Overview
NOTE: The area referred to as "The Marsh of Peril" is the combination of 3 chunks: Wardship of the Celestine Moon, Ruins of Vol Tuniel, and Thelaseen. Also, many people (myself included) often just refer to the whole darn area as "the wardship" which is technically incorrect.
Ok there's a lot of info scattered around the internet on the wardship, and a few guides… but most seem to just tell you what you need, not where you get it from. I was in and out of the wardship from 28-33, and almost full time from 34-41, and gleaned quite a bit of info from my experiences there. EDIT: This was for the summer of 07'. Completing a set of wardship armor as of now (summer 08') will take a CONSIDERABLY lesser amount of time and levels. I am currently running a character through the wardship to experience the changes and to update this guide. I will now proceed to ramble on about my time in the wardship and its dungeons, and provide a few tips on where/how to get certain items. If you know how to get the pieces, but want a little more in-depth info on the dungeons and their mobs/layout, skip to my next post.
For every piece, you need ancient armor piece + candle + rune + tome + catalyst. My first bit of advice is to buy some bigger bags, because the wardship is going to ruin your inventory space!
First off, you need faction with the Celestine Ward….. a lot of faction. As of now, ALL races start at -2000 faction (evil races used to start at -8100). Until you get to 2000 faction, you should do the quest to kill bloodhowlers (or mushroom spores, read on a bit), which is repeatable. This is given in the building in the southwest corner of the Wardship outpost, and has you kill 100 bloodhowlers for 500 faction (and 28 copper!) so 100 kills = 700 faction total, as each mob gives 2. You can also turn in runes for faction, which I will mention later. Another option that has been added in is to do the mushroom spores quest in the recondite threshold. Collecting 30 mushrooms (ground spawns throughout the swamp) can be turned in for 500 faction (*note - This has been reported to no longer give EXP), this quest is repeatable. It is less time consuming than the bloodhowler quest. The advantage of the bloodhowlers is that you can get wardship drops as you kill them.
Faction
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- AW = ancient weapons
Two things happen at 2000 faction. First off, a lot of new quests become available in the Wardship, and most of them give faction. One such quest is to head south to the recondite outpost in Vol Tuniel, where you will find more quests to do, also for faction. There is a nice list of all the quests in the marsh of peril here. You should do any and all quests you can find in the Celestine Wardship outpost as well as the Recondite Threshhold, as they provide quite a bit of faction.
The other thing that happens at 2k faction is that Thorian Glowban, the ancient rituals expert outside the bank building, will offer the first catalyst, used to make pieces for arms, wrists, and waist. The same thing will happen again at 5000 faction. New quests will become available, as well as a new catalyst, this time for head, feet, and hands.
OK, with the faction out of the way, I'll talk about the components. First up, the candles, because they make the least sense!
Candles:
Where can you find the candles, you ask? The answer is anywhere. Depressingly, a level 28 bloodhowler has the same chance of dropping your precious kel and sar candles as a level 40 6dot deep in the Vi'Rak temple - you just gotta get lucky with em. The good thing is that they're tradeable, and you can usually get them cheap off the broker if you need to. My advice would be to not worry too much about candles - by the time you collect your armor, runes, and tomes, you should have more than enough candles. They drop relatively frequently.
What about the armor drops themselves?
Armor:
- Tier1: Waist, Arms, Wrists
- Tier2: Head, Feet, Hands
- Tier3: Shoulders, Legs, Chest
Just about anything in the marsh of peril, be it bloodhowler, frog, or Vi'Rak boss, has a low chance of dropping a piece of tier1 or tier2 ancient armor. Again, you just gotta get lucky. Unlike candles, however, armor is soulbound. EDIT: This is the paragraph where I used to complain about how frustrating it is to get armor. Fortunately, armor now drops all over the place and is not really an obstacle.
OK back to where to get tier3 armor. You do have a shot in any of the dungeons, as I mentioned. For a better drop rate, and for tier3 in particular, you need to delve into the depths of each the three dungeons. For Vol Tuniel, the basement is your best shot, especially near the throne room. For the Vi'Rak lair, this means the temple. For Thelaseen, this means the drake or golem islands, or the smaller islands beyond them. Patience is the name of the game here, as you will also find many tier1 and tier2 pieces. The payoff comes in the form of 7-10k xp per kill in a full group, and 5+ faction per kill as well.
Greed roll on armor pieces you don't need - they sell for some decent coin to a merchant and you can also turn them in for motes. I'll discuss motes towards the end of this post
Next we're on to runes! Runes are my favorite piece because they come from mobs that drop them every time. Every named boss will drop two runes. Sure, the mobs are bosses that are often very difficult to get to, but at least you know you're going to get some runes, as opposed to the armor/candle random chance waiting game.
Runes:
Delso is the easiest to get, and you will learn to hate delso. Scattered throughout the marsh of peril are bloodhowler camps and troglodite ruins, and there are many named bosses that can spawn at any number of such sites. This area, the area outside the 3 dungeons, is often referred to as the "overland" area, as the dungeons themselves are primarily not at ground level. Any of these nameds are guaranteed to drop the delso rune. They are not soloable by every class, as they are all 4dot mobs, and they all hurt like sonsabitches. (Curse you Hunter Redhand!) Be wary soloing in the marsh, as most of its denizens are much harder than a comparable level 3-4dot found outside it. I will discuss a few mobs and their attributes/behaviours later. Also, if you're unlucky, you can still get delso runes from nameds inside the dungeons themselves. If you do, it is OK to break down and cry.
Somor and eltha runes are found in Vol Tuniel and the Vi'Rak lair (which is actually connected to VT, though you can get in elsewhere) Any named has a shot at dropping either, but the higher level the boss, and the deeper in the dungeon, the better the chance of it dropping an eltha rather than somor.
Rigva and zalge runes are found in Thelaseen. Unlike VT/Vi'Rak, I didn't find bosses that seemed to drop the tier3 rune (zalge) at a higher rate. In fact, you won't find many nameds at all early on in the dungeon, with the exception of Vodel the Sneak. (You don't find him, he finds you. And only when you are busy. Good thing he sucks) Vodel, however, is a complete tool, and will never drop his nice dagger, and will usually give you a delso or rigva rune.
The golem experiments on the golem island in Thelaseen appear to drop only tier1 and tier2 runes. If you need runes from Thel you should probably try the islands behind the drake and golem islands.
EDIT: Neither of the tier2 runes (somor, rigva) are exclusive to a dungeon anymore. They do tend to drop more where I have pointed out, but it is possible to get somor in Thelaseen as well as rigva in Vol Tuniel.
I have also been told (Courtesy Jgok, flamehammer) that bosses on the surface of Vol Tuniel (IE within the walls, but not in the basement) can drop both somor and rigva (in addition to delso, of course). I also know that they can drop eltha from personal experience. Add to this that they are fairly easy and you have a great place to farm runes for faction or for your armor. You'll still have to go to thesaleen for zalge, however, and you'll still probably want to venture deeper into VT for a good chance at an eltha rune.
Greed roll on all runes you don't need. They can be turned in to Mr. Glowban for faction. 100 for tier1, 250 for tier2, and 500 for tier3.
And finally, the tomes. I hate tomes.
Tomes:
First off, some rules about tomes. Tomes are ground spawns that you right (red ! icon) click to open, and then loot. They're hard to miss because they (in most cases) have a red light beam shooting up a few feet over them. You can tell what kind of tome it is by mousing over it, but note that you CANNOT do this while invis. If you are invis, you won't get the ! icon, you won't be able to tell what kind of tome it is, and won't even be able to loot it. The other thing about tomes is that they are connected spawns, much like harvesting nodes in many areas. If you see a tome you don't need, you should still pick it up to spawn another somewhere else. This means you'll be picking up plenty of jgors in VT and plenty of ilsus in Thelaseen.
Like the tier1 runes, the tier1 tomes can be found scattered throughout the overland area in the marsh of peril in any of the troglodite ruins. They can also show up in Vol Tuniel or Thelaseen
Jgor and Quel can be found in Vol Tuniel. Jgor spawns all over the damned place, while Quel is found almost exclusively within the throne room itself, though you can get lucky and get it in another room. Note that if you are using invis to go around and check tomes, that mosquitos DO see through it, and will proceed to destroy you. Did I mention that they have 150% run speed and that their attack stuns you if they are flanking? Also they have AOE attacks and will wipe your party every few minutes if you aren't careful (or high enough level). Moving on.
Ilsu and Vurm tomes can be found in Thelaseen. Like jgor, ilsu spawns all over the damned place. Note that you CANNOT find vurm on the first few islands. You must go PAST the golem or drake islands to the smaller ones beyond to have a shot at it. Thelaseen, like VT, is hard to get around invis. Drakes and drakeguards see through it, and almost every island has pathing drakes. Note that there is one island full of dark elves, all of which see through invis.
Tomes, while a pain, are now tradeable, and can be found on the broker for a reasonable price most times. (Unless it's vurm. Usually expensive because it's really the only hard one to get.)
Vi'Rak lair does not have any tome spawns. This sucks, because Vi'Rak is the best place in the marsh.
OK so you ground out your faction, got your candles, your runes, your tomes, your armor pieces, became a hermit, alienated yourself from both your RL family and your in-game guild, and got outleveled by all your friends. Where do you go to actually turn all this stuff into armor?
Southwest of the entry ramp to Thelaseen is a big glowing orb surrounded by three golem guardians. There are many ways to deal with them (in addition to just killing them, of course, but they are 4dots) My cleric friend simply turned on invulnerablility and ran in. You could also lull them. A common tactic is to have one person piss em off real good and then run away while the other moves in to click the orb. Simply right click the orb as many times as you need armor pieces. Note that it decides which armor piece to make, not you. That means if you have all the things you need for both your legs and your BP, with the exception of one vurm, the orb decides that you need pants and have to wait for your BP. So if you have the necessary components to make multiple pieces, make sure to bring only what you want to make, and leave the rest in the bank to make sure you get what you want.
There is one final thing to do in the wardship - the ancient weapon quest, given by Mr. Glowban, catalyst extraordinaire, once you have 11900 faction. The quest is to simply kill 5 bosses in VT (Vi'Rak lair counts, I believe) and 5 bosses in Thelaseen. Boss translates to anything that drops a rune, and you should by now have a good idea of where those are. (Not from this guide, by from getting to 11900 faction and getting your runes. I'll talk about nameds locations in my next post) After you complete the quest and get your reward (options are a longbow, shortbow, healy orb, nuke orb, throwing dagger summoning thing orb, and a shield) you have the final task of enchanting it. I say task because at this point you're in so deep there's no way you're leaving without finishing.
To enchant you need 1 of each tier3 rune, candle, and tome. Yes I'm serious. Vurm, quel, kel, sar, eltha, zalge. You also need 300 motes of power. Now what the hell are those exactly? Well, after you complete the weapon quest, any boss you kill drops 5 motes of power. (They're quest drops, so everybody that needs them can get 5) Note that bosses in Vol Tuniel do not drop motes. Don't panic, you don't need to kill 60 bosses. Remember those armor pieces you've been saving? You can turn in tier1 pieces for 5 motes, tier2 pieces for 15 motes, and tier3 pieces for 30 motes. Many people have so many pieces at this point that they don't really have to kill any bosses for motes at all. Once you have everything, get a perfect catalyst from Glowban and head off to the orb for one final time!
Armor Component List:
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Armor Rewards
Weapons:
Quest : Ancient Weapons of Leth Verael
Once you have 13k faction and adventuring level 38, you will be able to get the Ancient Weapons of Leth Verael quest that requires you to kill 5 nameds in Vol Tuniel and Thelaseen
(You can kill the same named more than once for updates)
Rewards
Once you have killed the 10 leaders of Vol Tuniel and Thelaseen you can turn in the quest for your reward
- Ancient Shortbow of Leth Varael
- Ancient Longbow of Leth Varael
- Ancient Shield of Leth Varael
- Varaelian Orb of Annihilation
- Varaelian Orb of Healing
- Varaelian Orb of the Moon and Stars
Upgrading your Weapon
Once you have your Ancients Weapon of Leth Verael you can upgrade it.
You need the following materials:
■ 300 Motes - Gained from turning in armor parts at Thorian Glowban, in the outpost.
■ T1 Armor: Gives 5 motes.
■ T2 Armor: Gives 15 motes.
■ T3 Armor: Gives 30 motes.
■ A Perfect Catalyst.
■ Your newly gained weapon.
■ Each of the following; Kel, Sar, Eltha, Zalge, Quel and Vurm
All the materials are then turned in at the Ancient Ritual Stone in the Thelaseen chunk.
- Yasoril, Celestial Avenger
- Damelun, Harbinger of Night
- Resadal, Bulwark of the Heavens
- Rylsca, Anari's Wrath
- Tessoral, Tuniel's Mercy
- Queldoral, Bounty of the Gods