Exploration of Giants Cave Quest, pt1

I just started this, and so far I've picked up 1 Ancient Parchment. What is not clear to me from reading the Stratic's guide: do I turn in the Ancients Parchments unopened to Sorint (the NPC) and let him tell me what I've found, or do I open them first and then turn them in if I found something good? And if I am supposed to open them first, how do I do this? Just double-click on them? I appreciate any help on this. By the way, for a destroyer with a pole and a boxed SE in the upper 50s, the outer rooms seem like a fairly good place to grind for XP. Just be careful not to pull too many of the big cats at one time!

You open them, then when you colect set of pages (5 pages per set) you turn them in to Sorint for recipes. You will get one of the 2 listed on stratics.
If you get giant doogles or love letters those are just garbage.

part 1 is tallum/dc leather or plate rec
part 2 is maj and nightmare leather and plate

Just out of curiosity, what is everyone's drop rate in this quest?

A 60 DA and myself (63 SE) were hunting for over 3 hours the other day and saw not one drop the entire time.

Have any of you experienced a poor drop rate such as this?

make sure you dont have sweet fluid quest

I don't, but the DA did.

Will that prevent me from benefitting from it?

from what it seems is that if you have the sweet fluids quest, you have a lower chance of getting overlapping quest items. But then again that drop rate for the GC quest sucked! I hunted for an hour, got one, opened it up..whoopdee doo a giants doodle! This was back in C3 though.

The droprate SUX, even the GM said that when I petioned (the quest was actually bugged when I did it on sub...)

Yep drop rate is pretty low. I've been at this for maybe 3 - 4 hrs and gotten 1 Medical Science chapter and 1 Doodle Book. Considering these are low grade A gear and only 60% recs, they really should do better. To think I might spend a couple of weeks, get 1 60% rec, and have that rec fail is pretty bad.

I just started this quest last night. I got 2 ancient parchment drops in about 40 minutes. One was a doodle though :( I still had a couple of chapters from a long time ago when I went through GC as a SH. What is odd is I think I have Chapter 3 from three different sequences of books. This makes me a little worried that there will be super rare chapters similar to the ToI blueprint quest.

I am probably going to delay doing this quest until I get the War Frenzy skill [to get stun resistance]. I was getting stunned regularly from Kranrots even in Doom Heavy with 50 CON. This makes it too challenging to pull trains and use a polearm.

But in any event, the quest so far seems a lot easier to do than the A robe recipe quest. The only advantage to the A robe recipe quest is you will for sure get a recipe after killing a certain number of mobs since the quest item drops occur virtually 100% of the time (if not 100% - can't remember for certain).

Biotox, what is the name of the A robe recipe quest? Are there similar quests for A grade Heavy Armor and weapons?

Also, is there anybody reading the forums who has actually gotten a complete set of what they wanted from either the pt 1 quest or the part 2 quest? If so, how long did you have to work the quest to get them?

I did this quest a lot. At first it can be hard to keep going cause your not getting many quest items. If you can handle the Bears on one of the bridges, that is your best spot.

For the first 2 weeks (about 3 to 4 hrs per day), I didn't finish a single book. But after that I found that I was able to complete a set almost every day after that. (I would get between 1 to 3 quest items per buff round on average).

Also if you have time, pick up some seeds and make a lil extra cash while your at it ;)

Pt2. I tryed this one for a while, but found that the quest items did not drop as often as Pt1. And some of the mobs are a lil harder. So I moved on to other areas and other quests.

Biotox, what is the name of the A robe recipe quest? Are there similar quests for A grade Heavy Armor and weapons?

Also, is there anybody reading the forums who has actually gotten a complete set of what they wanted from either the pt 1 quest or the part 2 quest? If so, how long did you have to work the quest to get them?

(Seer Manakia @ Giran) Hunt in Antharas Cave
Whisper of Dreams Part 1 - A grade robe fabrics
Whisper of Dreams Part 2 - A grade robe recipes (60%)

(Head Researcher Sobling @ Giant's Cave) Hunt in Giants Cave
Exploration of Giants Cave Part 1 = Low A grade Armor recipe
Exploration of Giants Cave Part 2 = High A grade armor recipe

(Magic Trader Wesley @ Ivory Tower) Hunt TOI/Blazing Swamp
Supplier of Reagents - A grade armor parts

(Head Blacksmith Vergara @ Aden) Hunt Forsaken Plains
Kail's Magic Coin - A grade Weapon recipes (60%)

(Warehouse Freightman Romp @ Aden) Hunt -various-
Stolen Dignity - A grade Weapon parts.

(Warehouse Keeper Walderal @ Aden) Hunt TOI
Shriek of Ghosts - A grade Boot/Glove/helm parts or recipes

(High Priest Orven @ Aden) Hunt Devasted Castle
For Sleepless Deadmen - A grade Jewelry or Shield parts.

(Grand Master Otlin @ Aden) Hunt Forbidden Gateway
Illegitimate Child of Goddess - A grade jewelry or shield recipes.

Thanks for all the info. Guess I'll stick with this a litle longer, and I know of other places to go for A grade gear.

Just out of curiosity, what is everyone's drop rate in this quest?

A 60 DA and myself (63 SE) were hunting for over 3 hours the other day and saw not one drop the entire time.

Have any of you experienced a poor drop rate such as this?

It took me and goil constantly 2 months just hunting in that place to get enough for one for our tallum heavy craft, after that we bought the pieces.

lets say be prepared for some insane amount of hunting in there, I recommend the bridge with the bears, all mobs there drops it.