My first impressions of successfully making my first 3 AAAA's

[Grants]

Sorry for being a bit ingnorant. I have done everything but the Shadowmane Pelts at this time. I am interested in farming the pelts but I have no idea what to expect. I see that it drops only in one zone. Can you give me some details about the zone? Key requirements, instanced or not, which mob drops the mane, etc. Thanks in advance.

Dreadspire Keep requires a key to enter. 4 missions in DoDh. You will need a pretty solid group to be able to hunt there tho. As far as I know the pelt drops from all the Shadowmane mobs there. A good place is the Shadowy Student camp in the basement. He also drops the 25ac 25hp aug that most plate classes are drooling over. I wouldnt go there without a good puller + a bard or enchanter.

Other places for the shadowmane pelts is like Zolina said Stoneroot falls, and some instanced zones.

[tuis]

I have no problems farming Bolts.. Have 40x bolts in bank waiting on me to do the combines for AAAAs. Just dreading the ore combines.

The way i farm em is to AE the whole CC :P. Its not many that can pull it off but with a cleric its very easy. Usually clear all good bots in 2 pulls.. and pull the reapers in a third pull (when I can get that camp).
Usually get 3-5 bolts per 1.5/2 hours

Farm the Shadowmane pelts in DSK. Usually get 2-5 per night. + 1-2 last blood steel/fine silk.

Wouldn't suggest ruin your faction in CC before you finished DSK key / demi key (if you are a high-end raider).

I like to take my monk in there and rampage the place. Starting from the Rogue dude west of Treddlehoop I pick up all of those, grab the reapers and corathus there, then the stray good bots north of them, and while I'm in a killing mood I grab the thralls and shrooms and head back towards the camp with the bank grabbing what I can short of aggroing any named, then bring them all back to the reaper area and commence the beatdown. While I wait for rampage to refresh I stick to killing the reapers. Keeps the faction balanced in my favor should I get caught in some PvP action.

Its funny but right now my bottleneck is Clockwork Gnome Shafts of all things.

[Looniper]

I haven't even finished collecting parts in Corathus yet, because I have no real hope of ever USING the AAAA, since the stone only drops from 2 places and both are RAID encounters.

I really don't expect that to ever change, after all, raiders are the only ones who matter to SoE for some reason, but it would be nice to see something as involved and useful as the AAAA for the rest of us.