Ok, I realize this zone is so old, that it used to be the way people PURCHASED spells, I mean got access to them in the first place, by finishing the questline. However... recently I've noticed a change in the drop rate and the quality of loot from Tombs of Night and it matters because: a. if you are training a transmuter, and you care at all about not being a ganking jerk, you will want to find instances to do so you're not in public contested zones grinding for loot to mute b. if you're looking for loot to either sell for money because you're new to eq2, or to equip yourself with, ditto, an instance is still good because you only share drops with your friends, not whoever is beating you to the names c. again, if you're new to eq2, or even mmo's in general, you won't be running around like gangbusters , you'll be going careful, so a contested zone will be no fun for you d. Sony, you gotta watch out for the old stuff, if you start making excuses for why something doesn't work anymore, you're making people unhappy K, so nuff said about why it matters.... what i've noticed in the past couple of years: 1. even as short a time as 4 months ago, the hellhounds were dropping hellhound puppy plushies, not anymore... I wasn't just "unlucky" this time... I always go after the hellhounds bc I want that plushie, it's diff from the one you get from Neriak, it has red glowing eyes. OK, it wasn't like every time you did the zone you got one, but I did the ENTIRE Bloodline Chronicles from start to finish, and didn't get one, that's so totally unlikely it's just gotta be a bug or an intentional removal. 2. the fairies in Crypt of Thaen NEVER drop fairy parts, ...what? are they like, anti-fairies? Even the skellys drop skelly parts, c'mon. 3. The whole time I got more drops from trash mobs than names. 50% small chest, 49% treasure chest, the other 1% was exactly TWO exquisite drops from the Obdurate Parasite and the last name down in the Pit on Level 3 of ToN... I was encouraged enough to spawn Shaya, but she didn't spawn, just a PH. Zero ornate, not even in Crypt, not even in the raid zone... the end mob in the raid zone gave me a Treasure Chest with a crafting book and a bandolier that had 3 negative (red) stats! 4. I could, at the end of the questline, buy everything that was rewarded except the ONE item I really wanted, the Potion of Marr. I realize the concept of draining power from toons is a new idea and a new strat for the game, and it wasn't such a big deal at the time, but now it is. And between my potion of clarity and my manastone, I'd like a third option for all my hard work in completing this questline: So my request to sony, please add Potion of Marr to the Quartermaster. Make it No trade if you want, or Heirloom. I just think it would be a nice reason for people to do that questline (it restores about 500 power, can be used every 43 sec, but it doesn't stack nicely, so you can't carry a bunch of it around). Except for interesting appearance armor loot, the entire thing was very disappointing. I undertook the questline mostly because I never had before and I needed something to occupy my mind while I collected items to transmute. I did go from about 160 to 280 transmuting, but it was mostly on spell books. I'm not sure I can recommend the questline right now... it's not really worth it to unlock that raid zone. I mean, it doesn't drop anything nice. The only exquisite I got was from Tombs of Night. How wierd is that? Along with CoE, there's been some kind of global revamping of loot. I've noticed it everywhere. Treasure chests are more likely than ornate everywhere. Except Kunark forward, that hasn't changed. But it's so extreme in this questline and zone, I just had to call attention to it. I spent almost 30 hours on it, started it a day ago, and stayed up half the night last night to finish it. It's been a marathon, so I maybe I left out some key points. Ask me questions if I'm not making sense, it's pretty late out here.
What I meant by "I've noticed it everywhere" is.. right after CoE came out, Obelisk of Lost Souls started giving no Ornate chests either, and that went on for maybe a couple of months, I don't go there every day. Now it drops the same way it did before, and I even caught the epic evil eyes up once, which was a treat. There seems to be a general updating of old zones. I guess I'm glad about that. I'm not impressed that ToN and Nek Castle's drops seem to have been nerfed so bad though. I used them a lot to transmute, and some nice stuff I found, I sold on the broker so people could alt up. I'm assuming it's a mistake for now. They wouldn't purposely have epics in any zone drop treasure chests consistently. Esp not in a zone you have to unlock. Well, off to the next instance...
