Grave Matters is a quest in Hellfire. This quest must be accomplished to enter the Crypt, the second set of new levels added in the expansion pack.
Grave Matters
- Quest Name: Grave Matters
- Triggered By: Finding the Cathedral Map.
- Frequency: Every game in Hellfire.
- Given by: Gillian
- Location: Hive Level 4, then the Town graveyard.
- Reward: Access to the Crypt.
This quest has two stages. The first is to move through the four levels of the Hive (a location where the Warp skill truly comes in handy). On the fourth level the boss of the hive, the screeching, insecticidal Defiler, can be found. When killed she drops the cathedral map (and only the Cathedral Map. No item to go along with it.) which you must take to the cemetery and drop on the large, ornate grave that is the only change to the cemetery from how it looked in Diablo.
If right clicked, the cathedral map opens up to show an overhead view of Tristram, with an arrow pointing to the graveyard. This is enough of a clue for most, but just in case the irrelevant barmade Gillian gives a speech when asked about this quest.
- My grandmother often tells me stories about the strange forces that inhabit the graveyard outside of the church, and it may well interest you to hear one of them. She said that if you were to leave the proper offering in the cemetery, enter the cathedral to pray for the dead, and then return, the offering would be altered in some strange way. I don't know if this is just the talk of an old sick woman, but anything seems possible these days.
Whether you speak to Gillian or not, the quest works the same way. Walk to the cemetery, drop the map on the new grave, and it will slide away leaving a stairway down to the Crypt.
Strategy Tips
The Defiler is not very difficult to kill, and the Hive is fairly annoying to clear out, so most players just teleport around until they find the Defiler, kill her quickly, grab the map, and portal out. The Defiler is easy to find since if you land on the same screen she starts her screeching "Come closer mortal..." monologue, a speech she almost never gets to finish. (This illustrates a key aspect of choosing your own famous last words; make sure they're short enough that you can get them out before you're dead!)
The Crypt was designed to be equivalent in difficulty to Hell (levels 13-16). That's the official word, anyway. If any non-sorcerer players actually feel that way they've kept a low profile, since the unanimous conventional wisdom is that the Crypt is much easier than Hell, if only because the floorplan, reskinned from the Cathedral (levels 1-4), offers so many doorways to bottleneck the enemies and small rooms to chase down ranged attackers in. As with the Hive, there is a great deal more monster variety in the Crypt than in any of the original areas of Diablo. While Hell and the Caves never offer more than 2 or 3 monster types, 6-8 is the usual amount for each level in the Hive and Crypt.
The one big difficulty of the crypt is for Sorcerers, since the enclosed areas and multiroom layouts make effective use of Chain Lightning difficult. The immunities oversight made by the original D1 team is corrected as well, since unlike in any area of Diablo, the Crypt holds plenty of monsters with fire and lightning immunities, who can only be attacked by magic. Blood Star and Flash are necessary skills here for a sorcerer, after they were nothing more than novelties in Diablo.
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| Quests in Diablo and Hellfire -- Quest General Info -- D1 & HF Quest Items [e] | ||||
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