Items with extremely low drop rates

In EQ there seems to be a huge gap between "hard" and "tedious". When items have extremely low drop rates it just doesn't make the game fun. When you go days without seeing one drop the game turns more into a job then a game.

So I am curious what those items are for you guys. Excluding "expansion wide ultra rares" like CoTF and TDS have. Also realizing RNGesus is nicer to some people. What items have you guys farmed for days and seen none or very little?

Personally I've been trying to complete recipes to get my trades to 350 (when Selo get the aa). So mine are trade related and AP related.

Iridescent scales - Took me 4 days of clearing to get the 4 I needed.

Pyrilen flame - One in every 5 clears so far. RSS has a long respawn so very time consuming.

Gelidran ice - In all my clears I have never seen one. At this point I think its bugged.

Lightning cores - Never seen one. I know its used for an epic but the drop rate is abysmal.

Various elemental plane trade drops - It took me near 3 weeks to get enough drops to do the recipes with some items never to be found. I understand in-era these items are big upgrades but out of era maybe they could drop more for the sake of sanity.

Anything foraged - Unless you make a forage class you may as well not even try to get enough foraged items to do anything with. Binding forage on 2 chars in Thuliasaur I never got enough quest items after doing every quest in there. It took a guildie (ranger) to come in and forage for 30 minutes to get the items for me. LDoN I did with a druid and it still took days to get enough from one zone. This is not fun.

So how about you guys?

Getting 3x Coral Hilted Tulwars from Plane of Water was probably the most tedious thing I had to do...

Of course they’re now nerfed so not worth the effort anymore.

As a benefit though, the drops from the trash helped me amass an excellent inventory of tradeskill mats.

https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=50710
On a more reasonable level however, I've never seen a Sebilisian Berserker Cloak drop. Easily 10+ ODS and RBG each but never a single cloak.

The mythical 5 mini spawn in Anguish doesn't exist I'm convinced.

Grand Lorekeeper Kino Shai`din - Chardok Library

Not so much an item issue on this mob as it is a spawn %age issue.
100's of hours spent in Chardok Library ( even the past day with rare bonus's ) I have only seen 1 Grand Lorekeeper in that entire time. ( Cloak of Imperception )

On top of the low spawn %age you have people exploiting charm to kill him from ( Graveyard ). Which i really hope is address in a future patch.

We just got him in passing last night when we did royals. He dropped the crappy 30 second invis cloak with 10 charges. Bigly disappoint.

These items should be this rare IMO as they replace raid gear from classic and are a viable option for multiple classes.

That's cause each of the Seb rares drop off a specific mob type. SBC drops only off Kor which mostly spawn in areas people don't camp and there is only a few of them period. ODS drops of Dars/Boks and RBG drops of Krups and those mob types make up 90% of Disco/ABC.

Having recently done the combines for 350 Tradeskills in everything but research on Phinigel pre-EoK, your list here is good and highlights some of the worst ones. The OOW rare armor components (Pyrilen Flame, Gelidran Ice, Lightning Cores, Essence of Discord), the OOW rare and common augs, LDoN forages, PoP Tanning/Temper rare components, etc.

Of the things you didn't include, Taafeite/Harmonagate/Prestidigitase/Staurolite are awful. JC requires I think 128 of each of these? From the time they started dropping on Phinigel to TDS~, I banked every single one I got to drop with almost no competition from groupmates. Even doing that, I was still short about 50 Taafeite and 40 Harmonagate.

Cobalt Drake Hides / Ice Burrower Silks from Velious suck due to how rare those NPC types are. CS only has 4 cobalt drakes and you often see 0 hides from them.

Really for most of these things, the Overseer system is the perfect solution. You don't have to mess around with rare drops so that you don't imbalance the availability of these rare and sometimes quite good tradeskill pieces in era for future TLPs. Instead just update the Overseer tradeskill quests to have rewards for older expansions specifically OOW, PoR, LDoN, PoP, Luclin, Velious. This would help the 350 grind for future TLPers and help returning players on live catch up with their AP progression not to mention the 40k AAs they need to grind etc.

Iksar Blood: While not as rare as the other items on the list. It pretty rare for an item that only real use is to grinding smithing. The CT revamp going unlocking with PoP instead of Luclin kills the value of the craftables from there, and the Iksar culture armor in luclin suffers from the low chain AC. Prior to LoY it's a rare drop very limited spawns in OS and Dalnir. Dulak in LoY is the best place to farm, and even then it still sucks.

For older eq, probably Runed Blade from KC.
For later eq, I've never got a cotf chase item, and have probably done 100 plus ha.

I don't even want to know how long I've spent at Ruiner iSuka in Riftseekers trying for vest of the serpent. The bad part of that one is that it's behind an already rare named. Every time I had him pop he only dropped the aug. This is a big part of why I like a lot of the 80+ game.

Great additions to the list. I've been collecting these as well. And guildmates have been sending them when they see them. Also have a buyer set up. I rarely see them. Might have half of what I need.

The ice burrow silks are rare because the zone is so big, everything is spread around, and you gotta find PH's to kill. They are horrible to farm.

I do like the idea of adding trade mats and rares to overseer.

I support adding more tradeskill reward choices to overseer

Finally found a single gelidran ice. Guess they are not bugged. Can't count how many gelidran I've killed both in era and out.

+1 for more TS options in Overseer. It's still a work-in-progress, so there is a lot of hope we could successfully lobby for this.

Some expansions have a lot of tradeskill mats. Obviously classic. Velious has a bunch of skins/silks from many different mobs. Luclin has a bunch of tempers and ores etc. OoW has a TON of random stuff. I say this because IF we could go back expansions I wonder what they would add. Also if they would add rares (Maybe for crit success?) suchs as gelidran ice, lightning cores, iridescent scales etc.

While the overseer is a great idea and I am all for it, I also kinda think the drop rates should be tweaked so when its 2-3 expacs out of era they are easier to get. Hell maybe tweak in era since its unlikely many will show up. But I imagine they cannot do that without effecting current TLP in those era.

Also from what I read about cultural mats they become more common as they go out of era. So maybe it is possible.

I've seen this guy 12 times while camping king over a 3 day period before double rares. He normally drops junk but not as rare as some other spawns. Bad RNG can happen.

Same here with the SBC in all the years, until Rizlona. First time in Seb this server, SBC, ODS and RBG all in the first 2 hours, followed by he next day by croaking dirk and undead dragon sinew in first juggs camp. Absolutely nothing since then, though

Got him for the first time ever two weeks ago on Aradune, just on the way down to Royals. He dropped the cords.

Lightning Core seems to be an uncommon drop in Citadel of Anguish, as far as I could see during my recent epic globe runs, though you need 6 people to get the instance, and no mercenaries allowed since it's a raid instance.