Shades of Mort'ton (Activity)

Check out the Runescape Wiki's Article here: Shades of Mor'ton (Activity)



''This is a Dangerous activity. If you die playing it, you can lose your items.''

The Shades of Mort'ton is an Activity in which players create pyre logs to cremate Shades in hopes that they will receive keys that unlock chests in the Shade Catacombs. Players also play the game to get sacred oil used for cremating Vyre corpses at the Columbarium, to turn Serum 207 into Serum 208 and just to get Crafting experience by repairing the temple. Players must have completed the Shades of Mort'ton quest before they can play this activity.

Playing the game can earn Combat, Herblore, Crafting, Firemaking, and Prayer experience. A combat level of at least 81 is recommended to avoid being hassled by the loar shades whilst building the temple and cremating the shade remains. Prior completion of In Aid of the Myreque allows for much easier banking in the town of Burgh de Rott.

The official Shades of Mort'ton world is world 77.

Sanctifying The Oil
Logs can be turned into pyre logs by using sacred oil on them. Olive oil can be easily bought from the Mort'ton General Store, but in order to turn it into sacred oil it must be sanctified. To do this, you need to help build the Temple of Mort'ton like you did in the quest. You can gain Sanctity by either buying materials and helping build/reinforce the temple walls, or you can kill the shades that come to attack the temple.

When the fire altar in the centre of the temple has been lit (with a Tinderbox), you can use olive oil on it to make sacred oil. (Each time you successfully light the fire altar, you receive 100 experience points in the Firemaking skill.) You can only sanctify olive oil when your Sanctity is above 10%, and each time you do it drains around 2-3% off. When you have Sacred Oil, use it on your logs to make Pyre logs. It's a good idea to combine your olive oil into 4 dose bottles before using it on the fire if you're going to make Yew, Eucalyptus, or Magic Pyre logs.

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


The repair state is how complete the structure of the temple is. The temple must be 100% built for the holy fire altar to appear. The minigame will occasionally reset itself and walls will start to disappear. Just concentrate on un-repaired wall sections to build them up again.

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 Build 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 gotten from the chests in the Shade Catacombs, so rarely will there be a need to buy much if also doing that part of the minigame. 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.

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 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 level of key to get through certain types of doors. Higher level keys open 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).

As shades are undead, 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.

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 alch 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).


 * 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.

Unlocking the chests
Once you have your keys, you can go into the dungeon and unlock the chests they go to. 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 or armour. 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
 * Steel will yield Steel to Adamant items
 * Black will yield Black to Adamant items
 * Silver will yield Adamant to weak 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.

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.

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 minigame (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.