Age Of Conan - Entering Black Castle

In the depths of the Stygian desert lies a castle atop a mound of sand. So close to the sun, the rock used to construct this structure have turned black as coal.
Thus, it's name...The Black Castle.

The castle is believed to guard the River Styx against foreign marauders. The internals of the Castle are full of traps and puzzles. This makes for an interesting group encounter.
It must be noted that you need a minimum of 4 players here, but 6 is best...and for a low level dungeon, the quests are challenging for sure.

Tetlana arrived with a group of various adventurers, including a Tempest of Set, a Ranger, a Rogue, and a Bear Shaman. Not the typical Tank/Spank group.


The Bear Shaman and the Tempest provided heals, while the Ranger, Rogue and myself provided DPS. I also had a small group of pet based minions to help take down mobs quickly.

There are 5 boss wings within this castle. All mobs are the above average mobs, meaning they require a group to defeat, or a higher level (+5 levels higher) can take out maybe one at a time.


As we journey deeper into the castle, all sorts of mobs start to appear, like these slithering terrors. I really enjoy that there are quite a few different mob variations within the world. I keep finding more that are not copies of other mobs that so often happens in MMO's.


One point during an encounter of a boss called a Malefic Mutation.


There are several cool puzzles, with one which became a pain until we got some help. Seems one room has a large eye of Set that watches over a room. If you try to walk through the sunlight in that room beaming from the Eye, prepare to die horribly.
Seems we need to block the light from the Eye to prevent this disaster...

It took about 2 hours to complete this run, with some decent blue gear drops as well.

The fact this dungeon has a more "puzzle" like nature (which is the norm for some of these group based instances) made it quite fun to run.

The next dungeon is the Sanctum, which is a level 36+ instance. I will hopefully have some shots of that soon..

Cheers