Quest:The Balance of Light and Shadow

The Balance of Light and Shadow is the quest that priests must complete in order to get the epic staff Benediction/Anathema. Upon completion, your quest reward will be the Splinter of Nordrassil. You then combine the Splinter with The Eye of Divinity and The Eye of Shadow to create the staff.

Objectives
Save 50 Peasants before 15 are slain. Speak with Eris Havenfire should you accomplish this task.

You may view the Death Post to view how many Peasants have been slain.
 * The Balance of Light and Shadow

Description
You must do what I could not: Save the peasants that were cut down while fleeing from Stratholme.

They will walk towards the light, you must ensure their survival. Should too many fall, our cursed existence shall continue - you will have failed.

Every ability, prayer, and spell that you have learned will be tested. May the Light protect you,.

Completion
Your tenacity and courage are astounding, priest(ess). You have earned the right to hold the Splinter of Nordrassil. Only one task remains: The Eye of Shadow must be recovered. Scour the world.

Preparation
Getting all possible buffs before accepting this quest will benefit you greatly, as any help from the outside that does not include killing skeletons will help you. Stocking up on potions and elixirs will also help you, as will other consumables such as Stratholme Holy Water. Depending on gear and player skill, the quest can even be done purely self-buffed (don't forget Inner Fire).

More important than buffs is the ability to do the required tasks fast. Custom-configuring the user interface can help a lot. In this quest only 4 spells are needed: Abolish Disease, Flash Heal, Renew and Holy Nova. A useful way to configure the action bar would be:

Key 1: Inner Focus Key 2: Abolish Disease Key 3: Flash Heal rank 5 Key 4: Renew rank 6 Key 5: Holy Nova rank 3 Key 6: Major Mana Potion

Using the maximum ranks of your spells is not needed as it will get you out of mana pretty fast; the peasants have only around 1500 health, the Flash Heal and Renew used should each heal around half of it.

You should be comfortable with this layout before starting. Practice moving while simultaneously casting Abolish Disease, Renew and Holy Nova.

The "V" key is your friend: it will activate health bars above mobs, making it significantly easier. Unfortunately the bars tend to "jump" around the screen alot. This effect can be minimized by looking directly downwards from far above. Maximizing the "Max Camera Distance" in "Interface Options/Advanced" also helps.

To enable friendly NPC health, you might have to rebind your "v" keys from the Options->Key Bindings control panel. There are 3 separate togglable options that affect this feature. Make sure all 3 are bound to keys (V, Shift-V, Alt-V) and spam all 3 when the fight begins, until you see NPC health bars.

The three options are:
 * Show Name Plates (V)
 * Show Friendly Name Plates (Shift-V)
 * Show All Friendly Name Plates(Alt-V)

Completing the quest
There will be 5 waves of around 10 peasants each, the number will slightly increase from wave to wave. The waves will start at the cave entrance and walk slowly down the road. After the script has started, there will be a dome of light on the road 10-20 yards after Eris. If the peasants reach that spot, they are safe. All the way they will be attacked by Skeleton Archers, they don't do much damage, but enough to kill most of the peasants without healing.

Try to stay cool under pressure, it takes a while, and remember, 14 peasants are allowed to die, that's nearly three per wave. So don't give up early if you make mistakes.

Caring for the peasants
While the peasants move from the cave to the light, you should move with them and perform the following, in order of priority:
 * 1) Badly diseased (purple): Cure, Flash Heal, Renew
 * 2) Mildly diseased (green): same as above
 * 3) below 60% health: Flash Heal, Renew
 * 4) All others: Renew
 * 5) Don't take care of any peasants who have moved beyond Eris

The disease kills the peasants very quickly, thus removing it is most important. Next, peasants who are below 60% of their health should get a flash heal, and finally every peasant should have a renew on him by the time he reaches Eris.

It is very important to treat all peasants before they reach Eris. After that, just let them go, Renew will hopefully keep them alive for the rest of the road. Because at that time the next wave will already start, if you don't get back in time, some peasants will surely die from the disease.

If you fail the quest in any way, Eris will despawn and you will not be able to accept the quest for 10 minutes.

Caring for yourself
Each wave of peasants is accompanied by increasing numbers (from 4 to 10) of Skeleton Warriors. Either gather up many of them and use Holy Nova to finish them off, or use Oil of Immolation. This will kill the skeletons allowing you to basically ignore the skeletons and concentrate on the peasants.

You can bring a friend to aid you. Of course, they cant see peasants without eyes, but they can help other ways, such as giving buffs and providing auras. Be careful: using friends often causes a demon named The Cleaner to spawn. He hits for 4,000-5,000 a swing, immune to all damage and his sole purpose is to prevent people from "cheating", by using other player to help them.

Quotes during the quest
Randomly said by a peasant when a new wave of peasants appears:
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell

Randomly said by a peasant as it walks towards redemption:
 * say
 * say
 * say

Randomly said by a peasant when it has been safely escorted:
 * say
 * say
 * say
 * say

Said by Eris when more than 15 peasants die (player failing the quest):
 * yell
 * say

Said by Eris when enough peasants are saved (player successfully doing the quest):
 * yell

Said by Eris when she is randomly healing the player during the quest:
 * yell