Kobold Island is a small island with a huge wealth of Dragonshards on it. However, you can’t just pick them up. You will need to activate the Dragonshard Extractors spread across the island to extract the Dragonshards.
You are asked to go in with a group and get these Dragonshard Extractors running in order to collect your quota. You will have to defend them since they will be attacked when they are activated.
You won’t have much time to complete everything, so try to have your strategy ready before you enter.
The best strategy for Kobold Island is to break into teams and keep your section of the island secure and protected.
Get the small extractors up and running as soon as you can. Keep an eye on them and fight off anything that may attack them. If you are shorthanded, put an upgraded turret at each site to protect it. Determine what direction the enemy approaches from and place the turret in a location that will cover that and the shard Extractor.
When you zone in, buff up and summon anything you may want. Then head straight off the front of the airship. There is a Small Dragonshard Extractor in front of you and this should be the first one you power up. Just to the north are 4 kobold camps. Slaughter them for parts and then head back to the Extractor. Power it up and leave someone to protect it while the rest of the group splits. Some should head north, while the others head west. You should focus on the north half of the map to start. Once you get the center and northern Small Dragonshard Extractors powered up and running, you can begin to spread out to protect and upgrade them.
- Small Extractors are cheaper to get going but will not harvest as many as the large ones.
- Small Extractors extract Dragonshards at .25 per Tier. They can be upgraded once up to Tier 2. Dragonshard costs vary with quest.
- Large Extractors extract Dragonshards at 2.5 per Tier. They can be upgraded twice for a total of 7.5 Dragonshards per second. Dragonshard costs vary with quest.
- The Archon will drop Dragonshards so snatch those up if you can and are close. Don’t stop everything to hunt it down since it doesn’t really drop that many.
- The supply crates are a nice bonus but don’t waste time hunting those down either. The bonuses they give are just not worth the wasted time. They will sit around for a couple minutes then self destruct.
- Red named creatures protect the large Extractors. They will drop supply crates into your inventory when they die.
- Once the Extractors are activated, you can buy magefire turrets to protect them. Keep in mind that you can only have 5 without using a requisition form.
- With a cap of only 5 magefire cannons without a requisition form, you should only place 1 per Dragonshard Extractor and upgrade it to Tier 2.
- Do not use any magefire cannons if you are actively protecting a turret.
- With the Large Dragonshard Harvestors costing so much more than the small ones, make sure to get the small ones up and running and upgraded as soon as you can. This way you can produce enough to finance the large ones.
Kobold Chaos
- Level: 4-15
- Duration: 15 Minutes
- Pays: Crude Talisman
- Quest Completion Goal: Harvest 500 Dragonshards
- Star Optional: Fully upgrade all Large Extractors
- Star Optional: Destroy the Lantern Archon
- Star Optional: Desecrate all 6 Kobold Idols
- Star Optional: Defeat an Island Djinn
Do not destroy the kobold idols. This is a good thing to do once you have reached your goal. It’s a good idea to keep the kobolds there so they will respawn. Once you hit quota, take out the Kobold Idols for the easy optional.
Once you have the small extractors going have a couple of people run between the south and east extractors and the north and west extractors to keep them free of enemies. Or you can set up some turrets at each one. Make sure to upgrade the turrets since the first tier is not strong enough to last and will be overrun by enemies.
As you begin to get a lot of Dragonshard, get the Large Dragonshard Harvestors going. Upgrade them as soon as you can and try to avoid extra expenses such as extra turrets or letting the small ones get destroyed. If they do get destroyed, you can restart them but it will eat up parts.
As the Large Extractors get upgraded, you will notice that you will really start to rake in the Dragonshards. Make sure these stay protected above all else. Let a Small Extractor get destroyed if you need to, because the Large Extractors bring in a lot more Dragonshards.
If you are trying to get the Star Optional, Destroy the Lantern Archon, make sure to jump on it as soon as it arrives. You have a limited time to kill it so do it fast! It is a lot tougher than other monsters on this island so be ready to dish some damage. When it dies all of its bounty will be left behind.
The Disruptor
- Level: 10-20
- Duration: 15 Minutes
- Pays: Necromantic Charm
- Quest Completion Goal: Collect 400 Dragonshards
- Star Optional: Fully Upgrade all three Large Extractors
- Star Optional: Leave the Entropic Giant Skeleton alive for 5 minutes
- Star Optional: Have 10 Level 2 Turrets active at once
- Star Optional: Do not let any Extractors get destroyed
Begin this as you do the other quests of Kobold Island. It’s always best to get things up and running as fast as possible. Get the Large Extractors going as soon as you can but be sure to protect the small ones. You may want to put upgraded turrets or park hirelings to watch them. You don’t want any of them to be destroyed or you will not get the Star Optional. Have group members protect them until you get a Large Extractor going. Then put up an upgraded turret at each Small Extractor and move to the large ones to clear them out and get them going.
One of the optionals is to get 10 fully upgraded turrets up at once. Since there is a 5 turret cap, you will have to use a turret requisition to make this Star Optional. Hopefully, you are lucky enough to get a requisition, otherwise you will have to buy them in the store. I am a little disappointed in Turbine for this one. We should be able to get all Star Optionals without having to use the store. The Turbine Store should be there to help or enhance the game, not be required for any quest. But I digress…
The Star Optional for the Entropic Giant Skeleton can be achieved in multiple arrivals of the Entropic Giant Skeleton. He seemed to show up a few minutes after the Dragonshard Extractors are started. Then it shows up a few minutes after it is destroyed. Try to kill him when he first shows up. That way you can still work on getting the Large Extractors set up, and you can decide if you have time to do this Star Optional the next time he shows up.
If you are tackling this optional in one shot, use these 5 minutes to clear the island and slaughter kobolds for parts. You can also use what shards you have to place your turrets, and make sure to upgrade them! This way once the Star Optional rolls over to being complete you can slaughter the Entropic Giant Skeleton and get right back to kicking out Dragonshards.
Short Cuts
- Level: 15-20
- Duration: 10 Minutes
- Pays: Orthon Metal Scrap
- Quest Completion Goal: Collect 400 Dragonshards
- Star Optional: Do not kill any Kobolds
- Star Optional: Deplete all portals
- Star Optional: Kill 25 Orthon Lieutenants
- Star Optional: Maintain an extraction rate of 20 Shards per second for 2 minutes
The portals are pretty easy to use up. Just going through them 3 times will use them up. You will be able to tell as they start out round and will get skinnier and skinnier with each use. There is a delay before you can use it again once you pop out but it is only around 20 seconds or so. Using a portal will randomly teleport you to another portal location on the island. It may even teleport you to the same portal location.
To get the Star Optional, Do Not Kill Kobolds, you will need to run around and desecrate the Kobold Idols. This will get you parts without killing the kobolds. Use these parts wisely as they will be the only ones you will be able to get.
For the Star Optional of Maintain a Rate of 20 Per Second, you have to have most of the Large Extractors fully upgraded. Each Large Extractor will produce 7.5 crystals per second at Tier 3. There are three of them so that makes 21 total dragonshards per second. The Small Extractors only do .25 per tier so they really do nothing to help with this. Get all of the Large Extractors upgraded and protected as soon as possible.
The Disruptor~ Epic
- Level: 21-25
- Duration: 15 Minutes
- Pays: Epic Necromantic Charm
- Quest Completion Goal: Collect 750 Dragonshards
- Star Optional: Fully Upgrade all three Large Extractors
- Star Optional: Leave the Entropic Giant Skeleton alive for 5 minutes
- Star Optional: Have 10 Level 2 Turrets active at once
- Star Optional: Do not let any Extractors get destroyed
This quest is similar to the regular The Disruptor challenge quest. Refer to the guide above for tips and tricks about how to complete this challenge quest.
Short Cuts ~ Epic
- Level: 21-25
- Duration: 10 Minutes
- Pays: Epic Orthon Metal Scrap
- Quest Completion Goal: Collect 750 Dragonshards
- Star Optional: Do not kill any Kobolds
- Star Optional: Deplete all portals
- Star Optional: Kill 25 Orthon Lieutenants
- Star Optional: Maintain an extraction rate of 20 Shards per second for 2 minutes
This quest is similar to the regular Short Cuts challenge quest. Refer to the guide above for tips and tricks about how to complete this challenge quest.
In addition, the extractor crystals can be targeted with invisibilty spells making protecting them quite a lot easier.
I have heard about this trick though I suspect this might be considered an exploit. I expect this will probably be fixed in the future.
There was much beard scratching done in general over the exploit question so I’ll try to be brief here. I wondered if it was very much different than casting invisibility on Commander Tesara in the Gladewatch outpost defence. The difference being casting it on a human you need to defend versus an inanimate object you need to defend. In P&P you can cast it on objects, leading me more towards the conclusion it’s creative and clever play rather than an exploit.
That said in P&P you can also be a druid, those systems are not directly comparable. When all said and done the decision is ultimately up to the powers that be, not the general concensus on the internet, so while I’m sure it can be looked at either way, I hope they don’t “fix” it.
I’m all for creative and innovative ways to win quests. That is what D&D is all about, not just seeing who can bash the fastest and hardest. Unfortunately the trend has seemed to lead towards the later recently in DDO. :(