Encyclopedia Necrotheurgia  

 

Got this today, Jan. 06, 2019 for my L49 Nec. Took 12 days of straight camping (8-14 hours per day). ~24 min respawn timer for MOBs in PoHate so we're talking >300 PH/rare kills with about 60+ being the broodmaster. I can sorta see how this kind of rarity may have been era-specific - i.e. when level cap was 60, but still - since this was like the only item apart from a Vex Thal drop for Nec pet focus it seems the Devs were being *very* stingy with drop rate.

I Can Verify that this drops still, had it drop for me today just now.

I have been in the Plane of Hate for days now. (as the zone wide sporadic emote says, "You really hate this place".) I have killed 'an ashenbone broodmaster' (not 'Ashenbone Broodmaster') a bunch of times. So many times, that I am letting the potentially useful Wand of Souls rot. I have them on my traders, on my wiz, necro, shared bank slots, some mules, and even corpse stored one. I must have had at least ten of these guys pop over the last few days, but probably fifteen, or maybe twenty. The Wand of Souls dropped everytime, Shattered Emerald of Corruption once and Eye of Innoruuk twice. He has also dropped miscellaneous trash items on occasion. This mob or his ph spawns about every 29 and a half minutes. Just before the corpse rots, I kill the next ph or named as the case may be. I know there are better pet foci out there, but I want this one for my necro.

I saw the posts below, and did a little research: This item dropped as late as May and June of 2004, which is more than a year after the POH revamp which occurred on May 13, 2003 per the post on the 'an evil little imp' page.

Sooo, if anyone knows if it still drops, please post.

As a mage I know a few things about focuses. Back in the days of Kunark when this item was introduced. Level 60 was the best level you could get.

Pets used to come in a random range of levels spanning about 4 or 5 levels for each spell level. Mages had baby focuses (the Shovel of Ponz the Torch of Alna etc.) that predated Kunark which only worked up to lvl 49 (was no spells at 50).

Kunark is then released levels go up to 60. Instead of extending the range they just added a new set of focuses to be much harder to obtain. The Staves of Elemental Mastery for Mages and the Encyclopedia for Necros. These would raise the pet 2 levels it only really worked on the new Kunark pets between 50 and 60. Since ya needed to be 46 at least to visit the planes to obtain these (with the exception of the water staff which dropped in Kedge).

Some time after they dropped the whole random level pet thing and made pets summon at set level. This change also affected the focuses somewhat as they were more so geared to make it less likely to summon a weak pet more than making a stronger one (I don't think the Level 2 focuses raise it more than one level it just raised 2 to avoid the 2 weakest level pets from being summoned.

Shadows of Luclin is released they introduced AAs for the first time. A sort of way to allow a character to grow in power where he/she couldn't gain any more levels. They Indroduced the Beastlord Class as well. All the previous focuses were pet specific and it was keyed to a resistance type to determine which focus worked on which pet. Air pet was magic, water was cold, fire was fire, earth was disease and the Necro pet was Poison based. All other pets prior were not to be focused. Beastlords presented a new problem they would want to focus these pets as well but they couldn't squeeze it in with the system they had so came a new family of generic multiclass focuses. The Gloves of Dark Summoning the new Focus introduced this expansion would work on all mage pets regardless of element and the Necromancer pets. Not sure if it was always so but the Gloves are currently set to only work on 59-65 pets. If it was still true when they were indroduced it only worked on the mages 59 air pets, the 60 water pets and the Necros EoT pets only. (Not positive if the Mage Epic pet was included at the time but it is now included). Until the next expansion anyways.

Planes of Power is released levels raised to 65 New focus added that goes beyond that of Gloves of Dark Summoning made useable by Mages Necros and Beastlords as well. Unfortunately for many it dropped also in the highest content Plane of Time.

LDoN when it released finally decided to give some of the less than uber folks a chance at some focuses for their pets since not everyone could get to VT or Plane of Time to focus a pet that was past level 60. Used also as an Augment as a great way to allow the less than spectacular to add this to a already hard to acquire (hopefully) piece of equipment. There is another LDoN pet aug focus but only drops on hard raids.

GoD is released new focuses are added some going beyond the Time/LDoN focuses some just filling a few gaps in between.

OoW is soon to be coming with the promise of raiseing levels to 70. Most likely these difficult to obtain multiclass focuses will also have there respective usefulness range extended to level 70. Historically they have not been known for that but Many of these focuses were quite difficult to obtain and suddenly making them totally useless once ya pass 65 is an outrage. When its released I would guess the following would occur:
1 - The Current high end focuses will be allowed to extend beyond 65.
2 - At Least one new focus going beyond that of the current GoD best.
3 - A few lower level focuses stronger than the cheap LDoN one but not quite the time level ones with appropriate stats (a kind of poor mans Gloves of the Dark Summoning of sorts)

If you read all this you must be bored outta your skull. However thats the nuts and berries of pet focuses the encyclopdia which was nice at one time has gone the way of dinosaur like so many older drops. The old focuses that are limited in level are just that limited all the high end (can use on 65 pets) is where its at these days. The NRo camp LDoN Augment focus is the easiest to obtain new focus currently and coincidently also the weakest of the new high end focuses.

Edited, Sun Jul 18 10:23:41 2004

As of a couple patches ago, this item has the focus effect: Minion of Hate, same pet focus, now its shown

Where can i find a list of pet focus items? This is not an attribute even noted on the item description.

The pet spells summons max lvl everytime, with focus it summons basically max lvl +1. Test it, summon pet without book, send it to fight watch max hits, then summon new pet with book and send it in, and check higher max hits.

One catch, tested it and found it has no effect on 61+ pets.

During one fo the recent patches, I read that Necros now summon the highest pet possible for their lvl...so, in effect, negating the need for this focus item, am I wrong, or going insane, or what? Hehe...thanks

Skydawg Deathmaster
Warlock of Hallowed Pestilence
Quellious

I was looking at this item, wondering why the hell a high level thing like this would have an effect of "Reclaim Magic" and was about to post a comment... then I scrolled up, realized it was a focus item. Whoops. Still, though, sweet item. (Wonders if there's a warrior focus item... so when we get rezzed we come back as a lean, mean, short fighting machine!)

169 is normal BS damage for Minion of shadows if you summon a max pet.