Yes, I've been there on the Talendor and Severilous hunt for the book, it took me weeks to finaly get one, I even went as far as making a team of level 50s to kill Nagafen, which didn't get to kill him because it turns out that there are people who perma camp him for some reason. But anyways my luck on this game is weird, sometimes I get items I'm looking for immediately, other times I take weeks or a month to get something to drop, and then there are moments where I get so desperate that I just throw platinum at people for an MQ.
One of my luckiest moments was when one of those MQs went wrong. I was doing the warrior epic and I needed to get a spiroc wingblade, which I was very unhappy about, since I have an irrational fear of death touching mobs. So I just said "***** it I'm going to MQ it!", and started asking in general chat for it.
Eventually a Druid took my offer and we headed off to Freeport to do the turn in. Once we arrived she turned in her part, but ended up getting the reward, some jerk must've haded in one piece and not the other earlier that day. I payed her since she lost her item, and then we went our separate ways. A few moments later she sends me a tell saying that her husband is farming Plane of Sky. I told her that I didn't have any keys, but she told me that they could summon me through a bonfire. I had no idea of what that was at the time, and I'm still not sure of how fellowships work, but I went with it anyway. and they summoned me up to spiroc island and got my blade.
After that they asked me if they could help with anything else, and I told them that I needed a ball of everliving golem from another DTing mob in the Plane of Fear, and they said "ok let's check out if the golems are up!", and they were! even the shade of Cazic Thule was up. The first golem we killed dropped the ball and a Soul Leech which went to a shadowknight friend of theirs who was also doing his epic 1.0, he ended up joining us after that, and I just ended up going through the whole warrior epic with these really nice people I just met, and to top it off some guy offered to power level my warrior and bring me up to speed with the game, but I had to decline since I'm living the silver life.
So yeah, luck just goes up and down!
And it goes on and on. 
To compound my frustration, I began my camp of Phinigel Autropos for my 2nd last Bard Epic item yesterday. 3 kills, no backbone.