a large leaf scarab  

You said it rare, i nearly bashed my puter in frustration looking for those scarabs. Even using my ranger to track em, i didnt find any lagre eyes for about a week.

Having decided to try a Shadow Knight, I set off on the new guy Armor Quests. I really like the "newbie"" (can't we come up with a better term?) Armor Quests.
Just now as I'm posting this, I waited 45 minutes to find one and another attacked, the mother lode!
Well, I killed both. No loot on either.
Now another 45-60 minute search for another one.
In the meantime, I've killed 100 spiders and have stacks of silk. The fashion now is "***** those quests, I'll take the silk to the bazaar and sell it for the ridiculous price of 25pp each. Then I'll by 'God's own Mithril Armor' instead."
Everything that's wrong with EQ today is embodied in these SK quests.
Focus the quests on a near non-existent MoB and then dole out armor that is useless by the time you can make it (say, level 10-12) since the Armor you can buy in the bazaar for a few pp's blows it away.
This is very frustrating for an experienced player and most likely, intolerable for a young new player.
Three RW days and a doazen or so game days, and I bet I've seen less than 12 of these Large Leaf Scarabs, and only two gave up armor loot.
I'm level 8 now and I have exactly 1 piece of newbie armor, the Bracers because they need the Leaf Scarab (not Large).
The decision to use these virtually non-existant MoBs, the bazaar/plat situation and twinking show how SOE has given up on game balance probably in favor of yet another broken expansion.
Come on, let's get back to fun gaming!