How to look for the book of a skill: one book drops from one monster, which books are simply sold by three traders, and the locations where most of the books learnt after the second profession are concentrated.
When I first started trading in books, I made myself a little table. Usually such tables give the level at which the book will be needed for learning the skill. I think that is wrong. You have to know from whom this or that book can be knocked out and what the level of that mob is, in order to figure out with which character we are going to knock the book out. And of course the location where the mob we need is.
How to trade in books is told in a separate article: Trading spellbooks and amulets on Interlude servers; here we look only at the drop from mobs. The first rule in looking for books: a particular book drops from only one particular mob, and from nobody else. So either you knock out the book you need (no matter how long it takes), or you leave with nothing (that is, go to Giran to shout about buying the book).
Some books, although they drop from mobs, are also sold by NPCs: Natasha stands opposite the smithy among the traders in Rune, Rupert downstairs in the grocery shop in Goddard, Wesley in the basement of the Ivory Tower (the NPC from whom the quest for reagents is taken). For the C5 chronicle the book Summon Friend is sold in Goddard and in Rune.
Where the books are concentrated
There are several locations where the books learnt after the second profession are concentrated; the main part of the mobs with the drop of these books is there.
- Ivory Tower Crater: books drop from all the mobs, and the drop of each mob has at least three different books, some as many as five. Mostly these are the spellbooks needed right after the second profession or a little later. Somebody is constantly running about here and knocking something out.
- Timak Outpost: only amulets for warcryers and overlords drop here. From all the mobs except the one that summons minions.
- The Enchanted Valley: books drop from all the mobs, both below and above.
- Frozen Labyrinth: books drop from all the central mobs of the groups. Since this location was introduced in the C5 chronicle, the drop of the books needed for learning the new skills added in that chronicle was put here.
- Primeval Isle: the books needed for learning the domes and the third-profession skills introduced in Interlude were put here.
The rest of the books were distributed evenly among various locations; as a rule, only one kind of mob in a location (sometimes two) has the drop of some book. The catacombs and necropolises got their portion of books too, from level 40 to level 80, also 1-2 kinds of mobs per dungeon. If a mob is in the catacombs only in the week of struggle, it means that, as usual on Interlude, the Dawn wins, and in the week of victory that mob will not be in the catacombs.
On the page of each spellbook, amulet and blueprint there is the monster it drops from, with its level and location.