Heavy Clay  

 

This stuff drops pretty often, actually, if you can kill all the muddies in the zone fast enough. When a muddite has it, Heavy Clay is ALWAYS deposited as the LAST item in the muddites' inventory. Thus, when the loot on the mob starts to decay, the Heavy Clay is the first item lost. (Yes, loot decays on mobs while they are still walking around, starting with the last piece of loot in inventory.) The first time you wade through the zone killing every muddy in sight, you probably won't get much of anything for Heavy Clay drops. But if you kill them as quickly after they re-pop as possible, you'll start to get the drop pretty often. What I do is stand my Necro or Mage at the intersection deep in the zone, and let my pet whack them as they pass by. You'll also want to kill all the minotaurs that wander by, as they are a PH for Muddite Elders, and the Elders seem to have the drop a bit more often than the minors.

(BTW, the "loot decay timers" are in operation on mobs in most zones, so if you're hunting for loot, its always a good policy to jump on the fresh pops as soon as you can.) In RM for instance, its the platinum on the HG's that starts decaying immediately after the HG pops. In Everfrost, the Mammoth tusks start to decay on the mammoths, etc.

Before you flame, I learned about the loot decay timers in Everfrost a couple of years ago. My mage hunted there for XP and loot, and he could kill a mammoth in less than a minute. He got lots of double tusks fairly consistently. I then took my bard there to level, and it took my bard several minutes (up to 15) to kill a mammoth by kiting it. He never got _any_ tusks to drop at that level (~29th?). So I made a big fuss to Verant about how unfair it was to keep the loot decay timers running after the mob had been aggro'd. They were basically penalizing players who really had to work a lot harder to kill the mobs. Apparently Verant (it was pre-Sony days)thought I made a good case, because a couple of weeks later the loot decay timers in Everfrost shut down the moment the mammoth was aggro'd. I don't think they fixed this in every zone, unfortunately. As a rule of thumb, clear out the old trash, kill fresh pops, kill them fast, and get more loot.

I was there for about 2 hours last night. I only got 6 pieces of heavy clay and each piece fell from a Minor. Maybe it's just my bad luck, maybe they changed it. Either way, these guys are so easy that I would just kill them all anyways.

Drops from the muddites, both elders and minor

Edited, Thu May 22 08:48:14 2003