The Iron Sill
 | |
| Region | Drift Network (south wing) |
|---|---|
| Level range | 80+ |
| Boss | The Anchor-Gorged |
| Entrance | Portal in the Drift Network hall, south-wing alcove |
| Landblock | 0x00AE |
The Iron Sill is a three-floor grind dungeon opening off the south wing of the Drift Network hall, built for characters of roughly level 80 and up. A sill is the bottom member of a doorframe, and this one names a door the Meridian could not close: the anchor-iron they drove into it was swallowed by something on the far side and never came back out. The halls below are full of creatures that fed on the same iron seam, and the thing that ate the anchor still holds it.
Overview
The Iron Sill is three stacked combat halls with a raised boss sanctum above the top floor. You arrive on the middle floor; climb toward the heavier things or descend into the swarm. Every creature here carries the mark of the buried iron, its shell gone bronze where the metal worked outward through it, brightening toward gold the closer you get to the source.
The three floors are tuned to the server's encounter weights, so which floor you pick is a matter of taste rather than reward. The monsters are level 160, which on this server is content for a player around level 80 and up (monster level runs roughly double the player's), and it stays worthwhile well past that into the mid-game climb.
The three floors
The floors differ in encounter weight, not in earn rate. Each floor pays out at about the same experience per hour; the choice is purely how you like to fight.
| Floor | Weight | What you fight |
|---|---|---|
| Top hall | Heavy | Fewer, tougher elites. You take them a few at a time, and each one hits hard and soaks a lot of damage before it drops. The Iron-Gorged Grievver, Iron-Gorged Harrower and Iron-Gorged Bane nest here. |
| Middle hall | Medium | The baseline. A steady stream of Gilded Shade, Gilded Wraith and Gilded Husk at ordinary strength and ordinary numbers. This is where you land. |
| Bottom hall | Light | Weaker creatures in dense packs. The Tarnished Carenzi, Tarnished Stalker and Tarnished Runt swarm thick down here; individually flimsy, dangerous only in a crowd. |
Because the tougher floors hand out proportionally more experience per kill and the lighter floors hand out less against far more targets, the three balance out. A group that prefers picking off single elites earns the same as one that likes carving through a swarm.
Inhabitants
Every creature in The Iron Sill fed on the buried anchor-iron and wears it in its shell. They are grouped by floor:
- Top, Heavy: Iron-Gorged Grievver, Iron-Gorged Harrower, Iron-Gorged Bane
- Middle, Medium: Gilded Shade, Gilded Wraith, Gilded Husk
- Bottom, Light: Tarnished Carenzi, Tarnished Stalker, Tarnished Runt
The trash are aged bronze; only the thing in the sanctum burns molten gold, so the color reads as nearness to the swallowed iron.
Boss
The sanctum above the top hall holds The Anchor-Gorged, the colossal Grievver that ate the anchor-iron meant to pin this door shut. It is the reason the dungeon exists, not a monster that happens to live at the end of it, and it fights unlike anything below: it hardens as it feeds, growing tougher with every quarter of its health you take rather than weaker. The sanctum is reached from the top hall, so a group that came for any floor can finish there together.
Access
The entrance is a portal set into a recessed alcove in the south wing of the Drift Network hall, near the door Coriel the Anchor-Clerk keeps his tally beside. Step through and it drops you into the dungeon's antechamber; a return portal named Surface at the far end brings you back to the hall. The portal is open to anyone, with no quest or key required to enter.
Coriel pays by the head. He sets a kill tally for whichever hall you name (or for the boss), and you turn it in to him when the count is full. Each tally resets a day after you claim it, so you can run them again and again. See Coriel the Anchor-Clerk for the exact counts and rewards.
See also
- The Anchor-Gorged - the dungeon's boss.
- Coriel the Anchor-Clerk - the Meridian clerk who pays the kill tallies.
- Drift Network - the hall this dungeon opens off.
- Encounter weights - how the three floors balance.