Mission Accomplished! 20 Years Later

For some reason I can’t do screenshots from one of my computers for Project 1999, but I can for another. And this whole story was sadly not captured because I was on the wrong computer when it happened.

But it is a story, and one I am very, very excited about!

I finished the quest for the Journeyman Boots for my Enchanter. This is something I was never able to accomplish on EQ Live. It still feels like a big deal.

Journeyman Boots give you a free speed buff that increases your run speed by 35%. It is essentially a free, low level Spirt of the Wolf cast. And considering SOW is one of those buffs you never want to be without (as is Clarity for casters, and Haste for melee classes) – but it is the one that ALL classes love to have.

Florimel is now level 44 and while that is on the early side for getting Journeyman Boots, I needed a break from the camp I was doing and decided to go explore the Ocean of Tears and see where / how the quest actually works.

In general, it goes like this.

First you have to kill an Ancient Cyclops. There is a single spawn point in the Ocean of Tears, that has a 1 in 86 chance of spawning the AC on a six minute timer. There is also a very, very rare chance one will spawn in the Karanas and the chance to spawn a lower level version of one in Southern Ro. The Southern Ro one can only spawn at night and there are several placeholders.

Secondly, you have to farm a Shadowed Rapier. These drop off of Shadowed Men (who can be found in many zones). Shadowed Men are invisible mobs but you can see them by the weapons they are holding. The Shadowed Rapier is a very rare drop as well and the downside is is that it is a TEMPORARY weapon. Meaning that if you log out it goes poof. That creates it’s own challenge.

Finally you take those two items, travel to the Rathe Mountains and look for a very fast Gnome named Hasten. Hasten shares a single spawn point with a mob too challenging to kill without a big group (it’s for the Monk Epic) and is on a 4 hour despawn period meaning of the big guy spawns you just leave it be for 4 hours. If not, you can try to get Hasten to spawn every 6 minutes.

Once he does, you need a friend to “distract” him or you can’t catch him. While distracted you give him the Ancient Ring from the Ancient Cyclops, the Shadowed Rapier, and 3250 gold – no more, no less and non-converted (ie: can’t give 33 platinum).

Complete all of that and you get your Jboots. An item you will likely use the rest of your Project 1999 days, unless you are a Shaman or Druid.

The barrier to a lot of this is the fact that on a non-instanced server there are a lot of things that have to go your way. First off, the Ancient Cyclops camp. There is a lineup there generally that people respect. So when you enter the zone if you are looking for that mob you ask, and get put on the list. If you are the top of the list you get to stay there until the AC drops or you quit. I say this because I have spoken to many people who were stuck there hours – one up to 10 hours, even, before he came.

The Shadowed Rapier is a bit better in the way that there are several Shadowed Men camps spread out around Norrath. Still, many people have shared that the Rapier took longer than the AC.

Lastly is the Hasten spawn which is far less of a problem unless the aforementioned monk Epic mob was up, which takes a 4 hour wait.

Imagine a WoW player having to jump thorough those kinds of hoops to get an item. I can see some of you shaking your heads right now. Still, this gives the item meaning. It’s an accomplishment not everyone goes through or get. I was unable to get it done with my time on Live EQ, which actually made it even that much more important to me in Project 1999.

Of course in Project 1999 everything is sellable / buyable and even though its a no trade item the MQ turn in piece is for sale. For 5000+ platinum. Meaning players have found a clever way around the LORE and NO TRADE parts of the quest.

You can only have one Ancient Ring on you at a time. But you can have as many corpses as you want holding one. During my adventure I met someone who had 3 corpses saved to sell the turn in portion, who was saving up for a Fungi Tunic (which sells for 55,000 plat….).

My story was much easier. I woke up at my normal time (4:45AM) and figured the server would be pretty quiet, so went to check on the spawn. There were two people there. I then logged off, but came back at 7:30 AM. There was one person there, and I was “next” on the list.

The next mob was the AC. He killed it, got his ring, and congratulated me on getting the spawn point. He then ported (druid) to East Commonlands to “corpse” himself to hold multiple copies of the ring, and asked to be on the list after me. I said sure. The next spawn (6 minutes later) was a regular cyclops. I could barely kill it with a hasted and Boon of the Garou’d pet. I had 6 minutes to sort that out – I knew there was a second cyclops on the island and decided to try charm killing with it.

6 minutes later, the Ancient Cyclops spawned. The druid actually came back and helped me kill it. He didn’t have to – but I might have failed and he was just being nice.

I went and farmed a Shadowed Rapier – it took me 20 ,minutes. I was at one spawn and a Magician was at another, close by spawn. He had three drop in two pulls and he messaged me so I could get one. It was LORE, so he couldn’t hold two. I rushed there, but was too late, it had decayed. I took his camp and on the second spawn another one did. That was 4 in 18 minutes, which is ridiculous luck.

I had to log for a couple of hours but “corpsed” myself so the rapier wouldn’t go “poof” when I logged. I learned that trick from the Druid as well. So I came back, gathered all the items, and went to spawn Hasten. The Druid was already killing the spawn, every 6 minutes, hoping he would show up. He did after 12 minutes (2 spawns). I did the turn in while he kept Hasten hailed, and boom, Journeyman Boots for Florimel.

In a combined farm (non travel) time of around 48 minutes. Which is rediculous luck.

But a hell of a story.