Continued...
Totemic Breastplate
The second-most difficult piece of the armor to get, it offers 19 AC, +5 SV magic, +5 SV disease, and +5 SV poison. It requires a medium banded mail, crushed dufrenite, a lancer swordfish fin, and grizzleknot bark.
The lancer swordfish fin is the easier piece to get. It drops off lancer swordfish that populate the first room in Kedge Keep. Obviously, you will need enduring breath to even get down there. According to the wiki, the swordfish range from 28-32, but almost all of the ones I saw conned blue to a level 30 shaman (not sure if this is just RNG, or if there's a trend). Unfortunately, there are about 6-8 swordfish in the first room, making it impossible to pull one unless they're already split.
One tactic I tried was rooting one, then making a beeline for the zone, then zoning back in after a few seconds. This is extremely risky unless you're a fast swimmer - the fish hit you extremely hard if your back is turned to them, and you can die in about two seconds this way. I was able to kill one swordfish this way (he did not drop the fin), but I almost died several times and I wouldn't recommend it.
The good news is that this is a pretty popular higher-level camp for people in their 40s, and basically no one else wants the swordfish thing for anything. I ended up just checking /who all kedge while I hunted in the area, then when there I saw some people in Kedge, I zoned in and asked if I could loot the swordfish fin, and got it in about 5 minutes.
The Grizzleknot bark is much trickier. Grizzleknot is a very rare spawn in South Karana, and there seems to be a lot of misinformation about what it takes to spawn him. I've seen several guides that recommend hunting along the eastern zone line, especially in the northeast. From my experience, this may be how to spawn Grizzleknot on blue or back on live, but it does not seem to work on green. I killed everything around the eastern zone line for several hours, and did not get him to spawn. I have heard other people say that they tried doing this in vain.
The way I got him to spawn - and the way I have heard other shamans get him to spawn - was by killing everything around Valen Nhostrolo's well. I did this for about 15 minutes, and he spawned a few hundred feet to the southeast, just out of view. I've also heard that he sometimes spawns a bit to the northwest. The tricky thing about the spawn is that he does not always spawn within view of the well, and does not spawn in the same place as his PH, so you need to be vigilant about checking the areas a bit further away from the well. Fortunately for me, someone /ooc'ed out that he had spawned, and I ran over and killed him.
One other tip on this part: one thing that makes killing stuff go way faster (without having to burn much mana) is to charm an elephant, or better yet a bull elephant, and sow it. Then when you attack other stuff, position the elephant behind the target. The elephant generally does 30-40 damage per hit, and hits pretty fast. This means that you have to tank, but when you're killing greens, they can barely hit you anyway, so you don't really lose health. This will allow you to conserve mana in case Grizzleknot pops and you need to take him down right away before someone else ganks him.
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