Zed Sticklebush  

Walked in zone today, Zed was up at the fire, killed him and looted the mask for the pimpy rogue alt. Total time spent camping the mask about 45 seconds :)

he finally spawned at east point in campfire

handed in the 4 heads i am NEVEr doing this quest again lol

now i jhave been here SEVEN (7) days wiating for him to repsawn again

Defineitly leave the named up. I spent a couple nights at this camp. the last night I decided to leave the named up. Not even a full 30mins later after clearing 2 spawns of all of the poachers Zed popped. Dropped the mask, and made my baby rogue very happy.

just got him to pop in about 45 min for a low level rogue of mine, i used the techniques leaving the named mobs up and it seemed to work

he popped at the campfire and had the item on him, it was the very first time zed made an appearance for me

my fricken rogue was 2 zones away, i was not concerned because i thought it would probably have a 30min rott timer, needless to say i was wrong 7min( and the corpse rotted right before i got their

so back to camping

I camped a total of 6 hrs - 14 kills and I left 3 named up had a good number of Named pops over the time. Dropped mask when he spawned in the large tent.

Ok this camp is a major pain, the easyest way to get him to spawn is like was already stated, kill everything, when a named (that is not zed) pops, leave it there, pull around them and do not kill.

I had 4 named up, 2 in the back tent next to the fire, one in the smaller tent to left (facing fire) And one next to fire.

What this does is when you clear the poachers those names you have up cannot spawn again, so your odds of getting a zed spawn increase, I had tried this camp before and I finaly decided to try it this way, it was still a pain but once I started doing ti that way I got some Zeds and finaly got my rogue his Burnoose.

Good luck

Edited, Mon Jun 12 15:38:58 2006

I've killed this guy 6 times already. All I got from him was his head all 6 times. I've only seen him spawn at the back of the longest tent once and at the fourth spawn point of the fire the rest of the 5 times. He's such an aggravating camp!!!!

I've camped Jaggedpine on and off for months with my ranger trying to score one of those masks for my young rogue alt. About 10 ranger lvls later I still come back here for a few days of camping, like today: I can clear them out easily now, but only had one Zed spawn in 10 hrs (and that was right off the bat when I arrived). As stated in many earlier posts, Zed spawns by the fireside or within the "big" tent, in random fashion. Let's hope the gods of Norrath smile down upon you when you give it your shot. =) I'm going to have to take a break soon.

[EDIT:] ROFL, I log off for two minutes so an alt can put some clarity pots in shared bank for my ranger, and when I log back, Zed's up in the fourth spot at the fire. I kill him and there's my burnoose of the half-breed. Sometimes I really think They do this on purpose to drive players crazy. =P

Edited, Mon Apr 3 21:19:12 2006

I camped this guy for weeks. I was lucky, very lucky, I had read about the burnoose and came and saw Zed and killed him and got the burnoose the very first kill. I told my better half about the burnoose and since she has a lowby rogue, I figured that I would get her one. I camped her rogue on the big rock by the fire and hunted Zed. For weeks and weeks I hunted this rare fool. Finally! Finally, I get him and he has the burnoose. I quickly logged her toon on and had it loot the burnoose. Oh what a happy rogue I was. I was the very proud provider for her and I ran her rogue to POK and was gonna show it off to the rest of the guildies and low and behold, the dang burnoose has a lower level of usage on it. Her rogue is only 28 and can't use it until 34. Sigh! Maybe I had better read all of the infor before doing a favor like this again. LOL

Good luck to any and all that hunt for this very rare drop.

Edited, Fri Sep 2 06:55:54 2005

26 kills later... and 8 days of camping (2-5hours a day) i got it...confirmed still drops as of July/13/05

I camped the poachers last night for about 90 minutes, then came back this morning to try again with a freshly temped pet (couldn't get virtue). Kept the tents and firepit cleared. Zed spawned twice in the large tent, different spot each time, dropped boots and head but no burnoose.

Then he spawned at the fire, took him down again and this time he had the burnoose. Camped my 54 necro, logged the rogue and looted my prize.

Including the fire spawn (where the named ones predictably spawn), Zed appeared three times in about two hours.

Good luck!

Chazy Belladonna, 54 Necromancer (Maelin Starpyre)

Currently going on 4 hours of watching a baby bard macro chant kite the fire spawns and closest tent spawns and clearing the spawns he's not kiting... Have seen every named but Zed, some a few times.

It's not as bad as for some though =P This other bard is doing a lot of the work for me (I left for an hour or so to go to class, figured it wouldn't pop while I was gone =P) and since he already agreed that Zed as mine (and is afk w/the macro anyway), i just gotta be alert =P

A lot of these posts were helpful though, I've made sure to keep the two big tents clear, although the only named have come from the campfire and the back of the small tent (proxmity aggro on said baby bard).

Does Burnoose of the Halfbreed still drop? Heard that it didn't...

Forgot to mention, His head dropped and I dont know if any other loot did, but from my experience with these named in this camp, they will usually only drop one of the possible drops in their loot table, with the head always dropping.

So my best guess, would be that Zed has a 1 in 3 chance of dropping the mask. However, the mask could have a reduced chance to drop, 20% with the other 2 drops having a 40% each.

Can anyone confirm

1. His spawn rate ( I hear its 2 - 2.5 hours )
2. IF he has a PH or if he has a 1 in X chance of popping in the 4th spot every X hours ??
3. Does he only pop in the 4th spot at the fire, or can he pop in any of the 4 positions at the fire ?

I camped him last night, and did not see him pop at the camp, but he was killed by a druid that was KS'ing from the poacher camp, and pulling from the largest tent. So I think he does in fact have a slight chance of popping in the tent.

He is definetly the rarest of the named in that camp. All other named popped at least 2 times, some more that 6 in my 5 hours there.

For reasons not entirely clear, I decided that my lvl 31 rogue needed the ultra-rare drop (half-elf illusion mask) from zed sticklebush. I say not entirely clear because 1) lvl 34 is required for the effect; 2) my rogue is a barbarian with ok faction in most places; 3) the mask is just an illusion, more in the category of "fun" than anything else; 4) the quest requires unreasonable amounts of time to complete.

Nevertheless, given all of the time my ranger, paladin, and shaman spent at the poacher camp (all going from lvl 51 to 52+), I thought that I should get some sort of reward.

I found previous posts on this topic quite helpful, and thought that I would add (or summarize) a few of my observations; hope someone else finds this helpful:

1) In the days that I camped Zed (not continuously), I only saw him pop at the campfire. Never from the tents. The spawn time for the "fourth position" at the campfire is about 2 hours and 5 minutes, but most of the time it is not Zed. I would estimate Zed pops about every 6-10 times. On average (own experience and talking to others), he probably pops about twice per day.

2) I found it useful (as others have) to have my rogue camped at the campfire. Unless your rogue can solo the lvl 40 mobs there, it seems best to kill Zed with an alt, immediately camp, and then log on as the rogue to loot the corspe. This approach works best, of course, when there is no one else in the zone or at the poachers camp. In general, about half the time no one else is in the zone, and, of the other half, about half of those times no one else is camping the poachers.

3) Given that Zed and the other 3 named are on a fixed timer at the campfire, it is easy enough to know (by killing one of them) when the next named will pop. I tried that approach one weekend (never got the mask), rather than camping them continuously. Interestingly, no one else was ever at the camp when I logged back on every 2 hours or so over the course of about 36 hours. Vaurian Sticklebush does seem to pop not uncommonly from the smaller of the two tents opening to the river. It may increase the chances of Zed popping to keep her alive (as that would mean that only 3 other named would be available for the 4th campfire spot).

4) Yranik Blackguard is a common spawn at either the tents or the campfire, although he never spawns from the "fourth" campfire spot. He is the most difficult of the poachers to kill, as he often resists spells, and breaks root quickly. Snare usually holds on him, though.

5) I killed Zed 6-7 times over 2 weeks without him ever dropping the mask. Tried to camp him again one evening, only to find that a high lvl necro was camping (continuously) the poacher camp for something like 36+ hours straight. The necro killed Zed a few times, without him ever dropping the mask. I logged on as my ranger early in the am (about 7am EDT), expecting to find the necro still there. Necro was gone, but Yranik and Vaurian were up. Vaurian was in the tent mentioned above. No other named was up. No one else was in the zone. I killed Yrannik, then killed Vaurian for sport. She had the poison making modifying device on her, and so I camped my ranger, logged on as my rogue, and tried to find her corpse. I had not killed Vaurian right by the tent, so my rogue got lost looking for the corpse. I finally made it back to the campfire after about 10 minutes, only to see that Zed had popped. Still no one else in the zone. Logged back on as my ranger, and killed him. Still no one else in the zone. To my amazement, he dropped the mask. I think that it is possible that the presence of a rogue (or bard) in the zone may make it more likely that zed will pop and that he will have the mask. Clearly, the mask does drop, and it does drop whether or not a rogue or bard is in the zone. But I think that it is odd that after all of those hours spent, the only time I got the mask was after my rogue was around right before the next named popped.

Hope all of this helps someone get the mask. The quest is painful, although the plat and experience there is not bad at lvl 51.

For the past few days I have been trying to get this illusion mask. I have noticed something about the named pops that no one else has posted before so i figured I would post it. From what I have seen the only spot that pops the named in the tents is the tent with 5 poachers in it. The ph for that tent is the first one you see when you walk in, she has his/her back to you. Also i noticed a clue as to when the named at the bonfire is going to spawn. Right when the 2hour timer on that named is up, one of the poachers walks west, over the hill, and over to the panther. Since the panthers kill them, I believe it's the programmers way of getting this named to pop on its own. So when you see that you know to wait around for a few minutes. Good luck and i hope this helps you.

was bored, had thought about the fact that one of these rotted afew days back (was offered up in server auction to loot) checked here to see where it was, sneak/hid over with my rogue to see what was up.. hey people, wonder if those are the poachers... click on person & well, it was Zed! quick log on my main (65 war) run over still up, tag & bag look & see... the Burnoose!(head too) log my Rogue back on & pray the wildlife doesn't eat me before the corpse is unlocked :o) Now in a few levels my Vah Shir will be able to be a lil halfbreed too! sad thing is still no Guise for her as it's 5x harder to get to/do... well she'll be wearing it even if she can't use it yet!

Edited, Wed Sep 17 01:52:40 2003

6 hours of camping with a Zed no show. Killed the other names a few times each and decided to leave. Came back an hour later and a monk was farming pelts off the poachers. He trained the entire camp to the animals then feigned and let the animals take care of it. Perhaps this helped, as the next pop there was Zed in one of the tents and he dropped the mask.

After reading all the posts here I guess I was just lucky. A 51 Ranger was killing poachers and said Zeb was up and in one of the tents. Ranger pulls Zeb, we kill, mask dropped. I was at the camp for 10 min max.