The Spirit Realm

I don't raid much these days so I've begun swapping out my older raid gear for HoT group stuff. I was shocked by how expensive it is to make T4 gear straight off the bat (30k for the armor piece, a couple more 1000's for the bonding agent and container) so I've been trying to get one remnant from each tier for each slot so I can cheaply make a T1 and then upgrade it for just the cost of containers. That means 32 remnants for the whole set. The T1's are relatively easy to come by in HoT lower, where a good geared paladin should be able to molo names, but after that where is the best place to farm? I'm guessing Erudin for T2 given the amount of undead. SS has been good for T4 (crypt is a great camp). Where for T3?

Personally, this is my only criticism of HoT -- the way it is set up rewards plat buyers, people who sell TA's, and other unscrupulous folks -- they can get through the progression, farm only the T4 pieces, pay the high price to make the armor and they're done. They should have either made the price reasonable or don't put a price on it at all, require everyone to collect all 32 pieces.

Related question -- for those who want to legitimately earn the plat to pay for T4, what is the best legit plat farming these days? I haven't had the need to farm plat in ages (I farmed hill giants in mountains of rathe back in the level 50's). Gems from HoT are good but slow going and personally I hate looting very much vendor stuff when I'm in a group because it seems greedy and its hard to loot and tank (if you have a puller who keeps em coming). My guess is tradeskill stuff -- what are TS'ers needing/buying in bulk these days?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

To farm plat go to Illsalin.... Slaughter undead, loot, sell stuff back when you get to PoK.
Should net 5 to 10k for an hour, and if 85 or lower get decent AA.

Dream dust is used in a few good recipes. Mostly I just solo for a while and hoard diamonds. To be honest after completing shawl and making my raid armor I resorted to selling the fear prog mission that I would solo an d sell x5. A few runs doing that and my plat stock is good for now. I plan on eventually selling all the ores and other ts stuff I've been saving. I hope I never need plat again. Keep in mind that one blue diamond is the equivalent to 5-9 hill giants. I guess I'm one of those bad people that sells missions and I plan on doing it more bc one alt is 250k just for a set of t4 visible.

LOL @ Shiftie, I guess I shouldn't brand people "unscrupulous" just because they sell TA's. And I certainly don't mean to equate it morally/ethically with plat buying. Most in my guild usually offer up TA's whenever they're available to guildies for free and its pretty rare that they aren't gobbled up. Maybe I should rethink this and sell them once in awhile. BTW pretty impressive that you are soloing HoT progression missions as a paladin. How long does it take you to complete that mission?

About an hour and a half. It is rather quite simple, send me a tell in game and I'll take you and show you where to set up and what not. Up till cazic at which point you could pop a merc if you were so inclined. I did it once or twice pure solo for the sake of seeing how it would go, then I did the 3 brothers achieve and since then if I do it I pop a merc to speed it up. Selling taskadds is one of the small markets left in eq and that is b/c a lot of people will buy them for an alt instead of repeating the mission and since fear seems to be a roadblock for some players it sold fairly well. Really a few of the plat dupes flooded the market with plat a while back and there is nothing that really sells in the bazaar. It would have been better if the t1 hot visible/nonvisible were a little more rare. That could have worked to bolster some peoples pocketbooks but as it stands there is basically nothing left in eq to sell.

T4 has the top tradeskill drop rate for the good items. In particular, Fantastic Silks/Pelts/Marrow, and Shimmering Loam will fetch a pretty penny. However, most people you group with will probably know this too.

I am a tradeskiller from waaaaaay back, so I set up a /barter toon and bought Shimmering Loam relatvely cheaply and made the Extravagant Stormguard armor and Illustrious augs. The final result is very close to T4 visible. Right now I am in full cultural visible, with about half Elusive Eidolon (Dream Mote vendor) non-vis and the other half T4 dropped non vis. I am using a T4 dropped shield, and T2 dropped 1HB. My Shaman box is not geared nearly as well as me. Elusive Eidolon non-vis and visible stuff that is a couple expansions old, I have about 1500 AA, and the alt about 1200.

For some reason, the T3 nameds seem tougher than the T4 to me. I have no problem moloing (PAL/SHM, with healer and dps mercs) T1 and T2 stuff. And I can find a couple buddies to help in T4 (need more DPS). But the T3 names kick my butt more often than not. I see a lot of people camping the named Halfling (Jenni) and Goblin (Mooto) in Al'Kabor's Nightmare (Rivervale section) for T3 stuff though. Princess Klaknak is not too bad, but Queen Klaknak is much tougher. Good luck to you!

I did notice the frostcrypt mobs drop pp like giants in the old worlds do. Like a previous poster mentioned RoI is good for 80 to 87 range, I usually make 4 to 5 k worth of vendor loot per lesson burn in RoI at level 85. You do want to loot every mob you kill, it does slow down your xp rate, but if you short on pp you have to make some compromise.

They also activated every old accounts, so if you got friends that are not going to play again, you can let them know first and then strip their accounts of plat if they ok with it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

After some screwing around I came up with another solution and thought I would post it for the benefit of others struggling with plat - farming names in HoT. For some reason, people are willing to pay a lot of plat for the attunable items and t1 armors which are tradeable. I have no idea why players that have the required level don't just farm the stuff themselves, or better yet do the progression and get better than t1 drop stuff, but there is a market for it (maybe for alts?). The HoT zone is pretty easy to molo, especially the basement undead area and the yard (lots of ks'ing there though), just set up, kill for random vendor drops and kill the occasional name, loot the stuff and sell it in baz, rings and weapons are for sale in the 20k range, I unloaded a couple of rings quickly (a matter of minutes) for 12k each. The t1 armors are on sale for 20k+ (insane considering it only costs 32kish to make a T4 from scratch); pick the most popular class on your server or the cheapest player made template, make that t1 armor and sell it. The spell shards also sell for a pretty penny. The exp that you get moloing HoT is feeble but at least it is something to do while you are lfg.

Feerot supposedly is a good zone for this too but I haven't had much luck there and frankly I hate those wide open zones with hills.

With this approach I quickly gathered enough plat to make my T4 BP, I feel like a real tank again hehe.