Superb Rockhopper Hides

[borblefoot furtoe]

I have hunted extensively in all three areas that Superb and flawless hides drop. From my experience here is How I rate the zones.

1. DSP Safest zone to hunt in. Lowest drop rate of Superb and flawless pelts. Biggest drawback is high level players will tend to kill the age old rockhopper and spawn the tribals.

2. Scarlet desert. Fairly safe to hunt in Drop rate of Superb and flawless slightly higher than DSP. This is offset by the limited number of spawns available and relative danger of pulling spawns. Biggest drawbacks are remoteness and shortage of spawns


3. Mons letalis. Most dangerous place to hunt in. THe boulders have a really big aggro raidius and don't hold root very well. Drop rate for superb and flawless is the best here. Drawbacks. Terrain is terrible often making impossible to see that boulder that just aggroed you. Traps and shiknar abound so if your KOS to shiknar your not gonna have an easy time here. Root does not hold quite as well on the hoppers either. The higher drop rate is more than offset by the danger and difficuluty in hunting there.

I usually hunt DSP if the hoppers are up if not its really a toss up on the other two. Lots of hoppers and lots of danger or nots so many hoppers and less danger.


Borblefoot Furtoe
61st season Druid
Firiona Vie Server

[Eumerin]

I should add that another reason I'm jaded on hopper hides is that my recent excursion to Mons Letalis netted me more damaged hopper hides than superb and flawless hopper hides.

Of the three zones, I'd actually prefer to hunt in Mons Letalis over Scarlet Desert. Scarlet Desert actually tends to feel more crowded to me, and nearly everything in zone (the only real exception is the bloodtribe) is KoS. Hoppers seem fairly infrequent when compared to the hordes of scarlet cheetahs and sunflowers that are all over the place.

Mons Letalis is a much more annoying zone, and you risk falling 100 feet off a sheer drop in far too many places, but the hoppers seem more plentiful, which makes it easier to hunt them - provided, of course, that you can keep the agros of stonegrabbers and spire spirits to a minimum. There's also the annoying fact that one of the trap spawns is shiknar hatchlings, and they WILL agro on you even if you're not KoS to shiknar.

[splunge]

The only way the sambata will spawn in the DSP caves is if someone kills the Age Old Rockhopper. Leave him alone and hoppers will continue to spawn.

As far as the shiknar go, yes a few kills will make you KoS, but if you are planning on/working on going to Vex Thal, you will become KoS to them anyways because one shard for the VT key drops off of high level shiknar in fungus grove.

[Rad]

Bazaar

I greatly appreciate all the info. Tradeskilling on Stromm can sometimes be radically different than the other more mature servers it seems. Certain things (like Ribbons) have very little resale value. Plus as the server levels up, you can see how demand and supply of various items change. Bazaar pricing drives a lot of decisions in my mind. If you pay attention, it can make tradeskilling a bit less painful. However, given I obviously have seen the "easy part" of a tradeskill (the first 170 points vs. the last 80), things might change.

(Edit to remove sig - please test your sig with the preview function, it's stretching the rows oddly. - Heartsong)

[zumavt]

One other route is to buy all you need in the bazaar and sell at break-even prices. I finally reached 188 last night after starting 7 months ago at 158. I made only tunics, cloaks, legs and sleeves, all WIS items I had in my own tradeskilling suit that I figured others would want as well. Once I had enough supplies for 12-20 combines, I'd do a run and transfer to my mule for a 2-3 week sales cycle while taking the plat from those sales to buy more supplies. A small profit from each sale offset combine failures. If I was willing to undercut all other sellers, I could sell out in one or two nights, but I didn't do this until close to 188 as I needed to sustain the cycle. I know most players might not want to wait this long, but I was working on a few other tradeskills at the time and couldn't dedicate all my plat just towards tailoring. You could even try this path until you can level enough to farm your own supplies.

Cuen Anastasio 54 HE Ranger on Zeb
188 tailor
200 fletcher
200 baker
200 brewer
199 potter
185 jeweler
182 smith

[Toppo]

I think I'm giving up on hopper hides. My average in 4hrs is 1 superb and 2 flawless. Yes, I get a few HQ and lower for other things, overall its a waste of time.

PS. this is in SD

[Pockets FullOfGold]

Recently, and I mean within the last 2 or 3 weeks, I'm finding it much harder to farm for Hides in DSP. I am unsure as to the reason why but there seem to be less Superbs and Flawless available. Plus there seem to be alot more people killing the Age Old Rockhopper for some reason.

Pockets FullOfGold

[Nonyo]

Rad could you please remove that very large sig? Or at least shrink it down some. It makes it mroe difficult to read the thread. Thanks.

[sir0die]

it's been awhile since i checked, but the combine that you are gathering the hopper hides in DSP, doesn't it need acrylia also? don't the tribals drop acrylia? so why bitch about the ancient hopper being killed, just farm some acrylia for awhile.
if ya end up heavy on the acrylia, sell it, then buy ya some hopper hide (if any for sale).

[Rad]

Sorry

The new boards screwed up my old posts. It was fine when I posted them initially. I will make the necessary changes.

[Pockets FullOfGold]

The reason I am "whining" is because I like to gather up the Hides first then collect the Acrylia. Yes I could go out and collect the Acrylia while the Rockhoppers are down, I just find it annoying that they are gone so often now.

Pockets FullOfGold

[Magrath]

Originally posted by sir0die

if ya end up heavy on the acrylia, sell it, then buy ya some hopper hide (if any for sale).

Heh, after trying to farm hides, I decided to try just this. I figured it would be more productive to farm acrylia, sell some, and buy hides. I failed to anticipate the consequences though.

Since blocks don't stack and trader space is at a premium, I turned all my acrylia into nice stackable bits, studs, and boning. It sold nicely, but now there seems to be an abundance of wealthy players with large amounts of boning auctioning to buy hides at high prices, and not a single hide on remains on the market. Oops.

[Eumerin]

We have a similar problem on my server, although I don't know why it started. You can buy plenty of acrylia on the market, but can't find a single hide for sale.

The acrylia market is getting low enough that one of my guildmates, who was farming in acrylia, apparently decided he should stop for a while and let the prices climb back up as I guess some others were starting to get annoyed with him for flooding the market.



Considering how heavily acrylia drops in AC, its a shame there isn't a place where the superb and flawless rockhopper hides drop as freely.