Meldrath The Malignant  

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 !!!