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Found
in the starting zone of Freemarch, Iron Tombs is the first
instance Defiant players will encounter. Tuned for players of level 17
and higher (many will prefer to wait until level 19) , this is a pretty
standard dungeon crawl with three boss encounters and plenty of undead
minions lying in wait. Iron Tombs is steeped in lore as players attempt
to foil the plans to the Endless Court who seek to aid Regulos in
destroying Telara.

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Group Configuration:

A single
tank and healer are sufficient to build a group around, leaving room
for your choice of DPS to fill out the party with any healing soul
being a viable option – including the Chloromancer.

Quests:

There
are five total quests available for Iron Tombs, none of them
need
to be picked up beforehand as they are all given inside the instance:

•     style="font-weight: bold;">Release the March Wardens: 
  the first quest you will encounter and it is given automatically upon
  your initial zone in. This straightforward quest tasks you with
  vanquishing all three boss encounters
•     style="font-weight: bold;">Relics of the March Warden: is
  given by the NPC Eliam’s Ghost at the zone in and it requires you to
  loot three items from the second boss encounter.
•    Source
  of Control: is also dispensed by Eliam’s Ghost and it
  sends players into the zone to retrieve Sourcestone Amulets.
•    You
  Are Who They Call: is
  given after defeating the second boss encounter, players will be given
  a clickable item that they will use to drag Spectral Screamers back to
  a central location
•    Laid
  to Rest: obtained from the NPC Tobias Leighton
  inside the zone and the objective is to destroy several Death Shards
  throughout the zone.

[protip]
Damaging the Death Shards will begin to release waves of mobs, so be
careful to dispatch each wave before resuming dps on the shards.
Releasing too many waves is an easy way to wipe your group[/protip]

Bosses:

Caor Ashtone

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Undead and not happy about it 

This
encounter is the easiest of the three and is a standard tank and spank
with a DPS race component. Once the tank establishes initial agro, DPS
can open up on him as there are no tricky mechanics in place to prevent
the tank from holding threat. Caor doesn’t hit the tank too hard with
melee, but he uses a fast DoT named Ashtone’s Curse to create a
stacking debuff on the tank that will make them unhealable if the fight
goes on too long. This debuff is called Jagged Wounds and is not
dispellable, so make sure to keep big heals coming as it builds and
keep DPS on task to prevent a wipe.

Three Kings Event

The
second encounter is a council style event known as the Three Kings. The
event begins with a scripted animation showing Alsbeth summoning the
bosses Humbart the Bold, Laric the Ascendant and Derribec the Magus.
The event starts off with each boss attacking after the one before it
is killed, beginning with Humbart. Humbart is the easiest of the three
and should be tanked facing away from the group as he has a nasty
frontal cleave that also knocks back effected players. [protip] His
statue can be used as a barrier if the tank keeps their back to it,
giving the rest of the party plenty of room to attack.[/protip]

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Once
Humbart falls, Derribec becomes active and will begin nuking the tank
hard with his Life Rend spell. The good news here is that it is only a
single target ability, but it does hit hard. Laric engages once
Derribec is dispatched and uses a fast cast heal ability to frustrate
opponents. Keeping the heal interrupted will help make quick work of
Derribec and then the real fun begins. Phase two consists of all three
kings resurrecting at once and engaging the group. The tank will want
to save any AoE threat cooldowns for the start of this phase. The kill
order for this phase will be the reverse of phase 1 as Laric should be
your initial target. Focus fire each boss down and be mindful of
interrupting Laric’s heal. Once the triumvirate have been finally laid
to rest a treasure chest will appear for you to loot.

The Orb Room:

While
this isn’t a boss encounter, the orb room is a gauntlet style encounter
that requires a moderate amount of coordination and haste to complete.
This room may look overwhelming at first due to the large amount of
mobs, but interspersed throughout the room are clickable orbs that will
help kill any npcs in their area. The trick here is that these mobs
will continually respawn unless they are all killed before the respawn
timer hits. Our group found success by sending the tank ahead to the
next orb with the healer staying in between as the dps burned down the
remaining mobs. Completing this gauntlet will allow you to access the
area that contains the Sourcestone Amulet for the style="font-style: italic;">Source of Control
quest.

Ragnoth the Despoiler:

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To the victor go the despoils

The
final boss encounter in Iron Tombs, Ragnoth the Despoiler is also the
most fun. This scripted fight is aided by an NPC who helps to negate
Ragnoth’s most devastating attack – Flame of Ragnoth. The fight starts
out fairly straightforward as the tank will engage and spin the boss
away from the group to avoid his frontal cleave. Healing can get a bit
dicey with the cleave and a direct nuke, but the party shouldn’t take
any damage here so focus on the tank. Periodically throughout the fight
Ragnoth will being to channel the flame spell and you will notice just
before this happens that Eliam’s Ghost will appear and also cast a
shield, all players will need to run into this shield to avoid death.
Ragnoth does follow the tank over, so be mindful of positioning to keep
the party safe from his other attacks. The fight continues to repeat
these two phases until Ragnoth is put into the ground. In addition to
saving your bacon, Eliam’s Ghost is kind enough to stick around and
open up a portal to whisk you out of the dungeon.



Iron Tombs is a nice introduction to style="font-style: italic;">Rift instanced
zones and helps to reinforce the lore of Telara nicely. Even though
there are only three boss encounters, you will want to block out a
decent amount of time due to density and overall amount of trash mobs
throughout the zone.