dude your whole rant is just ... sorry to be so honest ... stupid!
You do the quest without much research and then you complain.
Petitioning(wont really help you here), skipping parts(missing faction), porting all around the place (lazy shaman use your scale lol) ....
I did the quest up until BD last week, it took me couple of hourse and I got my Black Fur Boots. No porting, no petitioning, no hiring druids or rangers.... shaman epic if so easy you should not need to do that.
Try to do some research before you do each step
http://mysite.verizon.net/drexxell/eq/shamanepic.html
What I did:
:Started in FoB getting gem from lesser spirit
:ran Cabilis-OT (bound myself there in outpost, to be able to gate back and catch boat to TD to use firepots)-TD firepots-Odus-Eruds Crossing
:did the underwater part and gated to OT
:ran to TD firepots-Freeport - did the handin and talked with Bondl Felligan and the greater spirit in Green Jade
:ran to rathe mnt. Killed Tabien and Glaron (Glaron was up, I had to come back the next day for Tabien)
:ran to Karana and found the wandering spirit (use the map from link to find the best place where to look for it, I did that and found it in 5min - SE from the 2nd guard tower when going from Qhills)
:Hailed it to get the quest, hailed it again and did the hand in, got the shield and gem
:gated to OT, ran to EJ, did the gem hand in and gated to OT
:ran to TD firepots-G. Faydark-L.Faydark-Mistmoore where I met with 3 guildies (warrior, rogue, cleric all 50+), rogue killed and Advisor in the castle library to get the BD to spawn, he did so 30seconds later and we killed it. Looted the pelt.
:gated back to OT-ran to EJ did the hand in and got my Black Fur Boots and Ancient Journal.
Im now farming CoM, got 3 out of 6 already....
P.S. you can skip some parts, but you need to farm the faction you did not get by skipping before you do handins ... I prefer just to do the quest. Its epic afterall, why skip parts plus its really easy and does not take much time.
P.P.S. skipping part does not make much sense imho...its much easier to get te faction you need this way rather then farming the CoM pages over and over again....