Taken from the EQ-IQ guide to Stilettos Order’s Intercepted

As with all Heritage Quests the goal reward is an item that was usually a item that was highly desired during the original Everquest days. This quest is no exception to this rule. The reward is the controversial Manastone. The Manastone was a rare drop from an Evil Eye mob in the Lower Guk zone. This is the same mob that also drops the Bag of Sewn Evil-Eye which is a reward for Foomby’s Stolen Goods Heritage Quest as well. The drop rate was sometimes reported to be some where around 1 in 100.

The Manastone was a much overpowered item in the game and was soon nerfed around the time the Kunark expansion pack was released. It was also removed from the loot table of the Evil Eye mob and stopped dropping altogether. Now the funny thing is that Sony did not remove the item or actually really completely nerf the Manastone itself. What they did do was prevent it from dropping as well as prevent it from being used in any new zones other than the original pre-Kunark zones. This nerf was also extended to any old world zone that was revamp as well. This means zones such as the Commonlands, Lavastorm and Desert of Ro zones will not allow the Manastone to be used.

So why was Manastone considered so overpowered? Let’s look back at the early days of Everquest when mana regeneration was very slow as compared to the way it is today. For those healers or mages that were lucky enough to own this Manastone they would never run out of mana. Forgive me if I am off a little here but from what I understand from my reading the Manastone itself would sacrifice 60% of your total heath and then take one third of that add and it to your mana pool. So try to imagine that you had 6000 Hit points. Take 60% of that to get 2400 hit points sacrificed. Then divide that by 3 to get 800 mana. Now cast a Heal over Time spell that uses 400 mana. You just got back a net of +400 Mana and full heath as a result of your Heath over Time Spell. You could then click on the Manastone again and then heal. This all adds up to some very fast regen. These are not exact numbers and are used to illustrate how powerful the Manastone was in a time where mana regen was very slow. Today the Manastone still remains in Everquest mainly as a relic of the past. At times after it ceased to drop it could be found on in the Bazaar going for as high a 1 million plat. With today’s faster mana regen and the revamping of the old world zones the Manastone is now just an old relic of a forgotten time.

For more on the Manastone see show 10 on Stilettos Order’s Intercepted.