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Sundered Splitpaw: Upper Caves

The Upper Caves is your link from Thundering Steppes to the Splitpaw Den, an non-instanced NPC area that serves as a hub to the many Splitpaw adventure zones.  This zone is instanced (created just for you or your group; you won't find any other players inside) and scalable (mobs inside are scaled to bracket your level, or your groups average level)  and can be skipped by using a teleportation shard, a quest reward that will be explained later.

Note that even in the solo instance, you may encounter heroic mobs.  Choose your battles wisely, and avoid adds at all cost.  You *should* be able to solo any mobs between the entrance and the Den zone-in with relative ease, I've spoken with soloers of every archetype that have been able to work their way in.  If you have a lot of trouble, consider switching up your armament to something with more AC, STA, and AGI, even at the cost of a little of your primary stat.  If that fails, your tactics might be hurting you.  Always pull to a safe area, take out the Rosch (mage), Nisch (healer), and Lteth (dps-scout) mobs in gnoll groups first (in that order), and buff up to maximum strength before every fight.

You'll encounter boxes and barrels along the way.  You must use barrels to destroy breakable walls to progress through the zone, and please note that they will hurt you if you're too close when they detonate.  Barrels have about a 5 second fuse, lit by right-clicking the barrel and selecting "Detonate." Boxes allow you to climb walls, and please note that they can only be moved 3-5 times before falling apart and becoming immobile.  To use boxes for this purpose, climb on top of the highest object by the wall you wish to climb.  Stack the boxes one on top of the other like stairsteps on the ground (if they aren't within reach, move the bottom box to within reach and stack them up there, be careful to move each box only once while putting them in reach / stacking).  Finally, while standing on the highest object by the wall you wish to climb, place the entire stairstep on your level.  If you played it smart, you should have one move left to adjust the stairstep if necessary.

If you're capable of invisibility, this zone can be traversed without fighting a single mob if you wish.  Just follow the steps below while invis.

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Enough introduction!! Here's how to progress through the zone.  By the way, there's a nifty quest for a torch that gives off blue light, as well as some other areas to explore, but for the purposes of this article, I'm mainly concerned with how to move through to zone to get to the Splitpaw Den.  More info as I confirm it. :)

First room:  from the entrance, make a right.  Look up and clear the aggro flying mobs you see one at a time.  Always clear these flying nasties, they are masters of add and will attack you while you're dealing with the mobs ahead.  Deal with the spiders one at a time along the wall next.  If you like, you can work your way around and clear the mobs on the other side of the cavern, but it's not necessary.  Progress through the first passageway into the next room.

Second room: Gnolls everywhere!  Deal with any mobs you need to along the right wall, roaming / flying mobs first, until you get to a ledge containing a group of gnolls.  If you're lucky, this group contains a sycophant (illusionist) gnoll which always drops a barrel.. Pull them down off the ledge and kill them one by one.  If a barrel doesn't drop, take a moment and kill the solo mob by the breakable wall to your left.  Next, use the method described above to build a stairway to the ledge, where a barrel awaits you.  Place the barrel against the breakable (cracked) wall and detonate it to gain access to the third room.  By the way, you can jump down the hole a set of gnolls were guarding into an area below to deal with some undead mobs.  There's water below, so you won't sustain damage, but this area is not required to progress through the zone.

Third room:  More gnolls; some undead, some living.  Basically repeat what you did with the first room.  There's another area reachable with boxes to grab a barrel if you're invis and don't want to fight for it.  Blow out another wall to move forward.

Fourth room:  Gnolls and purple blobbies.  Fight / stealth your way into the tent area (who needs a tent in a cave?) where you'll find another interactive object, a wooden board.  Place the board across the crevasse to enable you to drop onto to the lower area off to your left, but first be sure to grab a barrel to blow out the wall on this lower level.

Fifth room:  Contains a teleporter to take you to the Splitpaw Den.  Congrats, you've made it!  Now to solve some of the mysteries of Splitpaw, including how to gain their trust...