Halls of Stone Guide
Halls of Stone is the first instance intended for characters above level 77, which is when you’re first able to purchase the Cold Weather Flying skill to use your flying mount in Northrend. As such, a flying mount is indeed required to reach the instance, though if at least two people in your group have one the rest can be summoned with the summoning stone.
Quests:
The only quest for this instance, “Halls of Stone,” is actually within the instance itself, to complete an event the functions as one of the instance’s bosses. It’s impossible to miss and, if you finish the instance, impossible to not complete.
Boss Strategies:
Maiden of Grief
This Maiden is visually quite similar to another Maiden, the Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan, and her abilities are similar as well. The Maiden will summon void zones under random group members that, generally, need to be moved out of. She will also cast Shock of Sorrow, which does a small amount of shadow damage and incapacitates the whole group for six seconds. The healer and tank, when they see her casting this spell, need to move into one of the void zones before they’re incapacitated, so the incapacitation will break and they’re able to continue tanking and healing while everyone else is stunned. It’s important to note that if one player breaks the incapacitate and the tank doesn’t, the Maiden will immediately start attacking the non-stunned player, so the tank needs to be sure to break the effect. As long as you’re able to survive the incapacitation’s one way or another there’s no real problem
Krystallus
Krystallus is very similar to a five man version of Gruul of Burning Crusade fame. Besides a normal Boulder Toss he occasionally uses at a ranged target, Krystallus’ main abilities are a Stomp, which does a small amount of damage and ranged knockback that causes all group members to slowly turn to stone over 5 seconds (slowing movement speed more and more as time elapses) and Shattering them once everyone is completely immobile. The Shatter deals damage to any allies nearby, so everyone simply needs to make sure they’re spread out after the Stomp and it’s a very simple fight.
The Tribunal of Ages
The Tribunal of Ages is an escort/survival type event that functions as the third boss, and is the objective of the quest mentioned earlier. Talk to Brann Bronzebeard and escort him down the hallway to the Tribunal. He will start to work on a computer terminal as the large heads on the wall start to come to life, and one begins shooting weak holy bolts at random group members. At this point wave after wave of elite mobs as you’ve been fighting the whole instance will start running through the door you came from, and your job is to take them all down and prevent them from attacking Brann Bronzebeard in the back of the room. After a while, the second head will begin attacking in tandem with the first; it slowly builds and fires a large orb that will deal heavy damage when it hits the ground, but can be easily spotted and avoided. The third activates last, and will shoot continuous eye beams along the ground that need to be dodged. Awhile after all three heads have been harassing you as you deal with the constantly incoming mobs, Brann will succeed in shutting down the defensive system and a long scripted event will begin. After it’s over, the door to the final boss will be open.
Sjonnir The Ironshaper
The final boss of the Halls of Stone is unfortunately melee-unfriendly, but as long as they’re paying attention it’s not too bad. His arsenal of lightning-based spells include: Lightning Ring, a channeled point blank AoE that all melee, including the tank, should back out from; Static Charge, will causes the afflicted to damage all nearby allies, in response to which he should back off from the group; Lightning Shield, which simply causes attackers to take a small amount of damage every time they attack him; and Chain Lightning, a nuke that chains to other nearby allies. There will also be a wave of weak slime adds, followed by a wave of helpful Earthen if the fight lasts that long. The difficulty is really based upon how much melee you have, as they’ll be taking far more damage than any ranged DPS, but as long as the healer keeps up it’s a fairly simple fight.
