The Darkwoods - Spiderkin drop rate

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Ek02

Dalayan Beginner
I have tried farming this area for shadowkin silk for a while now. I havent seen one yet. Im wondering if the drop rates on this silk can be increased considering the factors below...

I propose a comparison between two dropped tradeskill items at the same tier...

Ice Kobald Furs

Sorcs Lab--
-Kobalds spawn in specific locations
-Zone is EASY to pull singles, no wanderers if I recall, or if their are.... there are very few.
-Zone line is VERY easy to reach from where the kobalds are
-Some kobalds are shamans?

The Darkwoods--
-Some mobs are invis... even though they arent invis
-Even with see invis on... I get attacked by warped spiders I cannot see... who move SO FAST.
-Wanderers are ALL KOS and support other mobs
-Random generator can put scorpikin and other mobs that DONT drop silks.
-There are a bunch of light blue mobs that need to be killed to have the possibility of a spiderkin spawn in their place?
-Scorpikin Savages flurry? or some sort of special NPC attack
-All the mobs here are a melee class?

After having dealt with The Darkwoods and having so much more spidersilk than exquisite silk... and absolutely no shadow silk. I ask you for your input and commentary on this situation...

Considering the difficulty of The Darkwoods and time required to farm Shadowsilk in the darkwoods I propose the following possibilities for change?

1.) Make it so that spiderkin drop absolutely no Spider Silk and increase the drop rate on exquisite silk. Its stupid killing a level 50 mob and getting quest items and spidersilk... Considering that the heartlands spiders can be DESTROYED at 65 and drop plenty of Exquis silk.
2.) Fix the darkwoods so that inviso mobs stop attacking me and fix targeting in the zone.
3.) Increase the drop rate on shadowkin silk substantially to make up for the randomness of even having a spiderkin spawn.
4.) Put Scorpikin on the other side, the east commonlands side, of the bridge?

Basically my point is that the risk vs reward seems a bit skewed here... considering how difficult this zone is with all the roamers who assist all other roamers, invis who arent invis... roaming mobs, and the targeting issues.

Thank you.
 
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Darkwoods is a pain, there's no doubt about that. Like most tradeskill items, its harder to farm in some areas than others. For example, stormwolf furs are a pain compared to ice kobold furs. You can, however, easily farm the components for shadowsilk in lasanth with a fairly decent drop rate for a 50 pp each drop.
 
Ek02 said:
The Darkwoods--
-Some mobs are invis... even though they arent invis
-Even with see invis on... I get attacked by warped spiders I cannot see... who move SO FAST.
-Wanderers are ALL KOS and support other mobs
-Random generator can put scorpikin and other mobs that DONT drop silks.
-There are a bunch of light blue mobs that need to be killed to have the possibility of a spiderkin spawn in their place?
-Scorpikin Savages flurry? or some sort of special NPC attack
-All the mobs here are a melee class?
Click to expand...

1 - There are Scorpikin Cloakers that invis the mobs there.
2 - See invis allows you to see all the mobs. If you got attacked by a spider you couldn't see, then your see invis had worn off.
3 - There are tons of safe spots to pull in Darkwoods. It has a decent ZEM for an outdoor zone because it's not "easy"
4 - Scorpions by nature don't make silk. As with any other zone you might have to farm components in, sometimes you need to kill PH's.
5 - Light blue mobs as PH's are still better than greenie PH's...
6 - Scorpikin Savages are the toughest mob in the zone (barring nameds of course)
7 - All mobs are melee but some have interesting procs (snare poison, silence poison...)

As mentioned in another post, this isn't the only place to get TS ingredients for Shadow Silk.

I do think though that the spiders in Darkwoods should not drop normal silk and only drop the Exquisite Silk. Exquisite should probably also drop from the EPL and WPL spiders as well for the level of the mobs. It doesn't currently, but should.

I think that splitting the levels of mobs makes sense though. Before the bridge should be the lower tier mobs (warped spider, warped scorpion, darkwoods spider) and then north of the bridge should be the Scorpikin and Spiderkin (and maybe darkwoods scorpions on both sides of the river). It would probably make the area more likely to be used as an exp zone. As it is now the mob distribution is sort of wonky on the north side. Too many lower level spiders and scorpions.
 
I have spent a lot of time in Darkwoods bow kiting and see many Spiderkin Silk drop. In an afternoon of grinding out 2 AAs or so in Darkwoods I have seen up to 5 or 6 drop, but I usually get 2 or 3.

Also, the Spiderkin can drop up to 3 or 4 regular 'Spider Silk' and it can be very easy to miss 'Spiderkin Silk' on the corpse with all the regular silk mixed in, it looks very similar.
 
Zone difficulty/drop suggestions aside, comparing Ice Kobold Furs to Spiderkin silks is a flawed comparison; they're for completely different things and there's no reason the difficulty and availability should be similar. Augs SHOULD be a lot more common than armor. Compare the difficulty between high-end blacksmithed augs (which require 2 bricks of common ore from one of 2 zones, one of which a non-kos zone) with Deepmetal armor (which requires 3-15 bricks of rare ore only found in First Ruins).

People have made most of the other points I would have had, except to extend the see invis comment to say that it also "fix[es] targeting in the zone".
 
Gotcha...

The only issue I believe is that Deepmetal is properly priced for how difficult it is to obtain and considering its marginal benefit to a tank. Deepmetal almost seems like a necessity for a tank to get into a guild and move up in tiers. Shadowsilk, though it is great armor, there are plenty of alternatives to shadowsilk that casters can find at that tier. Considering the marginal benefit that armor gives casters compared to tanks... it seems as though that if you were thinking of how to spend your time most efficiently in SoD... you should only purchase SS if you have an absolutely crappy item in that slot at your tier... or if you plan to twink a caster.

Anyways... the point you make is clear. I have nothing more to say about the TS ingredient drop rate. However... the darkwoods still sucks? =\

The Darkwoods seems like a zone that had high hopes and expectations but someone didnt follow through. The mobs are interesting... the zone has some interesting ideas implemented. Realistically though... why would anyone ever xp, farm, and most importantly... find a group for the darkwoods? The mobs are OP, the zone has issues, their are better places to go, and the risk vs reward ratio is MEH.

I would like to see any of the following for the darkwoods?

-Mobs toned down
-A named Scorpikin mob
-An event involving the bridge and two sides.
-Stop tynil the twisted from dropping normal spidersilks and boost exquis a little?
-Some sort of faction building quest for a neck gate to red sun peaks?

Anything to make it more worthwhile to individuals to actually create an incentive to group that area? It seems like a zone with great potential, that is currently disappointing.
 
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Personally I love to xp in the zone, but I do get discouraged with all the tons of light blue mobs all over the north side of the zone. Makes things inconsistent and discourages other people in the group from wanting to stay and xp there.

Overall I dig the zone though. It's cool and spooky and I don't think the mobs are overpowered there so much as spawns are poorly intermingled.

There is a "named" scorpikin btw... sort of... :)
 
Ek02 said:
Gotcha...
. Realistically though... why would anyone ever xp, farm, and most importantly... find a group for the darkwoods? The mobs are OP, the zone has issues, their are better places to go, and the risk vs reward ratio is MEH.
Click to expand...

In between time i used to lfg, I would clear out the north section simply due to the ease of access to MoP to goto the group when i found one. (people risking tmaps there were often very happy to see me)

alas -25% exp mod forced my lazy butt over to the plaguelands. (since orcs were always dead. Thanks Eustace! :p)

I do agree that the loot from the mobs was crap (most of the junk wasnt even worth looting to sell). Only the silks made it worthwhile, and they were pretty rare. Perhaps to encourage more folks to hunt there the mobs loot tables could be adjusted to at least sell better vendorable junk if not actual useful items.
 
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Darkwoods mobs have always been op, and give fairly crappy rewards in both xp and $. The only notable use of darkwoods for xp is tearerfish charming for funsies. For silk====> Lasanth.

Most of the people you will see in darkwoods, either have the misfortune of having a map there, are on their way to somewhere else, or are level 57.

That being said, there are a few ways you can drastically increase your survivability in darkwoods.
1. Tboots
2. Root, or root clicky.
3. slow robe also from there.

Process: Start on the east wall, venture out in short bursts, keep aware, pull with slow, have sow, drag it back towards the wall, when it's right on the edge root, blast, repeat.

There, you have now mastered darkwoods, with a caster at least.
 
Would be sweet if it had a bump in the ZEM, could be a nice alternative to just grinding out in Lasanth or something like that. I dont think it would even need an increase in loot, just a significant enough boost to the xp to be had, since it is a pretty hard zone but I think pretty fun in the mid-upper 50s.
 
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