Magician epic 1.0 is truly ridiculous

Discussion in 'Casters' started by Zadune, Jul 13, 2017.

  1. Zadune Journeyman

    I've done every 1.0 quest, for every class, at least once over the years...except this one, until recently. Found all of them to be challenging but fun...until now. All in all, 90% of this quest wasn't that bad. I'd put it about in line with the Necro 1.0 in difficulty, which is to say above average but doable. The Sol A Lava Elemental farm took a few hours, clearing Najena many times over was a pain, and PoSky was a tricky effort.

    Then we get to the final thing I need: Quillmane. Left this for last because I'd heard that it's the most difficult part of any 1.0. After spending two straight days on it, I'm nearly ready to give up (and this from somebody who almost never gives up on anything). Spent about ten hours a day for each of those two days painstakingly farming South Karana. Researched methods to spawn Quillmane beforehand, so I wasn't just randomly killing. I managed to find the PH mobs (with the short spawn times) and focus on killing them quickly and repeatedly while ignoring non-PH mobs...and then did this for hours upon hours. I occasionally lost track of PHs and had to go through the hassle of re-finding the cycle, but once I did I was taking out a PH every two minutes on average.

    I read that Quillmane has about a 5% chance to spawn from the right PH, and that you might see it multiple times in an hour while farming the correct PH. I must have terrible luck, because I only saw one Quillmane in the two days I spent doing this (and it had the common drop, not the epic drop). That was enough to show me that I was farming the right PH, so I kept at it for a few more hours, and...nothing. Eventually I just started clearing the whole zone rather than trying to utilize track to follow the spawn cycle, mainly out of spite over the whole thing, and that didn't work either.

    TL;DR WTB a cloak hand-in on The Rathe. Or if anyone can share their experience with getting this cloak, maybe I'll keep at it. Really does feel like I'm either doing something wrong (and wasting my time) or am simply the unluckiest person around.
  2. Xyroff-cazic. Director of Sarcasm

    I've farmed probably 9 or 10 cloaks. I highly recommend NOT just giving up on the system and going on a random slaughter. That would take ages. Be systematic and patient for an hour or 2 looking for the PH, and you will find it. As I'm sure you've already read, the PH is on a ~65 second timer. I usually start around Splitpaw and start clearing wanderers south of there. The most common types of PH in my experience are escaped Splitpaw gnoll, lion, lioness, mist wolf. Try to focus on those first. But others include shadow wolf, treant, an elephant, aviak avocet, aviak harrier, aviak darter, centaur sheltie, centaur archer, centaur courser. I've also heard a cyclops can be on the cycle, but I've never seen that. There is also some info floating around that "an elephant" is unique to the Quillmane cycle, but I've seen two of them up at the same time. That said it's still a top priority mob to kill/time if you see one.

    Another tip on finding the PH is to park a character on top of the entrance to Splitpaw. If you find a mob pathing precisely south to north that wanders over top of the entrance, it's likely to be the Quillmane PH. Not guaranteed, there's a few others that do the same. But if you wait in that spot for a while you will find the PH for sure. I usually find it faster by just killing random stuff and timing the respawn.

    There are other named in the zone that have the same type of spawn cycles as Quillmane. If you find a 65 second cycle and another named pops, leave it up, that's the wrong cycle. If you get a cycle going that you think might be Quillmane, it can be helpful to summon a familiar to "set" your tracking window. Then you know anything that pops newer than your familiar. This can be helpful if a PH spawns a bit out of range of your tracking, which can happen rarely even with a maxed ranger standing in the center of his spawn area.

    I don't have any characters on Rathe or I'd come help ya. Good luck.
    moogs likes this.
  3. fransisco Augur

    wow, just a few hours in solA? Man that pos took me 18 hours!
  4. Zadune Journeyman


    Thanks for the input. I was definitely farming the right PH for all of those hours. I think the main discouragement for me was knowing that other people were doing the same thing and seeing multiple Quills in an hour (and knowing that if it took another 20 hours to see him a second time, he again might not have the cloak).

    Cyclops is indeed on the cycle, but rare. I saw a few of them over the days. There was one instance where two An Elephants were up at the same time, with both on a 65 second timer. I eventually concluded that one of them was Quill's PH and one was Cracktusk's PH...though it might be an "either one can be either one" situation.

    I might give it another run later this week if I have time, but I really hope I'm not doing it wrong.
  5. fransisco Augur

    if AT ALL possible, bring a tracker.
    find/bribe/pay a ranger.
  6. Brohg Augur

    "back in the day", I made and leveled a ranger alt to 30 just to hunt this mob.
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  7. Ibadan Kun'Tirel Augur

    Welcome to the club. We got jackets. Hah.

    Back in the day that was a ginormous pain, and then of course getting to sky 7th island wasn't exactly a joy either.
  8. Zadune Journeyman


    Got a 62 ranger and 95 druid present just to make sure PHes don't escape.

    ...yes, I was having this much trouble even with that. Let's hope the third 10-hour shift yields something...