Act Five Quests

Quest One: Stop the Siege
Quest Two: Rescue on Mt. Arreat
Quest Three: Prison of Ice
Quest Four: Betrayal of Harrogath
Quest Five: Rite of Passage
Quest Six: Eve of Destruction

Quest One

Quest Name: Stop the Siege
Triggered By: Reaching Act Five
Given by: Larzuk the Blacksmith
Location: Bloody Foothills
Reward: Larzuk will socket an item of your choice; discounted prices in town.

This first quest in the Act is about as straight-forward as a quest can be. You must find Shenk the Overseer, and kill him.

When you first enter town, if you approach Larzuk the Blacksmith. He will have the "!" over his head, and if you click on him he gives you his introduction speech, and then offer the following:

"If you're here to defeat Baal, you must prove it!

As we speak, Harrogath is under siege by Baal's demons. Catapults rain death just outside the town walls.

Baal himself travels up the sacred mountain, having left in charge here one of his most vicious generals, Shenk the Overseer. A ruthless taskmaster, he lashes his own minions into suicidal frenzies on the battlefield.

If you wish to prove yourself to us, destroy the monster, Shenk, that commands those infernal catapults outside Harrogath. If you manage to do this, return to me."

Your mission accepted, you set out into the Bloody Foothills. Shenk is always found near the end of the long, rectangular level. If you already had the Frigid Highlands waypoint and wanted to go right to Shenk, you could just take that waypoint, and then run back into the Bloody Foothills, and Shenk would be right there.

Shenk overseeing his minions.

There isn't any great strategy needed to kill Shenk, he's just a bigger, stronger Overseer, and by the time you reach him, you'll have seen dozens of his kind. He is surrounded by a couple dozen minions, but he seldom lashes them into any sort of frenzy, and he can't resurrect them, so kill them off however you can, and then go after him directly. He has a decent amount of hit points, but doesn't hit that hard, so you shouldn't have too much trouble on any difficulty level.

Upon Shenk's death, dozens of catapult shots rain down on the area. This doesn't do anything in terms of damage to you, but it's colorful and fun to see.

Reward: After Shenk is dead, when you next return to town Larzuk will offer to add a socket(s) to an item, and will discount his prices to you. The socketing quest is just like the imbue quest in Act One, you can wait and do it as much later as you want to, and it will remain an option when you click Larzuk until you use it.

The quest adds the maximum number of sockets possible to the item you choose to socket. You can only use this quest reward once on a given item.

Sockets added:

Normal Items - From 1-6, the max allowed for that particular item. Check our Items section for the exact number for every type of armor and weapon.

Magical Items - One or two sockets. In the beta they could get up to three, but this was turned down as Bliz felt it was overpowered.

Rare/Set/Unique/Crafted Items - One socket only. (Crafted get up to 3 in the beta, but this is a bug that will be fixed.)

No Sockets Added - RuneWord items, items that have already been socketed, item types that can't have sockets added at all.

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Quest Two

Quest Name: Rescue on Mt. Arreat
Triggered by: Entering the Frigid Highlands.
Given by: Qual-Kehk
Location: Frigid Highlands
Reward: Ability to hire Barbarian Mercs and 3 Runes

This one is a little more involved than the first quest. You must scour the Frigid Highlands and find fifteen captive Barbarian NPCs. They are held captive in wooden-fenced pens in groups of five, and when you find them you need merely knock the lock off the gate, and they will stream out and vanish into a portal that appears for them.

Barbarians in the pen.

Through the portal they go.

Yes, you'll probably get Warcraft II flashbacks.

The three pens are always somewhere in the middle of the Frigid Highlands, not over by the sides of the area, and generally not visible on the mini map from the sides either, until you get close to them. The pens are easily spotted once you get near though, as large white rectangles. You'll always spot one on the minimap first and then close in on it, advancing slowly since there are monsters every step of the way in this area.

The Frigid Highlands (and all the other early surface areas of Act Five) is about as large as the first two surface areas of Act Four put together, so this one usually requires some looking.

None of the Barbarian pens are guarded by any greater concentration of monsters than you find anywhere else in the fortified walls areas of Act Five, so don't expect any massive dangerous battles. There are also at least 15 and probably more random wandering Barbarian NPCs around this area, but they are content to do their own thing and don't need rescuing.

As you free each bunch, the quests menu pops up telling you to "Free ten more warriors", and then "Free five more warriors".

When you return after freeing all 15 of the Barbarians, go to Qual-Kehk for your reward. He will have the usual "!" over his head, and will tell you:

"Thank you for rescuing my men. They have spoken well of your bravery in battle. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.

If you wish, you may hire some of my mercenaries that you saved. And please... take this set of runes. I had been saving them for a socketed shield, but I think you'll make better use of them.

Be sure to set them in the right order for their fullest effect."

The Runes you receive are Tal, Ral, and Ort. None of them do a whole lot on their own, each adds elemental damage of one type to a weapon, and 30% resistance to it to a shield, so all three in an item and you'd have all but cold damage/resistance covered. But if you put all three into a three-socket shield in the correct order (Ral, then Ort, then Tal), you get a special better bonus, and a Rune Word item.

Wrong!


Right!

Ancients Pledge
RalOrtTal
+43% resist all
10% damage taken goes to mana
+50% DR

You get the same three runes for this quest every time (so you'll have three sets by the time you do all difficulty levels with a given character). The actual order to set them in isn't specifically said, but they appear in your inventory in order, top to bottom, just how they should look in the shield. Whether you would know to get a three socket shield and socket it with these three gems in the proper order if you were seeing it for the first time in the game and didn't know about Rune Words is debatable.

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Quest Three

Quest Name: Prison of Ice
Triggered by: Entering Arreat Plateau (surface area #3)
Given by: Malah
Location: Frozen River
Rewards: +10 to all resistance, Rare class-specific item.

Malah tells you about this quest with a long speech. By the time you get this quest you've noticed that Nihlathak has been gone from town for some time, and you have no one to gamble with. Malah says:

"Here is a matter which I hesitate to share, but I believe you are the only one who can help me now. Anya, the young alchemist and daughter to one of our slain leaders, has been missing for some time. She is a strong, crafty woman with a spirit like no other.

One night, just before your arrival, I overheard her and Nihlathak arguing about her father's death. The next morning she was gone. Nihlathak has his own tale as to where she went and why. Don't believe him! I fear he is at the root of her disappearance. Please, if you can, search for Anya and bring her back to us. She'll know what to do about Nihlathak."

You can talk to all of the NPCs about this quest, and they all echo her comments, basically saying that Anya is missing, and that they suspect Nihlathak.

If you go to the Frozen River level and then come back to town, the NPCs have gone past suspicious, and call Nihlathak a "snake" and saying that he's "slipped through our fingers". He's actually been gone since around the time you got Quest Two, but never mind that.

Anya steps out of the smoke

Quest Prompt: Look for Anya under the Crystalline Passage by the Frozen River.

Once you find her, she tells you that Nihlathak did this to her, and to tell Malah what's happened to her. When you return to town Malah is eager to talk and she gives you a thawing potion she's prepared.

Quest Prompt: Use the potion Malah gave you to thaw Anya.

You return to Anya and click on her, and when you do a huge plume of blueish-white smoke rises up like a geyser. After a few seconds Anya walks out the left of the smoke, and shortly after it vanishes. She casts a town portal (that you can't use) and vanishes back to town.

+10 to all resistances

When you return to town you should talk to both Malah and Anya. Both give you very good rewards for your actions, so this is an essential quest to complete for the rewards, even if you don't need to do it to finish the Act.

Reward: From Malah you get a scroll that permanently adds +10% to all of your resistances. Do this on all three difficulties and you will have +30% to all, making up most of the increased -resistances in the Expansion. Like the other +quest items (potion of life, book of skills) you can only get this reward once per difficulty level, so don't bother trying to mule the scroll or get two of them.

Anya gives you a Rare, class-specific item for your character class. A sorceress gets a Rare orb, a Druid a rare animal pelt, etc. The Amazon gets either a Javelin, Spear, or Bow, but it's not tied to what you are using. A Bowazon could get a spear, which isn't exactly what she wants, so some trading around there might be needed between Amazon sub classes.

Another benefit to rescuing Anya is that you can now gamble again. Nitlathak does gambles when you first reach Act Five, but he vanishes soon after and you have no way to gamble until you bring Anya back. You also need Anya to buy throwing potions from.

Tip: Be sure you find the Crystalline Passage Waypoint, or even go on and find the Frozen Tundra Waypoint before you enter the red portal Anya opens for Quest Four. There is no waypoint in the Frozen River, and if you don't find the Crystalline Passage WP before you go down, you will probably go right back to town and on to Quest Four, and when you portal back from the Quest Four dungeon, you'll have a long walk all the way from the Arreat Plateau waypoint through the Crystalline Passageway back to where you were.

Think of it like Act One. You need to find the Dark Woods Waypoint before you go back to town with the Scroll of Inifuss, since you'll then go to the Field of Stones and Tristram, and probably end up having to run all the way from the Field through the Underground Passageway to get back to the Dark Woods. If you do this in the next game you'll have to clear it as you go, which is annoying.

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Quest Four

Quest Name: Betrayal of Harrogath
Triggered by: Rescuing Anya (Quest Three).
Given by: Anya
Location: Red Portal to Nihlathak's Temple, then down into a three level dungeon.
Rewards: Your name on an item from Malah.

When you rescue Anya in Quest Three, she returns to town and is found to the south of town center in front of a large building. When you first return her to town after rescuing her in Quest Three, she gives you three speeches in a row.

The first is about the game plot, how her father was one of the dead Council of Elders, and how the thought of vengeance against Baal is all that keeps them going. The second leads into the Rare Class-specific item she gives you for the Quest Three reward. Then she gives you the fourth quest with a long speech:

"Nihlathak told me he struck a deal with Baal to protect Harrogath. In exchange for the demon's mercy, the misguided fool plans to give Baal the Relic of the Ancients, our most holy totem!

Doing so would allow Baal to enter Mount Arreat unchallenged by the Ancients. I tried to stop Nihlathak, but he imprisoned me in that icy tomb. Nihlathak must be stopped before he dooms the whole world. As much as I would love to strangle the life out of him, I'm afraid I haven't the strength. You must go to his lair through this portal I've opened, kill him, and then bring back the Relic of the Ancients. Stop Nihlathak from destroying what we have striven for eons to protect."

Portal from Anya
As the speech ends she opens up the portal you see here. You must go through the portal to a special quest area that you can't reach any other way. This quest is not required to finish the Act, and the reward isn't very big, so you can skip it if you want, though it's an interesting quest area and advances the plot quite a bit.

The quest area has a very cool opening area:

Portal from Town.

Mist-shrouded cliff.

It's a trap!

Read the captions on the above shots for more info. Once you get into the dungeon, you descend three levels through the Halls of Anguish, Halls of Pain, and Halls of Vaught. (Fred Vaught is one of the background artists on D2X.)

Quest Prompt: Find Nihlathak in the Halls of Vaught.

Nihlathak is in a corner of the Halls of Vaught, on a raised dais surrounded by Minions. They charge and he casts some spells, but it gets really interesting once you kill a few monsters, for he starts casting corpse Explosion on the bodies of his own followers once you kill them.

First sighting of Nihlathak.
Corpse Explosion!?

He's a bit like the Summoner though, lots of spells and protectors, but once you get a clear shot he goes down pretty quickly.

Larzuk injects some levity.
Once you've killed him you have no choice but to return to town, either by a town portal, by going back up to level two and taking the waypoint there (if you bothered to find it) or by walking back up three levels and taking the red portal. Back in town Anya has the "!" overhead, and when you talk to her it's not all good news:

"You have stopped Nihlathak, but he didn't have the Relic! He must have already given it to Baal. Now, Baal will not be tested when he reaches Arreat's summit.

I do thank you for trying though. Please, allow me to honor your courage by magically inscribing your name onto an item of your choosing. It's the least I can do."

This isn't a valuable quest reward, but it's very cool. It works like the Imbue quest, you click the option seen here, and Anya opens up a box that you can drop your item into.

Apparently it will work with any item in the game, magical, rare, unique, crafted, set, etc. We first did it with a Sorceress and selected her gloves, just to see what it would look like. You see the results here.

Doing it with a Set Item would be sort of interesting, since there is a name on those already. Yes, it works of Wirt's Leg as well.

Earlier in the Act, one of Nihlathak's gossips while he's still in town:

"The demon hordes have grown powerful beyond measure, aided by our foolish mistakes. But I may have found a way to correct those mistakes."

Thusly foreshadowing his turn to evil.

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Quest Five

Quest Name: Rite of Passage
Triggered by: Reaching the Ancient's Way triggers Qual-Kehk to speak of it - or - you can go straight to the Arreat Summit and click on the altar.
Given by: Qual-Kehk
Location: Arreat Summit
Rewards: +experience. Set amount, increases with difficulty level, around 1m on normal and 50m on hell.

Once you advance to the Ancient's Way, the last ice cavern level in the game, and then return to town, Qual-Kehk will be eager to talk:

"Every time I hear of you, warrior, your deeds become more legendary. But take heed. You are approaching the very summit of Mount Arreat. I have never dared venture there. It is sacred -- our most holy place. The legends say it is guarded by the Ancient Ones, who block the path of all who are unworthy. Your reputation here does not matter...It will be the Ancients who determine your worthiness.

Good luck."

You don't need to talk to Qual-Kehk or anyone about this, you can just advance through the Ancient's Way to the Arreat Summit, and do it. This quest seems straightforward, but has a very tricky element to it you see in no other quest in all of Diablo II.

Quest Prompt: Travel through the Ancient's Way to find the Ancients at the Arreat Summit.

Aside from the quest, the Arreat Summit is probably the most impressive area in the entire game. The screenshots don't do it justice, the amazing part is walking along the edge with the landscape far far below. It's awesome with perspective mode, which the game automatically turns on there (the option for it in the Options menu is grayed out at this point) for the ground moves much slower than the edge of the cliff you are walking along giving a nice illusion of depth. It has to be seen in motion to be appreciated.

The Summit is a small area, not much larger than two screens end to end in 800x600 mode. The center is the raised circle with the three statues, and there are pillars around it in a large circle with some open snowy ground outside of that, with cliffs bounding the area on all sides and a barred stairway to the far right. In the center on the dais you see these three statues.

The three Ancient Ones, guardians of the Worldstone Keep.

The altar highlights when you point and it, and when you click a long speech is heard with three voices speaking in harmony.

"We are the spirits of the Nephalem, the Ancient Ones. We have been chose to guard sacred Mount Arreat, wherein the Worldstone rests. Few are worthy to stand in its presence; fewer still can comprehend its true purpose.

Before you enter, you must defeat us."

Recall that Nihlathak stole a relic and gave it to Baal, allowing him to enter the Worldstone Keep without having to face these guardians.

When the speech ends, the action begins.

Ancients Awake.

The Battle is joined.

Leap Attack.

The statues come to life, and they are all Barbarians (of course) in glowing red armor. Yellow flaming light radiates from them, and they are very impressive in action. As you see in the screenshots, they use Warcries to boost themselves, and they all have skills. You'll see Leap Attacks, Bashes, and even very fast Whirlwinds, which don't look like much in a screenshot, but are amazing to see in action, with the streaks of light left behind. The small shot on the right here is of one mid-WW.

You must kill them all, and when they are beaten they explode in a huge burst of yellow flames, and return to statue form. There is another long speech about how Baal must be defeated, and the dire consequences for the world if he's not destroyed.

Death animation
So what's the tricky part?

If anyone in the party casts a town portal while fighting the guardians, or comes through one from town, the Guardians immediately vanish and return to statue form. And you have to fight them again, with full regenerated hit points, until you kill them all. The stairs down to the Ancient's Way are barred once you reach the summit as well, so portals are the only way out.

This isn't so hard in normal, but by Hell difficulty they are spawning with three magical modifiers and two immunities each, and you are just about guaranteed to get at least one physical immune and another lightning immune, on top of Lightning Enchanted, Stone Skin, Teleporting, etc. Three big damage very fast melee fighting bosses at the same time in an area too small to retreat from. This is a death trap for just about any character playing solo.

You can, however, use their instant disappearance to your advantage. If they spawn with very difficult mods, someone just needs to cast a Town Portal, and they will all vanish back to statue form. This would also be a very nice escape possibility for Hardcore characters, if you are in trouble, just portal and they vanish. However you have to fight them all again.

In a party, players who die during the battle need to stay in town while the surviving players continue to fight, or the Ancients will return to statues as soon as someone comes through a Portal.

This is a very unique quest and the hardest battle you'll face in the entire game, in most cases.

Reward: Huge experience bonus, it's around 1.5m on normal, 20m on Nightmare, and 50m on Hell. There is a Clvl requirement to get the reward though, you must be Clvl 20 on Normal, 40 on Nightmare, and 60 on Hell to get it. So no partying with bigger characters to get there quickly and get a huge bonus. The bonus experience doesn't seem to be cut by your Clvl exp penalty if you are over Clvl 75, so if that's the case in the final game, very high level characters (85+) would want to save this quest as long as possible, since they'll get a huge exp bonus for it, while all the other experience they earn is penalized a lot.

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Quest Six

Quest Name: Eve of Destruction
Triggered by: Defeating the Ancients (Quest Five)
Given by: Qual-Kehk, or when you reach the Throne of Destruction level.
Location: Throne of Destruction.
Rewards: Baal's item drop, complete the Act, view final cinematic, gain a title.

This one is about as straight-forward as a quest can be; you just move down through the three levels of the Worldstone Keep, (there is a waypoint on level two) then through the Throne of Destruction level to a final room where you see Baal, but can't attack him yet.

Quest Prompt: Find Baal's Throneroom.

Baal on his throne.

He is up on a throne (hence the level name) here, and laughs constantly. Once you have killed all the random monsters in the room, the fun begins. He laughs and laughs (yes, it makes you want to kill him) and after a few seconds emits a glowing ball of yellow lightning. It flies up into the air and crashes down somewhere in front of the steps, and there appears a SuperUnique boss with his pack of minions.

Once you kill off that pack, their bodies vanish but leave a lot of blood, Baal laughs constantly, and then spawns another huge glowing orb which crashes down and releases a bunch of monsters. This happens five times, different and more powerful monsters each time, with the fifth bunch Baal's Minions, monsters that are seen nowhere else in the game.

Baal's Guardians, in order of appearance. Click to view them:

Colenzo the Annihilator -- Fallen Shaman

Achmel the Cursed -- Greater Mummy

Bartuc the Bloody -- High Council

Ventar the Unholy -- Balrog

Lister the Tormenter -- Baal's Minions

One major issue with these packs is the computer lag when they load. Early in the beta it was very bad, with several seconds of lag on your end as your computer loaded in the monster graphics. If you were right where they appeared, you could be killed before you were able to move at all. This has been improved so that now most of the lag comes after you kill each minion. You'll get laggy for a few seconds (depending on your computer power) as Baal laughs and the blood from the last pack sort of splashes around. Then it catches up to normal speed and the next pack appears with little lag. Only the last pack with Lister the Tormenter is still laggy before they appear, and it's advised that you get well back down the hallway, and be sure you have any minions, Decoys, Valkyries, Shadows, etc up and ready before they appear.

After you kill them all Baal laughs some more, then vanishes down the portal behind his throne. You follow him down and enter a small room with the enormous worldstone looming in the middle of the area. It's very graphically impressive. Baal is less so, and dies very quickly if there is any Static Field in the area. He doesn't attack that quickly, but does have some interesting spell effects not seen anywhere else in the game, and can even duplicate himself when he's nearly dead.

Baal launches the cold wave.

Baal doubles the fun.

Baal dies in agony.

Once Baal is down and his death animation, the orbiting spirits light show ends, Tyrael descends from overhead and hovers. And glows, and pontificates in his usual pompous fashion.

"I am impressed, mortal. You have overcome the greatest challenge this world has ever faced and defeated the last of the Prime Evils. However we are too late to save the Worldstone. Baal's destructive touch has corrupted it completely.

Given enough time, the Worldstone's energies will drain away and the barriers between the worlds will shatter -- the powers of Hell will flood into this...Sanctuary...and eradicate your people and everything you've labored to build.

Therefore I must destroy the corrupted Worldstone before the powers of Hell take root. This act will change your world forever -- with consequences even I cannot foresee. However it is the only way to ensure mankind's survival.

Go now, mortal. I have opened a portal that will lead you to safety.

May the Eternal Light shine upon you and your descendants for what you've done this day. The continued survival of mankind if your legacy. Above all else, you have earned a rest from the endless battle.

Once he's done with this rather unsettling message, he opens a red portal. The screen shakes and keeps shaking worse and worse, and chunks of crystal keep spinning by, moving up or down. When you click on the portal you pop to the new Congratulations screen, and after that view the final cinematic.

If you've already killed Baal, Tyrael doesn't appear, and you don't get the red portal, basically the same as if you kill Duriel when you have credit for the quest already.

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