A Quick Look at the Quest Purge the Fallen Shrine

One of my favorite areas in DDO is the Sands of Menechtarun, more commonly referred to simply as the “Desert”.  Their are a number of quests located in the Desert, including the three flagging quests needed to get to the Demon Queen: The Tomb of the Wizard King, The Chains of Flame, and An Offering of Blood as well as five “walk-up/side” quests, one of these being Purge the Fallen Shrine.  Like the other walk up quests, Purge the Fallen Shrine doesn’t really have a quest giver as opposed to a quest rewarder.  However, unlike the four other walk-up quests, this quest reward for this quest is from Bahir Khalidan as opposed to Wayfinder Skavyer.

Purge the Fallen Shrine is a level 11 quest on normal making it a level 13 quest on elite.  The lore behind the quest is interesting and explains to our characters how ruthless King Raiyum really is.  I remember the first time I entered this quest and simply getting slaughtered.  There isn’t a wide variety of enemies in the tomb.  The enemies primarily consist of cacodemons (flesh renders), pyrodemons (fire reavers), and a variety of mepthis.  The mephits can be really annoying as these include dust mephits as well as air mephits which tend to through up obscuring area of effect abilities.  The cacodemons and pyrodemons can also be quite lethal if you grab too many of them.

The goal of the quest is to relight the torches in the shrine and to advance to the final resting place of the the fallen hero, Ashok Khalidan.  Although the map is a little twisty, it is still pretty straightforward with few twists and turns to worry about.  The main issue with the dungeon itself is that navigating through the smaller tunnels can be aggravating because these tunnels are split down the middle by columns which makes them more narrow.  But overall, this isn’t a huge issues and you can use the formation of this halls to your advantage to bottleneck your enemies.

Hamllin taking on the enemies of the Fallen Shrine.

After you make your through the majority of the map and light all of the flames you will come to a hallway to that leads to the final resting place of Ashok Khalidan.  However, prior to getting there you have to get past four orange named enemies: An efreeti, a hellhound, and two mephits.  Once you defeat these enemies, who aren’t exceptionally touch, a fire barrier comes down where you will encounter the wraith of Ashok Khalidan.  Once you defeat the wraith, Ashok Khalidan returns as a passive spirit and tells you how he came into the service of King Raiyum.

As we work our way through this quest, we learn that King Raiyum’s reputation for being one of the strongest summoners was not underestimated as you can tell he was the one who summoned the demons and mephits, as well as the mini-bosses, to roam and guard the shrine.  We also learn how King Raiyum manipulated Ashok into doing his bidding by kidnapping his family and using the thread to kill them as motivation for Ashok to work for him.  Ruthless indeed!!

Overall, Purge the Fallen Shrine isn’t to tough of a quest to do at level.  Having some type of fire resistance is extremely beneficial in this quest.  It is a fun quest lore wise as we learn more about King Raiyum and how evil he really is.  We also learn why the quest rewarder is not the Wayfinder as Ashok asks you to find one of his relatives to relate the story so that he can finally rest in peace.  It is a fun quest and one I would recommend if you ever get into the Desert (which you should!!).

Thanks for reading everybody and happy questing!!