Guard McCluskey  

Kane Bayle uses Guard McCluskey's name, this is dialogue hinting at the "Paladin Hunting" quest. It was unprompted, I just went around qeynos asking everyone about everything qeynos related and stumbled upon this.

[Wed May 18 23:02:07 2022] You say, 'bloodsabers'
[Wed May 18 23:02:08 2022] Commander Kane says, 'Bloodsabers!? You must be new. Your shrine serves me well. You shall all be rewarded once I rule. No doubt you have not come to waste the time of the future emperor. Are you seeking [new information]?'
[Wed May 18 23:02:14 2022] You say, 'new information'
[Wed May 18 23:02:14 2022] Commander Kane says, 'I have gotten word from Guard McCluskey that the young knights of the Temple of Life and the Hall of Thunder have been holding contests to see who is the fleetest. Every so often, they send a young knight to run the paths of the Plains of Karana and back. Lone young knights are easy targets for experienced Bloodsabers.'

Guard Mccluskey, a corrupt Qeynos guard...

McCluskey was also the name of the corrupt cop from The Godfather. The one that punched Michael outside the hospital Vito was in, and the one shot in the restaurant along with Sollozzo.

I am a druid started soloing donlan at 30 throw harmony ( always stuck on him first time)on mcclusky and kite donlan (12 kills took me to 31 after turning in bracers)great exp! I was here till lvl 41 and started killing mccluskey at 35 their spawn is roughly 6 minutes each pleanty of time to med. Snare mccluskey it may take upto 8 tries to stick him only nuke him, if you try and dot med he will gate back when low on health when he is low melee him down he will not gate takes a while but i have a maxed 175 1hs from this. For loot every four hours roughly swarm mother spawns at field next to barbs pull her up on track as soon as you see the message warning of swarm, run right at her and snare pull her away from the swarmlings (only 4 will attack you at any given time)melee the swarmlings and dot mother she drops blue diamonds and gems. For amusement let a monk or other melee type try and take mcclusky hehe ( had to full heal 39 monk 3 times so he could kill him ). it will take roughly 2 and half hours to level , again best exp for druids. My faction can not get any better with qeynos guards and cant get any worse with corrupt guards warning there are corrupt guards in qeynos and if you are attacked by one, even good guards will join them! consider yourself KOS in qeynos if you do this quest.

-I soloed both of these guys last night. SoW is a must. Donlan dies quick but you have to recast Bonds of Force on McClusky after Donlan dies or your 2 min of fame will be up. I started off with a Lightning shock on McClusky for 385 damage and ended it with 2 more after using AE for 226 multiple times. Resists were rare for me at lvl 40. My exp bar actually moved. I will probably be here at least until 41 hopefully 42 depending on if Donlan greens out or not.

Ok, I'm a druid here of the 39th season and I found McCluskey impossible to kill. I tried every avenue possible. I snared him as high as 4 different times with him resisting, had to zone. Then if I get the snare to work, my firestike does minimal dmg when it hits him. Combust works better on him. Snare, DOt, Combust, Combust, Combust, he resists Combust, Firestrike (dmg 7), Snare again, DOT again, Combust, Combust, oom and he still has 1/8th life left, he disappears, returns to tower, I approach tower, McCluskey returns with the other guard, zone. Not worth the time nor effort until you are in your 40's. Too difficult. Bracers are nice but not worth all the downtime involved.

if you get close to this guy your life just goes down, he hits hard and stuns annoyingly. the bracers from him and the other guy rock though

~~ez~~

I thought I'd share a great soloing spot for a wizard to beat the hell level 35. It is killing *corrupt guards* at the guard tower nearest to the barbarian fishing village in West Karana.

A few things are required to ease the difficulty of this camping spot. At level 35 SoW is required to beat the tougher of the two guards McCluskey. McCluskey varies from level 34 to 38 or so. He is very tough to root and nuke so I found you *must* kite him. Bonds of Force is a possiblity but both guards resistance to all most forms of magic are high and thus they resist BoF *a lot*.

To help resistance I found that the Staff of Temperate Flux works very well in making the fire and ice based spells do more damage on average. This is very important because running out of mana against guard McCluskey happened to me a lot and I had to zone thus wasting a whole bar of mana with no experience gained. The level 38 spawn of McCluskey I found was too resistant to beat so I would usually /ooc for a person to help and there usually was one near by at the fishing village. The spawn time for both guards is around 10 minutes.

The lesser of the two guards is guard Donlan. His level varies between the high 20s to low 30s. I was able to just root and nuke him almost every time with no problems at all if he was the only guard present. Its a good idea to hit either guard you are attacking with the lower element spell produced from the staff mentioned above. This greatly helps overall damage and thus reduces the amount of mana required.

The experience is very good for this killing these two guards. But the best thing is that they drop a guard bracelet almost every time. This no drop item can be turned into Capt Linarius in the stone bridge tower in North Karana for a few gp, usually a mid level bronze or steel weapon and more *experience*.

Surprisingly this spot in a week of camping was rarely camped by other players. Even during peek hours.