I remember reading the original thread weeks ago and rolled a toon just to try it. Unfortunately it got patched as soon as I hit 74.
I was discouraged, but I decided to work around it to see if I can still make use of the other quest. As I predicted, the other quests in the chain still give exp/gold.
Here's a list of quests:
Overlord Drakuru - NPC - World of Warcraft
Dark Horizon (or Reunited) are the two quests that have been patched to give no rewards. However, the rest still provide the gold/exp listed. For example right now I'm using It Rolls Downhill to farm exp/gold. I would believe that any in the chain afterward would work too, but I can't confirm myself, so I will only advertise that quest for now.
There are some downsides from doing this rather than Dark Horizon/Reunited:
- You actually have to quest
- It takes much longer to do, and you're subject to many ways of messing up (a shade finds you, your costume fails, ganking, etc.)
So why still do this?
- Repeatable, meaning at 80 you can go back and do all the other quests for gold.
- You're doing the same quest over again, no travel time, don't need to look up how to do quests
- If you can avoid the shades well and don't get unlucky with costume failing, you don't have to kill anything
Here is the theoretical fastest speed doing this quest (ignoring any mess ups, I timed each part several times to see on average how long it took):
- 30 secs, grab quest, go up to Drakuru, get his quest, come back down
- 175 secs(7*25) secs per crystal turn in (including MCing the pet)
- 30 secs going back up, turning in to Drakuru, drop quest, and come back down
Works out to 240 seconds (or 4 minutes).
Using 4 minutes at 20950 exp per turn in, you do 314250 exp/hour.
These figures come off as much slower than soloing, but remember, even if it's slower, it means you keep more quests to do at 80. Also you don't have to walk around as much or fight (saving durability).
Some tips to speed it up:
- Hotkey the mind control rod, the horn to call stefan, and the costume. It'll make it much easier.
- Hug the staircase to avoid most shades. Wait until a shade pats past you before you grab the geist. Also don't MC a geist close to a shade or it'll agro you.
- If you agro a shade somehow, run to the portal and use it, you will drop agro and still maintain your costume if not hit.
by alpha21