I went around for 2 hours and killed everything I could as a 5th-6th lvl warrior here in the Thicket and managed to get 3 armor pieces from the guy. You can hunt for multiple things and get them in a decient amount of time. No twinking on this guy either... I've got all stuff recieved from the Warrior quests.
the fact is this is better than leather, and you can get it at lvl 5 i highly doubt you would have enough money to buy a single piece of leather by lvl 5 unless all you did was hunt hoppers and sell the hides to higher lvls who need them, except, if your a Beastlord your going to need those starting at an early age aswell. I was able to tailor a full set of tattered hopper hide for my self by lvl 8, and had nearly a full set of shaded by 10 when i started the guhlom armor quests. The amount of newbie quest VI managed to pack into just shar vahl is astounding. Only bad thing is alot of mobs dont drop any vendor lewt :) with my beastlord at lvl 23 im still wearing guhlom and hunting armor. this toon is one of the most fun i have played. and he is UN twinked!
Yeah, four scales are all you need for one piece of armor, but there are multiple pieces. Each different type of saurek may drop its own unique scales, and it takes four scales from the same saurek type to get a piece of armor... hence the drop issue and the good quest factor.
All in all, a nice quest with some nice armor pieces for nontwinks.
OK yes you only need 4 scales but a whole playing session for only one piece of armor? As an example think about how many pieces of curscale an iksar could get in the same amount of time.
That is only an issue if you are unaware that nearly every named NPC in the newbie area gives out quests and you can be collecting items from all sorts of mobs for several different quests in the same playing session. The DING!s will creep up on you while you are doing all of that, too.
Altogether, VI did an adequate job on this zone and the content. Some things -- like Sentry Ferin sometimes mysteriously aggroing on pets, Bloodbulks popping from nowhere, and Darkened Jawbones seeming to drop very rarely -- are enough to make you scream, but the good more than outweighs the little irritations that come with it.
Yes, an awesome zone with many newbie quests. When I start an alt that is not twinked, I bring them here for the quest armor. It's nice that in this zone the mindless killing of anything that moves usually has some purpose. =)