Researcher's Badge  

 

We just finished with this quest yesterday, twice. (One for myself, one for my Monkly Partner In Crime.)

We set out for West Karana to find Oobopterbevny. She seems to follow the same path when she spawns.

She will spawn somewhere near the farmhouse close to Froon and Choon, down in the valley. She will then walk up the hill, right past Froon and Choon, and continue down over the road, up the other hill, and will continue going until she hits the NK zone, where she will despawn.

(Found this out the hard way. Was trying to med and follow her at the same time, and waited too long. :) )

She wasn't too bad to take down, with myself, a 44 Cleric, and my Monk friend, level 44.

You have to kill her where she is, don't think about pulling her. The Monk took a swift death trying to pull her the second time we encountered her.

With my assortment of 44 Cleric buffs, (Resist Disease, Resist Poison, Resist Magic, Resist Cold, Armor of Faith, Resolution, Symbol of Naltron, and Armor of Protection for myself), we were pretty much Overbuffed, and were resisting things left and right.

We had come up with a plan to kill her beforehand, and to my surprise, it actually worked.

I told the Monk to engage, where I followed up with a stun. I then spooked the pet off over the hill.

After that, it was just a matter of chain stunning, (Stun, Holy Might, Force), over and over, stopping to drop the occasional Celestial Healing, or to re-spook her annoying pet.

The second time around, we managed to kill her unbuffed, while the monk still had Res Effects on him, so all that buffing was probably not needed. (Although we did take heavier damages the second time.)

When you loot the Jars, turn your book into Velarte at the temple, and he will spawn the rats for you.

The rats are normal sized rats. Diseased, and Healthy rats. There are also blank tiles, that have NPC nametags "Tile AB, Tile BB", etc.

The object is to turn all the diseased rats into healthy ones.

I can tell you that the layout of the puzzle is random, as the one I got was different from the one my monk friend got, and both of those were different from what the guy who wrote the Quest Information here got.

(The Monk's puzzle was exceptionally easy, he only needed two of the enchanted rats to finish the puzzle, but we gave the third to an empty space, just to be sure.)

The puzzle is explained very well by the book Velarte gives you when you turn in your Interrogator's Badge.

Basically, you're working on the Bomberman theory here. Rat goes off, shoot a "cure" in 4 directions. The cure will only cure diseased rats that are in it's line of fire with a healthy rat to bounce the aura back off of. For instance.

E X X H

If the X's are diseased rats, dropping a jar at the E slot, the aura will fly past the diseased, hit the healthy rat, and then cure them when the aura ricochets back.

E X X H
X
X
H

Here as well. All X's would be cured, whereas :

E X X H
X
X
X

Placing a rat would cure the dieased rats on the right, but not on the bottom.

When you're finished, turn your empty jars into Velarte, who will give you your Researcher's Badge.

On a side note, we loved these quests. They have a decent reward, awesome XP (total of 10% at L44 for doing the quest twice), and are a blast to do. :)

PS. A big thank you to Etrerien The Ranger for tracking her for us the second time. You made things a lot quicker. :)

PPS. I started the quests with Indifferent faction to Vegalys and Apprehensive to Velarte, and I was able to do the quests up to this point, with no faction-related problems at all.

Looking forward to finishing the last two badges!

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Edited, Mon Jan 13 10:48:49 2003

Did this quest 2 times now and must admit it was fun. After speaking with Vegal in Nqeynos and running to West Karana we waited for prolly 10 min or so waiting for her to pop. Got her on track and went over to have a look. At first I was ill prepared and jumped in with both feet. Was a mistake to say the least. She is a tough little cookie. The second time we buffed up nicely and with regen we ran in rooted her pet, snared Oonnob and blasted away. Once she was out of the way the pet fell without any difficulty. I would estimate she has about 2k hp because with the help of a 51 Shammy it took a min or so to finish her.

After I looted her Jars I went to go play the "Cure the rats" game. Its a real good idea to change your perspective and take your time figuring out the puzzle. I actually didnt get it right the first time and had one rat that wasnt cured! I did turn in my empty jars and Voila! I got the necklace anyways??? Hey I am not complaining =)

This little gnome wench is lvl 41 and her pets lvl 35. She roams the wall on the north side by froon. She roams and is hard to track.

I haven't had a chance to play since the patch today. I know it's a longshot, but has anyone checked if a 4th step has been implemented?

Has anyone noticed that this badge took a 2ac jump, instead of 1ac? Thats pretty signifigant.

If they go to 10 i would love to wear this over my rygorr collar. It will have 10 wis int str agi, 50hp 50mana and more then 9 ac :)