Shades of Mort'ton (minigame)

The Old School RuneScape Wiki also has an article on: osrsw:Shades of Mort'ton (minigame)

This article is about the minigame. For the quest, see Shades of Mort'ton.

The official world for Shades of Mort'ton is world 88 (P2P).

Due to an update, this article may be out of date. Reason: Little information about dummies, stackable remains, Flamtaer braces, storage chests You can help improve this page by editing it.

This is a dangerous minigame. If you die, you will lose your items and will need to reclaim them from Death or your grave.

Shades of Mort'ton (minigame)
Release date	18 October 2004 (Update)
Members	Yes
Location	Mort'ton
Participants	1+
Skills involved	Combat, Construction, Firemaking, Prayer
Reward currency	None
In spotlight rotation	No
Hiscores	No
Tutorial	No
Custodians	None
Music unlocked	Lair (music track)
Developers	• Original: Tytn H • Addition: James C
Infobox • Talk page

Shades of Mort'ton is a multi-part minigame unlocked after completing the Shades of Mort'ton quest, in which players perform the various tasks involved in cremating shades. It takes place in Mort'ton, south of the Mort Myre swamp and just north of Burgh de Rott.

The players rebuild the Flamtaer temple under siege from the Loar Shades, create the ingredients to make the various forms of pyre logs which then are used to cremate shade remains. Players will then enter the Shade Catacombs under the town, hunting for the treasure chests which are unlocked by the various keys they receive by burning the shades. Players may also enter the catacombs simply to hunt the more powerful shades that lurk within.

Rewards

Players often play the game simply to get sacred oil, which sells for a high price, aside from being used to create pyre logs for cremating shades and vyre corpses at the Columbarium. Players also may turn serum 207 into serum 208 at the temple.

The Shades of Mort'ton minigame provides a variety of experience, primarily in Crafting (repairing the temple), Prayer (burning shades), and Firemaking (burning shades). Players can possibly also gain an amount of Combat (killing shades) and Herblore (creating serums) experience from this minigame. It is somewhat lucrative, with clue scrolls being a semi-common reward from a shade key, and the other rewards being worth selling. It is one of the cheapest methods to gain Crafting experience, by repairing the temple, but at around 12 experience a second (with flamtaer hammer) it is very slow for the money saved. Players must have completed the Shades of Mort'ton quest before they can take part in this minigame.

The intended primary reward from this minigame is the shade key. This key unlocks the various chests found in the Shade Catacombs, which can generate significantly valuable rewards. See the section below on unlocking chests.

Loar Shades

The temple and the cremation area are full of level 58 loar shades. A combat level of 117 or higher is needed to make them unaggressive, so lower level players should bring armour to deal with them. A shade luring dummy can be deployed to avoid loar shades from attacking the temple or players.

Access

Partial completion of Nature Spirit allows you to pass through the gate southwest of Canifis into the Mort Myre Swamp, and access Mort'ton to the south. Fairy ring BKR teleports you just south of the gate. Otherwise, players have to enter the south side of the Haunted Woods, and find the passage into the east swamp. There is a passage from the east swamp to the west swamp through the wall of weeds which will require a great deal of wandering around in the east swamp to get to. Once in the west swamp heading south through the winding path will finally bring the player to Mort'ton.

However, completing In Aid of the Myreque is strongly recommended, as it gives players access to the local bank in Burgh de Rott to the south, without which players will have to trek all the way back and forth from Canifis on every trip. Partial completion of The Branches of Darkmeyer gives access to a Burgh de Rott teleport using Drakan's medallion, which will further speed up banking trips.

It is highly recommended to use serum 208 on Razmire and Ulsquire as soon as possible for assistance, trading, and supplies.

Sanctifying the oil

To create one of the many types of pyre log, a player must use a vial of sacred oil on the chosen type of log. Sacred oil is created from olive oil which can be bought from Razmire Keelgan. The olive oil must be blessed on the Flaming Fire altar in the temple north-east of Mort'ton in order to be sanctified into sacred oil. To do this, you will need to help build and defend the Temple of Mort'ton as was done in the quest. Sanctity is gained by either building/reinforcing the temple walls, or by killing the shades that come to attack the temple. Killing shades is recommended only for players proficient in combat, as only the kill itself generates sanctity, not the combat. As a player's sanctity percentage is constantly draining (around 1% every 30–50 seconds), this method would be counterproductive if the player is unable to quickly bring down the shades.

When the fire altar in the centre of the temple has been lit (it is possible to fail; success grants 100 Firemaking experience), simply use a vial of olive oil on it to create sacred oil. It can be lit and the oil sanctified only if the player has more than 10% sanctity. Each time a player blesses an olive oil it will spend 2.7% (for a 3 dose vial) or 3.6% (for a 4 dose vial) of sanctity. Decanting olive oil to 4 doses makes the process faster. If you're going to make Yew, Eucalyptus, Magic, or Elder pyre logs, you must have 4 doses. Bob Barter at the Grand Exchange can decant either type of oil into 4 dose vials instantly.

If the medium Morytania achievements has been completed, pyre logs may be stored in storage chests dotted around the town, and retrieved at any time. There are four chests in Mort'ton that can be used to store up to 30,000 of one type of pyre logs. Noted pyre logs may be stored in the chest.

Building The Temple

To get sanctity to make sacred oil, it is necessary to help with repairing the temple. Shade luring dummies can be used to distract the Loar Shades when repairing the temple. While this is normally a group effort, it is possible to rebuild the temple and obtain sacred oil solo with very high combat levels to kill shades quickly. When starting, three figures will appear in the top-right corner of the screen.

Repair State

This percentage indicates the condition of the temple. The number is raised by repairing the walls, and will gradually fall as shades attack and destroy it. Resources are used up by repairing the walls.

Resources

Resources are used for repairing the temple. Unlike the repair state, this is individual and not a shared statistic. When at the temple, choosing Repair Wall starts the repair process. First, certain items in inventory are turned into resources. Once this is done, the resources are drawn down as the temple is repaired.

The following items are used to create resources. All the items needed can be bought from Razmire Keelgan in Mort'ton. (Most can also be found or made elsewhere on RuneScape.) For each 5% resources, the following is required:

• 1 x Timber beam or plank. Beams are much cheaper, so buy those.
• 1 x limestone brick. Razmire Keelgan also sells limestone, which is cheaper and can be made into limestone bricks with a chisel, which he also sells. (This saves some money and gets extra crafting experience.)
• 5 x swamp paste. This is the most expensive part if purchasing the items in the store. Plenty of swamp paste can be received from the chests in the Shade Catacombs, so rarely will there be a need to buy much if also doing that part of the minigame. Swamp paste is an occasional thank you gift when "curing" afflicted residents. It can also be made from Swamp Tar and Flour. Swamp tar spawns in the Mort Myre Swamp and the Lumbridge Swamp. On the Grand Exchange, the swamp paste currently costs 2 coins.

Also needed is a Hammer or Flamtaer Hammer to build the temple, the latter being much faster.

Flamtaer bracelets can help in the construction of the Temple Walls. The bracelet comes with 2 charges, and when the effect activates it can instantly build a single temple wall. It is suggested to have multiple bracelets, especially if soloing the activity.

Sanctity

Sanctity is what is used to make sacred oil from olive oil. This figure like resources is personal, and starts at 0. It increases by repairing or reinforcing the temple, or by killing the shades around it, giving 2% sanctity per kill. Sanctity will slowly decrease over time, and will reset to 0% upon logging off or hopping world. When building the temple, approximately 5% sanctity is earned for each 1% of resources spent. Repairing is recommended over killing shades for raising sanctity quickly.

Creating The Pyre Logs

You can only cremate Shades with Pyre logs. Pyre logs can be created by using sacred oil on various types of logs. The table below shows the costs of creating each type of log.

There are four chests in Mort'ton that can be used to store up to 30,000 of one type of pyre logs.

Creation of pyre logs with sacred oil

Log type	Pyre logs made	Doses of sacred oil	Firemaking		Creation cost	Profit/Loss	Profit/Loss per XP
			Level	Experience
Logs	Pyre logs	2	5	20	8,939	-4,144	-207.2
Oak logs	Oak pyre logs	2	20	20	9,065	-5,356	-267.8
Willow logs	Willow pyre logs	3	35	40	14,568	-10,601	-265.02
Teak logs	Teak pyre logs	3	40	40	14,230	4,635	115.88
Arctic pine logs	Arctic pyre logs	3	47	40	14,608	-2,225	-55.62
Maple logs	Maple pyre logs	3	50	40	14,263	456	11.4
Mahogany logs	Mahogany pyre logs	3	55	40	15,033	-2,382	-59.55
Eucalyptus logs	Eucalyptus pyre logs	4	63	60	20,284	-7,997	-133.28
Yew logs	Yew pyre logs	4	65	60	19,529	623	10.38
Magic logs	Magic pyre logs	4	80	60	19,686	2,997	49.95
Elder logs	Elder pyre logs	4	95	60	28,925	-163	-2.72

Killing the Shades

To kill the shades, first you have to get to them. Loar shades are the easiest since they just wander around the village. The rest, though are encountered during Temple Trekking or found in the Shade Catacombs just north-west of the town. The entrance can be a little hard to find since it is tucked right up against a small hill on the northern edge of the village, against water and opening to the north. To get to the various higher level shades you will need various types of keys to get through the different doors. Fortunately, higher level keys will open the matching type of door and will also open lower level doors. For example; a steel key will open steel and bronze doors. Your keys will not disintegrate when walking through doors. For more information about the levels of keys and how to get them, see Cremating the Shades.

As shades are undead, the Salve amulet (e) will boost accuracy and damage when fighting them. As a precaution, players should always keep at least one key in the bank of the highest type of metal the player can access so that the player can always kill additional shades without having to deal with the difficulty of burning all the types of shades again.

Shade	Combat level	Key needed
Loar shade	58	N/A
Phrin shade	60	Bronze key
Riyl shade	63	Steel key
Asyn shade	65	Black key
Fiyr shade	68	Silver key

Cremating the Shades

A shade being cremated.

Once you have the Shade remains and the appropriate pyre logs, you can start burning them. All the materials for this minigame are tradeable, and can be bought on the Grand Exchange. Useful items for burning:

• Morytania legs 3 or 4. These will increase the chance of receiving gold keys from burning Fiyr remains and will give 50% more firemaking experience for burning remains. Morytania legs 4 will also award 50% more prayer experience.
• Flame gloves will increase the firemaking experience received from burning the pyres by 2% (5% together with the ring of fire).
• Ring of fire will also increase the firemaking experience received from burning the pyres by 2% (5% together with the flame gloves).
• The First age outfit from the Ectofuntus will increase prayer experience by 1% per piece. If using the firemaking items as well, the bracelet and ring cannot be used and their effects do not stack.

To cremate a shade:

• Place your logs on any of the funeral pyres located around the south and west edge of Mort'ton.
• Place the shade remains on top
• Click the pyre to light it.

Light your fire promptly, the funeral pyre will despawn after about 30 seconds.

The table below shows what kind of logs are required to burn which kind of shade, as well as the Firemaking experience gained per pyre log.

Cremation of remains using pyre logs

Pyre Log	Firemaking		Remains that can be cremated	Cost of pyre log	Cost per XP
	Level	Experience
Pyre logs	5	50	Loar, Phrin	4,795	95.9
Oak pyre logs	20	70	Loar, Phrin	3,709	52.99
Willow pyre logs	35	100	Loar, Phrin, Riyl	3,967	39.67
Teak pyre logs	40	120	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre	18,865	157.21
Arctic pyre logs	47	158	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre	12,383	78.37
Maple pyre logs	50	175	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre	14,719	84.11
Mahogany pyre logs	55	210	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre	12,651	60.24
Eucalyptus pyre logs	63	246.5	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre, Asyn	12,287	49.85
Yew pyre logs	65	255	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre, Asyn	20,152	79.03
Magic pyre logs	80	404.5	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre, Asyn, Fiyr	22,683	56.08
Elder pyre logs	95	450	Loar, Phrin, Riyl, Vyre, Asyn, Fiyr, Tortured soul	28,762	63.92

You will see an animation of a shade's spirit floating up into the air, then either a key or a stack of coins will appear in your backpack. The type of key depends on the type of shade remains used. The number of coins you get this way are roughly equal to the high alchemy value of the item you would get from the chest it would open.

• Loar: Low Bronze only (or 400-500 coins)
• Phrin: High Bronze, low Steel (or 600-700 coins)
• Riyl: High Steel, low Black (or 700-800 coins)
• Asyn: High Black, low Silver (or 800-900 coins)
• Fiyr: Silver or Gold (rare) only (or 2,200-3,200 coins)
• Tortured soul: Silver or Gold only (or 3,400-4,300 coins)

Prayer experience is gained by burning the shades. The amount depends mainly on the type of shade cremated, and to a lesser extent on the type of log used. The experience obtained from each combination is shown in the table below.

Type of log	Prayer Experience
	Loar	Phrin	Riyl	Asyn	Fiyr	Tortured soul
Pyre logs	25	37.5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Oak pyre logs	33	45.5	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Willow pyre logs	33.5	46	61	N/A	N/A	N/A
Teak pyre logs	33.7	46.2	61.2	N/A	N/A	N/A
Arctic pyre logs	33.9	46.4	61.4	N/A	N/A	N/A
Maple pyre logs	34	46.5	61.5	N/A	N/A	N/A
Mahogany pyre logs	34.3	46.8	61.8	N/A	N/A	N/A
Eucalyptus pyre logs	34.4	46.9	61.9	79.4	N/A	N/A
Yew pyre logs	34.5	47	62	79.5	N/A	N/A
Magic pyre logs	35	47.5	62.5	80	100	N/A
Elder pyre logs	36	49	63.5	81	101	126

Unlocking the chests

Main articles: Shade Catacombs and Shade Catacombs/Rewards

The chests are colour coded to match the keys.

After the update on 15 March, 2011, the Ring of Wealth now has an effect on the rewards from using a shade key.

Once you have your keys, you can go into the catacombs and unlock the chests which the keys open. The entrance to the catacombs is north-west of town, a little north-east of the bridge, through some doors built into the north side of a hill. The entrance is not marked on the minimap. Look for a torch on the bank of the swamp.

Each time you unlock a chest, the key will dissolve in the lock. If you want to come back and fight more of the shades of that level, make sure you leave at least one key to get through the doors with. It might be a good idea to leave one key in your bank when you finish, in case you want to come back and play again later.

To open a chest, match up the colour of the key with the lock of the chest, such as a Steel Key Black with a steel-trimmed chest with a lock painted black. If you're not sure the colour of the lock, you can examine the chest for more info. Inside the chest will usually be a few coins and one treasure, either being some runes, armour, or a clue scroll. Plus, sometimes if you press continue the dialogue, there will be a bit of swamp paste in the bottom of the chest as well, making it easier to repair the temple (since paste is the most expensive part). The levels of armour depend on the type of key.

• Bronze yields Steel to Mithril items or an easy clue scroll
• Steel yields Steel to Adamant items or a medium clue scroll
• Black yields Black to Adamant items or a medium clue scroll
• Silver yields Black to Rune items or a hard clue scroll
• Gold yields Mithril to Dragon items or an elite clue scroll

Additionally colour of the loop defines the probability of the key yielding one of the "better" items available. The order is (worst → best):

Red → Brown → Crimson → Black → Purple

So in other words, a silver key black is more likely to yield a better treasure than a silver key brown, but all silver keys have the exact same set of possible rewards. Purple keys will have the highest chance of receiving a clue scroll.

The chests also occasionally yield clue scrolls, with keys from loar shades yielding level 1 clues (occasionally, at best) transitioning upwards to fiyr shades which can regularly yield level 3 clues (almost common, usually at least 1 every 35-50 keys, sometimes more common).

Shade keys

		Colour
		Red	Brown	Crimson	Black	Purple
Metal	Bronze
	Steel
	Black
	Silver

Special key

Gold

Other activities

You can also use Sanctity from building the temple to make Serum 208 by using a Serum 207 on the fire. You must have a minimum of 20% Sanctity to make Serum 208.

Giving this to the Afflicted that wander the town will cure them, and they will reward you with some coins and other small gifts which are useful for that minigame (olive oil, limestone, a few types of logs etc.) or grimy tarromin. You can use both serums to cure the Afflicted, but Serum 208 yields a greater reward, including the occasional Bronze key or Clue scroll (easy). Northwest of Mort'ton there are snails and trees so you can kill the snails, take their meat and cook it for healing if you get hurt. A perfect inventory for this would have: 1 silver sickle(b), at least 1,000 coins, good combat gear, 1 flamtaer hammer, and a number of druid pouches or an Ouroboros Pouch to keep the ghasts from rotting your food.

Update history

The update history project is a work-in-progress – not all updates to this topic may be covered below. See here for how to help out!

• patch 3 August 2020 (Update):
  • Modernized the presentation and position of the Shades Of Mort'ton minigame interface.

• ninja 16 April 2018 (Update):
  • Players can now left click funeral pyres to add their highest tier shade remains ready for burning.
  • Added a take all option to filled pyre log storage chests in Mort'ton.

• ninja 15 May 2017 (Update):
  • Razmire now sells four-dosed olive oil as a Morytania diary reward.

• update 12 Dec 2016 (Update):
  • The Flamtaer bracelet is released.

• ninja 30 August 2016 (Update):
  • A left-click sanctify option has been added to the fire altar.

• ninja 18 April 2016 (Update):
  • Shades' combat stats have been increased.
  • Shade remains and timber beams are now stackable.
  • Shade chests now have their lock's colour in the name.
  • Keys or coins are now placed directly in the inventory rather than on the stone slab when cremating a shade.
  • Shade luring dummies have been added to Razmire's store.

• ninja 20 July 2015 (Update):
  • Added a left-click option to funeral pyres to add pyre logs and Vyrewatch corpses.

• patch 13 May 2013 (Update):
  • Two lines of text concerning burning shades have been added to the game filter.

• patch 11 December 2012 (Update):
  • Poisoned weapons have been removed from shade chests.
  • Removed poisoned weapons from the loot tables for the Shade Burning activity.

• patch 22 November 2012 (Update):
  • Shade combat has been fixed.

• patch 11 April 2012 (Update):
  • Gravestones now spawn outside the Shade Catacombs when dying within.

• patch 27 March 2012 (Update):
  • Code has been tweaked to make the minigame more efficient.

• patch 27 March 2012 (Update):
  • The Morytania achievement diary is released, whose rewards grant various bonuses to Shades of Mort'ton.

• patch 21 February 2012 (Update):
  • A notification has been added for trying to burn high-level shade remains using low-level pyre logs.

• patch 22 November 2011 (Update):
  • A minigame map icon has been added to Mort'ton.

• patch 12 October 2011 (Update):
  • Drakan's medallion no longer uses charges when teleporting from within the Shades of Mort'ton catacombs.

• update 23 August 2011 (Update):
  • Gold keys and chests are released, with new rewards including shade skulls and necromancer kits.

• patch 7 December 2010 (Update):
  • Using a vial on the fire altar now uses all of them.

• patch 9 November 2010 (Update):
  • Rebuilding the Mort'ton temple no longer tries to play a new animation every second.

• patch 8 July 2009 (Update):
  • Coins can now be picked up before they disappear.

• patch 29 May 2007 (Update):
  • Shades can no longer attack from great distance.

• patch 17 May 2005 (Update):
  • Serum 208 can now be used on afflicted for better rewards.
  • Black spears have been added to shade chests.

• update 18 October 2004 (Update):
  • The Shades of Mort'ton quest and minigame are released.