludal owlbears. I can kill them in 40 secs it takes me to cast 4 nukes. Then I end up waiting 5-10 mins (don't remember the respawn rate) waiting for those 4 to come back. Way too slow. As for TM, sonic wolves are much higher level and the bat adds are a pain. I can solo them easy but it takes me about 3-5 mins per kill by the time I track one down, kill and loot.

I can go to HSM and when the right mob is up, I can round up 20-25 of them at a time and AOE them to death. I can keep 4-5 islands clear until the new pops. Endless farming for an hour or two, 1-2 stacks of each substances easily. So much easier at HSM.

Taushar

[Bregalad]

Actually, EQTC Luclin drop guide happens to say that. It lists TM sonics as first choice for Shrieking, and points out that Wailing from Owlbears in HM is 'rarer' than in Paludal.

[Meirril]

Actually, EQTC Luclin drop guide happens to say that. It lists TM sonics as first choice for Shrieking, and points out that Wailing from Owlbears in HM is 'rarer' than in Paludal.

While both are true, they are also untrue. Drop rates for HSM owlbears and wolves in their natural starting position are non-existant. However, when either of them takes over the grimling camp the islands start to drop substances. While the drop rate of an individual mob are not as good as either of the other zones, there are alot more mobs in a small controllable enviroment that have a significant drop rate. In the time it takes a normal melee to find and kill 1 dire sonic wolf, the same melee could of cleared an entire village of sonic wolves in HSM and probably gotten twice as much substance for his trouble. Since the wolves are much lower level that melee will have less downtime. As for casters, well if you have any AoE capability HSM is definatly THE place. Run accrost a few islands, circle a few times, and AoE away. First one should kill them all (they have around 600hp).
As for owlbears, 4 spawns on a 10 min timer...even if they dropped 2 substances each every time they wouldn't even come close to 25 mobs that drop one occasionaly and spawn every 5 min.

Lastly, swirling shadows can be had by massive bashing in SWT (as fast as you can run and loot most of the time, but bad drop rate.), taking a chance killing some fairly nasty shadows in Twilight (the 150 lifetap is the big deal, otherwise they arn't that bad.), or *gasp* hunting AR for non-green mobs and getting swirling shadows as a junk loot. The umbris toiler type mobs there have a good drop rate of shadows.

[Bregalad]

Ahh, was wondering about that. Before HSM 'fix', I used to decimate owlbear cubs and razorbeaks for perfect pelts, and they dropped substances as well. But after the fix, the open are near owlbear caves is completely empty, not a single cub or razorbeak. Fleshrenders don't seem to drop them at all. We piled them mile-high yesterday without a single substance drop.

We tried make HSM completely owlbear controlled yesterday so we could determine which type of bear was best for substance (the bonegrinders and razorclaws on the south beach where grimling chieftain is dropped nothing for us), but at one point when bears did take over the zone, about 1 min later some idiot showed up and took out their boss in the outpost, resetting the zone. After that we tried again, but Owlbears just wouldn't go offensive on grimlings. Anyone know how to reliably trigger bear attacks on other sides?

[Raamil]

The idiot was probably trying for the soloable flowing thought 1 item the owl boss mob drops. Besides that once one race takes the whole zone it resets itself in 20 or 30 minutes anyways. Substances only drop from the south camp and only from the islands. They do not drop from the shore where the grimling cheiftan spawns, only the islands.

In 4 or 5 days of messing around with the war, i could not find any way to force which camp attacked which. I had several people come by and tell me theories about killing this leader or that leader or keeping the guardians cleared and I tried them all, but it really seems to be random.