Shades of Mort'ton (minigame)



The Shades of Mort'ton is a multi-part activity in which players perform the various tasks involved in cremating shades. The players will create the ingredients to make the various forms of pyre logs which then are used to cremate Shades. Players will then enter the Shade Catacombs under the town, hunting for the treasure chests which are unlocked by the various keys they receive by burning the shades. Players may also enter the catacombs simply to hunt the more powerful shades that lurk within.

Players often play the game simply to get sacred oil, which sells for a high price, aside from being used for cremating Shades, and Vyre corpses at the Columbarium which is related to the Legacy of Seergaze quest. Players also may turn Serum 207 into Serum 208 at the temple.

The Shades of Mort'ton activity provides a variety of experience, primarily in Crafting, Prayer, and Firemaking. Players will probably also gain an amount of Combat and possibly Herblore experience from this activity. The activity is somewhat lucrative, with clue scrolls being a semi-common reward from a shade key, and the other rewards being worth selling. This activity is one of the cheapest methods to gain large quantities of Crafting experience, by repairing the temple, but at around 12 experience points a second (with flamtaer hammer) it is very slow for the money saved. Players must have completed the Shades of Mort'ton quest before they can take part in this activity.

A combat level of at least 81 is  strongly  recommended to avoid being constantly hassled by the loar shades whilst building the temple and cremating the shade remains. Loar Shades will not break a target lock so long as the player is in the general vicinity, much like the behaviour of a revenant in the wilderness when a player runs away, except far weaker. A player can lure a shade through the entire length of the wandering path and halfway through mort myre swamp before the shade is forced to give up the chase by a programed boundary if the shade locks onto them. Shades will also actively seek to find the player if they hide behind an object, and if any shade gets a clear 'line of sight' on a player, they will approach and attack. Shades that cannot attack because the player is already under attack will remain in the area and attack when the preceding battle is over. Not only this, but these creatures are numerous, making the entire area completely inhospitable until the player has reached the level at which loar shades are no longer aggressive.

Accessing this area, and hence this activity requires completion of the quests: Priest in Peril, and Shades of Mort'ton.

NOTE: Nature Spirit does not have to be completed, only started.

It is highly recommended to have used a dose of Serum 208 on Razmire and Ulsquire for assistance, trading, and supplies. Prior completion of In Aid of the Myreque is strongly recommended, as it gives players access to the local bank in Burgh de Rott, without which players will have to trek all the way back and forth from Canifis on every trip.

The official Shades of Mort'ton world is world 77

Sanctifying The Oil
Sacred oil is used to create the various types of Pyre logs. To create one of the many types of pyre log, a player must use a vial of sacred oil on the chosen type of log. Sacred oil is created from Olive oil which can be bought from the Mort'ton General Store. The olive oil must be blessed on the fire altar in the temple north-east of Mort'ton in order to be sanctified into Sacred Oil. To do this, you will need to help build and defend the Temple of Mort'ton as was done in the quest. Sanctity is gained by either building/reinforcing the temple walls, or by killing the shades that come to attack the temple. Killing shades is recommended only for players proficient in combat, as only the kill itself generates sanctity, not the combat. As a players sanctity percentage is constantly draining (around 1% every 30–50 seconds) this method would be counterproductive if the player is unable to quickly bring down the shade.

When the fire altar in the centre of the temple has been lit (with a Tinderbox), simply use a vial of olive oil on it to create sacred oil. When a player successfully lights the fire altar, you receive 100 experience points in the Firemaking skill,though they may fail. Players can only light the fire altar if they have more than 10% sanctity, as well as only being allowed to sanctify olive oil with Sanctity above 10%. Each time a player blesses an olive oil it will use 2.7% (for a 3 dose vial) or 3.6% (for a 4 dose vial). It is not only more profitable (slightly) but also more useful to decant your olive oil into 4 doses before bringing it to be blessed. If you're going to make Yew, Eucalyptus, or Magic pyre logs, you must have 4 doses.

Building The Temple


To get sanctity to make sacred oil, it is necessary to help with repairing the temple. When starting three figures will appear in the top-right corner of the screen.

Repair State
This percentage indicates the condition of the temple. The number is raised by repairing the walls, and will gradually fall as shades attack and destroy it. Resources are used up by repairing the walls.

Resources
Resources are used for repairing the temple. Unlike the repair state, this is individual and not a shared statistic. When at the temple, choosing Repair Wall starts the repair process. First, certain items in inventory are turned into resources. Once this is done, the resources are drawn down as the temple is repaired.

The following items are used to create resources. All the items needed can be bought from Razmire Keelgan in Mort'ton. (Most can also be found or made elsewhere on RuneScape.) For each 5% resources, the following is required:


 * 1 x Timber beam or plank. Beams are much cheaper, so buy those.
 * 1 x limestone brick. Razmire Keelgan also sells limestone, which is cheaper and can be made into limestone bricks with a chisel, which he also sells. (This saves some money and gets extra crafting experience.)
 * 5 x swamp paste. This is the most expensive part if purchasing the items in the store. Plenty of paste can be received from the chests in the Shade Catacombs, so rarely will there be a need to buy much if also doing that part of the activity. Swamp paste can also be made from Swamp Tar and Flour. Swamp tar spawns in the Mort Myre Swamp and the Lumbridge Swamp.

Also needed is a Hammer or Flamtaer Hammer to build the temple, the latter being much faster.

Sanctity
Sanctity is what is used to make Sacred Oil from Olive oil. This figure like resources is personal, and starts at 0. It increases by repairing or reinforcing the temple, or by killing the shades around it giving 2% sanctity per kill. Sanctity will slowly decrease over time, and will reset to 0% upon logging off. When building the temple, approximately 5% sanctity is earned for each 1% of resources spent. Repairing is recommended over killing shades for raising sanctity quickly.

Creating The Pyre Logs
You can only cremate Shades with Pyre logs. Pyre logs can be created by using sacred oil on various types of logs. The table below shows what kind of logs are required to burn which kind of shade.


 * Note: Wearing Flame Gloves or a Ring of Fire will increase the Firemaking experience when cremating shades.
 * You need to have Teak Pyre logs or higher to cremate vyrewatch corpses.

Killing the Shades
To kill the shades, first you have to get to them. Loar shades are the easiest since they just wander around the village. The rest, though, inhabit the Shade Catacombs just north-west of the town. The entrance can be a little hard to find since it is tucked right up against a small hill at the edge of the water facing south. To get to them you will need a certain type of key to get through certain types of doors. Higher level keys open equal and lower level doors, i.e. a steel key will open steel and bronze doors, etc. You will not use up your key when walking through doors. There will be more about the levels of keys and how to get them in Cremating the Shades.

As shades are undead, the Salve amulet (e) will boost Attack and Strength when fighting them, and the Gadderhammer is better even than a Dragon Scimitar against Shades (This seems to depend on level. At higher levels, the Dragon Scimitar and a shield seems to kill faster with less damage, because the Gadderhammer is a slow weapon). As there are no safe spots, using Crumble Undead may not be such a good idea. As a precaution, you should keep a key in your bank of an equal or higher metal than what you need to reach the area you plan to kill shades in, to allow for quick access and to be used as a precaution if you become careless and die, due to the difficulty of reaching the inner parts of the catacombs before your gravestone crumbles.

Cremating the Shades


Once you have the Shade remains and the appropriate pyre logs, you can burn them. First, place your logs on any of the funeral pyres located around the south and west edge of Mort'ton, place the remains on top, then click again to light it if you have a tinderbox in your inventory. You will see an animation of a shade's spirit floating up into the air, then either a key or a stack of coins will appear on the pedestal nearby. The type of key and how good it is depends on the level of shade. The number of coins you get this way are roughly equal to the high alchemy value of the item you would get from the chest it would open. Although you can leave the reward on the pedestal and then collect them all at once, there is a chance they will vanish if you take too long about it. It is best to let only 5 keys stack this way, and any gold that appears should be grabbed immediately as it will disappear much quicker (an Update, on 15 July 2009, increased the time coins remain, so this should not be an issue). Prayer experience received was lowered in an unknown update.


 * Loar: Low Bronze only (or 400-500 coins)
 * Phrin: High Bronze, low Steel (or 600-700 coins)
 * Riyl: High Steel, low Black (or 700-800 coins)
 * Asyn: High Black, low Silver (or 800-900 coins)
 * Fiyr: Silver only (or 1,500-5,000 coins)

Prayer experience is gained by burning the shades. The amount depends mainly on the type of shade cremated, and to a lesser extent on the type of log used. The experience obtained from each combination is shown in the table below.

Unlocking the chests


Once you have your keys, you can go into the catacombs and unlock the chests which the keys open. The entrance to the catacombs is north-west of town, a little north-east of the bridge, through some doors built into the north side of a hill. The entrance is not marked on the minimap. Look for a torch on the bank of the swamp.

Each time you unlock a chest, the key will dissolve in the lock. If you want to come back and fight more of the shades of that level, make sure you leave at least one key to get through the doors with. It might be a good idea to leave one key in your bank when you finish, in case you want to come back and play again later.

To open a chest, match up the colour of the key with the lock of the chest, such as a Steel Key Black with a steel-trimmed chest with a lock painted black. If you're not sure the colour of the lock, you can examine the chest for more info. Inside the chest will usually be a few coins and one treasure, either being some runes, armour, or a clue scroll. Plus, sometimes if you press continue the dialogue, there will be a bit of swamp paste in the bottom of the chest as well, making it easier to repair the temple (since paste is the most expensive part). The levels of armour depend on the type of key.


 * Bronze will yield Steel to Mithril items or a clue scroll
 * Steel will yield Steel to Adamant items or a clue scroll
 * Black will yield Black to Adamant items or a clue scroll
 * Silver will yield Mithril to Rune items

Additionally colour of the loop defines the probability of the key yielding one of the "better" items available. The order is (worst &lt; best):

Red &lt; Brown &lt; Crimson &lt; Black &lt; Purple

So in other words, a Silver Key Black is more likely to yield a better treasure than a Silver Key Brown. In practice, however, there seems to be very little in the way of consistently higher rewards from higher coloured keys of the same metal type. Also, purple keys will have the most chance to give out clues.

It should be noted that this is the only place where fine cloth can be obtained. Fine cloth is needed to make splitbark armour. Any level of chest has a chance of yielding fine cloth, however the higher level chests have better chances.

It should also be noted that the chests also occasionally yield clue scrolls, with keys from loar shades yielding level 1 clues (occasionally, at best) transitioning upwards to fiyr shades which can regularly yield level 3 clues. (almost common, usually at least 1 every 35-50 keys, sometimes more common)

Banking
Some items you would want to have mainly depend on which type of shade you are hunting. They should consist of some low level food (if needed you can just kill and cook the snails to the west or just get some from the fishing spots to the south), some logs some olive or sacred oil, and the type of shade you plan to cremate. Below is a table showing what logs you need to cremate a shade. * recommended log to use

Please note that you should bring 100-200 logs if you want trips to be worth the effort.

Other activities
You can also use Sanctity from building the temple to make Serum 208 by using a Serum 207 on the fire. You must have a minimum of 20% Sanctity to make Serum 208.

Giving this to the Afflicted that wander the town will cure them, and they will reward you with some GP and other small gifts which are useful for that activity (olive oil, limestone, a few types of logs etc.) or grimy tarromin. You can use both serums to cure the Afflicted, but Serum 208 yields a greater reward, including the occasional Bronze key or level 1 Clue Scroll. Northwest of Mort'ton there are snails and tree so you can kill the snails, take their meat and cook it for healing if you get hurt. It is recommended to wear rune armour or better and wield at least a granite weapon. A perfect inventory for this would have: 1 tinderbox, 1 hatchet, 1 silver sickle(b), 1 chisel, at least 1,000 coins, good equipment (as mentioned above), 1 hammer or flamtaer hammer (speeds up the process), and (optional) a druid pouch to keep the ghasts from hurting you or rotting food.

Music

 * Lair