Halls of Shan Ta Kor

1. Entrance
2. Halls
3. Bridge
4. Acid Trap
5. Switch Room
6. Fire Bridge
7. Room of Fire
8. Crossroads
9. Minotaur
10. Guardian of Shan Ta Kor

This is the final quest in the series called Shan Ta Kor. The zone isn't too hard, but bring a rogue along or feel the burning death of traps. Also, the final boss is a hard fight, unless you know his weaknesses.

You begin at the Entrance (marker #1) and make your way to the Halls (marker #2). Here in the Halls are scattered hobgoblins and a hidden door to a room with a chest to the south. As you make your way to the Bridge (marker #3), you will notice that you can either bypass the bridge (since it's not lowered for you to cross) by going through the hidden walls to the south, or you can do a neat trick to lower the bridge by shooting an arrow at the lever across the pool. If you go the hidden wall route, you will need to kill spiders. proceed to the Acid Trap (marker #4).

This is where your rogue will begin to shine, or begin to look worthless. Do not use the shrine to the north unless absolutely necessary, or if your cleric needs to memorize fire, acid, and cold resist spells. With a very good rogue, you will only need fire resist, but if he fails at any of the control boxes, then you will need the other resist spells as well. Also, this is the time to use all those resist potions that you have been hording from barrels and boxes.

The reason I suggest not using the shrine yet is that if someone dies in a trap, that shrine is their saving grace. Move through the acid trap to the Switch Room. Following the path to the east, you will come upon a ladder to get to the east switch... which will have fire spewing at the climber as he goes up. After both switches are used, this will open the doors to the south. Move on to the Fire Bridge (marker #6).

The fire bridge prevents you from crossing to get to the chest to the west, and can be disabled by a rogue. After you finish looting there, head down the plank to the most intimidating room in the zone, the Room of Fire (marker #7).

Stay to the north, because once someone steps in range of that large room will all the pillars, they will notice that each pillar has four jets of fire that go off constantly. For the people that have never seen this before, expect many "OMFG!". The trick to safely getting your group across isn't giving them all fire resist, it's getting your rogue across. Fire resist will not save you completely because there are also spike traps along the entire floor as well. Put your best fire resist on the rogue and have the rogue run south through the fire as quickly as possible.

Once the rogue is past the fire and spikes, they should search the east wall near the barrels for a control switch. Disabling that will disable some of the spikes, specifically the ones on the west side wall area. Now, quickly have the rogue run to the middle of the west side wall (will fire resist still on, the fire is still filling the room) and search for another control box. Disabling this control box will stop the fire on the west side wall. If the rogue was not able to disable the spikes, the rogue will not be able to search for the fire control box as they will be spiked to death by they time they find it. Therefore, if either control boxes are failed, then the group will have to use a different method to get across. If both were successful, have the entire group (who has been waiting patiently to the north of the room - don't be bold and think you can run through the fire without dying, you will just waste the cleric's mana) move along side the west wall to the south. Now continue to your next set of fun traps at the Crossroads (marker #8).

You will notice on the map that there is a shrine to the west. This is the last shrine you will get before the big boss, so use it as you cannot get back to it once you get to the final boss. At the Crossroads, you can either go south or east. Both paths have ice traps as you go down, and spike traps at the bottom, and ice traps as you go back up. But, the control box found by the rogue will disable the east ice traps. Note that there is no control box for the south route. Also, the rogue can disable the spike traps on the bottom of the east route. Continue to the Minotaur (marker #9).

As you enter the room where the Minotaur is, the gates will fall behind you trapping you in. Make sure the entire group goes in at once, because you cannot open the gates until the minotaur is dead. If they entire group dies fighting him, recall out and wait five minutes for the instance to reset because you cannot proceed to the boss without killing the minotaur. Once he is dead, head on down to the final boss, the Guardian of Shan Ta Kor (marker #10).

The tube running down to him leads to water, so you can just jump straight down it without using the ladder. Once you reach dry land, do not go further south until your group is ready to fight him. Couple things to note about the Guardian; his damage reduction versus normal weapons is immense, do not expect to hit him for more than 0 damage. Elemental damage from weapons is also greatly reduced, so do not be surprised if that also hits for 0 damage. Admanatine weapons will hit him normally. His AC is very high, so a warrior with sunder will make the melee part faster. He is not immune to Web, so be liberal with your Web if you have that spell. He is also not immune to any damage spells, so bring at least one caster. At 60% of his health, an earth elemental will come alive, so have a melee that cannot hurt the Guardian kill it, and at 30% the other earth elemental will come alive. The Guardian's melee hits can range from 10 to over 45 points of damage a swing, so I would suggest the tank to use block and intimidate the entire time. The swing is so slow and massive that the tank may be able to get a shield bash or single swing in between blocking his attacks. Note that the biggest amount of damage that will be dealt will come from the casters in the group. The healers need to keep everyone alive because there is no rest shrine that is accessable to bring their rez stone to. If you kill him, you will be rewarded with two chests of loot and the final quest piece. Finsh out to the Steam Tunnels, and Recall out to the Marketplace and talk to the quest lady to finish your quest.

The rewards have now been made static and unique, so you will get a list of very nice items for level 2-5 characters.