TBC has an easy (L61) quest reward that is about equally good: Imbued Chain (+12 Str, +11 Agi, +16 Sta)
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=25784&locale=enUS;source=live

So, don't bother with this anymore. I recommend spending your tickets on Greater Darkmoon Prize(s) instead.
http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=19296

I got the bulk of my tickets for this by farming rugged leather to make armor kits. For what it's worth here's what I'd recommend: first, if at all possible, farm mobs level 56 and above. Although no mobs consistently drop rugged instead of heavy leather, the percentage of rugged leather drops seems to be significantly lower from mobs 55 and below. Sure, you can combine 6 heavy leather to make 1 rugged leather, but that means your farming efficiency is being cut by about 85%!

Second, avoid farming mobs with junk drops like chimera leather, warbear leather, or thick scorpid scales on their drop tables. These items (like hides) drop in place of regular leather, and they drop frequently, so they also put a BIG dent in your farming efficiency (these items, which are only used to make a couple of items, were obviously included in order to cut down on the amount of regular leather entering the economy).

Third, the best place I found to farm rugged leather is the Ice Thistle yeti caves just east of Everlook. Don't bother with the regular yetis (mostly 53-55) outside the caves, go inside (where a high percentage of spawns are matriarchs and patriarchs L 56-58) and farm to your heart's content. I found with 3 hours of farming I could get about 160 rugged leather -buy another couple of stacks to make it a round 200, which is enough for 40 kits = 100 tickets.

Finally, I would recommend avoiding the temptation to farm plaguebats in EPL or scorpids in Silithid on the theory that you can get both leather and bat eyes / glowing scorpid blood. The drop rate of the eyes and blood is quite low, the scorpids often drop scales instead of leather, and the bats drop a high percentage of heavy instead of rugged leather. Also, the scorpids have a nasty poison that will result in significant downtime unless you have a lot of nature resistance.




Edited, Nov 30th 2006 4:37am by BlueKominto

Grinding for this is a breeze. The hardest part was .. waiting for the faire to come back. Camping outside Thunder Bluff ftw.

Best thing about this is it's raw stats instead of %crit/AP.

I used the strat posted here : http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=19491;page=1;howmany=50#114681371510994

Silly question: Does this have anything to do with the proffession ur character currently have or can u just buy the materials and turn it in for the tickets?

Most of the time when im grinding something for some certain armor piece or weapon it seems a very unfair amount of work. This wasnt nearly as bad as i first expected.

Started my warrior alt and grinded him to lvl 60 with 14d gametime. Bought Elementals deck too. :) Grinded 90 Scorpid Bloods and 10 Evil Bat Eyes and got bored of those mobs and their skills.

Changed profession to Skinning. Grinded it to 300 in about a day, little over i think. Then grinded the rest mats for the Darkmoon Tickets in less than a week.

Didnt spend a dime on the material for the quest. All grinded during the about 1,5 week perioid. Id say i got about 200g atleast as money drops and vendor trash. Loads of greens and one blue weapon. Also same time mining in the grind spot for Thorium which i got about little over 100 bars because of the competition on the veins. Also 5x Arcane Crystals and 2x Azerothian Diamonds. So all and all good deal.

If youre not in a raiding guild as i aint i recommend going for this if you want to max your stats before the big drops.

Oh i grinded at the yeti cave in Winterspring...little ways of Everlook. The cave spawns one small thorium vein and one rich thorium vein at the same time. So good proffs would be Skinning and Mining. If you get lucky theres some other one killing the mobs too that aint a skinner and the work goes even faster.

Good Luck!

Not actually that much better for a rogue than http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=17044

Sure, more crit and dodge, but Will of the Martyr= free.

For a shaman this would give:

+100 hp (+105 if you're a tauren)
+0.95% crit
+0.95% dodge
+38 armor
+20 attack power

You get less out of this necklace than most other classes, but it's still worth it imho.

I farmed this last year for my shaman, before patch: grind silithus for glowing scorpid blood. Takes ages. Now i grinded this for my rogue as well, but much faster!

Best strategy:
- get 130 vibrant plumes, this is 1/4 of the amulet. EASIEST to get! You can do 26 turnins at the darkmoon fair, after this your rep is to high (when getting tickets, start with handing in vibrant plumes, duh). Where: the cave with harpies in thousand needles (west of freewind post). Vibrant plumes drop fast, and with average gear this will take you about 2-4 hrs.

After this get the rugged armour kits / glowing scorpid blood / evil bat eyes.

- grind silithus for glowing scorpid blood, while skinning all mobs. Goes very fast. Very good idea is, if you have to grind 1/2 levels, do it here. This way you can grind while working on the darmoon amulet.

- do UBRS runs and try to be the only skinner. UBRS you need anyway for your gear / quest and each run will give you about 60 rugged leather.

Using this strategy I was suprised how easy it was and how fast it went!

Tip: create a mule, the stuff takes up a lot of space.


Edited, Fri May 5 03:23:04 2006

I was farming in Burning Steppes for a whole week for approximately 5hours per day, looting 'n skinning everything, then selling whole loot to vendor and buying additional rugged leather on AH /caused inflation of rugged leather prices btw :-)/, collected some random rare + epic drops for my alts as a bonus and finally yesterday I exchanged all those armor kits for tickets and bought this nice neck:-) Would I do it again? .... not sure:-) Was that worth of that? DEFINITELY!!! Plus I have now enough of cash to buy out dreamed Abyssal Leather Leggings of Striking from AH asap....

Edited, Mon Feb 13 05:57:39 2006

As of January 9th, 2006, this prize is once again epic with the same stats as listed in the image above!

My trick was to skin everything in Zul'Gurub then buy a little here and a little there off the Auction Houses. Winterspring (as well as the Burning Steeps) made an excellent farming ground for the last yard. (I'd like to thank two of my friends for the help in donating a few stacks of Rugged Leather, too)

Also, it might be wise to create an alt to "mule" the parts and/or crafted items while you gather. Fills up about a bank and two 14-slot bags.

Final note: Each turn in quest gives 100 faction. I quickly rose from Neutral to Friendy. At Friendly the profession-specific quests were all available to me. It might be wise to gather enough animal parts to reach Friendly then petition friends and guildmates for Thorium Widgets, Rugged Armor Kits, and Grinding Stones to get the 1200 tickets needed for this wonderful necklace. (My non-leatherworking friends were unable to do the Rugged Armor Kit quests while at Neutral. It has not changed.)

I am very happy with mine and am proud of the work it took to get it!

Edited, Mon Jan 9 13:26:41 2006

why is anyone argueing about "who should get this necklace" its a freakin quest who ever completes it should get the necklace plain and simple

So, assuming you're a 60 hunter.

The stats on this necklace would give you:

38 AC (If 2AC = 1 AGI)
29 ATK (If 2 ATK = 1 STR + 1 AGI)
105 HP (If 1 STA = 10.5 HP)
~3/4 of 1% chance to dodge (If 26.5 AGI = 1% chancew to dodge)

I currently wear Will of the Martyr (10 STA and 30 ATK), so really farming scorpid blood for a month would only yield 38ac and a slight chance to dodge, and take 1 Atk power.

Am I missing soemthing? Or is it time to sell off my stacks of scorpid blood? That is, if 38ac isn't worth it to me. I think the time involved, if you have little spare time is not worth the reward when there are easier to get. However, good luck if you want this, or are a class than can better benefit from it.

I suppose the mintue I sell my blood do they will add stats to it. Hehe.

(Note: source formulas taken from Thottbot)



Edited, Mon Nov 14 13:50:34 2005

would be good for a feral spec druid!

This is a good necklace for an Enhancement Shaman too. Its abount 1% crit, 100hp (well needed by Shaman)and adds dps with the 10 strength.

Also - there would never be any moaning from rogues or hunters for rolling on "their" necklaces. You would have earned this all by yourself without annoying anyone.

If you had Emberfury Talisman its perhaps not worth it, but remember for PvP Enh Shammy, spirit is all but useless. If you have the gold lying around then why not eh?

3 months... are u crazy... just buy the thorium 1080 thorium bars = 300g max, i bought all my thorium bars but it only took me 160g got good deals in bulk and guild took me 2 days to get

yes they fixed the stats. trying to get mine today since the fair is back. gonna be a sexy upgrade for my hunter.

I don't see how this item isn't worth the effort. This is a fantastic rogue neck piece..one of the better ones I've seen. And considering you only have to give up 200-300 gold (if that, for farming the materials for the tickets) to get this item I can't pass this oppurtunity up. I have seen less on AH for 500+. Even though I missed this month's faire I started my farming now for next month.

Edited, Wed Sep 21 19:02:42 2005

Back to epic rating on the test server. You can do the safe thing and wait, having to pay a little more for the turn in mats, or gamble and buy them at their cheaper, regular price now. Ya I'll wait too....

I'm not so sure it was worth the 2,400 Rugged Leather (about 240g) to get though. The test server version was what I thought I was getting. Ah well....