a needlite  

Ok, before anyone says no, hear me out. I camped the needlites and the queen last night for the first time. I'm a 28 (turned 29) Monk. I had a Shaman friend healing me. It's not that great for groups (unless your a lower level group of course) but as a solo Monk, these were all dark blue to me, and I can get around half a blue bubble of experience with these guys. But that's not all, the wings and legs they drop may seem like junk, but you can sell them for almost 3pp and a few gp to the merchants! Not sure if they are part of a quest, but I went back with a partial stack of each and came away with almost 40pp! Not too bad. At the very least they are worth good coin, maybe someone will figure out if they're for anything else. Great way to make money pretty fast.

They don't drop on every needlite though, so keep that in mind. Sometimes I'll get a few in a row dropping a wing or two, a leg or two, or a few of both, but then a few won't drop anything. But within an hour of hunting there I had half a stack of each.

Edited, Fri Feb 7 14:10:40 2003

This is the best spot I've found for a 25-29 necro; you can make more money kiting aviaks in SK, but here you'll get good XP, OK loot and max all your melee skills in almost perfect safety. Doesn't seem like they drop much, but wings and legs stack, sell for about 2pp each and, if you're lucky, the Queen's drops can sell to other players for more (and at 33 my Necro is still wearing the first Giant Needlite Wing he looted at 25).

Just stand in the corner of the cave to the left of the entrance, summon a pet, cast banshee aura (damage shield), pull a needlite with a nuke, then melee and lifetap while laughing at the way they commit suicide on the damage shield and getting all those lovely defence and dodge skill-ups; I maxed dodge starting from the basic 20-something in 3/4 of a level. If you get hit too hard then pull back and let the pet tank for a bit; also be ready to nuke them when they run so they don't get to the wormspore.

Only potential problem is when the queen spawns in the center, as pulling the center mob will usually also pull the one in the far corner if they're up. At 25 this will be a scary fight, but your pet can tank the needlite while you kill the queen and then kill the add.

Edited, Thu Nov 28 10:19:57 2002

These are like Monk Mosquitoes. They hit very, very fast. If they are red to you, they will hit you very fast for 22 damage a pop (LOADING, PLEASE WAIT...). Once they start conning yellow, those hits for 22 become hits for 14-16 with the occasional 20. Once they are white, they hit for 8-14 with the occasional 20.

The main benefit to hunting needlites is that they offer decent exp (similar to Paludal mobs), and the legs/wings sell for a few pp each (and are stackable now - no longer Lore). The camp can be solo'ed once you learn how to pull singles without agro. Also, even though they hit super-fast, the hits are relatively weak and the skeeters have very few hitpoints (aproximately 600hp). My ranger and druid rocked the whole hive by using damage shields to their advantage.

The main danger is the %#(^@* wormspore that sits above the entry ramp. Fleeing skeeters will waltz right through the wormspore while you get chain-rooted and health-tapped. As if this wasn't annoying enough, on several occasions a fleeing needlite will simply poof thanks to some unknown Verant "bug" (pardon the pun). I reported this bug after a long fight with the queen that saw her poof at like 0.00001% health.

So watch out for the wormspores, learn pull tactics, throw on some damage shield, and then camp this area from level 25-32.

Used to kill these skeeters and get legs and wings, went back this week and killed the room a dozen times and recieved no loot at all from the Needlites. The Queen still dropped a couple of Giant Wings and the Stinger.

Norbert Daggett
Last of the Beavers

To my level 23 monk, these needlites are dark blue, white, yellow, and red. They seem to be yellow and red more often than anything else, so I would guess low to high 20s to be the level range.

They appear to have an attack delay of roughly 1.0, with double attack, but they generally don't hit very hard (around 2 to 12 damage or so). The most these things have hit me for is around 23 damage, though, and that can be pretty rough when they're stinging you every second (often twice), so be prepared to deal with a string of bad luck in combat every once in a while. If these things can consistantly connect for good damage, they will poke you full of so many bloody holes that you won't know what hit you.

Obviously, with such a high rate of attack, these things are extremely vulnerable to damage shields, but some sort of attack speed debuff would also help quite a bit. They seem to have a fairly low hp total, so if you can do consistant damage, they'll fall in short order.

Warning: watch out for the wormspore plants in the caves! When these bugs flee, they usually run right past several wormspore plants, and if those plants get you, you may never escape, regardless of your level! There may be several ways to avoid or fool the wormspore plants, but so far for me, feign death fools them every time. If you do get caught by these wormspore plants, it helps to have enough health to survive the effect. It seems to last roughly 3 ticks, and does around 50 damage per tick, but the plants tend to chain-cast their effect so fast that you'll constantly be hit with it, so BE CAREFUL!