The Hidden Forest

Is there a specific reason that this quest wont allow you to pre-loot the quest items?
I was killing in SH for hours collecting all that junk w/o the quest (like nearly every other quest on the server)
and when I went back to start turning stuff in it was all useless and had to be deleted and re collected.
By the way you will need to restart the SH zone because when that little gnome said "No not THIS Silver Cog,
I want a different one!" I caved in his skull.

Gem of Corruption
Gem of Power
Gem of Ability
Gem of Control
Silver Cog
Bronze Cog
Lost Toolbox
Shard of Metal
Chunk of Mithril
Focus Crystal

You know it's 2 separate quests from 2 different npc's, right? The first quest is for the 4 gems and the second quest is for the remaining 6 items.

Yep, and neither will allow you to pre loot.

These two quests are a weird mix of item collection and flags. That's why you cant pre-loot anything because you dont get flagged for the item until you pick it up.

I guess I dont get the flag part. What's the point of having the flags on these quests if they are item collection quests? To prevent pre-looting quest items? Why?

It does suck that you cannot preloot these.

You can definitely pre loot the second quest. You don't need to have all the task steps completed to combine and turn in the final item. As long as you have the quest active you can turn in the combined item for the bot.