End of the Road Quest Walkthrough and Guide

Well, you have come to the End of the Road. I mean it; it’s time for the last quest in the Netherese Scroll series for Update 16 to Dungeons and Dragons Online, the End of the Road quest.

The Harpers think you’ve collected all of the remaining Netherese scoll pieces. The Netherese scroll pieces that are left are the ones that the Netherese wizards have already collected. So now the job at hand is not to find them, rather, it is to go take them by force from the evil and vile Netherese!

The Harpers have found where the Netherese have been working from, an old fort deep in The Blooded Wood. Sharpen your blades and prepare some spells and get ready to lay waste to what is left of the Netherese and retrieve the missing Netherese scroll pieces.

When you zone in, summon pets and hirelings and get everyone and everything buffed up. You know those super powerful Netherese scroll pieces you have been risking life and limb for? Those strange scraps of paper which hold power beyond understanding? That ancient and mysterious scroll that the fate of the multiverse may rest on, and which all of the Harpers have failed to retrieve? Well, the Harpers have that figured out now. Now it is time to give them “unwittingly” to a little, weak, and unknown person in the cabin at the beginning of the Blooded Wood. You must do it in order to advance the quest, and why not? There is certainly nothing that can go wrong with this plan.

Once you are done buffing and giving up the scroll pieces you have worked so hard to collect, head into the Blooded Forest to find out what is wrong with this plan.

The Trek through The Blooded Wood

Once you are in the Blooded Wood proper, head north and go through the gate. Take care of the few spellswords that are in your way. Head to the left (west) first if you want to go after any of the optional XP in this quest. Here you will find a few archers, breakables, and the first piece of evidence to Nothreril’s plan and with the Netherese as a whole. Once that small area is cleared out and taken care of head back to the east.

Climbing the Blooded Wood Hills

As you climb the hill, kill anything you run into as you go. If you are going for the optional XP such as Ransack and Conquest, hug the west side of the path and make sure you clear out the camp on the west. If you are not trying to get the extra XP and just want to power through the quest, stay on the east side of the path to avoid the extra mobs to fight.

When you come to a place in the road with a couple of dead Purple Dragon Knights, avenge their deaths and take not of the Resurrection Shrine just past them. Keep this in mind in case you, a party member, or those ever-so-smart hirelings decided to play Red Rover with the nasty Spell Ward Traps.

Keep killing enemies that get in your way. Or that annoy you. Or look stab-able. You will swing around and start heading west. In the middle of the road there are a string of Spellward traps blocking your path. Hug the right side of the road (north) and move up into the hills where you will see a small stone fence and a cabin in the woods. Don’t worry; it’s not the Cabin in the Woods. BTW if you haven’t seen that movie, you should. Anyway, kill the Netherese that are here and the named shadow worg, if it is here, named Shadowpaw. Make sure you take out the trash MoBs first and then tackle Shadowpaw. Shadowpaw is not too hard; he just has a lot of hit points. Make sure you have some Ghost Touch fighting Shadowpaw as well.

If you have a rogue you might have them disable all of the Spell Ward traps while you fight Shadowpaw so you can get some of that easy disable trap XP.

Just south of cabin in the woods up on the hill in the trees is another piece of evidence for the optional XP.

Continue traveling south, hugging the western wall to avoid the Spell Wards in the road. You can also disable them if you have the ability to in your group. Remember that the Spell Ward traps can be disabled from a good distance away; just make sure you are on the right side of them.

The road will hook back around east and down into a swampy area. Keep to the western wall and head up over the hill through the brush. Here Greenstalker may spawn. Greenstalker is a rare spider that has some loot for you.

Collecting XP and Loot in the Moat

Around the fort in the middle of this large open area is a swampy moat-like defense. It appears to be unfinished and crude. Once you drop down follow the path across the swamp on the broken and rickety path killing the few Sellswords in the way. When you get to the path on the other side you will see another Netherese wizard. Go talk to him and get the news of what went wrong with the Harper’s brilliant plan. Now put on your surprise face and gasp.

Don’t give the Netherese wizard the satisfaction of following him. If you are looking for that extra XP from optionals, kills, and rare MoBs, head west around the outside of the fort to clean house. If you don’t like extra XP and loot, give the Netherese wizard the satisfaction and follow him. Skip to the next section.

If you like XP and loot, read on! If not, jump down to the section below.

Make your way to the east and then to the north, staying on the far outside edge of the area. Follow the tree line north past the water and kill everything that moves.

Soon you will come to an area with a few more Sellswords that are around another one of the pieces of evidence of what is going in the quest and bonus optional XP. Pick it up and keep on moving.

Continue hugging the left side (western) of the open area here and head around the north of the keep. In the north eastern corner of the area you will run into some Yaun-ti that appear to be taking the last piece of evidence and your optional XP. You don’t have to take that. If someone tries to take your XP, you take that XP right back!

Keep on moving around the area in a clockwise fashion. You will come to the south eastern corner of the wide open area where the keep is located. There is another small pond here where there can be a named mudman, Miremere. He is a big pile of goo! Chop him down to size and take his not-so-gooey loot.

The last stop you will want to make out here is in the very south center of this open area. Here there is a shrine. Shrine up and ready your assault on the fort.

Have Fun Storming the Castle

It’s time to take out the cocky Netherese wizard that ran off before. He will be right by the staked and dead Harper you so foolishly trusted the Netherese scroll pieces to. You fool! Slaughter the Netherese wizard and his summoned minions and head towards the castle. Rinse and repeat the beat down on the next Netherese wizard on the bridge.

If you are cleaning the whole place out for all that tasty bonus XP and loot, remember breakables can now drop real loot.  Head left (west) slaying and breaking anything and everything you come in contact with.

If you are in a hurry, head to the right, taking out who you must. Be warned, zerging this (charging in without taking care of everything), will skyrocket the Dungeon Alert system (Buff them and debuff you). Having multiple levels of bad guys all getting angry with you at once will do that. So you will likely be forced to stop and fight should you charge in. So just be ready for the nasty Dungeon Alert if that is the way you roll.

Otherwise work your way all the way around the lower sections of the fort clearing everything out until you get to about the 3 pm position on the eastern side of the fort. Here you will see a ramp leading up and south. Take this path. It will then wrap around the fort one more time before it dumps you off at a shrine.

Use the shrine and buff up. Then jump on down into the meat grinder and get the party started.

The Netherese Play With Fire

As you jump down into the open area you will notice that there are a whole lot of spiked barricades all over the place.  Should you try to jump over one, get too close, or otherwise get too close to the wood, you will take damage. If you are doing this on Hard or Elite it could very well be a lot of damage. Avoid the wood!

Let the scene play out and watch what your trust in incompetence creates. Use the long diatribe and animated actions here to buff and up get into position. If you are trying to get the optional Ransack XP bonus, now is a great time to make a quick lap of the area breaking everything until you get your Ransack XP.

• Buffs: For this fight you will want all the standard AE group buffs. Also make sure that you have all your fire resistance and protection gear on. Also, if you have the choice to equip Piercing DR such as Greater Spear Block,  that will help take some of the damage from the barricades. GH and other buffs to increase saves are also a great idea.
• Position: Ranged characters should stack up on the crate pile to the left or east of the entrance to this fighting area. Tanks should move up just behind the altar. From here the tanks should be able to do their thing while casters and other ranged characters do their thing from afar.
• Battle Tactics: First off I like to leave the Netherse wizards alone as they will help you fight Razagnol. They will die fighting him eventually but the little extra help and distraction they offer is nice.

The quest battle tactics are pretty straightforward. Razagnol doesn’t chase anyone around. Instead, he teleports to static areas.  So the melee’s job is NOT to keep Razagnol in one spot to beat on. What is hard for most melee characters is NOT chasing him when he teleports too far away. He will start in the middle, then teleport out to the side, and then back to the middle again. Razagnol will repeat this process, bouncing between the middle and the 12/3/6/9 o’clock positions. So if you are looking at the map, the ranged fightersfire106

should be at the 1:30 position on the wall of crates (for Line of Sight or LOS). The tanks should fight him if he is in the center, at 9 o’clock, and at 6 o’clock. Otherwise they should wait for him just north of the altar using it to block LOS while he is too far for the healer to heal tanks in melee. He pops back to the middle before he goes out to the side so you shouldn’t have to wait long.

Razagnol likes to smash and bash but this is not too bad. He also likes Meteor Swarm and Firewall.  However, the worst thing he does is toss people all over the map with a whirlwind attack that blasts you back into the nasty, pokey, and spiky barricades. On normal, these are not too bad and anyone of this level should be able to suck them up. However, at higher level they can really hurt, quickly changing the battle. If/when you get kabobed, you should NOT expect any healer to come get you. You should run over near the healer and then take your rez out of danger in the nook you dropped into.

The ranged player characters should stick together and try to let the tanks keep agro. If the ranged group gets agro everyone should jump over to the adjacent stack of crates. This way you can stay in the healing aura or easily get hit with a mass cure if needed.

Tanks should stay on Razagnol as long as he is in the north east quarter of the inner area. Tanks should be able to ignore Firewalls. Tanks should also position themselves so if and when they get blasted backwards there are few Mr. Pointies to do their damage. If you spread out or try to flank Razagnol you can easily be blasted all over the place making it much harder for the healer to keep you healed. You should be able to suck up the damage and make your way back to Razagnol and then receive mass healing.

The only other thing to know is that at 50% hit points, Razagnol will summon some Dretches to come down and annoy you. Break off quick and kill these. Next at 20% hit points he will summon some Fire Reavers which are a little more trouble. If your Damage Per Second (DPS) is high, just keep on pushing through, letting the Fire Reavers rampage around. Once Razagnol dies they will go too. Once he dies you are done so make sure your XP trinkets are on before the final blow lands.

Elminster shows up with the death of the fiend and then runs off with the Netherese scroll you earned. Oh well, loot up the treasure chest here and head back to town. If you have turned in your quests and spoken to Rina between each quest you will not only have an End Reward for the quest End of the Road but you will also have a Series Reward from Rina for completing the Nethese Scroll Series. She will offer you a random list of the 23^rd level versions of the named items as well as randomly generated loot and Commendations. Reap your rewards and remember to reset the quest so you can get credit for your next run through!

Play Smarter, Not Harder!

~Karranor