Rescue on Mount Arreat

Quest Two: Rescue on Mount Arreat

• Quest Name: Rescue on Mt. Arreat
• Triggered by: Entering the Frigid Highlands.
• Given by: Qual-Kehk
• Location: Frigid Highlands
• Reward: Ability to hire Barbarian Mercs and Tal, Ral, Ort runes.
• Quest Priority: Not mandatory, but has a nice reward.

This one is a little more involved than the first quest. You must scour the Frigid Highlands and find fifteen captive Barbarian NPCs. They are held captive in wooden-fenced pens in groups of five, and when you find them you need merely knock the lock off the gate, and they will stream out and vanish into a portal that appears for them.

Setting the Barbarians free.

Yes, you'll probably get Warcraft II flashbacks.

The three pens are always somewhere in the middle of the Frigid Highlands, not over by the sides of the area, and generally not visible on the mini map from the sides either, until you get close to them. The pens are easily spotted once you get near though, as large white rectangles. You'll always spot one on the minimap first and then close in on it, advancing slowly since there are monsters every step of the way in this area.

The Frigid Highlands (and all the other early surface areas of Act Five) is about as large as the first two surface areas of Act Four put together, so this one usually requires some looking.

None of the Barbarian pens are guarded by any greater concentration of monsters than you find anywhere else in the fortified walls areas of Act Five, so don't expect any massive dangerous battles. There are also at least 15 and probably more random wandering Barbarian NPCs around this area, but they are content to do their own thing and don't need rescuing.

As you free each bunch, the quests menu pops up telling you to "Free ten more warriors", and then "Free five more warriors".

When you return after freeing all 15 of the Barbarians, go to Qual-Kehk for your reward. He will have the usual "!" over his head, and will tell you:

"Thank you for rescuing my men. They have spoken well of your bravery in battle. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.

If you wish, you may hire some of my mercenaries that you saved. And please... take this set of runes. I had been saving them for a socketed shield, but I think you'll make better use of them.

Be sure to set them in the right order for their fullest effect."

The Runes you receive are Tal, Ral, and Ort. None of them do a whole lot on their own, each adds elemental damage of one type to a weapon, and 30% resistance to it to a shield, so all three in an item and you'd have all but cold damage/resistance covered. But if you put all three into a three-socket shield in the correct order (Ral, then Ort, then Tal), you get a special better bonus, and a Rune Word item.

Ancients Pledge

RalOrtTal

• +43 or 48% Resistance to each Element
• 10% damage taken goes to mana
• +50% DR

You get the same three runes for this quest every time (so you'll have three sets by the time you do all difficulty levels with a given character). The actual order to set them in isn't specifically said, but they appear in your inventory in order, top to bottom, just how they should look in the shield. Whether you would know to get a three socket shield and socket it with these three Runes in the proper order if you were seeing it for the first time in the game and didn't know about Rune Words is debatable. This is the first RuneWord most characters will see in a game, check here for full details about Runic Items.

This reward can be placed in a Paladin-shield, and the inherent bonuses to Resistance or Damage/Attack Rating will be preserved in the RuneWord, yielding a much larger total bonus than any other class can receive.