Everquest - Phinigel server
- Thread starter krysanth
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Needless
Toe Sucker
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HGs are way more consistent on getting plat.. but seafuries is how i got my box of abu-kar lol
yerm
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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HGs are better plat even at 50 unless Rathe is full of mooches who don't kill phs, druids especially. Seafuries however are a lot easier and more consistent - there's safe spots, easy solo pulls, no ph clearing, less drama. Just need to not have it be too crowded. Easier of course meaning you're at least around 40...
Regime
LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...
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porkchop sandwiches
Potato del Grande
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I'd love to do seafury's instead of HG's but I can't for the life of me last more than 10 minutes in OOT without the zone crashing on me. Either when I pick over or randomly when I'm running to the island I'll get a EQ crash notification popup thing. Has this happened to anyone else? Never crash anywhere else in EQ. I've also tried deleting the zone files and having the patcher redownload them.
Crone
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Why are fire beetles all the rage? I think it's an exp quest, but what did I miss?
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Fire Beetle Eyes? Let me tell you all about them.
There are two quests that people are doing that use them. For the first one you turn in eyes to Xelha Nevagon in East Freeport. She's a Necromancer guild leader in the evil part of town. The rewards are exp and a little bit of cash and a level 1 spell. The other (and better) quest is in Grobb. You turn in eyes to Nanrum, one of the troll guards. That quest rewards a small gem and sometimes a Brass Earring. It's maybe 9% more experience than the EFP quest and if you show up with a level 1 character and do two full bags of fire beetle eyes it puts you decently into level 5. Given how boring the first few levels of the game are it's a pretty nice way of just skipping ahead. But it goes a little further -
When Ragefire opened up the first thing I did in the first minutes of the game was kill the Koalandi Fish in North Qeynos on a mule and turn it in on another mule. Each fish is between 7 gold and 1.1 platinum. Two full backpacks of fire beetle eyes, bought from the merchants that are filling up with the things, is maybe 8-9 plat. I "fished" up to 10 plat, ran my level 1 Dark Elf to Grobb, and turned them all in to get to level 5. Then what you can do is put all the gems and trash you got for the rewards back in the shared bank and sell them at a 50% profit (dark elf charisma is bad so using the same sell mule is actually a lot of cash) and go buy more eyes. Fire beetle eyes are (were) easily found on merchants in Qeynos, Freeport, Paineel, Tox Forest, Erudin, Erudin Palace, Rivervale, and Misty Thicket. I continued to churn eyes whenever I was bored leveling up and it was still worth doing into the 20s. With Ragefire I didn't know how parceling worked so I was using the shared bank and it was kind of a pain so I eventually stopped. When Phinny launched I knew how parceling worked and that made everything much, much easier.
The other thing I figured out was what to do with the Brass Earrings that you get from Nanrum in Grobb. They are identical to the Brass Earrings you get from the Orc Slavemasters in Crushbone and you can turn them in to slaves for quest items that you return to that slave's home city. Dwarf Female is a Targ Shield, Dwarf Male gets you a Dwarven Axe (!), High Elf Female gets you a Gossamer Robe (!), High Elf Male gets you a Silver Amber Ring (!), Wood Elf Female gets you Leather Legs, and Wood Elf Male gets you a Leather Tunic. You can do all these turn ins with the shared bank and mules. You can also turn in Brass Earrings to the Dwarven Smiths for a mold that sells for over two platinum. The quest exp on that turn in is fucking ridiculous also.
On Phinny the whole thing was one big money machine. "Fish" money turned into eyes that continued to roll themselves over into experience and money, Brass Earrings became items initially and then just more money later on, and when you're doing 50 stacks of eyes per turn in you're buying Krono on the first day. It all dried up though. With Bone Chips nerfed everyone was looking for any other big exp quest so once some people learned about fire beetle eyes all the merchants went dry. Most people were too dumb to leave behind 1 eye on the merchant which was really annoying. If you buy 100% of them that slot on the merchant is going to get taken up by whatever junk the next person sells it and any other eyes that get sold after are going to be destroyed. If you want to buy more eyes later you have to leave one "seed" eye behind. I'd try putting seed eyes on merchants that were in key locations and I'd come back later and someone had cleaned them all out again.
I had no idea it would turn into actual level 50s bot farming fire beetle eyes. The cash rewards areamazingat the onset of a TLP but entirely pointless soon after. The eyes only stack to 20 so it's not like you get to turn in monster stacks instantly like you got to do with bone chips. Even with double exp going on a character that is turning in 1000 eyes and then taking every Brass Earring to Crushbone the exp you're soon better served just grouping in Lavastorm or a dungeon somewhere. Another thing to note is that the quest experience on Phinny is not reduced, only the kill exp. If you turn in two backpacks of eyes on a level 1 character on Phinny and do the same with a level 1 character on Ragefire or LJ the exp rewards are exactly the same so I guess there is more incentive? It just does not seem worth it for the bot crews to get involved though.
There, now everyone knows how all of this works for the next TLP.
Vaclav
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Funny thing is my old school bat wings and snake skins thing I used to do back in the day (which sounds remarkably similar) would get poked fun at.... (And before I was posting anywhere and really didn't chat with anyone during my "Demetrious" days - even saw the one callback to it a few pages back...)
Interesting how times change where abusing easily repeatable quests is bad in 2000-2001, but kosher in 2015-16.
Interesting how times change where abusing easily repeatable quests is bad in 2000-2001, but kosher in 2015-16.
Vaclav
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
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Long-term both are great (especially Rogue, IMO) - but short-term rogue is pretty awful until Kunark.
Arbitrary
Tranny Chaser
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Alright, so I went ahead and farmed up 70 stacks of fire beetle eyes and then turned them in on my level 22 high elf wizard using a DE mark and then Origined to Felwithe to turn in the earrings. At level 22 the 70 stacks were 58% experience, the 24 earrings I got were another 19%, and the total cash earned was 116 platinum. It took an hour and a half to farm the eyes and I had my wizard bound at Grobb so I could go from Crushbone and back quickly. I tried to turn in some eyes at the Freeport lady but I couldn't get to Amiable but I don't think there is any way that quest suddenly becomes more exp at level 22 than it was at level 1 when I directly compared it with Grobb.
Sure, in the first hour of Phinny if I had completely refined the steps and no one else was buying eyes I could have really had an edge but when it comes down to bot farming eyes to level a character it doesn't seem very good to me. It would be a better use of my energy to group for an hour or two. Sure, it takes very little work with most of it being sending the eyes and turning the eyes in but I can't imagine trying to put a character into the 40s with this and using multiple Mage boxes to do it.