I recently rejoined the EQ community and rather than get caught up in all of this new stuff, I decided to take a stroll down memory lane. I was boxing with my old 62 Pally and new young 30 Wizard when I remembered the 'Hopper Cave. When I got there, the Sambata guys were on duty so I had to do some Googling to remember how to get the lizards back. I read about killing the Tribal Keeper PH'er and waiting for Garn. There were not many recent posts about it, the latest was from like 2009 and he seemed to think maybe the zone had been revamped because he wasn't getting Garn after camping the PH'er for five hours. So, must've been my lucky day because right after reading that guy's post and wondering how many hours of my life I would waste waiting - there he was. He does still spawn, the Rockhoppers are back. Yay! :)
The death of Sambata Tribal Leader Garn is necessary to replace the Sambata Tribe with Rockhoppers.
If you are very very lucky, he can be found in the Rockhopper caverns in Dawnshroud...North-eastern most cave, standing on a rock. But usually, what is on the rock is his placeholder, the Sambata Tribal Leader. It could take hours to get him to spawn. Kill a ST Leader; wait 12 minutes and either another ST Leader or Garn pops.
When Garn is killed, the Sambatas are replaced with Rockhoppers, who stay until the an Age Old Rockhopper (standing on that same rock) is killed.
We camped for this dude for three days, either he has an uncommon spawn rate, or we had uncommonly bad luck... On the fourth day, he popped, and I killed him, and the hoppers spawned.
We were trying to get the hoppers to spawn so we could get hopper hides for our Tailoring (Superb, Flawless hides) -- no dice.. I don't think the hoppers in Dawnshroud drop those. Killed several dozen and only got a single High-Quality hide. Lots of damaged, low-quality, medium-quality...
So if you're doing the 150+ tailoring, it's Mons Letalis for you..
If you're killing the hoppers for XP, they're plentiful and respawn like crazy.
placeholders name is "Tribal keeper" spawn rate is about 20 min keep killing till garn shows up then when you kill garn the rock hoppers show up again in about 2 min kk.