Ascension Chamber/Raid History

The Black Abbot awaits his rise to godhood and only you can stop his ascension. {{Quest
 * history=yes
 * name=Ascension Chamber
 * level=15
 * duration=Long
 * xp=4,900/5,100/5,300
 * loc=Hall of Ascension
 * npc=Sir Rohine Stiedra
 * zone=The Necropolis
 * patron=The Silver Flame
 * favor=6
 * overview=This article is about the old version of the Accursed Ascension raid. For the current version look here: Accursed Ascension.

Flagging

 * Complete the Litany of the Dead story arc.
 * Reflagging is never required for this raid.


 * obj=
 * Defeat the Black Abbot


 * misc=

Module 8 Version
When you enter this quest, make sure you do not move too far past the end of the bridge until all your party members have made it across as this dissapears and can drop them into instant death water. When you join forces with the Abbot, when he is reduced to around 70% of his maximum HP, he will retire from the battle. At this point he will also teleport 6 random team members to the 3 puzzles, 2 to each. If you do not have 6 live players at this time, you in effect fail the quest as the puzzles are required to win.

The three puzzles are:
 * Iceball Wand Room - You and your partner have to equip a special wand and take in turns to created ice islands on the deadly water to progress to the other side. Each island lasts for around 15 seconds and the cooldown is about the same for the wands, so you have to alternate the creation of the islands as you go across. Try to place the islands a reasonable distance apart and not under a bolt path from the traps that are present. Each wand has 10 charges, new wands are supplied on completion where you will find a portal to return you to the main encounter area.When both parties are staning on an island and one of you is going to cast an island next, try to make sure you do not stand on/behind the player casting the island as this can cause the DDO aim mechanic to bug and fire the wand charge in a random direction - this can cause you to fail the challenge as you have no island to progress to when the one your standing on dissapates.
 * Asteroid Room - Pick up the rocks and equip these as your main hand weapon. You then have to use mouse look and attack to aim these throwing rocks at incoming asteroids before they can knock you of your suspended platform. If you fail you fall to your death in the main encounter area.
 * Although throwing the rocks is probably the method intended by the developers of solving this puzzle, the group I play with has determined the most reliable method for completing this puzzle is for characters capable of using summons and create undead scrolls to spam create many summoned creatures. These can also be dispelled and turned to stone. This has the effect of blocking the asteroids from knocking you from the platform. Care must be taken to try and remain in the middle of the platform while the asteroids continue to reign down upon you. Once complete more thowable rocks will spawn and a portal will appear which will return you to the main platform to battle with the abbot again.
 * As of Update 6.1 patch 1, the Create Undead spell and scroll now has an extended cooldown timer which is shared by all sort of summoning spells, you can no longer summon as many undeads as you want.
 * Phasing Tile Room - This puzzle sees the person with the goggles having to guide a teammate across a series of invisible platforms that phase in/out of existance. Take your time to examine the pattern and find a good route across. Ideally you will get a pattern that will allow your partner to run across without having to "change lanes". A good technique for this is for the person on the platforms to run sideways while looking at the person with the goggles. That person only runs when there are platforms available for the runner to be able to move to. Thus you mirror each others movements across the pattern. As there are issues with voice chat latency, I would recommend that if you need your partner to change lanes that you use visually agreed cues such as jumping to move away a lane or block to move formward a lane etc. Once the first person is across they then have to equip the Alpha phase goggles and use those to guide the other player across his hidden platforms. Once both characters are across, portals spawn to allow you to return to the main platform to continue battle with the abbot.
 * A helpful technique is to also document the manuevers you will be doing, for example:
 * 1-4 stop, 5 stop, 6-9 stop, all the way.
 * This lets your partner known when to expect to move/stop as they progress across the tile pattern. You can also count the tiles as your progress across if you have voice chat.

Once all 3 puzzles have been completed successfully on the same run (all 3 are needed, else you have to melee the abbot down to 1/3 of his hp before he once again retires from the battle sending new random team members back to the puzzles), you will be able to continue the fight against the Abbot. He uses 3 special attacks at various points:


 * Inferno - The entire platform will be engulfed with fire causing excessive (200+) damage every 2-3 seconds and will also drain spellpoints. To avoid this, the players with the ice wands need to create ice islands of the main platform to avoid this. When inferno ends you can return to the main platform to continue the fight. The Abbot may use inferno several times so be ready.
 * Items that help are fire resist/protection, fire shield and Fire storm greaves to mitigate the damage taken.


 * Encasement - The Abbot can encase party members with a tight constricting rock which squeezes the life out of them. The only way to break them free (apart from death / res) is for those who succeeded in the asteroids puzzle to throw rocks against those who are encased to break them out. Typically you need 3 hits to break a player completely free.
 * If you get encased whilst on an ice island this can create a platform that can be used to avoid inferno should those with the ice wands die.
 * If you have the Freedom of movement spell cast on you or are wearing the Kundarak delving boots from the Plane of Night raid you will be able to jump out of the encasement without any additional help.


 * Invisible ghosts - The Abbot can summon mana and hp stealing wraiths/ghosts (beleived to be 4 at a time) which those without the beta/alpha phase goggles cannot see or attack. Those wearing the goggles must dispose of these, although they are affected by AOE attacks such as Firewall. Note also that if you are wearing the goggles you cannot see party members or mobs in ordinary phase (i.e. the abbot etc).

My recommendation is that if you fail any of the puzzles at the first attempt, just get out of the quest any way you can and try again, unless you want to practice handling the fight against the abbots special attacks (assuming you completed at least 1 of the puzzles and have the right equipment to do so).

Additional tactics that can help There are several tactics which you can follow to make this raid much more likely to be completed:
 * Choose partners. As only 6 people can be teleported to the puzzles the other 6 get left behind. If you choose 6 people to die (or less if not a full raid), assign each person who dies to a specific person who will live. This will guarantee that people who know the puzzles get to go there and also have backup people to help after they are raised.
 * Get an encasement on the water. Inferno can easily wipe your party when you return to fight the black abbot. Its recommended that you try and get a safe spot away from the main platform which you can retreat to in case of inferno. In my group those with the ice wands are assigned the duty of immediatly going to a set location and creating islands which they jump back and forth from. If they have Freedom of movement or the Kundarak delving boots they cannot be permanently encased. You will also have an encasement on the water which people can jump to to avoid inferno. Its recommended that you only stand on the encasement island while inferno is active to avoid additional further encasements building a tower to which you will be unable to jump. If you are likely to be encased its advised to stand at the very rear of the encasement so a stepped effect will be created which you can climb.

Module 5 Version

 * Most of the above applies to this version except that this version was SIGNIFICANTLY harder in many ways, and easier in one way: The puzzles were not required to win. You could simply have everyone suicide in there respective puzzle rooms and attempt to win the raid with brute force alone... Tho even suiciding often wasn't neccasary, as in this version the abbot had no range limit on his telekinesis, so he would often fling players into the pit of death AFTER he teleported them to the puzzle room, tho generally just the last person who had agro.


 * However as hard as the puzzles were, the fight itself was much harder in many ways as well in this older version:
 * A single death was extremely devastating: Everytime anyone died, they turned into a deadly anceint mummy priest which cast blade barriers, cometfall, slay living, greater dispel and in general was very hard to kill.
 * The trash waves were spawned far faster and in greater numbers.
 * The level cap was still 14.
 * The black abbot himself was slighty more powerful, casting faster and teleporting more often.
 * Inferno wasn't quite as devastating as the current version and dealt slightly less damage.
 * Despite the incredible difficulty of this version, it will still beaten many times through shear determination heavy use of major menonic potions.

Module 5, update 1 version

 * Update 1 made the raid essentially impossible to complete by adding these changes:
 * Touch of Dolurrh: The grip of death holds tight within the Ascension Chamber: You suffer a penalty -10 penalty to all your statistics. This effect was utterly unremovable and meant that a single death made the large majority of characters helpless for the duration of the raid.
 * All the puzzles HAD to be completed, in a single pass. (And you could not choose who went where.)
 * This debuff was so severe that it made the raid nearly impossible to complete. The debuff was later removed on normal difficulty only, then completely removed on all difficultiles in the following patch.
 * There were no known completions of this version.

In-quest items; * Items above are all Destroyed on Exiting Adventure, Destroyed on Death, Bind on Acquire }}
 * Iceball Wand - Wand: Iceball (caster level 1) 10 Charges, 15 second cooldown
 * Allows you to create iceberg on the water, used to cross the Ice room, then to avoid Abbot's Inferno
 * Beta Phase Goggles - Goggles: Visibility 2
 * Alpha Phase Goggles - Goggles: Visibility 1
 * Allows the wearer to see out of phase things, platforms and invisible monsters
 * Boulders (available in stack of 50) - Equip in weapon hand
 * Allows you to destroy incoming asteroids and on successful completion of the puzzle to break Encasement cast by the abbot in later fights
 * traps=
 * Ice Room has some bullet traps on the way.
 * Deadly water - Touch it and die.
 * npcreward=Standard
 * chest=Black Abbot warded chest
 * monsters=Black Abbot, Wheeps, Quells