Queen Nok Nok's Tomb  

Very easy MM if you follow Nydanthesilent's write up.
I 3-boxed this mission over 10 times to finally get the sword. Took me 20 minutes max to finish each mission.

I have tried meleeing them down... dotting and hiding. I have tried a thousand different things (at least feels like it) and i never get a quest update. gave up on the sword and i have went with a skymaul. sucks to spend the money but this quest is rediculous

you can now /open the chest. Its a wonderful thing.
However in my experiance ALL of the Grave robbers now see through hide.

How much experience do you get for this mission now? Also where is entrance for this mission now?

Is this quest broken now that they redid Nektulos? can't find the spirit

Tried to track the dark spirit with my 66 druid but no luck finding him.. Did they do away wi that misssion?

Ok, here is my walkthrough of this mission. Its quite easy although time consuming, but the rewards are definitely worth it, the necklace, and the short sword are both worth it. and with a full group it is about a 30 min MM, not too bad.And I have done it with 4 one being boxed by me. and although the mission takes about a hour its still doable.Im siure you could probably do it with 3 but it would take even longer.

First of all, the skills, get all the skills except fairy fear, which is really unecessary.

Upon zoneing in, you will notice "whitch lamps" which will be yellow con and they cannot be attacked. So dont even try. What you and your group need to do is get to the cave by the chest, and the witch lamps seem to loose aggro when you go right next to zone wall or high up on the cave wall.The cave is to the right of where you zone in at.

Once all of your group is by the box in the cave, and free from aggro, start whacking on the chest. You can only do melee damage to it. When it breaks, everyone loot shard, roll on item but dont loot the Fairy dust untill you have all looted and rolled and are ready for killing.Make sure the one looting the dust can complete the mission, because if he logs off, all of you will have no chance of completing it.

Once the fairy dust is looted, all of the witch lamps turn into rats. Now you do not have to kill the rats to complete the mission, but they are annoying and respawn every 10-15 ish minutes it seems.So you can either kill them on the way to the shrines or just try to avoid them. It is wise to kill the ones by the shrines so you dont get extra aggro while trying to destroy the shrines and fighting ther zombies.

Now your task is to break the 3 spirit shrines, they look like huge crystals floating in mid air.
what will happen is a red conning Zombie dudes will spawn at 60% roghly, and at 30% roughly. So kill them and kill the spirit shrines.I usually like to melee the shrines in the mean time medding and saving mana for the zombie bosses, there is a total of 6 of these to kill, 2 per shrine. Also when you dot these shrines, chances are good to spawn the second zombie while the first is still up. So I dont like dotting the shrines.

After all 3 shrines are destroyed and you get the message "Task stage completed", have the person with the dust zone out first untill all others get the green "Task completed" message on their screen, then you can all safely zone out.

I don't do alot of MM's, but I went to this one hoping to get the sword.

I did this mission once before the nerfs. Where is the dark spirit now? I went to the spot where I had done this mission previously, and there's no one there and no npc to talk to. Didn't see the spirit on track either.

Has it moved? Is it gone?

Edited, Thu Jan 26 09:20:36 2006

With the 12-7-05 patch there have been some big changes made to this quest.
1) To prevent "leeching", each participant must now loot a Shard of Wisdom from the destroyed chest. Only by doing so AND completing the task can you gain XP.
2) The Fairy Fire DoT has been reduced in power. Before, one DoT would take a shrine down 16%. Now it only does a total of 10% damage.
3) Previously, a Reanimated Grave Robber would spawn when a Shrine would drop to 50%. Now, it will spawn when the Shrine is at 66%.

One thing for sure...these changes have certainly eased the congestion at the entrance to Shadowed Grove. :<)

Jherikho Silverwolf
70 Ranger
Xegony server

why does everyone cry about newbs werent we all new at one time or another :)

Depths of Darkhollow is the biggest POS ever. I absolutely hate the rediculous amount of EXP that can be had by these missions (Nektulos). Ive done about 10-12 missions and like the ones that actually take time and effort to do but the Nek missions are a killer for this game. Too many people have shot from level 55 or less to 70 without really earning it. Now people that previously have worked on acheiving 65+ the hard way end up grouping with these people who still have the gear, spells and skills of someone of a lower level. I wish they would pull all the exp handed out by these missions... especially the Nek missions. The gear should be scaled down too... for example, there is no way it should take 15 minutes to get a sword of a quality that previously would have cost 100K + or taken a skilled group or raid a substantial amount of time to get.

everyone keeps say this MM is bugged. Did you ever thing it isn't bugged. I have a feeling knowing how SoE works that it is meant to mess things up if you dot and die and it kills the shrine. Think about it. How easy would it be to run in dot and die rinse and repeat? with this so called bug it keeps things in check. You know how SoE works think about it. Would also make since to why it hasn't been fixed.

Send 3 to EAST(cave) Crystal, 2 to NORTH and the last person to the cave.

3 at east hide, 2 in north hide person in cave on chest if the guy on chest gets aggro turn around and run into the wall, once you'r ehigh enough the wisps warp.


when dust is looted everyone DOT (fairy Fire) and melee / kick them to death, dont worry about adds and keep each other healed. North and East shrines should fall before graverobbers reach you. feel free to die at this point.


Regroup at enterence kill the rat there, jump on second log and dot the west crystal it'll fall quick. then zone out.

Mission takes about 7 minutes this way.

Anyone figure out the optional thing with the dust yet??

Even with the new rats, the mission is very easy to complete quickly. Send a couple people into the cave to deal with the chest. Have the rest sneak to the shrines and wait hidden. When the rats pop, the people at the shrines un-hide, DoT, and re-hide until the shrines drop. If none of the zombies see invis you can have your win in under 15 minutes. If they do you just have to win a little slower :)

EDIT: BTW, using this method you can win without killing a single mob.

Edited, Sat Oct 15 01:48:22 2005

Ok, I've seen a lot of people just plain not understand how to do this mission, even heard of people not knowing there's a lockout timer cause they've never finished it in less than 45 minutes, so I will share my method here. Ok, first I'll clear up some misconceptions I've seen on this board, the reanimated grave robber "zombie" spawns when a shrine is at 50%, no more, no less. It spawns in the remains room, and paths to it's shrine. If you dot a shrine (each dot does 19%) and die and your dot kills the shrine, you will get bugged lose your mission and likely get /bonked and /bitten many times. To start off with, you zone in and see all these untouchable mobs, some people like to move and hide and get to the remains very slowly, I personally prefer just blowing through them fairy linebacker style. Read the mission text, "hope they forget about you", they will drop depending on where you pick them up. Everything pre-cave should have dropped off you once you get into the cave, but sometimes they cheat, at any rate running up the wall behind the chest will drop agro from them, as well as the four wisps in the chest room. Melee the chest down and loot the item. now move person A, B, & C to the cave entrance. Once all 3 are there dot the shrine(shrine 1, or cave shrine) and wait. at just under 60% everyone dots again (each dot does 19 as said before, you've now dotted it enough to destroy it). Now have person A charge towards the shrine in the north (shrine 2 as marked on many maps) while B and C fall behind him. Once you get into that room there are 2 rats to worry about, if person A has agro on both rats, no worries, B and C run behind shrine 2 and dot then hide, if B or C have agro, A heals them to get agro. Now, once B and C are on shrine 2, A needs to run to 3 (west) and get behind the tree stumps to lose rat agro and hide. If A dies in the process the rats will charge B and C if they were agroed... Once A is at 3 dot it and hide. A serves as a lookout for B and C for the zombie. Once 2 is down, if you're feeling ambitious run B and C out to 3 to help finish it off, if not just wait there till A does its job. Once 3 is down have A zone out and once B and C get experience they can leave task and will auto zone out shortly. If you have more numbers just adjust how many you send to 2 and 3. Also, if somebody dies, they can move to the second stump from the zone in and get a shot on shrine 3. NOTE: these are numbered 1 2 and 3 for a reason, if you break them out of order (or just get them to 50% before people are in place) you just spawned a new challenge for them to deal with. Killing anything in this mission is purely optional, and mostly a waste of time, you get no xp or loot whatsoever. Also as stated jumping will get you a short burst of speed. With a 5 person group I've gotten this down to 12 minutes, leaving a nice 33 minute tasktimer to go do the orc mission in.

Edit: Patch day, o' patch day.... this mission is no longer worth mentioning on this website. SOE has decided in their infinite stupidity that if people are enjoying this mission, let us completely change it, then not tell anyone about it in those stupid patch messages they love so much. The rats no longer drop agro, the fairies seem to move slower (if possible) and everything was hitting harder. oh, they added a little message when the witchlamps forget about you. I really enjoyed this mission cause it gave me time to do other things while still enjoying eq and getting decent xp. Was the xp too much? Well sony added a tasktimer refresh to combat this problem, perhaps it was people leaving their toon in a mission outside the zone and getting free xp while afk or asleep. hmm, could have made it to where you actually had to zone in to get the credit. instead, hey lets make it to where nobody wants to do the mission anymore by changing the rules and making it to where you have to kill every mob in the zone or risk losing the mission because they failed to fix the problem with dieing with a shrine dotted and losing the mission. Not too mention, the group heal over time, still does not affect the whole group! Are they so lazy that instead of doing smart fixes to exploits and fixing the actual problems with the zone they'd just rather make nobody want to go to the zone anymore? Making an AA in 45 minutes was not an insane amount of xp imho. It's not like you make any loot at all in this mission, beyond the first time you loot the item, which is decent. there are zones in this game where you can make comperable if not better xp than this, while still getting loot. These missions were great for casual players who didn't have much time, guess sony doesn't care about that crowd though.
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Riszaak Liruek - 70th scrounge knight of Bertoxx
Xirisx Stormwolf - 70th Nukerdruid

Edited, Fri Oct 14 05:09:56 2005

Once the last shrine is destroyed make sure someone jumps onto the stump closest to the zone-out on the right hand side (facing zone-out) and you will immediately get the green "mission complete" text.
Occasionally we were getting a random bug where zoning out of the mission gave no exp to some people and sometimes zoning back in and out again wouldnt fix it, making sure the dust looter zoned first seemed to make no difference either. Have never had a problem with this since I found the sweet spot. give it a try :)

Edit.. Also the zombie linked to a shrine spawns when the shrine reaches 60%. And a fairy fire DoT will do 19% damage to a shrine.

Pawwz
65 Beastlord of Druzzil Ro


Edited, Sat Oct 8 05:03:13 2005

Dark Spirit Necklace
Magic Item Lore Item No Drop
Slot: Neck
AC: 7
Str: +4 Sta: +4 Wis: +4 Int: +4 Agi: +4 Hp: +40 Mana: +35 Endurance: +35
Sv Cold: +4 Sv Magic: +4 Sv Poison: +4
Wt: 0.6 Size: Small
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Slot 1, Type 7; empty

ok there is a bug with this quest, if you are killing the shrines and only one member has argo and dots the shrine then dies and is in middle of zoning from death when shrine dies you do not get credit for the kill for mission completion. basically no loot and no xp. put a bug report in but...

Edited, Tue Sep 27 10:23:20 2005

Losing agro on chest is done by goin high up on wall behind it.

At the crystal's run a tiny bit past it and just keep moving around behind it till the rats pop.
Sometimes a rat will stay, so do rat and then crystal.

The zombie guys pop at 30% and the last one just run past and have guy with dust zone first to get xp then everyone else run and zone.

No need to stick around once person who has dust zones.

We had 3 rotting missions in a row.
The loot that dropped was either already owned or the peeps in group couldnt equip (2x neck 1x 1HS).

Shame that.

Kinda makes me giggle the sight of them fairies doin there thing.
And can be very challenging when 1 or 2 of the party members cant seem to get the idea of "Hug the walls" and "Run behind chest up on wall" or simply "Stay close" LoL.

Sofurious
http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1149272

Got the neck piece for my sk. Hide dot hide is the way to go on the shrines. Alson found that if you dot the shrine then die while dot is running then you lose mission and no XP. Following are stats on my 66 sk.

Necklace of Containment

MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Slot: Neck
AC: 14
STR: +9 STA: +9 CHA: +9 WIS: +9 INT: +9 AGI +9 HP:+120 MANA: +115 Endurance: +115
SV MAGIC: +8 SV COLD: +8 SV POISON: +8
WT:0.6 Size: Small
Class: ALL
Race: ALL
Slot 1, type 7: Empty

Argoth 70 Shaman
Maxelis 66 Shadow Knight
7th Hammer

Did the mission again with my 54 War, got the sword again, which, of course, is scaled to level:

Ornate Shortsword (same graphic)
MAGIC ITEM LORE ITEM NO TRADE
Slot: PRIMARY SECONDARY
Skill: 1H Slashing Atk Delay: 20
DMG: 15 Dmg Bonus: 10 (@ 55) AC: 8
Effect: Burning Blade (Combat)
DEX: +7 STA: +7 CHA: +7 WIS: +7 INT: +7 HP: +80 MANA: +75 Endurance: +75
SV DISEASE: +7 SV COLD: +7 SV POISON: +7
WT: 1.7 Size: MEDIUM
Class: WAR RNG BRD ROG BER
Race: ALL
Slot 1, type 4 : Empty

Burning Blade
Required Level: 55
Spell Effect: Engulfs your weapon with flame causing 75 damage to your target.

I've seen this Dark Spirit of Nektulos in a couple different areas so far. He seems to wander. I've seen him near the zone line to Lavastorm and wandering towards the bridge. And yes, he was wandering the second time I saw him. So he's not a static npc. And I've only seen him the 2 times so far in many trips by those spots.

This is the strategy that I've used with my friends.. generally we can do this mission with three people if we're all on the same page.

We head to the cave slowly and carefully, being sure to not get aggro from the wisps. Each faerie should be in control of themselves, and not /autofollow anyone else. That's just silly, I know, but I've seen some real tools during this mission, lemme tell ya. As each faerie makes her way to the chest she starts beating on it as it is clear to do so. If a wisp comes close, just back up high onto the wall until they go away. The main goal here is to not get aggro here, because if you try to loot the opened chest while aggro'd, you will not be able to.
If a faery gets aggro, she runs it away from the chest and tries to aggro a few of the close ones away from the chest to help the other faeries out. Die and come back. Death does not lose you xp at this time, so be sure to use your deaths to your advantage. Once the chest is done, IMMEDIATELY loot the dust from it. If you've agreed on loot beforehand, hopefully the person who gets the sword or the neck will not have aggro and will be able to loot it.

If you need to help a faery get to the chest to loot the treasure, the other faeries should act as aggroers and try and clear a path to the chest for the looter.. slide by what you can without aggro, and pull away the rest. The chest only sits there for 7-ish minutes, so it's important not to mess around. Work together to achieve one goal, and then when everything that needs to be looted is, go ahead and move to the next phase, which is to clear the crystals.

What my groups have done is inched their ways to one crystal at a time, and cleared what roamer rats they could (that weren't tethered) The idea is usually to have the faeries that are Full Mana to start beating on the crystal, while the others that need a break just have a rest until its time for the zombie to pop. The zombie pops and runs towards your group when the crystal is at about 30%, give or take 10%. Kill the thing, finish the crystal, and move on. We try to finish the crystal that's closest to the zone in last, so that we can just finish off the crystal and make a run for it when the crystal is dead.

Some helpful tips for this dungeon:

1) Faeries go very slow, but the occasional jump can speed you out of a potentially bad situation.

2) Make hotkeys that tell your group when you're going to heal a player. Something like "Faery heal to %t!" as a button, then press your Faith of the Fay hotkey. And no, /cast doesn't work here.

3) Dotting the faery shrines could potentially be bad. If you die and the shrine dies from a dot, then the shrine gives you no credit towards your mission and you can't finish the mission. I generally just dot the rats and zombies and beat on the shrines without the Faery Fire dot.


As always, your mileage may vary. I generally over-explain a mission at the beginning instead of leaving everyone to their whims, so who knows what your group may decide to do. Good luck!

-Windd Whistler of Povar
(Formerly of Prexus)

Also while beating on the faerie shrine at around 50% a Reanimated Grave robber spawns and will walk out of the cave and stand infront of the shrine you are attacking. He will walk back into the cave after a minute or so, then repeat the pathing every 2 or 3 minutes. So I just watched for him and /hide till he left. Also there is one for each shirne so by the time you are on the third one three are walking to there respective shrine. BTW it is red to you at 25, I was 3boxing mission and got it to 25% before I wiped so a group of 6 should have no problem taking one down. And saying you will die alot is a understatment, I probobly died 20 to 25 times before I got the hang of it. There is something to running behind the shrines if you have aggro from creatures, they seem to "pop" to thier spawn points and forget about you, but at one point I had two of the rats on me and one "poped" to its spawn point and the other kept attaking me so not sure exactly how it works yet. hope this helps.


Imbrie Bloodhawk 70 Ranger
Shadowcasterr Bloodhawk 65 Wizard
Frogglok Klerik 65 Cleric

Lany Server

Edited, Wed Sep 21 02:50:48 2005

The Dark Spirit is near the orc camp near the river, not far from the bridge. Getting the mission will give you a compass indicator to the zone in.

This is a pretty good mission, but difficult to get used to. You'll die a lot in it. The reward is about an aa worth of xp, and one Necklace of Containment will drop:

Str/Sta/Wis/Int/Agi +9. 120HP, 115 Mana. +8 to cold/magic/poison. All/All, No Drop. It will disappear if you lose the mission.

You and your group will turn into faerie (sp?) rangers. When you zone in, make a hide button, and hide. Then select your aa's and save them (remember: you'll die a LOT).

The first step requires getting into the caves. If the wisps aggro you, run off the path and die, so others can get in the caves. You have to beat on the chest in the cave until it dies, then loot faerie dust and the necklace. Someone in my group seemed to think that if you run toward the shrines (see next step) when the wisps aggro, they'll de-aggro. Maybe someone can test.

When the chest dies, all the wisps disappear and get replaced by rats and zombies. They like to kill you too.

The second step is to destroy 3 shrines (they're sparkly looking things). I recommend leaving the closes shrine for last. The rats and zombies will kill you, but you can get around if you use your hide button judicously. It works best if some of you aggro the mobs and lead them away so others can camp out at the shrines and beat on them.

Note, there's a bug that will keep you from winning if you DoT the shrines down and aren't alive when they die, so avoid hitting the shrines with your DoTs after they hit 50% or so. What worked best for us was getting to the shrines, then using mana for heals to stay and beat on them longer. Die, rinse, repeat.

With some practice, I think this can be knocked out in 30-45 min. It's a bit frustrating, but definitely different. Very creative, and the reward is worth the time.