Analysis, Discussion and Tips for Success

General Discussion

Shades of Mort'ton is a relatively little-used minigame that is of interest to us because it can be used to train the Prayer skill. This is a somewhat complex minigame with several steps, and a full explanation of it is beyond the scope of a skill activity description, but I'll briefly summarize it for you and then explain how a part of the minigame can be used to earn Prayer and Firemaking XP.

In a nutshell: you help build the temple at Mort'ton, which earns you sanctity that you can use to convert olive oil to sacred oil. This is then poured onto logs to make pyre logs, which are put onto a funeral pyre along with shade remains,

which you get by killing shades. You light the pyre, which gives you Prayer and Firemaking XP, and also rewards you with either a key or a stack of coins. The keys open chests in the shade catacombs under Mort'ton, giving you rewards such as coins, runes, bars, armor, weapons, jewelry and even clue scrolls. You can also get fine cloth from the chests, a special item using to create splitbark maging armor.

The first part of the activity -- making sacred oil -- grants Crafting XP and is thus described as part of the Crafting skill optimization guide. We are interested in the actual cremation of the shades, which is what gives the Prayer XP, along with the rewards. Most of the items used in Shades of Mort'ton are tradeable, including the sacred oil, pyre logs and shade remains. However, buying pre-made pyre logs is difficult to do, so I assume the inputs to this activity are sacred oil, shade remains, and logs.

The amount of Prayer XP you get when burning a shade depends mostly on the level of shade (loar, phrin, riyl, asyn or fiyr, in ascending order), and somewhat on the type of logs used. The rewards received also depend on the type of shade, with higher-level ones giving more coins when coins are rewarded, and higher level keys that give better items and a greater chance at fine cloth. The Firemaking XP received depends strictly on the type of logs, not the shades used on them.

To maximize XP, you should use the highest level logs you can, and burn the highest level shades you can burn on those logs. However, in some cases it may be more cost-effective to burn lower level logs and/or shades, especially for players on a budget.

Shades of Mort'ton has not been updated in many years, and many of the items it gives as rewards have their value tied to high alch figures. Splitbark armor is also not in nearly as high demand as it once was. As a result of all of this, the minigame is now unprofitable in most of its incarnations, depending on the combination of logs and remains used. It is possible to make money on the task overall, if you collect shade remains yourself and also make your own sacred oil. But of course, doing this means you get less Prayer XP per hour as well.

There are literally dozens of items you can get from the shade chests, some of which are valuable and others, well, junk. To avoid even further complicating things, I have only explicitly listed rewards that are normally sellable on the Grand Exchange, and whose prices vary over time. Many of the rewards are low or mid level armor and weapons, which you won't usually sell on the GE; these are listed collectively as "Other drops", using their low alch value or high alch value. Cheap items like mithril daggers, steel items below platelegs/skirts, and (plain) magic staves, should be sold to the general store in Mort'ton -- he'll give you low alch prices, which is decent. Better items like decent mithril and adamant armor, rune med helms and spears, should be alched (or can be sold on the GE for roughly their high alch price less half the value of a nature rune).

Location and Access

This minigame is of course centered around the town of Mort'ton, deep in the wilds of Morytania. You must have completed the quest of the same name to participate, and you should also have finished In Aid of the Myreque, to earn free access to the only nearby bank in Burgh de Rott.

The quickest way to get to Mort'ton is to use the short-cut from Canifis you learn about in the quest In Search of the Myreque. Go through the trap door south of the bar in Canifis, open the secret door to the south, then follow the tunnel to the end. Go through the doors into the swamp, then run south to the bridge. Cross the bridge, then run southwest/south to the ferryboat; click on it and you'll arrive in Mort'ton; run southwest to Burgh de Rott and go to the bank there.

You'll make pyre logs at the bank. To burn the shades, you just run out of Burgh de Rott; you'll find funeral pyres to the east and west just after you cross the bridge into Mort'ton.

To use your keys you make your way to the shade catacombs. Go north to the center of Mort'ton, then veer northwest when you get near the general store. Go north as far as you can and you'll find a set of double doors embedded in a hill, right next to the swamp. Go through and then head to the appropriate room for your keys. Bronze chests are found in the rooms to the west and east as soon as you enter the tomb. For steel keys, go through a door to your south after you enter the tomb and go into any of the rooms there. For black and silver keys, after passing the steel door, continue south as far as you can go -- then go east to find the black chests, and west for the silver ones.

Required and Recommended Equipment

You don't need any gear for making pyre logs, and just a tinderbox to burn the shades. However, if you are under combat level 81 you should wear melee armor when cremating the shades, because the loar shades in Mort'ton will attack you periodically.

For going to the shade tomb chests, you should wear level-appropriate combat gear with one exception: if you are combat level 121 or higher and only redeeeming bronze keys, you will only encounter level 60 phrin shades, which won't be aggressive towards you.

Combat equipment should include a Salve amulet or Salve amulet (e) if you have them, since this gives a nice bonus against undead.

Required and Recommended Supplies

You need logs, sacred oil and shade remains. You need one set of remains per log, and the following amount of sacred oil: 2 doses per log for regular and oak pyre logs; 3 doses per log for willow, teak, arctic pine, maple or mahogany pyre logs; and 4 doses per log for eucalyptus, yew or magic pyre logs. As mentioned earlier, pyre logs are tradeable, but it is often hard to buy them in any quantity. Given this, and the fact that they are quick to make and you get Firemaking XP for them -- 12, 14 or 16 XP for 2-dose, 3-dose or 4-dose logs, respectively -- I recommend just making them yourself.

Shade remains are tradeable, and if you are out to maximize XP, you should buy them. They can be quite expensive, though (since others also want to get XP, naturally.) To save money, get into a routine where you take back some remains every time you go to the shade tombs with keys to use in chests. This does slow things down a bit, of course.

Familiar Suggestions

Use the highest capacity beast of burden you can, as long as it is a bull ant or better. (The lower beasts have too low a capacity to justify the time needed to load them.) This does include using a war tortoise, despite its high cost.

Technique and Tips

Start by making the pyre logs. Withdraw 12 4-dose sacred oils and then "Withdraw all" on your stack of maple logs. Use one oil on one set of logs and choose "Make All". Wait a few seconds and you'll have 16 sets of maple pyre logs and 12 empty vials. Dump these into your bank and repeat until you have all the pyre logs you need.

Step two, load up to cremate the shades. Summon a beast of burden (if you are Summoning level 40 or higher), set the left-click option to "Take BoB", and set your "Withdraw X" to 13. Take out a tinderbox. For a bull ant, withdraw 13 pyre logs and 14 shade remains from the bank, then open your familiar and store 5 logs and 4 remains; reopen the bank and take out 5 logs and 4 remains. For a spirit terrorbird, take out 13 of each, store 6 of each in the bird and take out 6 more of each; for a war tortoise, the same deal, but 9 of each go in the familiar. You won't use the full capacity of a pack yak, because that requires an extra bank and load step, negating any benefits. Instead, take out 13 pyre logs and 14 shade remains; open the yak, store 5 of each, and then store the remaining 9 and 8 respectively. (Doing this helps later on.) Now withdraw 14 pyre logs and 13 shade remains to make 27 pairs (1 less than the theoretical maximum).

Head out of Burgh de Rott to a pyre station. Click one set of pyre logs and then click the funeral pyre, then do the same with one set of remains. Now click the pyre, wait a second and the logs will go up in flames; the shade's spirit will be released, and either some coins or a key will appear on the stone pillar next to the pyre. Click the coins or the key to take them, then repeat the process. Note that it is possible to do many shades in a row before collecting rewards, but this doesn't save as much time as you'd think. You have 2 minutes to collect keys or 30 seconds to collect gold, or they disappear. When you start to run out of supplies, click "Take BoB" to get more supplies from your familiar, and continue until all the shades are done. Bank the gold and keys, and repeat until you have lots of keys.

Now gear up to go to the shade tombs, and head there using the instructions above. Go to the appropriate room for your keys -- in the case of bronze, steel and black chests you'll find all trim colors in each room, while some trim colors for silver chests are in different rooms. Click the chest to open it, and be sure to click the "Click here to continue" message, as doing so gives you a chance at finding a bonus of swamp paste in the chest. In some rooms you may need to deal with an aggressive shade that will interrupt you -- it is possible to just ignore these and open all the chests, but you lose all of your swamp paste that way.

When all the keys are traded in, exit the tomb and head back to Burgh de Rott. If you got a bunch of low level junk (mostly from bronze or steel chests), then go to Razmire and sell it to him -- you get some money and save some hassle. Other items can be saved or alched, as you prefer.

Some players like to load up on remains after using a load of keys. If you're going to do that, another alternative is to bring alching runes and use them on the mid-level junk while you are there, to make room for more remains.