Norrath's Keepers: The Drake Menace  

Done this one a couple times.

The drake eggs spawn a drake about 1/2 the time. At 55, we noted 8 out of 10 were "a Delve drake." The other 20% of the time, we popped "a Delve diviner" or "a Delve spellbinder."

The diviner is a cleric that has either an impressive mana pool or an amusing mana regen rate. The typical fight has the diviner getting hit with the Scryer's Tresspass (50mana/tick/X10) and Theft of Thought (376mana) and the diviner is still able to attempt 6 CHs per fight before resorting to Gate. After a spam of the spell Wrath, the CHs begin around 45%.

The spellbinder is a chanter who likes to cast Cajoling Whispers and Tashani. Easy fight.

The drake eggs are lootable, but I have yet to see anything dropped from them.

We were able to get this mission at 56. 56 warrior, 55 rogue, 56 cleric and 56 chanter.

Faction on the warrior who got the task was indifferent.

I assume this is attainable at 55.

Yellow to level 66, hits for about 730, mitigates slow, casts mage spells, not very hard. I do this with two other friends, one two boxing, we complete it pretty easily. 70 mnk, 67 clr (boxed) with 66 war, and 66 shaman. And our gear is pretty substandard.

Out of like 7 runs, dropped Storm Cloud (looks like alchemy component) and Spiny Fruit. No other drops.

Edited, Tue Apr 11 03:18:57 2006

Hail Boldger and he will give you tasks based on your faction with Norrath Keepers. If you don't see The Drake Menace, then you need to raise your NK faction more.

When you are given the task, you have 6 hours to complete it.
(Quick overview: My group normally does this task, by killing drakes and destroying eggs to the first big cavern, then evac/succor back to entrance and repeat. This will complete 7 eggs the first cycle and 7 eggs the second cycle, so when you start the cycle the third time, you will get the named drake and you are done.)


First part:
- Get to the entrance.
- You will have zone into the Broodlands, go out of the tunnel, then follow compass to neg1800 / neg1500
- When you come out of the tunnel go west around the boulders, and then head south and slightly west (watch out for the crevices that drop into lava).
- You actually have to click on the black area of the cave entrance to zone in, vs just walking up to it.
- The zone is Lavaspinner's Lair, but it is an instanced zone off the Broodlands, so only your party is in it.


Second part:
- Destroy 15 eggs.
- To destroy an egg, you target the egg and type /open. Each time an egg is destroyed, it can be empty or hatch a drake. You get credit for the egg either way.

- There are eggs along the path guarded by drakes.
- There is a roaming drake who will arrive near the party about the time you are on the 3rd critter. So it is sometimes wise to wait for it, then continue.
- The critters and eggs repop in approximately 20 mins (haven't timed it precisely, but when we kill the big cavern mentioned above, the repops are starting back at the entrance), so you have to keep moving a little bit or else wait a looooong time to redo the one egg near the zone in.
- At the third egg, be careful (do NOT go more than a couple steps past the third egg) .. looking to the room from the tunnel, it looks like it has a large flat floor, however, the floor is false and you will drop into 5 drakes if you walk out on it.
- As you look East from the third egg, and downward, hug the right hand wall (hook around the boulder), there is a ledge that runs down to the bottom of the cavern (hug the wall on the way down the ledge)
- At the bottom of the ramp, looking west, there is a drake in the back left that will agro if you don't stay near the wall on the way down. If he agro's, his path will pull the other drake at the bottom of the ramp.
- You will be looking west as you clear the cavern. We normally clear the bottom of the ramp, then back left, then center, and finally far right and far left (west side of the cavern). Then clear the 4 eggs.
- This will clear 7 eggs so far, so evac/succor back to entrance and redo the cycle.
- After your second trip through you will be at 14 of 15 eggs you need. Go back to entrance one more time and clear the first 2 drakes + the roamer (if necessary).

- Drakes are warriors, and have more HPs than the rest
- Evokers nuke and dispell.
- Diviners heal themselves (or other drakes if the fight is too close to them)
- Spellbinders tash, which is cleared with 1 use of Radiant Cure 1 (or cure poison)
- The critters run at low hps so is very helpful to have a snarer to prevent them running away and agro'g their friends.


Third part:
- When you open the 15th egg, you will get the Drake Matriarch and the possibility of a normal drake spawn. The Matriarch casts several times with nukes, so be ready to heal your tank. If you have the add, root / mezz it and kill momma first.
- The mission is complete when she dies and you are awarded 30 Radiant Crystals + 1 Norrath Keepers token (if you dont already have one).

My group normally consists of:
70 Shaman (me)
65 botted Wizard
70 Ranger
68 botted Magician
- The wizard gets substituted out if we can get a druid for the port. It is good to have the healer. And we pretty much add whoever wants to join us beyond that.
- I don't have exact amounts the critters hit for, etc because our pets normally do all the work for us (they have hit me for up to 600pt for the normal mobs). I use Leopard on pets, Quiescence on mage pet, then I pull with Malos or open the egg, Pets engage, we use slows/dots/nukes/arrows, critter dies.
- When I go through this I get over half an AA .. if I use my Veteran ability, then I get over an AA.