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.  style="font-weight: bold;"> 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 style="font-weight: bold;">.  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.



__________________



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...


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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