Who Likes Taming the Flames?

There are just some quests that many players just cringe on hearing and hate dealing with them.  Some of the more common ones include The Pit, Coalescence Chamber,and Taming the Flames.  The latter of the three is quite challenging to do at level on elite.  It is still challenging to do if you do it an elite and are a level or two higher.

What makes Taming the Flames so difficult?  The quest is held in an area called the Scorched Caverns.  The caverns happen to be underneath the House Kundarak Ward, not far from the House Kundarak bank.  As you can tell from the name of the quest and the name of location where the quest occurs, you will be dealing with something that deals with fire in some form fashion.  It turns out that this quest has a large amount of fire elementals and fire mephits and then some earth elementals and air mephits thrown in for some good measure.  The fire elementals are extremely potent and numerous, spawning in many locations and sending a variety of fireballs in your direction.  If you have a character that doesn’t have evasion, this can be extremely problematic.  Hopefully, you stock up on your fire resistance buffs before you enter this quest!!

Some of the fire elementals spawn over lava pits and as a result they sometimes get healed when you attach them.  To make things worse, these fire elementals also respawn.  So you can’t waste too much time in any one area unless you want to be attacked from behind.  There are also a number of places where ambushes are set up with mephits, mostly fire mephits, that can only be passed after all of the mephits are slain.  To make things even more complicated, there are a few spots with some spike traps, just to keep you guessing.

Sttollen making his way through the mephits in Taming the Flames.

Perhaps the most difficult portion of the quest is when you make your way to obtain a key to unlock a door that contains a host of mephits that need to be slain to lower a barrier to the person you are supposed to rescue.  Getting this key can be quite problematic.  The key is located in a pit that has a number of ledges winding down along the wall.  Of course you have to jump from one ledge to another because there are gaps between them.  And to make things even better, the ledges are protected by flame jets that are positioned in the wall and by fire elementals that are spread through out the ledges.  If you can run this gauntlet, then you get to the key.  The easiest way to do this is feather fall from the beginning of the pit down to the ledge with the chest with the key and to do this invisible.  Also make sure to be buffed with fire resistance and fire protection.

Overall, Taming the Flames is one of the few quests I find quite irritating, but definitely challenging, at level.  It is one of the oldest quests in the game, which makes this even more impressive concerning how our characters have increased in strength and power over time.  If you haven’t ventured in the Scorched Caverns, give it a try.

Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting in Taming the Flames.  Oh, if you want to farm fire elementals for your monster manual, I can’t think of a better place to do it :).