Marus Seru

This is an old thread... but I was just discussing this with a friend... "Pain and Suffering" is an actual mob in EQ. It can be killed.

I have killed this mob with a (a few times) with a friend before, but we had to use special methods (and this was a Loooong time ago). Sometimes something old... is something new again.

This used to be a good zone, but the last couple of times I have been there, I haven't seen anything to hunt except for the Recusos and Seru guards. On my last attempt, I spent 20 minutes running all over the zone and found one measley stonegrabber.

I don't know if they are trying to steer peeps to different zones, but if they want to close a zone just tell us so we don't waste time going to places where there is nothing to do.

I've gone from level 32 to 39 soloing in Marus Seru taking on mostly Stonegrabbers that con dark blue. There doesn't seem to be an xp modifier for the zone but there are so many mobs that go down quickly that there is no need. The Stonegrabbers cons are all over the map, often dark blues will go down much faster than a green con, and hit for far less. In general, expect more trouble from green con Stonegrabbers than from light or dark blue cons. Lightcrawlers aggro on ANYTHING from the same distance as the Zelniaks, about 75 - 100 feet, so keep your eyes peeled for adds. All mobs occasionally dropped words and runes, including the greyhoppers. The greyhoppers hit hard and fast for their size and level. Again I found that green con critters gave more trouble than blue ones. Most people group near the Netherbian Lair zone. I hunted near the Sanctus Seru zone, easy escape from danger and less people. Fletching supplies, bank and all merchants are available. Note that the guards did not attack any Stonegrabber I trained to the Sanctus zone, but would attack Zelniaks and Lightcrawlers. Never trained a greyhopper there so I don't know what the guards would do with one. Also I did some fishing while medding in Sanctus to use up the endless supply of fishing grubs I forage. Caught the usual fish scales, fresh fish, rusty daggers and tattered cloth sandals. Hehe, reminds me of my newbie fishing: "Wow I just caught a piece of armor!!!" and I put it on because I was barefoot lol. Hey it WAS an upgrade at the time.
Every so often I would take a break and do the Gerak Jelin/Centurion Jeli quest between Marus and Sanctus for Sanctus faction. Half the merchants won't sell to you unless you have decent faction. Got to watch it though because that quest also lowers Katta faction.
I've seen a max of 15 people hunting here, most at the Netherbian zone and a few at the Recuso camp to the southwest. It's been a good zone to me but now it's time to move on since at level 39 the xp has dried up and there are just a few mobs that con light blue.
Check the zone out for yourself and make your own decision if it's a good or bad zone. Personally, I heard that Paludal Caverns was great for levels 15 to 25, but I HATED it. Too many whiners and lousy players only interested in leveling and loot and not having fun in a role-playing game.

Yes, words and runes are dropping left and right on everything I've killed.

Thanks to goukix for that great post on this zone, it helped me live more than should have and got me alot of cash.


I wanted to say greyhopper hides can make you alot of $$$$. After reading up about them in here, I decided I'd much rather go out to MS and lvl up and make some money then sit in the way over crowed High Keep zone and wait hours for a group and watch people argue in OOC the entire time.

1. You can solo greyhoppers by level 24/25..but I personally prefer having a partner. In my case I was a Paladin w/ C3 and lay of hands (for a few to many mobs). While my partner was a ranger who would pull using snare and root to delay mobs arrival time. (Using sow and tracker he could pull several at a time)
2. We camped at the SS zoneline. Ranger would pull them there. When the crazy argo Zels and LC's would chase him down while he was pulling greyhoppers, the guards would simply attract them and kill them. While NOT attacking our greyhoppers. It's the perfect set-up. When we first started in our lower lvls we could zone easily to SS if things got bad.
3. Greyhoppers ALWAYS drop something. I'd say 45% Low Quality, 30% GreyHopper Hide (regular), 25% Blood, Eggs and Words.
4. You might be able to sell LQ hides for 10 pp, but it can be hard sometimes. The real money is in tailoring, where you can combine silk and LQ rockhopper hide and make LEATHER PADDING. LP's are a compent of plate armor (which is popular right now) which highly skilled black smiths make. I've found that many rich smithes would rather pay 20-25 PP per a pad than get there hands dirty w/ making the padding themselves. $$*ChiChing!*$$
5. Mad cuz you got greyhopper hides and no LQ ones? Just take a couple days and spam the MS zone for trading your regular for LQ, tailors who don't know about this money maker will happily make the trade (thinking they are ripping you off).
6. I've never had to wait more than 12 hours to sell my padding. They go quick. Just keep the bazaar on while your sleeping, they will sell.
7. You will NEED to get your tailoring skill up. Mid 30's and you can start doing this. It isn't hard, just buy a sewing kit. Combine ruined pelts with cloth patterns to make tattered leather armor and combine 2 spiderling silks for silk. This gets you in high 20's, then combine regular grey hopper hides with mask patterns, that can take you all the way to skill 80. But you only need to reach 30's to start doing this. My skill is in the 30's and I found that no matter how many you do you should end up successful 3 out of 4 times.
8. The other ingrident for this is silk. Just combine 2 spiderling silks in the sewing kit and you got one. It also doesn't fail, so you don't lose any silk. Ask for around for some good spiderling zones on your server, in mine (Luclin) I found that IS (swamp connected to frog starting city) is loaded with them without any dangerous mobs.

I think thats about it. Easy money while you level up to 33-35 or so.

I've been in Marus Seru for quite sometime now leveling and farming tailoring supplies. Here is some facts about this zone I can share:

1. Beautiful, dry (never rains), bright (never turns dark here), generally flat zone. However, this zone is kind of like a training ground for what you will experience in Umbral Plains: Aggro is based on Line of Sight.

2. With that said, the only mobs that will aggro are Zelniaks and Lightcrawlers (notice the caps since these mobs are very different from their uncapitalized cousins in various other zones). If you are in their LoS, they will aggro. The longest aggro range I've seen and tested is a Zel that spotted me when I saw it on the horizon! Generally, other zones give you a small aggro range where a mob will aggro when you've at least seen it's nametag...not here. The LoS aggro range on these nasties are ridiculous and rival Raptors in TimD and mobs in UP and certain Planes.

3. The Recuso and Hands will aggro on Zels and Lightcrawlers, they will KS if you pull near them. On the other hand, feel free to pull to them if you got an annoying add from LoS.

4. Unlike the lightcrawlers in DSP and SD, Lc's here RUN FASTER THAN SOW SPEED! This is incredibly important to note. I revisited the zone at lv 52 and I noticed even with SoW I was still getting bitten/hit by it when I was running it to the guards. And they hit somewhat hard (hitting in the 30's and 40's quite frequently) for a feisty lv. 20-ish mob. Choose your battles wisely as they say.

5. Two dangerous mobs not listed in the bestiary: A Massive Lightcrawler and A Giant Lightcrawler. If they aggro'd on you (generally when you least expect it due to a LoS add and they are flat and hard to see from a distance)...zone! Even if you train them to the Hands/Recuso, they are Hellbent on you and will still chase and hit you with 4+ Recuso/Hands beating on it. And they hit hard! Druids take note, the Giant Lc IS IMMUNE TO CHANGES IN ITS RUN SPEED...can you say difficult to kill? And this isn't a mob you want to be forced to melee if you are a low AC class.

6. The average HP on mobs (not including Hands/Recuso/named beetle) is around 600-700.

7. Experience here is good, but if you are also looking for the loot...go to another zone. The loot table in MS is terrible unless you are after tailoring supplies (see 8 below).

8. Greyhoppers are without a doubt the BEST WAY to get your tailoring skill from 15 to 95 cheaply. Generally, each Greyhopper drops 2 types of hides from a corpse: LQ Rockhopper and Greyhopper. It's about a 3:2 ratio of LQRH hides versus GH hides.

LQRH hides can be combined into Leather Padding (LQRH hide + Silk Thread, trivial around 32ish).

GH hides can be combined into masks (GH hide + Mask Pattern, trivial at 88 with Boots Pattern at 95).

You can get rich quick if you don't use the Leather Padding for smithing. In the bazaar, Leather Padding goes for about 15+pp each on my server (Bertoxx). I made well over 700 pp in one night from the excess padding I made. That alone makes up for the awful loot table in this zone.
By the way, GHs always drop something. However they also drop Blood (NO DROP, kitty quest item in Shar Vahl) and Eggs (NO DROP, a snack) rarely. So if you don't get a hide from them expect one of the two items above.

9. Surprisingly, this zone is usually empty. The most 'crowded' I've seen this zone get at prime-time was about 15 people hunting (13 if you don't include the 2 Power Leveler's, = P ). I was never KS'd once ([knock on wood]-elf har har). Other than that, typically I see only about 4 or 5 people hunting in the stretch of valley just to the north of the nether zone-in.

10. Hands and Recuso have faction hits. I started at Dubious to the Hands and Indiff to the Recuso (with a WE Druid). IMO don't hunt the Recuso here...having an outlet of escape by training adds to the Recuso or any guard is invaluable and could be life-saving.

11. Practically all the mobs (GH's, Zels, Lcs, Stones) try to escape when they are at around 1 bub of HP. However...

12. Mobs regen their HP remarkably quick. Kill them quick if you can. Don't let them wander.

13. SOE might have patched the mobs social characteristics here or it could be my lv (52, when I revisited the zone), but I haven't seen any initially indiff-con'ing roaming mob join in and help it's pal that I was smacking around. This was a different case back in the day when I had to carefully pull mobs away from their friends. (Not sure about this, sorry = / )

14. The beetles are all found in the cave leading to Mons Letalis. They don't roam anywhere else unless they were trained/pulled out of the cave. The Queen spawns rarely in the middle of the cave too. Also, all these beetles even the queen con indiff as opposed to their aggressive cousins in HS.

15. Luclin is known to have some really crappy pathing in zones (Scarlet Desert being the worst I've seen). For the most part, pathing in this zone is good except when the mob decides to go 'sight-seeing up in the mountains' of the zone wall. Don't be surprised to see a bunch of Stones milling about in a clump high in the mountainside when you look to your right after zoning in from Netherbian or to your left at the Sanctus ZL.

16. Foragers take note: You won't find Pods of Water here. Stockpile H2O before you hunt here. You will find food however, mostly those orange bulbs (forgot name).

17. Nothing sees invis. Although I have yet to confirm that some of the spell casting Druid Recuso can...but I'm indiff to them regardless.

18. Other than a few Recuso that are druids, nothing casts. Pure melee mobs that mostly hit twice (a hit + bite, claw, etc.) during a single attack.

19. Wolf-form is KoS to EVERYTHING! I'm not sure if 'scowls' hold true about other illusions, but considering that mobs mostly treat other illusions (Imp, Lich, Werewolf) similarly to Wolf-form, chances are you will be KoS too. Oddly, I've noticed that bear-form ignores this generalization. (Example: Gorenaire in DL doesn't seem to mind a bear near her...but a wolf/other illusion is a different story.) Bear-form at your own risk here.

20. GH's and Zels are animals.

(edit: almost forgot this...)
21. Nothing summons. (Luclin ignores the generalization of only lv 50+ mobs being able to summon. Case in point: Tailfang, a lv 4 named scorpion in Shar Vahl summons!)

'nuff said,
Happy hunting...

Edited, Sun Apr 6 15:23:33 2003

I'm surprised this hasn't been posted yet.

I was soloing grey hoppers near the Neterbian Lair zoneline. I basically pulled em into the little hallway there cuz I noticed the guards weren't KS'ing. Easier to avoid adds that way.

So anyways, in between pulls, I'm meddn. Looking down in my lap cuz I'm shuffling papers, look back up at screen and I see my corpse. I died! I'm thinking this is wierd cuz nothing was beating on me, I had full health, and no poisons or diseases on me.

So I respawn, and scroll my chat window back to see what the deal was. I see three things.....

A sickly sweet aroma fills the air.
Pain and Suffering tries to hit YOU but misses
Returnind to home point... please wait...

I ran back, got my corpse and left. Haven't been back since.

What was that all about?

Don't think it matters, but I was playing my DE Nec at the time.

I'm beginning to wonder if it is possible for DEs to raise faction. I've killed a *lot* of Recusos, but I'm still dubiously to the guards here.

to find. I like to grp and my BST is 28 1/2 would there be a problem finding groups?

Malkor 28 lvl Bard beastie

Edited, Wed Jul 24 07:57:18 2002

had a nice group here awhile back.i was playing my 33 rogue and was grouped with a necro , a chanter , a wiz and a druid.id just run out and whack a hopper then whack a stonegrabber and see how many of each i could train to camp.the casters would all nuke away with their best AoE's while the necros pet and i meleed.the chant was usefull for crowd control as was the druid since they get a little spread out after a few nukes.we could do around 3 or 4 pulls like that in a row , somtimes getting 6-8 mobs.it was shaky at first but after a few pulls it was cake and awsome exp.

Edited, Sat Jun 1 00:26:29 2002

OK just found this zone the other day (yeah I'm slow) and grouped here - we had a full group all within a coupld of levels of 30. Tore through the mobs but there were always more! Never had to go far to pull.

This zone could suppose a huge population, and unlike the Overthere there are only TWO classos of mobs that are aggro, NO wandering goons, AND it's always light! And for the coupld of hours I was there it never rained either (not sure it can).

An easy run from nearest bind in ShadowHaven too.

Ok i will confirm what Okirin said wqolf form really annoys everything in this zone guards and mobs.

Ok as to hunting.

The only monsters that agro are the lightcrwlers and the zelniaks (sp?)

Everything else will leave you alone if you leave them (i must admit i havent killed any recluso so i dont know if bad faction means kos as they are human i assume so).

The stongrabbers and rock hoppers are social so if you attack one they will help.

The zelniaks have a HUGE aggro range compared to most mobs i have seen.

The rhino beetles and stonegrabbers (weathered normal crumbling etc) are the best exp in this zone if you are high enough to hunt them. A lvl 30 druid and me (lvl 36 warrior) cruised through levels in a few days here hunting them.

The other thing is you can pull to the zone entrance and the guards will ignore them as the guards will only attack light crawlers and zelniaks (and recluso i assume)