"Neverwinter" - Spellplague Caverns (Master) Quiz

Answer: Gyrion

Gyrion is slayed and put down for good on your way to achieving the resources needed to enter the Spellplague Caverns, unlike his associates. Fearing for their lives, Kabal and Nostura flee into these Caverns to escape the player (or in this case, party).

Despite Lucan's pleads with Nostura to flee, Nostura and Kabal are adamant on taking a final stand to try one last time to eliminate the party, so they may keep their plans with the Far Realm alive.

Answer: Kabal the Firesoul

In the cutscene triggered upon entering the dungeon, Nostura will tell Kabal to take on the party in his place of power, at his Caldera. Kabal will agree to do so. After slaying his guards, the party will be teleported to Kabal's Caldera to take him on. You were at Kabal's Caldera at least once in your build up to get the resources necessary to come to this dungeon in the first place. Since this is the case, you will likely remember what to do; the fight is the exact same as when you were here before, with the obvious difference of Kabal and his cronies being much bulkier and hitting harder. That said, there is also one key difference here as well; upon "defeating Kabal", he will heal himself to full health twice, with the third time of defeating him being the end of the fight. Upon defeating Kabal, he is saddened by his defeat, but seems to accept that the end has been brought upon him, as he kneels, wounded and defeated, at the center of his Caldera. Thankfully, Kabal is not very bulky, and a party with a good Tank and good DPS should be able to cut into him fairly easily.

However, he hits excruciatingly hard, and because he is temporarily invincible at the start of each time he spawns in the fight, the party must prioritize cutting off his invincibility with the Golem Fireballs and the Cleric must be deadlocked onto the Tank while the party does so. The Tank must still generate Threat against Kabal even if they cannot damage him. Being unable to damage him reduces the Threat the Tank can generate, but there are still ways; packing Enforced Threat and Enhanced Mark helps. Unfortunately, Fighter's Recovery is useless while Kabal is invincible, as the Tank will be unable to make use of it while they cannot hurt Kabal, so bringing Greater Stones of Healing, even with good Cleric support, is a good idea. If you are the Tank and can afford to do so, packing a Battlefield Medic or Lillend companion can also prove helpful.

Answer: Giant Nothic Stone Eye

The Giant Nothic Stone Eye is often referred to as the hardest boss in the dungeon. The reason for this is simple; it is extremely easy for the Stone Eye to obliterate the entire party in a few seconds if even one person makes a mistake. While the Stone Eye's standard attacks are hardly threatening, and their growth is manageable, they have one attack that singlehandedly makes them a gruelling challenge; the Stone Eye can daze the entire party with their Gaze attack, which will be followed up by an Area-of-Effect attack which will promptly knock everyone off the battlefield, falling to their doom. If anyone gets stunned by the Gaze, it's over.

Avoiding the Gaze can be done at first by simply looking the other direction. Of course, as the fight rages on, it stops being so simple. Around reaching half health, Kavatos Stormeye will come and "help" the player by spawning mirrors around the Stone Eye, with the hopes of forcing the Stone Eye to Daze itself.

While this can happen, and if it does, the Stone Eye loses its growth, it also thickens the plot for the party; the Gaze attack now reflects off of mirrors. If a player is facing a mirror that the Gaze reflects into, they're dead. If the player's back is not facing such a mirror, they're dead.

At this point, deadlocked attention towards where the Stone Eye uses this attack becomes mandatory. Fast hand-eye coordination will be needed, so that the player does not stare into the wrong mirror. One mistake ends it all, so there is truly no room for error here.

Answer: Nostura of Stone Eye

Before entering the cutscene, Lucan will be found, alerting Nostura of Kabal's death, and begging her to escape, offering to hold off the party to allow her to do so. Perhaps it is because she would rather die a glorious death rather than act a coward and flee, and perhaps it is because she still believes she can defeat the party, but regardless, Nostura will refuse Lucan's offer, and will instead present Lucan with a portal he can use to escape the scene. Shortly thereafter, Nostura will engage the party. Much like Kabal, Nostura is very mechanically similar to when you face her at the Fey Castle. However, there are two major differences, aside from her merely being much bulkier and hitting much harder. The first is that she will, upon hitting 80% of her health, spawn laser beams around the battlefield. These beams kill anything they touch in one hit, preventing the player hit by them from reviving themselves or being revived. Thankfully, they are easy to dodge; you merely need to not be standing in the way of the massive lasers. They do not move and give off plenty a warning before firing off, so there is a large amount of leeway here. The second big change is what Nostura does when she reaches 66%, 50%, and 25% of her health. For these three times, she will utter the line "Ugh, I grow weary of this!" When she says this, that's the cue for the party DPS to enter the portals, which spawn shortly after Nostura says this. The DPS must destroy the Planal Tears, and quickly pass back through the Portals to destroy the Far Realm Horrors. During the time they do this, Nostura will begin to heal herself for roughly 2-3% of her health every five seconds. When she hits 25% of her health, everyone must briefly enter the portals. If they do not, anyone who stayed behind is subjected to a one-shot kill from a gargantuan Spellplague nuke Nostura drops on the battlefield. After this blast is dropped, the party may re-enter the battlefield and hack away at Nostura.

Despite how complex this all seems, the Nostura fight is typically regarded as the easier of the three boss fights. The reason for this is that every important part about the fight offers huge amounts of reaction time, in addition to not being too difficult for the average party to overcome. Inbetween the occurrences, Nostura herself is easy to whittle away at; she doesn't hit too hard and has no cronies to aid her in battle, unlike Kabal the Firesoul. For this reason, so long as the party avoids the two OHKO maneuvers in Nostura's arsenal, they should be home-free to win the fight.

Answer: Yes

While a Tier 3 dungeon is by no means easy to solo, this dungeon is much more comparatively easy to solo than its fellow Tier 3 and even Tier 2 epics are. However, if you think it will be a particularly fast experience, turn back; the first person to ever solo it was a Trickster Rogue, a DPS loadout, and it took them six hours and fifteen minutes to do it.

While this time has been beaten, it is reasonable to expect to spend at least that long if you wish to solo this dungeon. The Nostura fight in particular promises to be lengthy, as she will be sure to heal herself nearly back to full health each of the three times she stops to heal.

Answer: None

Upon entering the Hidden Treasure Room, the player will spot three treasure chests on each side of the room, with the large treasure chest representing the Grand Mimic at the end of the room. In order to trigger the fight, the player must try to open of the chests.

This will cause all of them to reveal themselves as Mimics and attack the player and party. Upon defeating them, they will drop incredible rewards, and will do so in great bulk.

Answer: The map in between boss fights is significantly different

While everything else was overhauled completely, the map layout in between boss fights actually remains the exact same. If you think about it, it makes sense; this is still the Spellplague Caverns. Think of it like selling your house to someone who never bothers to remodel it. Yes, everything inside the house would be different, but the house itself would remain the exact same.

Answer: Five

After defeating the Giant Nothic Stone Eye, the party will be prompted to find the five Tomes of Ascendancy. Doing this will require going through many, many Servants of Nostura, but will eventually result in the party reaching Nostura herself.

Answer: Legendary Dragon Key

Unfortunately, the Cloaked Ascendancy campaign does not grant the player a way to craft a key to the second Chest. However, a simple trip to the Zen Market can fix this problem, as the player may purchase five Legendary Dragon Keys for the cheap price of 150 Zen.

Answer: Cambion Magus

The Arcane Whirlwind would be a reasonable guest, but you can only get these from the similarly themed Many Starred Lockbox. The Cambion Magus is not worth quite as much as the Harper Bard in the Auction House, but for DPS characters, it is pretty much definitely better than the Harper Bard for you in almost every way.

The Critical Severity it provides cannot be overlooked. By equipping it, and investing a bit more in Critical Strike than you may have planned, you can go from an average everyday DPS character into one of the entire game's best DPS characters essentially in the blink of an eye. If you're not a DPS character, don't worry! The Cambion Magus is worth several million Astral Diamonds on the Auction House, so you could very easily make excellent value out of it, and become rich in the process!