Shadowscream questions from a Luclin-Newb

[Puskara]

Hiya folks!

So I played back in the day and took about 2 years off. Now I have returned to find my beloved tradeskills all changed. I was the first person to make a Handmade Backpack on Quellios back when pelts did not stack. Anyhow, now I play a dwarf paladin and have been working on my smithing. My skill is 132 and I have a Geerlok (purchased from a merchant for 18 PP). I have reached the point where I must make Ornate Chain, which is VERY costly or Humming Orbs.

I have never actually hunted in Luclin and would like advise on where a lvl 17 Paladin can hunt the required items, if at all. In addition is is possible for someone in the range of lvl 20 to gather the items needed for shadowscream? One of the reasons I wanted to smith was to wear the armor I made. unfortunatly I hear that You have to be super high to get items for cultural so Shadowscream seems like the best option until I hit my 30s and can do my Ro Armor quests.

So please give me your advice and keep it simple for this old-school Pre-Luclin player.

Thanks!

Puskara

[cattywumpus]

At 17 it's going to be borderline wether you can hunt shadowscream components at all. If you can it will be very slow with a lot of downtime.

The Wailing Substance you can get in Paludal Caverns from the Grimy Owlbears but expect about 1 every 10 minutes there if you can kill all four spawns (rough at 17). Hollowshade Moor will give you a better drop rate but the MoBs will be very rough at 17. I was soloing them at 18 as a Shaman but I can't recommend it for efficiency. You should still get XP there though so it may not be that bad.

The Shrieking Substance will have to come from HM since at 17 you wouldn't make a good snack for the Dire Sonic Wolves in Tenebrous Mountains. The Sonic Hunters in HM will be very painful for you but doable. Be better teamed with a slower and/or a healer.

The Swirling Shadows are just a matter of putting in the time in Shadeweaver's Thicket. The Lesser Shades are barely a challenge for a level 7 melee. Twilight Sea is not an option so you will be stuck with the lower drop rate of SWT. Swirling Shadows can rarely be found on merchants but I doubt you will get enough that way to make a dent in the number you will need.

Farming in HM was made an exercise in futility by the war fix. Everything changes too quickly now and at 17 there is very little you can do about it. Just go there, camp near the islands and wait till the right MoBs are up.

You may as well go for the Shadowscream combine after you make the Humming Orbs since it doesn't take anything but a banded armor mold and the Swirling Shadows and you may get a skill-up anyway. Since Humming Orbs don't stack you will not want to hold on to them till you can use them since you would need a dozen mules to do that. The only option to doing the SS combine is to sell them to a merchant.

[Thorvari]

I would actually make yourself some Orbs, and carry them around. They have a 12pt 5minute damage shield, which is very nice for a tank class, and they can be recharged by selling an unused one to a merchant, then all the used ones, then buying them back all fully charged.

The orbs do not disappear when the charge of Sonic Feedback is used, and can still be used for smithing if the charge is used.

[Malathos]

Actually, the Dwarvish cultural isn't as bad as it seems.
I've just finished my own set of enchanted imbued dwarven chain, which isn't much worse than the Ro armour - the good news is that the trivials are somewhere in the 130 to 150 range according to the numbers I've seen coming out

You need lava rocks and drops of mercury for the temper. The lava rocks I buy in the bazaar, when I find some that are cheap enough and the drops of mercury you can normally find on merchants at the windmills in steamfont (they drop from the elementals there and people just sell them to the merchants ). The real pain is going to be the 1500pp worth of rubies you'll need for a full set of enchanted imbued dwarven chain :shock:

If you hunt in the courtyard of unrest you've also got a chance of getting one part of your Ghoulbane - as well as some great exp and good loot.
When you do get your Ghoulbane, move to unrest and rip the place apart - the cash you'll need will start flowing in quite quickly.

[Kcalehc]

....and they can be recharged by selling an unused one to a merchant, then all the used ones, then buying them back all fully charged.

methinks this might be a bug exploit and I'd be carefull if you do choose to do it incase you get into trouble.

[Reflan]

Well people have been doing this for so long that I never considered anything could be wrong with it, myself. Sony has undoubtedly known about this for a very long time -- I probably first heard about this a year and a half ago or something like that. Since you do indeed pay money and complete a normal transaction, it seems like a fairly ordinary thing to me. I wouldn't worry about it.

As to having to do shadowscream -- it takes literally weeks and months to camp all the shadowscream you'll need even if you're over 60 and duo with two characters, like I do. At your level...well, I'd just go level and worry about it later. Your low stats and very limited ability to quickly hunt the mobs(who do NOT drop the items every time) means shadowscream would be unbelievably slow -- staggeringly so.

I'd recommend running around to different vendors using the PoK portstones regularly, buying pelts and silks off them. Use them to raise your tailoring to at least 31, which will make leather padding trivial to you, as I'm sure you remember from your old tailoring days. Sell some padding, keep some padding. On many servers they bring in very good money, over 20pp per padding. Get some Ping Fuzzlecutters from the gnome in freeport and sell them for a plat each -- they only cost a gold. You can actually build up quite a stock of money this way, and sooner or later you'll have saved up a lot of pelts, too. Then you can go do fine steel plate armor, which sells back for fairly close to the cost to make it, especially if you make your own padding. This is MUCH cheaper than doing ornate armor, and doing some vendor diving certainly won't be any more time consuming than camping shadowscream -- far less. And you won't die, etc.

I'd recommend checking the vendors up in PoK and PoT also, at least once a week, or after every patch or zone reset. High level players sometimes dump stuff they can't be bothered to sell on vendors that you can go and turn around and sell for a fortune. Example: my friend bought a sandstorm pearl off a vendor; they make a 20-30k item in pottery. I've gotten a few very nice things too for pennies on the dollar, and less. A few scores here and there, and some regular old minor scores of pelts and silks and that kind of thing, and you could well be able to finance going through fine plate armor. THEN...you can worry about shadowscream. Perhaps by then, too you won't be so low that it's actually hard to camp.

[Puskara]

Thanks!

Thanks for the advice! I appreciate everyones feedback. I have looked more closly at teh dwarven chain and it is really nice. i just need to get enough money to buy all those rubies. =)