Category:Mountain Tunnels

Dividing the east and west sides of Eragora is a long mountain range. Navigating across the surface has been seen to be impossible, thus the only other option available is to venture deep underground. Many eager adventurers have entered the dark confines of these tunnels only to be never seen or heard from again.

Level Range: 51-51

Builder: Doolen

Directions

Walking route from Eragora default recall: 2s, d, 6e, 2s, 2e, 2s, e, 2s, 4e, 2s, 2e, d, 5e, n, 2e, n, 2e

Portaling point(s) suggested: halfling spy is the only recall settable portal point. The rest of the area is cursed.

Connections

• Eragora Walkways
• Quarries and Mines (inbound only)

Navigation

The area is made of the following major parts:

• Pre-entrance rooms, which are separated from the area proper by a half-orken gate, requiring either quests or sneakiness to pass through,
• Post-entrance rooms, leading up to the maze,
• Maze proper, the insane part of the area,
• Another realm, the quest part of the area.

Adventuring

It is hard to describe the place in a few words, so some elaboration might be required.

This place is dangerous. It is capable of gobbling a 999 drg wzd in full spells in a matter of minutes. Your lords will die as easily as heroes to Ulrich. However, the area offers some of the best rewards (in terms of insignia) available in the entire hero game, which make it a very worthwhile place to run.

Entering the Tunnels

To enter through you will be required to either pick a side (halfling or half-orc) by proving your loyalty (ie. doing their quests), or to push hidden lever (vegetation) found at halfling spy. To get out the same applies, there is a secret way out at the eastern side of the gate.

Doing the half-orc quest is rather "trivial", as it involves going to an other area entirely, namely the Halfling's Paradise, and returning with the forged papers. This will reward you with a permahero -2 AC insignia, access to the tunnels, and will set your alignment with the half-orcs, making the half-orcs within the maze non-aggressive to you.

Chosing the halfling side is much more difficult, as it requires investigating the tunnels, returning to the halfling with everything found in the post-entrance and maze parts, but will also give you a permahero +3% xp insignia. This is naturally fantastic for high-TNL races, and permaheroes of any kind. You will need to bring three items to the halfling spy to accomplish this (as a part of investigating the area for the halfling), and this will make your further trips inside that much easier as halflings will not be aggressive.

Switching Alignments

Hitting 999 might make you wish to switch to the half-orc insignia. Regardless, to switch alignments, there are two quests, one for each side. Doing either will set your alignment to neutral towards both halflings and half-orcs and you will need to redo the appropriate entrance quest.

To switch to half-orken side, you will be required to travel to Sun God Altar and murder Sou f'Fle, and return with his necklace. To switch to halfling side, you will need to retrieve a certain sword from within the bowels of the maze.

The Maze

Regular mazes usually run 3-4 rooms, sometimes a bit more. There is a very hard maze at Daingean Machadae that counts 7 rooms. Ths one is 11 rooms big, every room has a full set of 4 exits, and only a single exit from a single room leads towards the exit.

Furthermore, the maze is chock full with fully-aggressive halflings, half-orcs, dust-imps, doppelgangers (which are always nasty), all of rather large levels, that (naturally) see through hidden/invisible, and requiring entire mana pools of surging every couple of rooms.

Unless you know exactly what you are doing, be VERY careful, conserve mana, and never drop under q9 calm/teleport mana. Bring extra casters for support if at all possible. Brutes are welcome but, as an important reminder, the place is chock full of doppelgangers and them copying the brutes is generally not what you would usually wish.

Oh. One final thing. There are wind mobs inside that will push your groupies away, meaning it is unlikely you will rejoin them due to the haywire nature and impressive size of this maze.

The Grand Finale

Throdak will give you a quest to free him, should you come and visit him during the in-game day hours. This will require navigating the maze to the altar, quaffing, and murdering all there is on the other size, which again is a story for itself. The rewards will be an exotic armor piece and weapon, but nothing overly powerful. Also, there is no insignia for doing the quest.

Final Comments

This is doable with a large group, but it's brutal. If you wish to sightsee, use a lord, as at least you will get the benefits of eulogy. This place will not do auto-CR for you.