The Story So Far...

  During the quest for the Young Olthoi Queen, the Aun Drumers stop their playing and the Olthoi start to swarm...

Step 0: Preparation

• Bane armor for Bludgeoning attacks from Brood Nobles

• Slashing, Piercing, Acid, and Bludgeoning protection

• Melee - Either 3 Melee per Olthoi Brood Noble, or a Melee and a Mage to Imperil

Step 1: Find Some Brood Nobles

  When the Drumers are silenced, a message will go out server wide stating that "The Olthoi in the north/east/south/west of Marae have begun to swarm!  When this happens goto the location indicated and look for Olthoi Soldiers and Nobles spawning.

  Each group of this has a "boss character," unidentifiable from the rest.  When this boss character is killed, a local message goes out and upgrades the swarm.  This will happen twice, then the Brood Nobles will appear.

Step 2: Killing Brood Nobles

  Ok, Brood Nobles heal ridiculously fast, so 1 melee or even 2 may not be able to bring one down.  They have 1000 health, and NEVER run out of Stamina.  Bludgeoning attacks is the best, with piercing second.  They also do BLUDGEONING attacks.

  The best bet is to draw them out one at a time by casting a vuln or imperil at them from a short distance away.  They have very high magic defense, a 350 buffed magic skill hits on the roughly 40-50% of the time.  Once you have drawn them out, focus your attacks on one, and the others will go back to the spawn point.

  Like Step 1, each group has one "boss character."  When this one is killed, an area-wide message goes out that tells you it's all over for that area, and the rest of them die.  This one has the Tessera on it.

Step 3: Ok, just what is a Tessera, anyhow?

  Encarta Dictionary Definition:

tes·ser·a [téssr] ( plural tes·ser·ae [téss r] ) noun

1. mosaic piece:  a small square of stone, tile, or glass used to make a mosaic

2. die:  a piece of bone or wood that was used in ancient Greece and Rome as a die, tally, or ticket

[Mid-17th century. Via Latin from, ultimately, Greek tesseres , a variant of tessares "four," from the sides of the square.]

  Ok, now that we have the definition out of the way, basically, a Tessera is a stone tile, with a picture on it.  In AC, this stone tile can be used to raise any skill by one point.  YES, ANY SKILL BY ONE POINT.  Whatever picture is on the Tessera is the skill that can be raised.  So for example, I got a War Magic Tessera.  I do not have war magic, so I went off to subway and said, "I have a WAR MAGIC TESSERA for trade!!"  Inside of 10 seconds my screen was filled with text from people wanting to buy it off of me.  I ended up trading it for 40 Singularity Keys, which tells you how valuable it can be.  (The guy I traded it to need 38 million xps for one point of War Magic Skill.)