alt="Guide to the Mines of Moria - Upper Levels" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/101226">
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MORIA | DUNGEONS
| INSTANCES
| DEEDS
| REPUTATION
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FELLOWSHIP INSTANCES AND SKIRMISHES
THE MIRROR HALLS OF LUMUL-NAR
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Location: Zirakzigil, 13.4N, 108.5W Type: Level 60 Instance - Solo, Small Mobs: Wargs, Merrevail, Bats Description: To bring life back to |
This instance is tied to Volume II Book 8, but can be run at any
time regardless of the player's progress in the epic books. It is
often abbreviated as HoM by those looking for fellowships, and it
contains one of the most difficult and aggravating 3-man
challenges in the game.
The mirrors in Lumul-nar are a favorite target of the merrevail,
who hate the light. They coat the mirrors with filth, and block
the passage of light with nasty-looking black webs and photophobic
doors. The goal here is to create a continuous path of light down
to the heart of Lumul-nar and defeat Ergoth, who commands the
merrevail there.
Start off by dropping down into the first mirror room - look for
the nearest platforms below and jump to those. Some of the falls
are long and will result in falling injuries.
The wargs at the bottom of the shaft are mostly sleeping, but
there is a patrolling matron. Fight her alone in the middle,
between the two groups. Warg matrons have a self-healing
corruption that can be difficult to overcome, and they put out
dreadful cold-based wounds - the icon looks like a black hand on a
blue field with a red border. Be sure to remove corruptions often,
and pot off the wounds as soon as you get them. Once the matron is
down, take out the two groups of weaker wargs and turn the mirror
to open the passageway to the next area.
The next room is a difficult fight and takes some special
planning. There are 2 matrons and a sleeping boss warg,
Frost-tail. First you fight the matrons, and then Frost-tail wakes
up and you fight him. The matrons are beastly - they have a
stacking self-healing corruption and deal devastating wounds. If
the matrons stay near one another for any length of time, the
stacked healing buff can be too difficult to overcome, so the goal
is to keep them separated.
There are many class combinations that work for this fight, but
you need strong DPS, tanking and healing for the matrons. For the
sake of clear illustration, we'll be using a
Guardian/Champion/Minstrel group for this, but other combinations
can use the same strategy.
The Guardian moves to one side of the room, the Champion and
Minstrel to the other. The Minstrel starts out in War-speech and
the Champion in Fervour stance. The Champion pulls the closest
matron, either with a shout or a ranged attack, and the Guardian
pulls the other with a shout. The Guardian tanks his matron on his
side of the room, potting off wounds, using self-heals and morale
potions, and the Champion and Minstrel burn theirs as quickly as
possible. Once the first matron is down, the Champion switches to
a more healing-friendly stance and the Minstrel drops War-speech,
and everyone fights the second matron. Try to conserve power as
much as possible on the second matron, because Frost-tail has a
lot of morale and the fight runs fairly long.
A Hunter with a lot of morale can off-tank the first matron while
burning it, but may need extra healing. And the matrons can be
crowd-controlled by various means. However your group does it, the
goal is to keep the matrons widely-separated and kill them one at
a time.
Once the warg situation is handled, turn the mirrors to open the
passage at the back, loot the chest for Medallions of Lothlorien,
and head down the next shaft.
The first encounter at the bottom of the shaft is a pair of lowly
bats... but appearances can be deceiving. As soon as those bats
are engaged, they spawn in 3 smaller bats each, which will
immediately swarm the main aggro target. Burn the big bats and
ignore the smaller ones - they despawn once the big bats are dead.
Next up is the big room with a lot of mirrors and a bunch of
patrolling merrevail. The ones to watch out for are the
task-mistresses. The mistresses need to be killed quickly because
they have a timed buff that causes them to do massive damage when
it runs out. They also apply deadly wounds (the icon looks like a
glaring yellow eye in a red box) which need to be potted off
quickly.
For mob groups that contain a bat and a morroval, always kill the
bat first. The swarms of lesser bats can be devastating to
healers. Clear all the mobs in this big chamber - up the ramp
first and then down below - and begin working out how to get the
light shaft aimed down the deep hole. It may help to work
"backwards": start at the destination and follow the path back to
the source to see which mirrors need to be turned which way.
The sequence is:
- Go up the north tunnel, and head up the ramp. Turn each mirror
once to make the light shine south across the big chamber. This
opens up a portal on the other side. - Head across to the opened portal and follow the path around to
the down-angled mirror. Turn that one 3 times. It will point
north at another down-angled mirror. - Head back down and take the downward ramps at the south side
of the chamber. Turn the illuminated mirror in the north once to
make it point south. - Turn south mirror once to make it point west. West mirror
points the beam back north to the middle mirror. - Turn middle mirror 3 times to make it point east at the
downward-pointing mirror.
When youget the light shining down the hole, it will open up the
webbing and clear a path to the mirror at the bottom of that
shaft. Follow it down to the bottom, either by jumping through the
webbing or by following the winding tunnels downward.
The mirror at the bottom is guarded by another task-mistress. If
she reaches the mirror, she will spawn a defiler, who will foul
the mirror. When encountering a mistress/defiler duo, always kill
the mistress first to prevent that buff from expiring. Defilers
are less dangerous, but they will periodically summon a cloud of
bats which gives them massive damage mitigation. The cloud of bats
is a corruption which can be dispelled, so dispel it as soon as it
happens.
Clear this room, turn the mirror twice so it points east, loot
the chest for another medallion, and head down the ramps
into the next room. This one requires a crude diagram:
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The glowy purple thing is the epic book quest objective, but in
order to face Ergoth, the group has to get all the mirrors
illuminated and focusing the light onto the lens in the middle.
Mistresses will spawn in around the room and patrol the mirrors,
and every time they reach a clear mirror, they will spawn in a
defiler to foul it up. The group will need to keep killing the
mistresses while one guy turns the mirrors as shown in the
diagram. Once the lens is lit from all four sides, the net beneath
opens up, the mistresses stop respawning and the group can jump
down and fight Ergoth. Make your preparations first, though. Hope
tokens are a particular asset here.
This is one of the most aggravating 3-man fights in the game.
Ergoth stands in the middle of the big lower lens, and a ring of
16 lesser minions stands around the outside. The challenge is to
leave one of each minion type alive (there are 4 types, and 4 of
each type). Before jumping down, target-mark one of each type -
these are your "no-kill" targets. The rest are fair game.
Player movement is hampered for the entire fight. Ergoth will
start with a big knockback and a nasty fear attack, and she has
high damage mitigations. Knock her down a peg or two and she flies
up, becoming unattackable, and calls forth her minnions, who pile
in and begin wailing on everyone... or at least on the healer. DPS
should stay focused on single targets here - AoEs are risky
because they may take out the "no-kill" mobs. Focus on single,
unmarked targets and take out a few of the adds before they
deactivate and Ergoth re-enters the fray.
If you manage to take out a couple of the adds each time, the
fight gets progressively easier. Healers will have the toughest
time here - stay close to the tank so he can pull the adds away,
and be ready to burn panic button skills.
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THE FORGOTTEN TREASURY
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Location: Silvertine Lodes, 11.1S, Type: Level 54 Instance - Fellowship Mobs: Orcs, Uruks, Spirits, Trolls Description: Many ancient halls |
This one is actually a pretty fun challenge on-level. There are 4
stages to this instance, and if the team pays close attention to
the details and has good communication, things will go well.
When you first enter the instance, run right up the the inside
edge of the rings and watch the statues turn, noting the order in
which they do so. This can cut out the trial-and-error guesswork
later on.
Follow the outside ring, fighting the mobs along the way. There
are 2 kinds of fights here: patrolling groups of orcs and spirits,
and the uruk sub-bosses with the crystals in their chests. Watch
the patrollers carefully and only pull those groups when they are
well out of aggro range of the uruks - fighting an uruk at the
same time as the groups of mobs can be overwhelming.
The group mobs are not that special - interrupt healing
inductions and stop attacking the fat ones if the interrupt fails,
and everything should be fine. The uruk sub-bosses are a different
story. These guys have lots of morale, apply some heavy debuffs
and switch between 2 phases during the fight.
Players fighting the bosses will occasionally get marked with an
eye, denoting a heavy damage-over-time debuff. Tanks can't really
do anything about this, but non-tanks can break line of sight with
the boss (ducking around a corner works just fine) and chug a pot
to get rid of it. Poisons and fears are the big ones here -
Hunters will want to spam poison removal on affected players, and
Captains will want to Muster Courage fairly often.
More important than the debuffs is paying attention to the
phase-switching. The uruks have a big crystal stuck to their
chests, and these crystals glow either yellow or purple. During
the yellow phase, the group can attack the uruks normally with
physical attacks. During the purple phase, the uruk has massive
physical mitigation but can still be affected by tactical attacks.
If the group has mainly tactical DPS (Rune-keepers, Minstrels in
War-speech, Lore-masters), kill these guys during the purple
phase. If the group is mainly physical DPS (Hunters, Champions,
Burglars, Captains, Guardians, Wardens), kill the uruks during the
yellow phase. When the uruk dies, he leaves a crystal shard of the
same color as his phase in the chest behind him (i.e. if you kill
him during the yellow phase, you get a yellow crystal shard). Most
groups will want the yellow crystal shards for Morhun later on, so
try to kill the uruks only during yellow phases.
Once a player gets a crystal shard, he can't get another shard of
the same color - they won't appear in the loot for him to roll on.
Take note on which players get which crystal, and repeat until all
six uruks are dead and the upper hall is cleared.
Next, the group needs to turn the statues in the correct order to
unlock the path to Morhun. If an astute player noted the order of
the statues at the very beginning, use that pattern. Otherwise,
it's trial-and-error to find the proper sequence. Put one person
at each wheel and turn the wheels one at a time - if a player
takes a bit of damage after spinning his wheel, it was not his
turn, and the sequence must be started over. Find the first wheel,
then first and second, then first, second and third, and so on
until all the statues are turned and the way is opened.
When all the statues are turned and the way is clear, jump down
into the arena with the big statue and head to the vault at the
back where Morhun awaits. For the Morhun fight, the group will
want to figure out a sequence for using the yellow crystals -
Morhun does the same phase-switching as the uruk mini-bosses, and
getting into melee range and using a yellow crystal will force him
out of the purple phase and into the yellow one, making him
susceptible to physical attacks.
The other thing to watch out for in this fight is the acid
clouds, which Morhun will drop periodically. Back out of them when
they appear and find a clear spot to fight in. Pot off any other
debuffs as they happen, and the fight should go fairly smoothly.
After you loot Morhun's chests, there's one more challenge: Skum
and Urauth, the troll tag-team, who will attempt to block your
escape. These guys hit damn hard when they pair up, so keep them
separated: the tank picks up one and holds him on one side of the
room, and everyone else burns the second one on the other side.
From time to time, one or the other of the trolls will break off
from whatever he is doing to go check on his brother - be prepared
for a beatdown then, but it doesn't last long.
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BATTLE OF THE WAY OF SMITHS
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Location: Silvertine Lodes, Type: Skirmish - Solo, Duo, Small Mobs: Wargs, Orcs, Goblins, Grims, Description: With the revelation |
This defensive skirmish becomes available at level 55, but
doesn't unlock until the player begins Volume II Book 5 Chapter 5.
It starts with a few rounds of assaults on the North, West and
East forges on the lower floor. The dwarf NPCs there contribute to
the defense and are sturdy and stalwart combatants for the most
part. Encounters pop up around the forges or under the stair
platform, and can be dragged to the forges to get the NPCs
attacking the tougher mobs. Each of the stations has a couple of
banners that can be picked up and placed for various effects -
healing auras, outgoing damage increasers and other interesting
effects. A player can have one of each color of banner in his
inventory.
After two rounds of a handful of assaults on the forges, the
enemies will catch wise ane begin assaulting Stothkell on the
supervisor's platform. Stothkell is pretty tough and weathers the
storm stoically. After a couple of charges, and for the final
assault, the enemies call in the big guns - a massive,
hard-hitting troll named Harna, and a couple of goblin
troll-keepers. Stothkell can handle the goblins, but you may want
to wrangle Harna well away from him. And now would be a good time
to plant all the banners you've collected.
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MORIA | DUNGEONS
| INSTANCES
| DEEDS
| REPUTATION
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