Meldrath The Malignant  

Ok. umm there are level 80 crazy hard zones with his name on it in SoF, and he is only level 35....hmm where is the faulty logic in this. He doesn't even have tough bodyguards or giant armies. hmmm.

I am working on tinkering, and the Minotaur Blood will hopefull take me above 300, although I might learn to hate it before I get that far. Getting as much Minotaur Blood as possible means killing Minotaur Guards, and Meldrath who will also aggro. I agree with the other posters about huge aggro range on the guards, but it seems to be less for Meldrath. He does aggro through walls, what a pain!

But down to the reason for the post: He has dropped for me bat wings once, and a zombie skin once. On a subsequent pass through the minotaur cave, I checked his ability to see invis, and he does not see invis, so I presume he is not undead. And he doesn't look undead. I don't know where the zombie skin came from, but it was there on the corpse. Maybe he ate a zombie? And as far as I know you can't give stuff to mobs and then kill them and get the stuff back the way you used to be able to do in the past. Further, since I was the only one killing in the zone, I don't think it was a plant.

Gnome meat is pretty common from this guy, so if you are looking for gnome meat, don't want to kill good gnomes, and don't have the fire power to kill high levels, this is a good, but slow source of gnome meat.

I should add that he was an easy solo for a level 75 ranger, even with his two guards as adds. None of his spells stuck, and hits were for three to ten or so. I can down him and a guard with one cast of hail of arrows. OOOhhhh. What a difference about 60 levels makes compared to when I first wanted to down Meldrath, but knew there was no way I was going to do it at level 10 to 15. Back then soloing single minotaurs was something of a challenge, and getting two on a pull was a good reason to run to zone.

*Necromancers are nothing without their mana.*

Yeah, especially when fighting something fifteen levels higher than they are. By the way, it's spelled rogue, not rouge. Just thought you may like to know how to spell your own class.
By the way, congratulations on the speedy ten levels you made with your paladin since you "just soloed this guy."

He was quite easy for me. Just soloed him and pet with a 48 pally buffed with just virtue. Worked on his pet first.. a few dismiss undeads and he was done with. About that time the dirty little nec pulled two dots on me. Stuned him then cast Thunder of Karana. After about two casts all he could do was poke me. hehe. It was all over from there. Left with 55% health and 60% mana. So moral of the story *Necromancers are nothing without their mana.*

Edited, Wed Mar 29 00:48:30 2006

I zoned into Steamfont and as I was headed towards the mino caves I brought up the track window. On it were dozens (I'd say about 50-60) red (to a lvl 40) mobs. A Malignant <something> were all minos and An Eldritch <different types> were all little gnomes. Both types con'ed indifferent to me. They were fighting one another.

A post mentions this happening to them too but I cannot find a reference anywhere about it. The mobs are not listed in the beastiary and I found no quest related to it. Obviously this is a triggered event but since nobody mentioned it but one person in the posts below it makes me think that simply killing Meldrath is not enough to trigger it.

Does anyone know more about this?

Lets me start wiht a keypoint as a lv 56 Beastlord(at the moment) i almost got whomped by Owlbears.. when i was huntin Mountain Brownies i decided lets go see who and what Meldrath is and i didnt even see him and he started DOTin my kitty butt and then i got to like 50% but he didnt chase me out of the tunnel and i was fine but like the Owl Bear and him the ONE keypoint is and always well be CARELESSNESS i mean i though i was doing so great with the other owlbears in Hollowshade and they were all green but for some reason the greens added while walking out of the tunnel and i was running and sow faded i stopped to cast it got Stunned so i finally got near gaurds they did NOTHING to help me and i escaped with 30% a lv 56 BL from Owlbears hehe greenies so yes carelessness can happen to lv 65s even i wont be suprised if i still get whomped in Hollowshade then hehe.

I am a 52 wizzy and i was walking thru tunnel for fun and he aggroed me thru a wall and came up in my target screen i cast back Draught of fire and an ice comet, for some reason i could cast thru the wall too and never had to deal with the minotaur guards , but i did end up going in there and killing them, he is definatley an undercon even though the fight with him was short he ended up taking me to 50% hp with just his 150Hp lifetap and his Dooming darkness/ Boil Blood. the next time i went in with 120 MR and most of his spells didnt stick. lifetap is pretty hard to resist and that acid venom blast spell ( dont know name ) was hitting me for about 60 DD. hope it helps ( he dropped the skull every time i killed him - i killed him 5 times just for fun)

<sigh> Been irritated by this overblown lemming anus since I was doing the Trueshot quest around level 16, so when I got my new batch of spells at 39, thought I'd teach him a lesson.

First time, got killed. Was about to be very annoying, but a kindly 60 cleric rezzed me.

Second time: used a useful pulling tactic to clear the others around him (Mino Lord, Pet, Sentry/Guards). Invis and run to the entrance of Meldrath's room (don't have to invis, but if you don't, you'll have to kill the Mino Lord yourself on the way in). With SoW up, uninvis in front of the room, and they will all aggro you - simply run out of the caves, (left every turn from the Meldrath room) and you will drag with you the Guards, Pet and will pick up the lord on the way out. Then just run to the windmills, where Forpza Fizla will stamp on their testicles. They all have the same runspeed, which is slightly less than SoW, so they will keep aggro without being able to beat you all the way there. Meldrath himself, however, will get tired and stay in the room.

BE WARNED - this is not a foolproof method - if Meldrath casts Darkness on you, you will be screwed, but he doesn't seem to do this too often.

So that leaves Meldrath on his lonesome. Easy kill without guards or pet at 35, thinks I, especially since I'm 4 levels above him, and have a 60 cleric buff which has doubled my HP's to 2300. Was it bollocks. Went in invis, popped right on top of him casting cancel magic to get rid of the damage shield. Spell stuck, but he still absorbed my first 3 rounds of attack without damage - even afterwards, I was missing or hitting low, a mitigation pattern that would normally appear on a mob about 5 levels higher, rather than below me. Then he feared me, and I waited around while his DoT's ate into my HP's - by the time I could attack again, I'd already lost 1000 HP, which means with my usual 39 ranger buffs up, I would have been dead. All this, and I'd hardly even dented his red bar - about half of the first one, if I remember correctly. Then he feared me again, and ran to the Mino Lord who had spawned, so I beat it.

To which I say if he is level 35, then golden cherubim blow heavenly trumpets from my diamond encrusted arse.

Still irritated, but will get the bugger one day...

One thing to watch out for is that agro range is a bit more than what you might expect. I walked in camoflauged, and saw him, his pet, and two guards. So I decided to walk down the hall a bit and do wolf form, and spell up and med. Well the guards start beating on me, but they're not doing to much, so I start to run to get out in the open. Unfortunately apparently Mal also ran out, well he feared me. I run into a walk and the guard just start pounding me. Unfortunately I didn't have gate up and that was the end of my sorry level 40 butt. Just make sure you're ready to fight when you go in, all resist buffs up and such. What I'm not sure is how'd you harmony or otherwise take out the two guards without getting him on you as well

This guy was an easy solo pull for me 37 Dru. No guards were up at the time. I saw him on track (he and pet conned Dark Blue) and went to go get him. I got close to his Spawn point and he stacked 2 DoTs on me. With SoW I ran out and brought his pet out with me. I then proceeded to root DoT his pet and heal my self due to the fairly strong DoTs he cast. Is pet was then killed and time for me to go back in for Meldrath. Again I got close to him (at least enough to snare him) and he begins stacking more DoTs and dispelling SoW etc... (Luckily he didn't get my KEI) and I began to pull him to the entrance of the Caves. He rooted me close to the cave entrance and then Feared me. It was kind of funny to see my self auto cast Fruy of Air on him like 4 times while he lifetapped me once and started DoTing me again. Root finally gave way and Fear wore off I was at about 50% health and about the same mana. I then put Drones of Doom on him and he was quickly below 20% health and couldn't go anywhere... hehehe Gotta love Ensnare. So down he goes while I heal myself. It was a little bit hairy there for a minute or so, but all in all pretty easy. Then I went back in and there are the guards. They conned light blue to me, so I figured what the hey... I got between them and Earthquake. Then run... I snared them and began the "Quad" thechnique outside. It wasn't much of a challenge. The worst of it is when he stacks Dooming Darkness, Boil Blood, and his poison DoT. Hope you can heal yourself quick. Anyway I didn't see it as much of a big deal myself, maybe I just got lucky.

Niltsaria Fastfeets
37 Druid of Karana
<Syndicate Ro>
Solusek Ro Server

At lvl 49 my pet took him out including his guards while i waited "Feign Deathed". Pet had about 10% health left.


Edited, Sat Aug 17 20:19:14 2002

It was so CRAZY my 39pally friend killed him (almost died and he had reallllllllly nice stuff)any way 7min later about we got this mesage that said "You here a rumble in the distence and as it gets closer you realize it is the rumble of thousands of hooves" and then HUNDREDS i kid you not HUNDREDS of minatar gaurds come almost died but made it to zone it was so crazy i ahve never seen that many mobs in one area in my life. so be carful. o ya the reason we think that killing Maldrath was the reason for all this is because the minatars were saying "this is for you Maldrath" so ya. (p.s. plz exuse spelling)

Faledor Moonblade
27 Warrior
Tarew Marr

This little @#$% has one heck of a large aggro radius - I attacked the Mino Lord over near the slave pen intersection and this little @#$% was on me in a second - nuked and dotted the heck out of me and slapped me up and down with fear to boot - didn't stand a chance - I am so going to enjoy ripping him a new one in a few more levels.

Troll SK - 32 seasons

Trust these people when they say he is hard - A 37 druid/30 chanter team got waxed, and quick.

He aggroed from around the corner on the druid, and the minos immediately jumped in hitting hard. first DOT did 180 initial damage. As soon as he aggroed, I ran to the entrance, and made it barely out. Minos were resisting roots from the chanter, and then he ran, as I died. He ran a short way, and died.

This guy is serious.

Was doing some faction work in the mino caves with my level 51 monk. Figured Meldrath would help with that faction.

Killed him 7 times solo. (not really a surprise that he is soloable at 51), but some general information that may help.

The room meldrath is in contains 3 spawns. Him, and 2 guards - these rarely spawn as sentries (higher level).

Meldrath is towards the back of the cave, whilst the guards are at the entrance. The approach tunnels to this cave take you near the back and meldrath will aggro through the wall. The guards will also come with him.

If you have someone to fd pull, or mez adds etc then not too hard to split them. But otherwise its very hard, since you get aggro from all 3 before your in line of sight of any of them.

Just to confirm 4 of the 7 meldrath fights I had, I just pulled all 3 and let the guards beat on me whilst taking meldrath down - so by saying soloable I mean the room is.. (reasonable equipment, but not uber).

The guards/sentries are on a different timer than meldrath. If you can clear out all 3 the first time - then keep the guards clear and you will find that meldrath will spawn seperately all alone.

Meldrath will basically cast 3 spells on himself to buff up.

1. - his pet. - fairly obvious, will beat on you a bit.

2. - skin like steel (not sure of name) - absorbs a chunk of damage before any actually gets through to meldrath, which means interrupting his spells to begin with is hard.

3. - a damage shield - chilled to the bone etc.

Having a pumice stone to dispell him would make life a fair bit easier (or indeed a class who can cast this).. When soloing, I did not bother (didn't have any on me).

Meldrath likes to chain cast if not being meleed, and even then casts fairly frequently. His favourite spell is fear, although he went through phases of just using DD spells, and the occasional clinging darkness (snare/dot).

His fear stuck on me about 1 in 15 times. (3 times in 7 fights, had a bug in one fight where I could not attack and he chain cast 10 fear spells one after the other). - MR 58 (no resist gear on)

Normally I would take about 3 bubbles of health (maybe 3.5) damage when taking both guards and meldrath with no debuffing of meldrath. One bad fight I took 5.5 bubbles dam (used mend).

However, if you have managed to clear the guards - sit in the room near the machine at the back. As soon as meldrath spawns attack. You can attack him before he has a chance to buff up - in that case I would take about 0.5 bubs of damage.

One extra point - if you resist fear enough (he has a habit of casting through walls rather than the normal line of sight rules) you can pull him to the mine entrance - this has one advantage - his pet does not follow by the same root, and usually turns up near the end of the fight.

Sorry for the long post - and do note I was higher level than most people who will be killing him for the ivy quest, so take that into consideration. But hopefully some of the info will be helpful

At level 28 when I was finally making a Trueshot I got near the caves. Pulled up tracking to see if he was up and sure enough there he was, or 2 of him rather. One red and the other blue. I know very strange. And before you say it, no, the other wasn't his pet. I tracked it just to make sure. Shame there was no one else around in Steamfont powerful enough or I'd have thought about taking him down...

This is too all you guys saying that meldrath is easy, I went and grouped w/ my friend to try to kill him (I'm a lvl 34 ranger, friend a 51 druid). We go in druid roots meldrath come screaming back out w/ the mino guards and his pet on us, no big, drop em, druid meds up. We go back in Meldrath is slowly making his way outside, we expected him to be in room big mistake, he had another pet summoned and a mino guard w/ him. I hop over kill mino guard and melee w/ pet, druid starts nuking meldrath, meldrath turns on me, dots me, nukes me, fears me, nukes me, nukes me, dead. Druid was already feared so she could step in. Druid comes back meldrath kills her too. We get back w/ bods, I call in a lvl 35 guildie wiz, she groups up w/ us, go in pull out 2 mino lords and a guard, kill em real quick. Magic peeps med up I go in and grab meldrath, he fears me and sow drops, luckily I'm walking toward cave ent, he kills me just as I see light, druid and wiz come rushing in just a sec to late, but kill his annoying gnomish butt, I come back loot skull (he had a piece of bat fur too, hmm?) and go get my ivy etched tunic, best reason for 2 deaths I've ever seen.

I was wandering around soling watchman Talv (I'm a 40th lvl necromancer) and someone said there were Minotaur caves so I went and had a looksee.
Went in turned a corner.And 'taunting attacker master'..
Huh wheres my pet? Looked all over..'You don't have a pet to command'..Damn I'm getting out of here.
Then straight away I was Feared into a just spawned Minotaur Lord, past him , landed next to a Minotuar hero made it to the entrance and died.
I had unfortunatly bound myself next to the entrance.No pet no spells. Lord and hero and Meldrath =dead.
Came back furious and found the Hero wailing on a group of around 28th lvl. Memmed darkness and a big DOT and cast to help them (my fault i trained after all unknowingly or not). He then comes for me immediately. Dead.
Respawned, Hero dead the Dots had helped take him down. I apologise to the group they were really good about it. I got my corpse was medding and Hero repopped (about 3 minutes respawn on this one!!) and killed me. I delevel to 39 and he's attacking the group.
I come back. mem 4 spells. Nuke the git. Get the bracer . Then work my way through the tunnels killing everything inc Meldrath who without his feared pet was bashed to oblivion and dropped the skull for my friend who i called to the zone quickly to pick up.So alls well that ends well i guess.
Those caves can be nasty .

Ok... I dont do this alot but there seems to be some confusion on how to kill this guy. First off I am a lvl 41 pally. At this lvl the only Minos that con blue to me are the Sentrys. With that said you can easily pull the Mino Guards away from Meldrath in singles...just make sure you are far enough away so that he does not fear you through the wall, I use a bow for this strategy. Once you have killed both Mino guards in this manner go back to meldrath. Here is where a pally truley shines, use your dual stun technique here...I.E. stun spell an shield bash...I do not have the best MR out there...with endure magic on it is a 60ish...if done properly Meldrath will only get one fear off on ya...i have attacked him and killed him 3 times now and his skull has been on him all 3 times as well as a fresh fish once, that i do not understand. Since the skull is lore you can only have one at a time..but you all knew that....enjoy an I hope this helped a bit....Oh yeah one more thing make sure you have your LOH up pallys...you may need that insurance

Gretchin Bristleface
servant of Brell 42nd paladin
Unification of Norrath
Prexus

Questing for the Ivy Etched Tunic as a lvl 19 Ranger is not impossible, just hope you can find some 40ish lvl friends to group with. I was in search of the skull and found a 42 druid and 43 sk who were looking for Lord Minotaur so they kindly allowed me to group with them. Our strategy was to pull the guards and kill them, pretty easy, then pull Maldrath himself, kill pet first , not too hard, Maldrath was tough, the sk would tank him and I would be doing what damage i could from behind him, the druid would nuke and heal a neccesary. As lvl 19 i was losing control atleast once per battle, very frustating but do u expect, He is not too hard with those level char but it can go the otehr way very quickly if he gets his opportunitiesto cast. Well After 6 times over 2hrs of camping he finally dropped the skull, all in all I died once, and the sk died in that same battle. Good Luck Rangers and it is well worh the effort. Ivy Etched Tunic Rocks !!!

Well, I just soloed him as a 47 necro. I used the secret engulfing darkness pull technigue. then my pet easily soloed him. I cant tell you teh technigue, because verant might decide to nerf it :(
-Nicah