Rite of Passage is a quest in Act 5. Not mandatory if you can get a portal inside the Worldstone Keep from another player, otherwise you must defeat the Guardians to get in. The reward is enormous though, so we recommend you do it.
| Given: | Given by Qual-Kehk or reach the top of the mountain. |
|---|---|
| Triggered By: | Reaching the Ancient’s Way triggers Qual-Kehk to speak of it. Or you can go straight to the Arreat Summit and click on the altar. |
| Location: | Arreat Summit |
| Tips: | You must destroy all 3 Ancients without leaving the area. If you leave they will be reset. If you open a Town Portal the Ancients will be reset. If no one is alive on the Summit (everyone is dead or in town), the Ancients will be reset. The Ancients are very tough. Try to focus on killing the easiest or weakest one (depends on your class, skills or party) and finish them off. Static Field works great on Ancients without Lightning Immune or Resistance. Next move on to the next weakest Ancient. |
| Description: | You are making your way up to the top of the mountain. None here would ever dare get as close to it as you have. It is sacred to those of Harrogath; our most holy place. The legends say that it is guarded by the Ancient Ones. They block the path of all the unworthy.
It makes no difference what Qual-Kehk or the others think of you. It will be the Ancients that decide if you are worthy of this battle. Good luck. |
| Rewards: | The maximum experience gain is limited to 1 character level.
Bonus to your Experience. Normal: 1.4 million, Clvl 20 required. Nightmare: 20 million, Clvl 40 required. Hell: 40 million, Clvl 60 required. This bonus is not cut like experience from monster kills when you are past Clvl 75, so this quest is always a huge boost, but if you can save it (borrow a portal to the Worldstone Keep) until you are Clvl 80 or 85 it’s even more valuable. |
Notes: You cannot get credit for this quest unless your Character Level is at least 20 on Normal difficulty, at least 40 in Nightmare, and at least 60 on Hell difficulty.
Here’s where things get real. It’s time to summit the mountain and prove yourself worthy of taking on Baal. Take the Crystalline Passage Waypoint and continue to the Glacial Trail exit. Make sure to grab the Waypoint in this location, and then continue on to the Frozen Tundra. This takes you back out into the open air. Work through the battlefield until you reach the Ancient’s Way. Make sure to pick up the Tundra’s Waypoint just in case you die. Do the same in the Ancient’s Way as you make your way to the Summit. Up until this point, you’re just fighting slightly upgraded versions of the minions you’ve faced thus far. The top of the Summit tasks you with facing down three very powerful Barbarian Ancients.
All three of the Ancients come with their own special skill. Ideally, you want to try and split one off from the other two, but this can sometimes be tough, especially if you pick the wrong one. In our experience, you want to first target Korlic so that he can’t use his Leap Attack to jump into a fight between you and another Ancient. Try to bait out a Leap Attack, dodge it, and then head in to deal some damage. After him, you can target either Madawc (Shout, Double Throw) or Talic (Whirlwind) at your discretion. If you’re having trouble separating them, consider using cold or stun attacks to better control them.
When you take all three of them down, you’ll get a very large chunk of experience and the door to the Worldstone Keep will open. Take a second to reload your potions before heading onto the final conflict.
You can’t leave for town during the battle, so be sure you stock up on potions. It’s not a bad idea to scatter some around the area before the fight, so you can run and pick them up during the action, reloading your belt more quickly than you could by opening the inventory window. Also, be sure you have enough Town Portals to not run out if you need to cast one to avoid death.
Be sure you check out the Guardians’ stats early in the fight in Nightmare and Hell, and if one or more of them have very difficult or impossible mods, respawn them by casting a Town Portal.
Huge experience bonus! 1.4m on normal, 20m on Nightmare, and 40m on Hell. There is a Clvl requirement to get the reward though, you must be Clvl 20 on Normal, 40 on Nightmare, and 60 on Hell to get it. So no partying with bigger characters to get there quickly and get a huge bonus. The bonus experience is not cut by your Clvl exp penalty if you are over Clvl 75, so it’s best to save the quest reward on Hell as long as possible. Skip past the Guardians with a portal to the Worldstone waypoint, and never do them for the quest until level 98, if you can wait that long. The huge 40m exp bonus gets more valuable the longer you wait, since it’s easy to earn 40m exp at lvl 70 or 75, or 80. By 90 it takes longer, by 95 the monsters are hardly yielding any experience at all, and by the high 90s, when it takes multiple Baal runs to budge the exp bar, 40m is more than you can earn in many hours of monster killing.