alt="Halls of Night: An Illustrated Guide"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98965" />

The Halls of Night shows another side of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro">the Lord of the
Rings
Online
, especially when compared to the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lotro/guides/update3/inn-of-the-forsaken">Inn
of the Forsaken. Where the
Inn of the Forasken is a high-adventure, fun-filled romp through
devious traps with a lighter emphasis on combat, the Halls of Night is
a nightmarish, violent struggle through a surreal dreamscape of undead
horror. This is the "other half" of Update 3, the darker side,
influenced by the fevered dreams of Hobbits ensnared in the depths on
the Barrow-downs on the way to an even darker adventure.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/89646" alt="divider" />

alt="Declan at Aughaire"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98952" />

The nightmare starts in Aughaire with a man named Declan,
whose grandfather went missing some time ago. He is worried, and sends
you off to discover the man's fate. Following the trail, you come to a
recently-unearthed barrow at 0.4N, 37.6W, tucked into the hillside in
Fasach-Larran. Stepping inside (via the Instance Join panel), you see
the earthly remains of the tomb's chief occupant, plus his
super-awesome throne.

alt="Skeletal throne"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98953" />

Examining the throne has an immediate hypnotic effect, causing
everyone in the fellowship to fall fast asleep. When the group awakens,
they find themselves in a strange, hazy, unreal place wearing
strange-colored burial robes. The color of your robe can determine how
and what you will fight, as it makes you "attuned" to beings of similar
colors. For example, if your spirit color is green, you will be
"attuned" to green spirits, and killing green spirits will apply a buff
which causes you to do more damage with attacks.

alt="Your Spirit Color Is Green"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98954" />

Exploring deeper into this hazy, surreal place, you will
encounter your friendly guide, Shadow. Well... not that friendly. He
explains briefly that you are inside a nightmare, and that in order to
meet the dreamer, you must first pass his test. And in LotRO, "passing
a test" generally requires killing stuff. This first fight will set the
pace for all the others that follow.

First fight src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98955" />

You are faced with a pair of tombs and a tomb-guard. When the
fight activates, the tomb-guard charges in, and the tombs spawn colored
spirits. These spirits will keep spawning as long as they remain
standing, so at some point, you will want to destroy them. But first,
you need to kill the tomb-guard, who protects the tombs and heals any
damage they take. Priority is generally tomb-guards, tombs, then
spirits last.

A traditional group (tank, DPS, healer) is ideal in here, but
this setup is not strictly enforced like it is in Inn of the Forsaken.
The tank picks up aggro on the spirits, the DPS handles the tomb-guard
and then the tombs, and the healer keeps everyone standing. This can be
somewhat difficult for tanks, as the spirits keep spawning in regularly
and will immediately head for the healers. It can also be difficult for
healers, who are under constant threat of attack by the spirits. DPS
has it easy. Note that the tomb-guards will frequently attempt to heal
themselves or their tombs, but that the healing induction can be
interrupted. They do this a lot, so having reduced cooldowns on
interrupt skills helps. Also be aware that the diseases the spirits
apply sap power - you'll want to pot them off quickly or risk being
totally drained before the fight ends.

Second fight src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98956" />

The second fight, further down the hallway past the wall of
blue fire (which disappears once you complete the first "test"), is
nearly identical to the first, but with the addition of a Hungry Spirit
- a colorless ghost that will race in and sap the power of whoever it
aggros on first. When these Hungry Spirits come up, they are priority
targets. Drained characters lose their fancy death shroud and are
slowed considerably for the duration of the fight. The spirit-drained
effect does not go away until a short while after combat ends. The
attack they use which causes the spirit-drain has an induction that can
be interrupted.

Third fight src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98957" />

The third fight is one tomb-guard and 3 tombs. The number of
spirits that spawn in during this fight can get a bit overwhelming, so
good tanking will be crucial here. The group's DPS'er may need to take
a break from tomb-smashing to helping keep the spirits under control.
This is the last test before Shadow introduces you to the architect of
this hazy reality - Nightmare.

alt="Nightmare's throne room"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98958" />

Nightmare has an awesome throne with a funky disco doorway
behind it, and the throneroom is fairly intimidating at first glance,
what with the four tombs and their associated tomb-guards lining the
path. But no worries - you don't have to fight here yet. Nightmare
wants to act like a bigshot first and let you know that you're not
exactly welcome here, and Shadow wants to instruct you that there are a
couple of other ugly situations to deal with first. Pick a path, left
or right.

alt="Right-hand path"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98959" />

Down the right-hand path lies the path to Terror. First you
have to deal with the pair of tomb-guards and the patrolling hungry
spirits. Wait for one of the hungry spirits to draw close to the foot
of the bridge and fight the two of them there. Trying to take on the
tomb-guards at the same time as the hungry spirits can be potentially
disastrous. When fighting two of the hungry spirits, it will help to
have 2 classes with frequent and reliable interrupts, because they're
going to keep trying to drain someone's power. The fight against the
two tomb-guards and their charges is pretty much the same as the other
fights except that there are 2 of the guards.

alt="How everything looks when you're spirit-drained"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98960" />

This is what your screen looks like when you get
spirit-drained. You lose your fancy robe, all the color drains out of
the world, you move slower and are less able to defend yourself.
Generally, when you get drained by the hungry spirits, you will want to
wait for this effect to wear off before engaging the next group... but
sometimes you won't have that option.

Next up is Terror. He lurks in a cavernous room with nasty
purple splotches on the floor. These are inert at the start of the
fight, but you're going to want to avoid them later on. At first,
Terror seems like nothing more than your average, everyday harmless
ball of blue light. When you pull close, however, his true form is
revealed. 

Terror src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98961" />

Terror hits pretty hard - tanks need to prepare to take a
pretty savage beating. This is compounded when Terror summons two
lesser mirror images of himself to join in the fun.  The
lesser Terrors have significantly less morale than the main guy and are
easy work to tear down. Each of the Terrors hits equally hard, so you
may want to divide them up between the three members of the fellowship.
Additionally, the purple puddles will get electrically charged during
the fight, and stepping on them when they are charged opens up a
swirling nether-vortex which stuns anyone standing in it. Better to
just avoid the puddles. This fight tends to run a bit long, so plan for
an extended fight and conserve power until the third disappear/reappear
trick. For the third set, you can ignore the weaker clones and kill the
boss one, which will cause the clones to despawn. Kill Terror and
survive to loot the chest and
you're ready to take on Panic.

Left-hand path src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98962" />

The path to Panic, on the left side of Nightmare's throne
room, is similar to the path to Terror: another group of 2 tomb-guards
and a matched pair of hungry spirits. However, with the full bloody
moon and cold, vast star-field hanging overhead, this path looks a lot
cooler. Dispatch the spirits in the same manner
as Terror's lackeys and you're ready to face Sub-Boss the Second.

Panic's room src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98963" />

Panic's room should be strangely-familiar - it's Halbarad's
library in Esteldin turned upside down, complete with a study desk
acting as a chandelier. Panic has himself a couple of tomb-guard goons.
You'll want to take the goons out first and interrupt their
heals. 

There are a couple of ways you can approach this fight. After
you get the tomb-guards down, you can each take turns beating on Panic
according to the spirit-color he is drawn to - when he is attracted to
your spirit-color, there will be no spirits of that color around the
edge of the room, but when he is drawn to another color, your color of
spirit will be standing there. When you're not attacking Panic, you can
attack your color of spirit and build up your spirit buff, doing more
damage when it's your turn to smash the boss.

Alternately, you can completely ignore the mechanics and just
tank-n-spank. There's no penalty for doing it this way. The colored
spirits don't aggro unless they are attacked, and you can ignore them
for the duration if you so choose. The spank-n-tank method actually
ends this fight a bit faster.

alt="Nightmare"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/98964" />

At last you return to the throne room, and Nightmare drops the
miserly jerk act, showing his true Rogmul form. When the fight starts,
a bunch of genuflecting tortured spirits appear around the outside of
the walkway. Your goal here is to avoid damaging any of them, so keep
the fight contained to the middle of the room and away from any
tortured spirits. They don't aggro unless attacked, but can be hit by
wayward area-effect attacks which will cause them to fight and possibly
get killed; at the very least, they make the fight more difficult and
cause the challenge to fail, and since there's no reason to fight them
at all, you may as well avoid them.

Nightmare will call in the tomb-guards one at a time
throughout the fight, and the tombs will activate and spawn spirits.
Kill the tomb-guards first, then the tombs, then clean up the spirits
and beat on Nightmare. The tank will likely have the toughest time of
it, as Nightmare has a draining attack similar to the hungry spirits,
and he will drain his primary target early on in the fight. Those not
holding Nightmare's aggro will want to stay at his back, as he has a
nasty frontal-area-effect attack. This one is also an endurance fight,
and power-draining diseases can pose a real threat. Make sure you have
lots of disease and power potions, and conserve your power as much as
possible for the 4th tomb-guard and wave of spirits.

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/89646" alt="divider" />

After defeating Nightmare (and hopefully having avoided
killing any of his tortured victims), you are treated to a little
theatre and given a couple of chests to loot. You can now exit via the
disco swirl and return to Declan to share the unfortunate news about
his grandfather. This instance pays out in skirmish marks, but not
nearly as much gold as Inn of the Forsaken. You are also granted a new
emote for completing the challenge - /dream, which causes you to
collapse to the ground in a deep slumber. Hopefully, your dreams are
much more pleasant now that the Nightmare is defeated.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Lord of the Rings Online Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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