These rats make nice pets along with the pestilent ones... Charm breaks for me at level 52 once in a while but after a few casts it sticks for a few mins.
I"ve seen them drop: Diseased rat fangs (60+pp to vendors) Pus filled rat pelt (30+pp to vendors) Rock Fern (common drop) Infected Rat liver (30+pp to vendors)
They are fearable (for necro's/SK's/Enchanters) so not too difficult to kill if you have a place where the pathing is fine. No, I'm not telling ya where. :P Also solo'able to necro's from 53 up. They have an evil regen though, so dot well.
Baroness Lyrael Ardeqath 58th Defiler of Rodcet Nife
They're soloable earlier than 50 if you've got a death-wish or something to prove to yourself. I just took care of one at 46 (not twinked or re-rolled) - I just don't recommend it (even if it was worth about a full blue). Took my entire mana bar, had to sit down and mem new DoTs half-way through (had six stacked on it), and adds would be deadly. Don't attempt it at all without at least j-boots or SoW potions.
Assuming you are a necro, the trick is to stick it with a root/snare someplace to buy you time to get it debuffed so that your DoTs stick with minimal resists. As a prerequisite, make sure you have your extended affliction, affliction haste, and affliction efficiency items, as well as spell haste and extended range. Make sure you're fully buffed (diamond skin, arch shielding, spirit armor) and pet is augmented.
Snared (resisted), rooted, snared, debuffed with scent of darkness, followed by boil blood. Then I had to sit down, forget scent and boil blood (since they both last the whole fight), and mem scourge (yah, disease based in disease - but it sticks sometimes w/ the debuff) and asystole. Movde away a distance and started casting those dots - venom of snake, asystole, and scourge. At some point the root broke so I sent in pet and feared it (which may take more than one attempt) before landing all three of the dots. Then I stuck a vampyric curse on it to counter my mana conversion. As fears dropped I refeared it, and also stuck it with an ignite bones and lifetap for good measure, at which point it was low enough health that it was running away and pet killed it.
Anyways, *smile* pardon my post - lol - just did it and still fairly psyched.
Mizzery, Necromancer of the 46th Circle Ilharess of the Sisters of Myth Firiona Vie
Same by bards: Selo's Accelerondo + Chant of disease (for some reason it's not resisted much) + Chant of Whateverelseyawant + running in circles. Takes too long, though, so a blue per kill isn't worth like 10 minutes to kill...
Tainted Essence? isn't that part of most of the Driud epic pieces names are? maybe we are looking at some kind of epic upgrade? kind of funny if it comes of some little rat.