The quest is very picky about when the shells will appear. If you scare the scarab into the pit with the tarantulas and the tarantula sees it and kills it after the blue glow has gone away from the scarab you will probably not get a shell. I lost 3 chances at getting a shell to this problem. It is also a good idea to kill anything aggro in the area, like ghouls or dune spiders, so that you don't get attacked while zapping the scarabs.
- I don't know what you mean by 'blue glow'. I completed this quest, and know several beetles did no give me shells. I thought it was simply because it wasn't a 100% occurrence of the beetles giving shells. I could be wrong of course. Also, if you have invisible/sneak/stealth or a totem, you can use that and still zap the beetles so you don't have to kill everything. --Sage Locano Aredium of Antonia Bayle (talk/contribs/images) 22:21, 30 March 2007 (CEST)
The shells ARE 100%. The only time I have ever lost a shell is when another player on the quest approached one of my beetles and zapped it. The system will assign the drop to the last player to zap the beetle. It has NOTHING to do with how long the blue glow lasts. I run them in one at a time or 4 at a time, makes no difference. --Florence Sopher of Lucan D'Lere (talk/contribs/templates) 02:18, 3 April 2007 (CEST)
The shell drop rate was 100% for me, with one exception: If I chased more than one beetle at a time, I would only get a shell from the first who got killed, not the rest of them.
I found that it was 100% unless i was too far away when the beetle died, i could bring more then one at a time but i needed to be close as they died. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.141.207.37 (talk • contribs)
- There are 2 things you must do in order to ensure you get a carapace:
- 1. You need to be near the skittish scarab when it dies.
- 2. You need to make sure that you have the skittish scarab as your target when it dies.
- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.47.82.228 (talk • contribs)
quest is still bugged as of 28/10/10[]
I can confirm the bug. I chased some skittish scarabs to the desert tarantulas and dune tarantulas. There were much fewer tarantulas and I had to circle for several minutes before the scarabs got close to the tarantulas. However, the tarantulas appeared to have lost their appetite for the scarabs, because they did not attack them, not even when the scarabs were flying through the tarantulas. Therefore, the scarabs are not killed by the tarantulas, the carapaces are not left behind, and you can't complete the quest. Gwarin 12:09, June 27, 2010 (UTC)
Zam said there was an apparent fix to this but not that I can see. Scarabs fly in circles around the rocks in the tarantula area and there's no spawns there. I finally got a scarab to attack a spider that was in a weird place (didn't respawn there) and the scarab killed it. Gunthore 20:21, January 20, 2011 (UTC)
The spiders do approach the rock, although none spawn there. They crawl close enough to attack the scarabs. The problem I ran into was not being able to loot carapaces. I did target it last, and stayed close to it. None of the other players near me could loot them either. 67.238.219.49 21:30, December 3, 2011 (UTC)
I got 100%, once I figured out the rules[]
- verify there are spiders near the central pile of rocks
- target the scarab while it is being attacked
- stay just back from the scarab during the combat
- as a Beastlord, I had to disband my kitty as he wanted to fight
- do not be in stealth mode during the battle
This combination worked without without fail, once I started following it. Sakshale (talk) 04:54, August 26, 2012 (UTC) PS - If I chased in two scarabs, I simply ignored the one that wasn't being attacked. A couple of times they were still near enough to immediately volunteer for the next round. One sat on the spider throughout the battle and yet flew away without fighting when the battle was done.
return to confusion[]
Today, I was going to add a correction to rule two;
- You must have the scarab targeted when the spider attacks.
Initially, adding this rule changed my rate from one in five, to four out of five.
However, I went back for the next round of the quest series and missed three in a row, in spite of being very careful to target first, follow to the rock and stay until the end. The real kicker was I double up on a run, where two scarabs were literally flying overlaid on each other. I targeted one, the other got attacked and dropped the carapaces, even though I was still targeted on the other. It got attacked and did not drop the carapace. Figure that out!
However, I was able to get seven in a row following those rules. Sakshale (talk) 01:30, January 14, 2013 (UTC)
Broken Again[]
Skittish scarabs do not path over any tarantulas. Kimylia (talk) 02:35, December 30, 2013 (UTC)Still broken, tried 8 scarabs, no drops, did all combinations, target, closeness, killing scarab, everything. deleting quest now!65.0.115.80 00:26, April 24, 2014 (UTC)
Hatched spiderling[]
In my observations desert tarantulas can summon a hatched spiderling. If the hatched spiderling kills your scarab it will not drop the carapase. Read combat chat to watch who killed scarab. I kill hatched spiderling to make sure it doesn't spoil the drop. Hudozhnik (talk) 15:13, September 3, 2017 (UTC)
Quest Working in May 2018[]
I finally got into the stride of this by Act VII... Took me a while to get a system going, and the first few I tried didn't drop carapaces at all and I, too, was thinking the quest is bugged; but I can assure you it's not.
First of all, as others have mentioned, it seems that the tarantulas need to strike both the first and last blows to the scarabs; so the first thing to do is to suspend your mercenary and kill off your pet. Also keep an eye out for the hatched spiderlings, as these tend to get summoned late in the fight, and will often kill the scarab.
You can just herd the scarabs into the path of the tarantulas and let them finish them off, but doing this is both slow and increases the chances of a spiderling spawning. The fastest way I found to get the carapaces was:
- Make sure there's a tarantula sitting directly in the path that the scarabs follow when they go round the rock. If there's not, kill a few and hope they respawn in a better location. This can save an awful long time pushing the scarabs round and round waiting for them to get aggro.
- Once the tarantula has started the fight, pile in with some DD (not DoT), and then carry on using melee attack.
- Once the scarab is down to around 20% health, stop attacking and let the tarantula finish it off.
Here's a video that illustrates the process: https://youtu.be/RXlrNln20wo.