(N)EverQuest Scrolls

Intended mainly for those interested in doing the iksar quests for shamans and shadowknights. See here.

In general, faction can be raised by killing sarnaks, goblins, frogloks and iksar outcasts in Kunark – not all will give hits, so only frogloks in Sebilis do, and the Kly in Dalnir do not, for example. There are also several factions in Cabilis, not all of which are raised the same by killing, so the hand in quests are a must. Most kills raise Legion of Cabilis faction, which is required to reach most of the hand in mobs. The rough procedure required is to kill until you can do hand ins, then use the quests to raise other factions. However, necro faction can only be raised by killing iksar outcasts.

If you can, the fastest way to get Legion faction is to collect weapons in Veksar and hand them in the the NPC in Lake of Ill Omen until you reach dubious with the Legion. I haven’t done this, but I believe roughly 10 or more hand ins (40 weapons) will be required.

Otherwise, the first stage is to get an Overthere Hammer, as later stages will involve trashing Venril Sathir faction. So, go to the Overthere, and kill 80+ sarnak berzerkers to collect sarnak war braids to hand in to Captain Rottgrime. The best camp spot, if you don’t have a tracker, is the couple of buildings at the south of the zone, north of the Frontier Mountains zone line; a number of static spawns and wanderers. Berzerkers seem to be on the general sarnak spawn table.

As soon as you hit amiable, go to the undead foreman, just south of the ships, and hand him a jade (only one required, although he talks about “filling [his] eyesockets”. Bingo.

The next stage is to become non-KoS with Legion, and gain some necro faction while doing this. SKs need to be non-KoS with necros; necromancers interested in doing the skullcap quest need to reach amiable with Brood of Kotiz. 150 – 200 iksar kills will allegedly take you to glowers with necros. There are several camps of low level iksar outcasts that you can use for this: the caves in Warsliks Woods, before the zone to LOIO; several camps of three in huts in WW; and the camp of four NE of the explorer tower in LOIO. The cave in Field of Bone is on a very slow respawn timer, so I don’t recommend there. The caves in WW have 12 – 15 spawns on a 16 minute timer, but you need to pay full attention for 4-6 minutes to kill them all. The hut SE of the zone to the Overthere has the advantage that you can go afk in the middle, if you have a pet; overnight here should be enough for faction.

The next step is to collect explorer survival knives; 4 – 5 stacks will be required to reach non-KoS with other factions; another 4 – 5 stacks if you need to become warmly or better. The explorers are in Lake of Ill Omen, between the Warsliks Woods and Cabilis zones. For light relief while doing this, go to the caves in Warsliks and kill iksars for Brood of Kotiz (necro) faction; you can detour a little north to kill the iksar bandit lord for his Bracer of Scavenging.

By the time I had 2 stacks (and OT mallet), I had gone from scowls to glares as a Cazic troll, but I had 5 stacks before I reached glowers. Four stacks handed in maxxed my legion faction at warmly. At 5 stacks handed in, I was glowers to crusaders, merchants, and mystics, but still scowls to the necros. 2 more stacks (and a backpack of bone chips), to apprehensive, then one stack to indifferent, and one more to amiably. An Innoruuk troll (shaman) raised at roughly the same speed, but was still glowers with merchants and crusaders while amiable to mystics after 8 stacks of knives; clearly shamans like other shamans, and the other factions prefer Cazic over Inny. One of the crusaders in LOIO is on mystic faction, which should simplify checking.

An alternative to the explorer knives quests is to hand in bone chips in vast numbers to Trooper Mozo in Field of Bone until you are non-KoS to merchants, shamans, etc. This is slower than the explorer knives, but without the FV faction hits. You will possibly still be KoS to necros – if so, kill more iksar outcasts until merely glowers. Necro faction is required for shadowknights to deal with their librarian (glowers is sufficient); shamans can get by without. Bone chips can be obtained in the usual way, for instance while getting the drops you will need later from Kurn’s Tower, or from a high level necro with the flesh to bone AA.

There is another hand in quest involving iksar marauder MM nose rings – I haven’t tried that, so have no idea of the faction hits or speed of raising.

You can now proceed with the (SK/shaman) quest hand ins; if you are relying on potions to raise your faction high enough, you don’t need to collect so many knives/bone chips, but you will need a number of potions, as several zonings will be required mid quest. A level 59 shaman is needed to reach the trivial level of Essence of Iksar. See here for raising alchemy.