Kepkhet Marrowfeast

Description
Referred to as The Queen of Scarabs, this vicious lady hides in the Crystal Desert surrounded by her minions: Marrow Scarab and Scarab Nest Builders.

This is what Aurek the Scarab Hunter explains about her:


 * For years I have hunted the elusive and deadly Kepkhet, Queen of the Scarabs. Every time I have closed in on her location, she and her brood move on and seem to disappear into thin air again. Recently, I have noticed a pattern in their selection of nesting sites. It seems that they always travel to places where death is abundant, building their nests among rotting corpses and on blood-soaked grounds, usually places of warfare, sacrifice, or slaughter.

In this case, she was obviously attracted by plenty of corpses that were the result of excessive farming in the area (see Notes).

Quests involved in

 * Family Soul

Location

 * Crystal Desert
 * Prophet's Path



Skills Used

 * (Elite)
 * (Elite)
 * (Elite)
 * (Elite)



Items Dropped

 * Kepkhet's Refuge (Unique)

Strategy

 * Two or three man farming teams have a relatively easy time farming Kepkhet. A W/Mo or W/N, an elementalist, and a monk can form a good farming group.  The caster stays an aggro bubble away from the warrior when he aggros monsters. The monsters around Kepkhet are arranged in a circle, with two outside patrol groups of four scarabs each.  Take out the patrol group first and then to take out all the monsters around Kepkhet. Then go after the Queen herself. Echo/Arcane Echo/Glyph of Renewal Meteor Showers when she is down to 3/4 health. When she casts Mark of Protection, stop attacking for the full 10 seconds or bring enchantment removal. Repeat as necessary.
 * A Ranger specializing in interrupts can be a good addition to a farming party. Nature's Renewal slows the casting of all her enchantments and makes the Queen susceptible to easy interrupts. Distracting the Queen while she spams Guardian will effectively hinder her ability to heal herself and her minions for 20 seconds. Mark of Protection which she tends to cast after she's below 50% health can easily be interrupted with Savage Shot. In addition, although expensive in energy cost, a timely Concussion Shot can render her pretty useless, if someone else with a high attack rating (such as a Warrior) is also busy with the Queen. Putting a Favorable Winds beside the Nature's Renewal helps greatly with the timing of the interrupts. Do not forget to consult other party members about their builds though, since the Nature's Renewal will also penalize their enchantments and hexes.
 * Diversion brings the Queen down quickly and is very useful when you don't want to kill all the monsters surrounding her.
 * Since most of Kepkhet's skills are enchantments, skills that hinder, remove, counter or exploit enchantments are very effective.
 * A player can solo Kepkhet by bringing adequate skills (enchantment removal, interruption, skill disabling, etc.) and then pulling her to the Griffons to the east by taking out one or two of her minions. As soon as she attacks, take her to the Griffons and then move out after they start fighting. Wait until they kill the smaller minions, then chip in and attack her when they start attacking her.
 * Rushing in to attack all the minions is a very bad idea. It is easy, with practice, for one target to drag her away from them. If you are farming with heroes or henchmen, set them to stand away from her group, and run in yourself. Most of the other minions will stay where they are, but she will follow you, taking two or three minions with her. Then pull her towards your heroes and focus all your attacks on one enemy at a time.
 * If you are farming with Olias or a necromancer player, consider bringing Well of Suffering. It will provide degeneration that is neither a hex or a condition and thus cannot be removed unless she moves away, which she rarely will. Alternately, bring Well of the Profane.