Is PoP flagging truly an intended bottleneck to the Artisan Aug?

what frustrating about the whole thing is ALL of the mats that us TS junkies had long ago and did away with in order to make room for the current mats needed. AND tossing old items that are now suddenly new again....cough cough Earring Of The Solstice.....

FU Pyrilen Flame!

I was not aware that you could request the task with Fishing at 200.

I guess Geri was right in the first place

I am not sure how the final combine works but the lore on the container mentions an average taken from the 7 major TSs to determine success or fail. It also would not let me combine without a TS mod active (trophy), guess you could use a gearlock item though

Did I miss the part where the tradeskill police were holding a gun to your head forcing you to camp PoP progression in order to get the augment?

As for people holding down pointless PoP bosses... they were up the majority of the time on Bristle before the quest was live... AKA people weren't c*blocking them for no reason. It's not the same as camping Emperor for a horse or VT for one of the many clickies. If you think that you'll never find those mobs up then that's naive. It's also naive to think you'll find them sitting around the first month or so of the quest release.

For one of the most vocal people on these forums about 'I take my time and am not in a rush because I'll just run out of things to do' you certainly 180'd for this quest it seems.

There's no Fisherman Trophy to hold while making the final combine

FYI
http://www.eqtraders.com/articles/article_page.php?article=q57&menustr=120055000000
seems like a good guide on what flags are needed for each step

Iridescent scales. took me 2-3 clears of txevu+qvic per scale. need 5. 45 mins per clear = 8 hours
Pyrilien flame. takes me 3 clears in RSS to get 1. and you need 4. so 90 mins per x 4 = 6 hours.
Wilted caladium and Stale Larkspur. 7 clears in undershore 3-4 hours
Forest Kangon Head - takes about 6 clears of shards landing kangons for me - 3ish hours
Murkglider blood. takes me 3 clears of nobles causeway for 1. that's about 90 minutes.
Cazicite - get 1 per clearing of cazic thule and you need 2. so an hour there

off hand that's what I can remember as far as difficult drops

Yes that is max skill and will get you the quest.

Would be interesting to hear from the designer whether a fishing mod item would count as the NPC was quite happy to give me the task with no 7/7 trophies in my possession. Unfortunately I have since bottled out and levelled a couple in preparation for the final combine.

Probably won't even be bothering with all of this until a year or two later when the buzz dies down. There really is zero interest in going to old zones and waiting on 3-4 day spawn timers.

Rare drops off trash for the combines is all fine and well. Great.

Requiring boss kills that any schmuck can waltz in and destroy with a long lockout is absurd.

Everything is working as intended

I have PoP progression done and had it done since it was modern. That's not the point. The point is that in order to acquire the best augment in the game, you have to potentially camp multiple raid mobs/events that could potentially be locked down by a single person if they chose to do so. I love going to old school raids and killing mobs and there were many times where lots of the PoP bosses weren't up randomly.

Do you expect a person who has worked their tail off completing everything else for their character but wasn't around for PoP to miss out on an aug because some @$$hole is permacamping so-and-so? Of all my years on BB, I've seen the Fennin Ro event up maybe a handful of times when I went there to kill it just to kill it. (I was on BB a heck of a lot longer than you btw). Same thing goes for Coirnav. I farm the bow mats there all the time and I rarely see that event up. RZ is another popular one to kill. Sol Ro was always popular.

And who's to say some immature tool isn't going to kill PoP purposely in spite so others can't get it? In all honesty, I've played enough games for enough years to know that some people will do that.

And stop throwing that I take my time garbage down my throat. If I were in such a rush, the thing would be done by now as I would've worked from home or taken a few days off. Yes, I take my time but I'd rather spend my time in game accomplishing something worthwhile. I'm sure many will agree that camping out in old school zones accomplishing nothing for hours on end is not the most fun or fulfilling time in the world. I've got books to read, sports to play, friends to chill with. I don't have time on such trivial nonsense as sitting down camping a raid mob that's 12 years old. (Luckily I have it done, but I'll defend those who don't).

All I have to say is, "WOOOOOOSAH!"

Relax people. Not like you have anything else to do except watch literally every raid loot go to Alts unless you get a new undergeared app.

As far as PoP goes. I have zero sympathy for people today. I did it when it was modern. I did it when we raced other guilds to fire and water. The biggest thing people can do nowadays is not only ask in guild chat if people need the PoP progression, but also offer it in general chat. After a few mobs and people in general getting their flagging that way, I guarantee people will mostly pay back that ten fold.

Gotta work together folks

Starting from 0 pop progression to completion for Aid Grimel when it was known (before aug shown tho), it only took like 3 or 4 days of trying to get through it all (did luck out on a patch).

You have like 4 months until Expansion with probably nothing to do unless you grinding on Quarm (which you will beat in a month and still have 3 months after that with nothing to do).

You can also afk wait for it while you do other stuff as long as you can check back every so often, the Projections last for at least like 15 minutes.

I think it's just a script or something, probably to troll/freak you out with the fails with just a requirement of the maxed TS + trophy like item. Kind of like what was done for the Alaran skill ups in Shards Landing quest.

As a general rule, I think having raid-level respawn timers on ancient raids (that 97%+ of the population can solo) is a terrible idea, all 10+ year old content should have a max of a 2-6 hour respawn timer.

If we wanted everything instantly, we could just play smart phone games with in-app purchases and blow a few hundred bucks a month. My old main (Smoke) is flagged, my current main isn't... it'll get done on both, eventually. I don't need it instantly.

What the Veterans Loung really needs is a long multi page thread about how HARD .. an easy quest is ! !

Seriously yall need to check yourselves.. this augs a literal Gimme if you put as much time into as you do your alts .. seriously ..

Or .. is that the issue you all hate that its not so easily obtained on alts ? either way shut up ..

DBG thank you for putting something worth the time / effort into actually getting aug wise I for 1 applaud your guys TS aug .. and everything bout it. Keep up the good work !

-Whulf.

My vote is the PoP bottle neck is really bad, I already don't get a ton of play time. I don't care when the next expansion is, or about people in raid guilds are bored. For the average person, maybe not in a large guild, trying to compete for multiple soloable 3.5 day respawns, is just stupid. Luckily, as you guys pointed out, there is other games people can choose to play, instead of EQ. And then when enough people have gone that route, they will simply shut down EQ and everyone can go play another game.

edit- for Koryu: On cazic- thule I've never once seen a public announcement of any PoP mob being killed. Are the people who compete to be first in raid progression sharing the timers with in their own guild? sure, just like as the previous 17years of EQ. But this idea, that a bunch of random players are all going to start helping each other out, because this quest has changed the nature of how people will operate in societies, is absurd. People will continue to operate the way they have for the previous 17years, trying to be 1st and get ahead of the competition.