See also Sword Halls

Arena style instance with 3 bosses: Sorcerer (left door) - Summons fire. Keep moving to avoid or drop a Captain Banner. Morroval (right door) - Summons bats and heals (interrupts!). Olog Hai (middle door) - AOE dps, and does a huge aoe knockback (avoidable, stay in the blood stain left of the entrance). All three bosses have corruptions that give them +15% incoming damage (meaning you do more damage to them), that when removed, provide buffs to the group. The Sorcerer gives a heal, the morroval gives a power heal, and the olog hai gives a bonus to your damage mitigation. If you're at a tough part of the fight, it's best to removal the corruptions. If you're at an easy part, keep them on to speed up killing.

Easy mode is just that, easy. You fight useless adds (2 pulls before each boss, each with 3 mobs, they drop the quest items), and one boss at a time (Sorcerer -> Morroval -> Olog Hai).

REWARD - 3 Medallions of Dul Guldur and 3 Chests full of runes and relics

In Hard Mode (or Challenge Mode) you must defeat all 3 bosses at once (adds spawn after about 10 minutes, meaning you need to finish before then). The key to this is a good group combination. Healer, Tank, DPS is the best combo. The tank can tank two of the mobs (Olog Hai, and one other), as the DPS kills the remaining one (group make up dictates which you kill first). With a champ, guardian and minstrel, it was easier to kill the morroval first, so I could stop it from healing, and keep the bats of the mini. With champ, captain and minstrel killing the sorcerer first was easier since it's fire is the most annoying, and it has the lowest hp. It should be noted that the morroval MUST be interrupted, or kept on the opposite side of the room from the boss being dps'ed.

For those that really excel at their class having the Guard/Champ/Warden tanking all three mobs is very doable. Using the corruptions early on to help off-set the damage the tank will take helps tremendously.

REWARD - 4 Medallions of Dul Guldur (+3 from daily quest) and 1 Chest full of runes and relics

See also Warg Pens

A straightforward instance. Most of the instance is trash pulls, with 2 bosses. The first is a simple tank and spank with adds. Aoe dps helps here. The 2nd boss is a bit more intensive. He hits extremely hard, and the healer will be strained to keep up someone who is not a tank (moreso if you're doing hard mode).

Not to Eat. Simple. Kill everything, don't worry about wargs eating meat (actually, stunning them as they run to eat meat, would speed things up).

REWARD - (3-4?) Medallions of Dul Guldur

To Eat. This is a bit more challenging. Every lump of meat sitting around on the ground must be consumed in order to complete hard mode. Wargs eat meat at around 1000 hp, so don't dps them further than that, and give them time to eat. The only real challenge here is the final boss. Have your tank hold the boss, the healer keeps everyone up, and your dps makes sure all five pieces of meat are consumed. This can be a pain, specifically if a warg does not want to eat.

Walk into the final boss's room. Stop, look just ahead and to your right and notice that really wide pillar. If you attemp to kite the boss, you're going to get hounding fear and he's going to catch you and rip you a new one if you aren't prepared. So, use the pillar. Start running around one way, then turn to look at him on the other side. As you run around, since you're faster than he is (unless you have hounding fear), you'll eventually start to lap him (catch up to him). When this happens, he's going to turn and start coming ta you the other way. Eventually, you'll find an equilibrium point, where you're both sort of shimmying back and forth around the pole.

Stay out of the fire -- going near it will remove the boss's frost DoT, but it'll also burn you, so use it judiciously. Use a pot on the poison DoT (or, if a hunter is your DPSer, have him remove poison from you). If you get a wound, use a wound pot (or, if you have a lore-master or rune-keeper, have him remove/prevent the wound).

REWARD - 6 Medallions of Dul Guldur (+3 from daily quest)

See also Dungeons of Dol Guldur

The Dungeons instance is both a puzzle instance and a combat instance. The dungeon is divided into 3 wings (West, North and East). In each wing, there are prisoners to be rescued (West - 2, North - 3, East - 4). Your goal is to rescue prisoners from each wing. The more prisoners you rescue, the better your reward.

Two dynamics make this challenging. The first is the fact that once one prisoner exits the wing, the doors to that wing begin to close and after about 90 seconds, they slam shut, and you're locked out from that wing. The second is the pathing Olog-Hai that cannot be targeted or attacked. If you get too close to them, you will be 'captured' and thrown into a jail cell at the beginning of the instance. The door takes about a minute to open (long induction) and all of the Guldur Guards will respawn, so you want to avoid this (Note: if you are captured 3 times, the wing is sealed, no matter whether you rescue prisoners or not). The Olog-Hai can be put to sleep for a limited amount of time using Nightshade Barrels (from the book 9 version of this dungeon, if you've done that). If the Olog-Hai finds a prisoner, it will throw you in jail, and the prisoner will be sent to a new cell and must be searched for again.

The basic strategy is that you should move between empty prisoner cells to avoid the Olog-Hai. Rooms with elves that must be freed should be avoided until you're ready to free all at once. Nightshade Barrels can be used to put the Olog-Hai to sleep, and this is good in some cases, but bad in others (as it can mess up timing, making it harder to get all the Olog-Hai asleep at once).

When Prisoners escape, they will run only when one of your group is around, and will take the straightest path (always around the edge though, never through the middle, ie East Wing).

0-2 Prisoners Rescued - 1 Medallion of Dul Guldur and one chest of runes/relics.

3-6 Prisoners Rescued - 6 Medallions of Dul Guldur and one chest of runes/relics.

7-9 Prisoners Rescued - 8 Medallions of Dul Guldur and one chest of runes/relics.

Note - I'm unsure what the lower bound on the normal mode and upper bound on the easy mode rewards are.

Prisoners = 2 :: Olog-Hai = 1

The West wing is the easy wing. The one Olog-Hai moves in a clockwise square around the wing. He stops in the corners. Start on the two sides closest to the door, and work your way to the back. Avoid the Guldur guard pulls if you find the prisoners in early rooms (simply to save time).

Prisoners = 3 :: Olog-Hai = 2

A straightforward wing. Two Olog-Hai make a cross and path back and forth. Once you've cleared the trash mobs, it's best to place a barrel in the center point, putting both to sleep, and therefore not requiring more than 1 barrel to have the whole area open to you. Remember to use the empty prisoner rooms as safe zones from the Olog-Hai. The rooms close the center (if empty of prisoners) are perfect for placing barrels in the center and putting the Olog-Hai to sleep.

Prisoners = 4 :: Olog-Hai = 3

NOTE: DO NOT USE NIGHTSHADE ANYWHERE BUT THE CENTER POINT!! Doing so will mess up the Olog-Hai's pathing times, and making putting all 3 to sleep a much much bigger hassle than it should be.

This is the difficult wing. There are 4 prisoners spread out in one of 19 rooms. There are around 15 Guldur Guards around this wing, and having them respawn will set you back on time in a major way. The only way to handle this wing is to clear the entire area of guards (opening rooms looking for elves along the way - make a map of locations for later: It Helps!).

Once you've got everything cleared, use your map to help determine where you need people to begin getting prisoners. You should always start on the east wall (as those take the longest, and you can get others on the way). If there is a prisoner in the center room on the east wall, it should be noted that he will run counterclockwise(or has for me twice).

Barrel Placement and Elf Rescue Explanation: I like to put my group members at the center points of the north and south wall so they can help me monitor the two Olog-Hai that make circles. I will stand at the entrance watching the Olog-Hai that goes down the center. When he is at the far wall, and the other two are just at the rooms on the far north and south (in the center), the barrel should be placed in the center. At this time your two other group members go get prisoners (starting on the eastern wall and working clockwise in the south, and counterclockwise in the north). If your timing is good, you can get all 4 within a few seconds of each other, no problem.

Once you've freed a prisoner or more from each wing, and all the wings have been sealed, the warden will come down into the center room. During his fight, he will target the elven prisoners with an attack that will one shot them. The key to preventing their deaths is the new distributed damage system. Once they are targeted, you must have all the elves gather around the person being targeted. All the prisoners will share the damage of the attack, and you wont lose a prisoner (your healer will need to spend some time topping all the npcs off). Since some of the prisoners are ranged or healer types, it's best to use the layout of the room to help bring all of the elves in to one tight space to avoid the distributed damage hitting one of the archers that is far away and killing him. The pillars in the room work great for this. The rest of the fight is a dps race. The longer he stays up, the more distributed damage he does, the more prisoners you will lose.

Additional Strategy: An alternate strategy that seems to have good results is using the jail cell (near the entrance) to bring the boss and all the npcs into one tight area (thereby reducing the damage taken for his distributed damage attack). To do this, you must use the lever right as the fight starts, and pull him into the cell (he can walk through the door)), then have your dps spend the 1 minute induction opening the door a 2nd time to let in any straggling elves (although at least some elves can also walk through the door). Have your tank put the boss in the corner, and use the layout of the room to your advantage, having your healer LOS when he attempts to fear the players (allowing the healer to continue healing elves).

See also Sammath Gul

The 6-man instance in the Dol Guldur instance cluster. This instance is one of the only 2 places in the world where a Symbol of Celebrimbor drops, which is required to craft level 65 2nd ages. Group make up is important. Due to the dynamics of the bosses and trash pulls, I would highly advise having diverse group. Having only 4 different classes for a run really seems to slow groups down and made trash pulls more difficult.