HQ Cat pelts vs Crystalline Silks

[Hobenroby]

Hail Good Tailors.

60th level druid here.

I am currently @ 75 in my tailoring skill and am looking to skill up. I spent some time in EK gathering HQ pelts for quivers but found that in the time it took me to get one stack of HQ cat pelts I could get over 5 stacks or more of Crystalline silks. (assuming I have the camp)

So my question is:
Would it be worth it to skip the quivers and go straight to crystalline silk armor?

Thanks for help.

[Vxart]

Stay in EK

The good thing about EK is that you can farm the silk you'll need for Wu's as well as the HQ pelts you need for quivers. The crag spiders have dropped up to 7 silks at a time and the carrion spiders drop up to 4.

If you need silk as well as pelts, I'd stick with EK. Especially if you're a druid and can forage Tea Leaves (for Qeynos Afternoon Tea) while farming.

[Chenier]

Or if one place bores you after a while, do both. As a tailor, you will go crazy no matter what you do. Change the scenary so that you have more interesting places to talk about when you see your therapist. =)

[Grygonos Thunderwulf]

I skipped pelts and went straight from cured silk to crystaline silk. I found farming CC spiders easy and you make a small amount of coin doing it. Enough to pay for threads at least, and you profit on combines.
Currently 118 since i started the crystaline silk.

[Hobenroby]

thanks for input folks.

I am thinking of jumping straight to Crystal silks even tho I am only at 75.

I prefer to do things in big batches.
ie.- hunt spiders in CC till I have 20 stacks of crystal silks, turn them to 10 stacks of Crystal swatches and then go to town with the combines.

Hopefully this will work for me since its so easy to get the silks..

EK was driving me nuts.. tho i will still go back for the pelts, spider solks and halfling parts. ( plus a giant or two )

Speaking of EK :
I have been using the PBoA tactic to kill as much as possible - as quickly as possible. ( snare anything remotely useful untill i have 10 or more and when they are close cast Upheaval )

Anyone have any other suggestions?
My lil' bear is a diligent helper but not necessarily the fastest way to kill things.

If only our pets could Loot things and carry bags!

[cattywumpus]

If you have luclin greyhopper hide armor is another option to take you up to 95. Greyhopper hides are not too uncommon and sell fairly cheap. The zone is well utilized so there is no shortage of pelts if players know someone in the zone will buy them.

[Eumerin]

Personally, I'd recommend the cat pelts over the Crystalline Spider Silk. There are a couple of reasons for doing this.
First is that the "five stacks of silk" comment isn't quite as nice as it looks. At the end there, one stack of silk only equals three and a third combines as you need six silks per combine (a while back I actually wrote a little piece arguing that for the last few crystalline pieces, you should sell the silk in the Bazaar instead and use it to buy the components for Wu's - I don't argue that anymore, but you'd still probably turn a profit...). In comparison, a stack of HQ cat pelts will always equal 20 combines. So save those silks until you absolutely MUST use them.
Second is that whole "if the spiders aren't camped" thing. The silk has value. When I farmed the silk, there were a number of times when there were already people here and they were still there a few hours later when I finished playing with the terrors. On those occasions when I did get the camp, I had to put up with people who told me that they "only need a few silks", and used that to justify tearing down the hall and taking every spawn they saw while I was prepping (I'm a paladin, so farming will never be my strong suite until the undead start dropping tradeskill items). The fun ones, of course, were the ones that would run by a minute or two later, followed shortly thereafter by Queen Drachnia.
So stick with the cat pelts as long as possible. Yes, it might be possible to harvest silks fairly quickly, but the silk harvesting is a long, painful, possibly conflict filled period as the silk only drops from one place, and is useful for some very nice things (your tailoring skill and a teleport potion).
And if you're a high level druid, you're in the wrong zone. Go hang out in Stonebrunt, not EK.
(payment for this last piece of advice is every last piece of bamboo that you get your hands on while in this zone - provided you're on my server, of course 8P )

[Pockets FullOfGold]

Actually, the Crystalline Silk drops in at least 2 locations... Crystal Caverns and Velketors Labyrinth. They may also drop in Dragon Necropolis but I've only been there once myself so I cannot confirm this.

I also would agree that doing the Quivers first is a better way to go before getting into Crystalline Armor. While you hunt the Cats in EK, you can also hunt the Spiders in EK for their Silk, which you will need for the Wu's. Plus if you have LoY, you can turn those LQ Pelts into MQ Pelts and those MQ Pelts into HQ Pelts at the NPC in Gukta which may lower your farming time.

Don't forget that you now have 16 slots in the bank to deposit items so you have alot more room to put all that silk you collect from EK.

Pockets FullOfGold

[Elii-Firiona-Vie]

Don't forget Thurgadin

Don't forget the spiders in the mines of Thurgadin drop lots of silk.

[Eumerin]

I don't believe you need LoY to visit Gukta, as its basically a revamped zone from the original game. You DO need LoY to play a Froglok or to visit the new zones (Gunthak and beyond).