Runes of Magic US / AU

A little disclaimer: this is just a quick translation of the original guide. I might not have time to smoothen it out before the end of the event (gardening duties etc... ). I hope the text below is clear enough.
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You’ll need: 189 Piecemeal Herbs + 93 Exquisite Ribbons + 93 transmutator charges

You'll get: a permanent mount for 2 riders. Quite nice, but a warning: it shakes like hell, after 2 days you’ll get a guaranteed motion sickness. Also, movement mechanics is broken: if you are on foot or on any other mount you can e.g. click on a far NPC, hit Attack and you’ll walk/ride to this NPC. But the birthday mount stops after just a few steps (it does go all the way if as a workaround you click on the ground and not on an NPC). Anyway, it’s free (save the time and tokens for charges) and otherwise it does work, so I won’t complain too much...

1. Ribbons
   
2. Herbs
   
3. Transmutation
   
4. Exchange
   

Ribbons and herbs are not bound: you can farm them on one toon and use on another, or buy on AH. Transmutation and exchange need to be done on the toon which is to get the mount.

1. Ribbons:

• You can buy on the AH (Exquisite Ribbon); last year on Saoraid they were about 30k per, so 93 would cost 2.8kk;
  
• Theoretically you can get them from a few event quests; in practice, I think, only two are easy and predictable farms: Space Supremacy and the froggy storm.
  

======= Space Supremacy

The task is given by Gredd Starchaser, the middle of the 3 NPCs standing on the bridge in front of crows (just opposite the garden). The tasks from other NPCs here do not give ribbons. You’ll get a 3 minutes buff . You have to jump into colorful shapes - blue spheres, green cubes or yellow stars. It’s best to stand on one of the middle platforms (those going straight upwards). After jumping at at least one block you get an orange (solar-eclipse shape) buff with a counter .

If you jump into more blocks you will get extra rewards, but to get ribbons it’s enough to jump into one block. And you do not need to stay in the field of play - no matter where you are, if you have the second buff , then when the first buff ends you’ll get a certificate and 3 ribbons.

So the easiest way to farm ribbons is:

• you log in to an alt for the garden
  
• but before going to the Garden and Jamie first talk to the NPC of Supremacy and jump into 1 block (it takes really just a moment);
  
• then right away go to the Garden/Jamie without waiting for the 3 minutes;
  
• when you finish the garden and talk to Jamie, the Supremacy buff will be almost finished; when it does you get 3 Ribbons (without extra time/effort, once a day on each alt which anyway is parked on the bridge!)
  

======= Storm of frogs

• On the bridge in Varanas there is a cook Convokenz Rush;
  
• talk to him and you’ll get a 7-day buff;
  
• On an island in Lake of Magic Mist (north part of Silverspring) there will be a storm: between 3 and 3:20, 6 and 6:20, 9 and 9:20, etc. (every 3 hours); entering the island changes the 7-day buff into a 2-minutes one;
  
• Not relevant to ribbons: during these 2 minutes you can collect points by walking into falling frogs (10 points for the princess, 5 for red, one for a regular one, a blue one fears you - during the fear time you don’t get any points);
  
• After 2 minutes when the buff is finished, you can turn in the quest at the cook on the bridge in Varanas - this always gives you 3 event Ribbons and a certificate; and if you gathered enough frogs, you can get some Phirius shells (I think: 3 or 5) -> in my opinion is not worth it (in comparison to 50 shells from a mini);
  
• You can repeat more than once a day, each time for 1 transport rune;
  

Tactics on max ribbons, 1-toon:

• Talk with the cook, eg. about 8:55, run to the island before 9:00
  
• at 9:00 the buff changes to the 2-minutes one; collect no frogs, return at once to the cook on the bridge; it’s great to have a stable buff from the castle, but probably not worth it to try to use the housemaid potion: you’ll have to wait until the 2-minutes buff finishes anyway, so no reason to hurry that much;
  
• after the buff will have ended - talk with the cook: get 3 Ribbon and certificate;
  
• Talk again and reset paying 1 transport rune (get the 7-day buff);
  
• Run to the island (now the housemaid potion may be worth it), the buff changes to the 2-minutes one, go back to Varanas etc.
  
• Within 20 minutes you can easily do 5-6 rounds
  
• You can turn in the last quest already after 9:20; restriction "9:00-9:20" applies only to the time when the 7day buff can change to the 2minutes one on the island.
  

A few alternatives are to have alts talk to the cook beforehand, and have them parked on the island, log in during the storm and run to Varanas. Takes quite some logging in etc. Quite crazy.

A better way is to repeat the 1-toon scenario with multiple “friends” on follow (they just need to get on the mount after getting out of the water and talk to the cook, otherwise no action needed).

Anyway: on 93 Ribbon need to give this quest 31 times ... If you do no Supremacy and just the storm, it's hard to do this on one toon if you take limited time of the storm into account. If you go for the storm, I recommend "friends" on follow.

But still, the supremacy on multiple alts is way easier. If you are running out of time at the end of the event, both the supremacy and the storm can be repeated after paying 1 transport rune.

Note that the only downside of the supremacy is that players can disturb each other, while the storm can be farmed by any number of toons at the same time.

• You can buy on the AH (Piecemeal Herbs), but at Saoraid they are for about 40k per; 189 herbs would cost more than 7,5kk - in my opinion a lot;
  
• Good news: you can farm them yourself in one day (it takes approx. 1.5 hours) or spread the farming out to 2 days.
  

Preparation:

• Find 3 NPCs (they are on all channels), to know where to run to:
  - Anlyk Messe in Varanas West (29.8, 42.1);
  - Nate Stange in Varanas East (40.3, 24.0) - he is under the roof, but you can talk with him by clicking through the fence;
  - Nonn Saffish in Logar (close to Agnes) (48.4, 42.7);
  
• EMPTY your backpack: to be safe, if you want to farm it all at one time - you need 50 empty slots;
  
• You will need to run and teleport a lot: to avoid crashes, set the graphics to minimum and re-log before you start running.
  
• Also have an addon to auto-accept transport costs.
  

The quest is really easy, but it takes a lot of time (both parts together about 1.5 hours) - terrible boredom. Description will be longish, because in my opinion it is worth to fight for effectiveness: if you can have 45 minutes of stupid running around instead of an hour it is worth it.

The first part of the quest:

• The idea is to gather as much as possible sets of 3 lucks (red hearts) + 3 tears (blue); if you want to get the herbs in one go, you’ll need approx. 19-21 sets, but this part is relatively quick and cannot be repeated the same day, so I recommend to get eg. 25 sets;
  
• In Varanas before the bridge there is an old crone, Flogg Shuiss;
  
• Offer her your help; you’ll get a potion;
  
• Further near the water find a place with 2 frogs not far from each other;
  
• Stand between them
  
• When you use the potion from Flogg, an action bar will appears with 2 skills (as in the quest for the bags in Xaviera): when you use several times a blue skill on a frog you’ll get blue tear; if you use a few times the red skill on the same frog, you’ll get a red heart;
  
• skills do not cancel each other, but if a frog has a few red and a few blue buffs, and next blue gives you the tear then the frog vanishes and the red buffs get wasted - it’s better to have one frog designated for the red buffs and one for the blue buffs.
  

Effectiveness hints:

• have your backpack open all the time: you can trace this way how many of the tears and hearts you have already;
  
• Ofc you should collect equal sets: (3 hearts + 3 tears), (3 hearts + 3 tears), (3 hearts + 3 tears) and so on.
  

So, for example, if you see in your backpack that you have more blue tears, try to focus on casting the red skill on your “red” frog.

If you will run very fast, it can get from one set about 10 herbs (sometimes less, sometimes more); so in theory to get 189 herbs it should be enough to have about 19 sets; but sometimes something can go wrong, etc. - this part just does not take so long, so again I recommend to get 25 sets of 3 blue tears + 3 red lucks. Leftovers (herbs, not tears/lucks!) can easily be sold on AH.

Once you have as many as you wanted: talk again to Flogg Shuiss (the crone in front of the Varans bridge); without a need of closing the window, clicking on her turns 3 hearts + 3 tears into one pink potion (they do not stack, but they occupy twice less space in your backpack than tears + hearts).

Note: tears and hearts have validity of one hour: you have to exchange them all as soon as possible. Pink pots are permanent: when running (see below) you can do make breaks between potions if you like.

Each pink pot gives you a 2-minute buff. You can get herbs from the 3 NPCs (western, eastern, Logar), but only if this buff is active. So simply repeat: use the potion, run to the NPCs as many times as possible, use the potion, run to the NPCs and so on.

So go to the NPC in Varanas West. Just before it use a potion (you can do this without getting off your mount!), talk to the NPC and get 1-3 herbs (often 3 ), run to the teleport => East, talk to the NPC, get herbs, teleport to the Varanas gates, snoop to Logar, talk to the NPC, get herbs, back to Snoop => Varanas, teleport to the West, and from the beginning: the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd NPC.

When it comes to effectiveness: once you get the herbs you do not have to shut the dialog window - it will just disappear when you leave. In my case the biggest time costs are due to loading of zones after teleporting: in my opinion, you should have the stable buff from the castle, but the housemaid potion is too much hassle.

Important: when the pink-potion buff ends, the order of NPCS does NOT get reset. If for example it has ended just after you have talked to the NPC in eastern Varanas then you have to go to Logar and use the next pink potions just before the NPCs in Logar (and not in the West where it all begins).

If you want to take it to to the extreme, macros like these can help you a lot.

NOTE: Ribbon and herbs are not bound (farm them on a toon with the best stable, or buy them on AH), but the results of transmutation (bag of herbs, basket of herb, gift of herbs) are bound => you have to do the transmutation on the toon on which you want to get the mount!!!

After the previous steps you should have already 189 herbs (from running to 3 NPCs; or AH) + 93 ribbon (from supremacy or the storm; or AH). You also need 93 arcane transmutator charges (you can buy them for 1000 tokens Phirius).

If you have a perfectly exact amount of materials then when merging nothing can go wrong. I myself divide them into three sets:

• 81 herbs + 40 ribbons
  
• 81 herbs + 40 ribbons
  
• 27 herbs + 13 ribbons
  

You will transmute 3 herbs (or derivatives thereof) with one ribbon. Try to keep backpack close to the transmutator, and stack items immediately in sets of 3 and transmute them immediately further.

Imho, if you want to do this on more than one toon and you want have a slight chance of staying sane the only option is to have the QuickSplit addon (you set /qsplit 3, and then just e.g. Ctrl+Shift to click to split-off a stack of 3 herbs from a bigger stack - very useful for some other transmutations as well!).

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Transmutation:

• 3 herbs + a ribbon => a bag of herbs
  
• 3 packs + a ribbon => a basket of herbs
  
• after using up 81 herbs and 40 ribbons you’ll have a gift of herbs
  

After transmuting everything you should have one basket of herbs plus two gifts of herbs.

The only time you can make a mistake, so be careful!

With two gifts and a basket in your backpack, go back to the old crone Flogg Shuiss. Select the option "Is this what you are looking for?"

Note: if you bought mats on AH or farmed them on a different toon, you won’t have this dialog option. You need to take the quest from the point 2 above, farm one set of 3 tears + 3 lucks and hand it in. After that you will get the dialog option "Is this what you are looking for?"

Exchange:

• get a "Flame Beast Horn (30 days)" mount for one Herb Gift Box
  
• get a "Red Flame Crysta" (for a Herb Basket)
  
• Then get Flame Beast Horn (permanent) for: the second Herb Basket, Red Flame Crystal and the 30-days mount.
  

(And note again the opportunity to make a mistake: do this last step we very carefully, the second gift is needed for a final exchange, be careful NOT to exchange it for a second 30-day mount!)

I haven't tried it but if you want, you can also get a 3% faster version with a tiny PVP bonus:

Quoted from "Soriya"

Yes, the mystery gift is an exact replica of the permanent mount you can get with the ribbons, with the 2 minor difference: A) 3% extra movement speed for a total of 68% and 3% resistance against player damage. I got it a few days ago, I was a little bit disappointed given the amount of work needed to get the mystery gift, but oh well.

Here you can find a video tutorial by Bluesons00.

That's it - good luck!

Just a small update:
Definitely the most time consuming part is running to the three NPCs (West, East and Logar) to get herbs. Boring like hell, plus it's easy to make mistakes.


So here is a nice little macro that does all the talking for you. I use it with MacroHelper (if you don't have it - it's an addon, you can download it e.g. here), but if you get rid of spaces and comments it might fit the character limit so it might be useable as just a "normal" macro.

Anyway, I'd still go for the macro helper.
1. download macro helper and put it in your addons
2. put the attached script in MacroHelper/Scripts folder, or copy the text from the spoiler bellow to birthday_EN.lua file in this folder (you actually have to rename the file! I cannot attach it if it has .lua extension [which is pretty stupid restriction of the .us forum])
3. create a macro

4. Important: review the snoop portals. If you talk to the Snoop in Varanas, the position of "Logar" option depends on what portals you do have open on that particular toon. Just talk to this snoop and count from the top 1,2,3... In my case Logar is the 5th option.

Do the same with the Snoop in Logar.

(PS: If you use a not-English client, you have to check the names of the NPCs (in particular: the Snoop!) and the name of the Attack skill in your language.)

5. After you have exchanged all the hearts and tears for tons of pink pots, you will need to start running. Just get on your best mount, go to the teleport on the bridge, and hit the macro once or twice (if you are far, the first hit will select the NPC and make you walk to her, the second hit will teleport you to Varanas West). Go to the first npc, use the pink pot without getting off your horse, and hit the macro twice (once from far, you can be a bit around the corner! the second time just by the NPC), go to the teleport at West and hit the macro twice (it will teleport you to East), go to the herbs NPC, hit the macro twice, go to teleport at East, hit the macro twice (it will teleport you to the Bridge), go to the Snoop, hit the macro twice and so on until the buff from the pink potion runs out. Then use the next potion and so on.


After talking to the herbs NPC always check in the logs in the chat frame that you did get the Herbs! If you simply continue without getting the herbs from the previous NPC, the next one won't give you any, you'll have to go back to the missed one! Herbs are not bound, gather them on the toon which has access to the best stables.