After clearing the troll caves about 20+ times and the undead blacksmith room nearly as many, I finally saw the First Mate spawn from a renanimated mercanary's corpse in the blacksmith room. I was AE kiting in 1st person so when the First Mate spawned and gave me a cuff, I was happy to see it was a slash instead of a hit Of course, I've been epic for over a year so it wasn't *that* big of a deal, but nice to get anyway.
Plus, right after I killed him, I checked the pier I had cleared some 20min earlier and found the decaying fisherman up and got the necklace. Nice night all around.. heh