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The Shadow Crypt

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The Shadow Crypt is the 5th quest in the Litany of the Dead Part 2 story arcIcon tooltip.pngStory arcs  are chains of quests that make up a story line.
Completing everything in a story arc often yields a nice reward.
.
The first four quests can be completed in any order to unlock The Shadow Crypt.
Tomb of the Shadow Guard • Tomb of the Shadow King • Tomb of the Shadow Knight • Tomb of the Shadow Lord • The Shadow Crypt


Nerezza's resting place is a twisted game of darkness and shadow. North becomes south, East becomes West, nothing is at seems.

The Necropolis, Part 2 adpack icon.jpg
DDO Point icon.png Requires access to adventure pack: The Necropolis, Part 2
The Shadow Crypt
Heroic level: 9
Epic level: None
Duration: Very Long
Heroic XP:  ♣6,690Solo/Casual ♦11,800Normal ♥12,450Hard ♠13,100Elite
Epic XP: N/A
Takes place in: The Shadow Crypt
Bestowed by: The Herald
NPC contact: The Herald
Quest acquired in: The Necropolis
Patron: The Silver Flame
Base favor: 7
Purchase: The Necropolis, Part 2 or VIP
Extreme Challenge: No
M shadow crypt.png
Loading screen

Overview

The Herald of the Emerald Claw requires your assistance in stopping Brother Nerezza and obtaining the Twisted Apocrypha. You must discover the treacherous path through the Shadow Crypt to defeat Brother Nerezza.


Spoiler Warning: Spoiler material below this point!


Objectives

  • Find and speak with Dame Calla
  • Acquire 2 Small Blue Gears
  • Acquire 2 Small Red Gears
  • Acquire 2 Small Green Gears
  • Acquire 2 Small Yellow Gears
  • Open the way to Nerezza
  • Defeat the Shadow Council (defeat 4)
  • Slay Brother Nerezza
  • Acquire The Twisted Apocrypha
  • (Optional) Slay Gloom — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Twilight — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Login Yapow — no XP
  • (Optional) Slay Rhonita Hourd — no XP
  • (Optional) Slay Callin Fornan — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Timoty Jorem — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Myriel Everborn — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Dontre Lebram — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Caligin — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Dusk — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Lurid — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • (Optional) Slay Murk — Bonus (10%): Heroic( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )

What to Expect

  • Maze (3 possible variations)
  • Map useful only in individual rooms
  • Randomly placed quest items (mandatory: 8 gears; optional: 4 additional gears)
  • Spawning/respawning monsters
  • Note: All optional encounters are rare spawns. You will generally only encounter 6–9 per instance, and may not enter the same room with them.

Tips and Misc

Some form of underwater action item, or water breathing potions or spells, is strongly recommended, as one quarter of the rooms encountered are (similar) underwater mazes.

The "path" through this quest is very confusing and non-intuitive, with each room seemingly connected at random to other rooms. Read below to familiarize yourself with some of the strategies for successfully navigating the quest.

Dame Calla will give the party a 2-use/rest Dimension Door trinket, Death's Door. This can be used to return you to the starting room. Use it wisely. (This item drops on exiting the quest.)

  • After first speaking with the injured Dame Calla, there will be a 10–15 seconds pause before the first fight begins.

Finding the gears

Your base objective is to collect 2 gears per color, for a total of 8; these are 2 each in red, blue, green, and yellow.

Optional: To access the "big chest" at the end, which can contain many of the named items, you need to acquire one additional gear per color, for a total of 3 gears per color.

You have to navigate a maze of rooms connected via "teleporting" exits/entrance points. This maze consists of 12 rooms - 3 rooms each in the colors red, green, blue and yellow. Each of these rooms contains a chest containing a gear that matches the color of that room.
Note that the "teleporting" connections cannot be considered physical (e.g. West goes to East) nor are they bidirectional, so you usually cannot return directly to a room, you just have left.

There are 3 known configurations to this dungeon: Green, Red and Blue. These configurations, or "instances", consist of 12 rooms from a set of 20 - 5 types of rooms, each in the 4 colors - with a defined set of connections between them.

Each room type has a different solution: Combat ("pyramid" and "columns"), maze ("maze" and "water") or puzzle ("torches").

A simple approach to finding all the gears is to walk in the same direction every time you leave a room. Eventually most rooms are explored. Be aware that although you may exit a room heading one way, say "east", you may enter the next oriented in any direction. Look at the map to see which way you leave a room.

Note: You can find detailed information on paths and rooms and variants here: Instance Paths

Exiting the maze

Once you have collected the gears you need, you have to find exit from the maze.

You must find a "banner room", a room which has a pale transparent banner hanging behind one of the archways leading its exits. The banner in these rooms may be hard to spot – look carefully. These are the rooms for each "instance":

  • Green: Yellow water, west
  • Red: Red pyramid, west
  • Blue: Green torches, east
Minor bug: Low graphics quality can remove the banner, making it impossible to recocnize the correct room. Use Ctrl+o to adjust your graphics quality.

Once you find the banner, take that exit and you will arrive in a new hallway with 8 levers, 2 of each color. Use each lever (each uses up one of the collected gears) to open the gate and proceed to the next room.

Here you have to fight Calla's spirit and the four Shadows before you can proceed to the end fight.

End Fight

Nerezza will clone himself multiple times when hurt below a certain level. You need to either hurt him fast enough so that he doesn't get to clone, or use Firewall to hurt all the clones. If you can't hurt him before he clones, and you don't have access to the Firewall spell, have all your party members focus on the original Nerezza by keeping him targeted using the Tab key. It used to be that Nerezza still remained targeted after re-appearing, but that is no longer the case.

You can identify the clones by seeing how much damage they take – clones have half as many hit points as Nerezza.

Nerezza also has special DR:

Quote:
Originally Posted by DeadlyGazebo Source

Actually, Nerezza has his vampiric 10/silver, an additional 10/magic ... 2/adamantine. (12/silver, 12/magic, 6/adamantine on hard, 15/silver, 15/magic, and 9/adamantine on elite).

Once the fight is over, use the altar to teleport directly to the end-chests. After the quest is complete, you can use the altar once to upgrade:

The altar may only be used once per run of the quest (on any difficulty); if you wish to make more than one upgrade, you will have to re-run the quest.

Optional minibosses

This quest has possibly the highest density of optional minibosses of any quest in the game. However, not all minibosses are accessible on all runs, as each is tied to a certain spawn location, not necessarily present in the actual instance layout.

  • Rhonita Hourd and Login Yapow almost always spawn in the first fight.
  • Caligin may spawn in the Yellow Pyramid room in a Red or Green instance.
  • Dontre Lebram may spawn in the Red Maze room in a Green instance, or the Yellow Maze room in a Red or Blue instance.
  • Dusk may spawn in the Green Pyramid room in a Red or Blue instance.
  • Gloom may spawn in the Red Columns room in a Red or Blue instance, or the Blue Columns room in a Red or Green instance.
  • Lurid may spawn in the Red Torches room in a Green or Blue instance.
  • Murk may spawn in the Red Torches room in a Green or Blue instance, or the Blue Torches room in a Blue instance.
  • Myriel Everborn may spawn in the Red Maze room in a Green instance.
  • Twilight may spawn in the Blue Columns room in a Red or Green instance.
  • Timoty Jorem and Callin Fornan almost always spawn in the long corridor with eight levers leading to Nerezza.
  • Overall, this means a Red or Blue instance may contain up to 9 rare monsters, while a Green instance may contain up to 11 (of a possible 12.)

Bonus XP

  • Aggression bonus: 34 or more monsters killed +10% Bonus.( ♣669 ♦1,180 ♥1,245 ♠1,310 )
  • Onslaught bonus: 67 or more monsters killed +15% Bonus.( ♣1,004 ♦1,770 ♥1,868 ♠1,965 )
  • Conquest bonus: 100 or more monsters killed +25% Bonus.( ♣1,673 ♦2,950 ♥3,113 ♠3,275 )

Loot

  • Notes: 4 in a Green, 5 in a Red and 6 in a Blue instance

NPC end rewards

Randomly generated loot, ML correlates with effective quest level.

Named Chest Drop

  • Shards of Light - 50 +3 Arrows: Infused with Positive EnergyIcon tooltip.pngInfused with Positive Energy: This weapon is infused with positive energy. It will apply a Cure Moderate Wounds spell to any target hit. This deals 2d8+3 damage to Undead (Fortitude Save for half damage), but will heal most normal creatures., Returning 75%Icon tooltip.pngReturning 75%: This missile will return to the player 75% of the time. (Left End Chest, Big Chest)
Last Edited Item Type Enhancements ML Bind Quests
Cloak of Protection
Cloak of Protection.png
(edit)
Cloak  7 Bound to Character on EquipIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Equip: This item is Bound to Character on Equip The Shadow Crypt, Optional "big chest"
  • Update 67
  • 3 months and 4 days
  • Venus
Witching Hour
Witching Hour.png
(edit)
Quarterstaff  8 Bound to Character on EquipIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Equip: This item is Bound to Character on Equip The Shadow Crypt, Right End chest and Optional "big chest"
  • Update 67.2.1
  • 1 month and 8 days
  • BugTime
Devout Handwraps
Devout Handwraps.png
(edit)
Handwrap  8 Bound to Character on EquipIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Equip: This item is Bound to Character on Equip The Shadow Crypt, Optional "big chest"
  • Update 67.3
  • 1 month and 5 days
  • BugTime
Phase Hammer
Phase Hammer.png
(edit)
Maul  8 Bound to Character on EquipIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Equip: This item is Bound to Character on Equip The Shadow Crypt, Optional "big chest"
  • Update 67.3.1
  • 1 month and 1 day
  • BugTime
Tenebrous Stiletto
Tenebrous Stiletto.png
(edit)
Dagger  8 Bound to Character on EquipIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Equip: This item is Bound to Character on Equip The Shadow Crypt, Middle End chest, Optional "big chest"
Dusk
Dusk (docent).png
(edit)
Docent  8 Bound to Character on EquipIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Equip: This item is Bound to Character on Equip The Shadow Crypt, Optional "big chest"
  • Update 37.3
  • 6 years, 5 months, and 4 days
  • Niminae
Silver Flame Pendant
Silver Flame Pendant.png
(edit)
Necklace  9 Bound to Character on AcquireIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Acquire: This item is Bound to Character on Acquire The Shadow Crypt, altar; upgraded from Silver Flame Amulet
Emerald Claw Pendant
Emerald Claw Pendant.png
(edit)
Necklace  9 Bound to Character on AcquireIcon tooltip.pngBound to Character on Acquire: This item is Bound to Character on Acquire The Shadow Crypt, altar; upgraded from Emerald Claw Amulet
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Monsters

Name ( picture ) CR Type Race
Brother Nerezza( view
Brother Nerezza.jpg
 • edit )
 ♥13Hard ♠16Elite Undead Vampire
Caligin( view
Caligin.png
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal Magical Beast Spider
Callin Fornan( view
Callin Fornan.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Wraith
Dontre Lebram( view
Dontre Lebram.jpg
 • edit )
 ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Spectre
Dread Wraith( view
Dread Wraith.jpg
 • edit )
 ♠18Elite ♦25Epic Normal ♠34Epic Elite Undead Wraith
Drifting Scourge Mage( view
Drifting Scourge Mage.png
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Spectre
Drifting Scourge( view
Drifting Scourge.png
 • edit )
 ♦8Normal ♥10Hard ♠13Elite Undead Spectre
Dun Butcher( view
Dun Butcher.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦8Normal ♥10Hard ♠13Elite Humanoid Human
Dusk (spider)( view
Dusk (spider).png
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♠14Elite Magical Beast Spider
Gloom( view
Gloom.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Shadow
Login Yapow( view
Login Yapow.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Shadow
Lurid( view
Lurid.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Shadow
Murk( view
Murk.png
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♠14Elite Undead Shadow
Myriel Everborn( view
Myriel Everborn.png
 • edit )
 ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Spectre
Phase Spider( view
Monster Phase Spider.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦7Normal ♥9Hard ♠12Elite Magical Beast Spider
Rhonita Hourd( view
Rhonita Hourd.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Shadow
Shadow (Mabar)( view
Shadow (mabar).jpg
 • edit )
 ♦7Normal ♥9Hard ♠12Elite Undead Shadow
Shadow Guard( view
Shadow Guard.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦10Normal ♥12Hard ♠15Elite Undead Wraith
Shadow King( view
Shadow King.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦10Normal ♥12Hard ♠15Elite Undead Wraith
Shadow Knight( view
Shadow Knight.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦10Normal ♥12Hard ♠15Elite Undead Wraith
Shadow Lord( view
Shadow Lord.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦10Normal ♥12Hard ♠15Elite Undead Wraith
Shrouded Terror Mage( view
Shrouded Terror Mage.png
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Wraith
Shrouded Terror( view
Shrouded Terror.png
 • edit )
 ♦7Normal ♥9Hard ♠12Elite Undead Wraith
Spectre of Calla( view
Spectre of Calla.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦11Normal ♥13Hard ♠16Elite Undead Spectre
Timoty Jorem( view
Timoty Jorem.jpg
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♠14Elite Undead Wraith
Twilight (monster)( view
Twilight (monster).png
 • edit )
 ♦9Normal ♥11Hard ♠14Elite Undead Shadow