Howling stones entrance

So you want to go to Howling Stones but you heard it is dangerous and you don't know what to expect exactly? Here's what you'll want to know:

Going in

First you have to get in, so you'll need to complete the Key to Charasis Quest then go to the temple in The Overthere chasm (A the on map) and click on the orb. Your first hurdle, after the key, is the orb being guarded by skorpikis, which are SKs who will HT. You can bypass them with invis but ideally you want to go in with IVU (more on that later). So if you have lull, do that, if you don't you'll have to either kill them or run in with invis. Be careful when lulling because there is a skorpiki that roams down the ramp leading to the orb. Sometimes the roamers are hard to see since they get bugged between different levels of Z axis, a bug that seems to be common in the area.

Once inside

So once you click the orb you land at the charasis zone in (right where the player corpse is):

Bad news #1; there's no realistic way out.

Bad news #2; there is most likely a welcome committee.

There are 2 roamers around the entrance point who patrol zone in. SOMETIMES, if you're very lucky, they will path behind pillars and won't see you zone in but I would come in expecting the worst. I've read people advising to message players in zone and ask if zone in is clear but the odds of people knowing is very slim so mostly a waste of time. Buff up and bite the bullet. Each roamer can be one of the following:

- A bottomless feaster (doesn't see invis)

- A skeleton sepulcher (doesn't see IVU, will HT)

- A bile golem (sees both)

As far as avoiding mobs go, there's obviously nothing you can do against a bile golem and nothing either if you get a live/undead combo. So now you can either pick Invis/IVU to go in but if you have IVU do that. Sepulchers will harmtouch you and IVU will let you dodge a double harm touch (450ish x2) which is basically the worst possible scenario and let you reposition to minimize harm if you can (lull, skip, charm, split...)

So immediately upon zone in check your combat log, as it may be very active. If so, congratulations luck wasn't on your side and now you got some fighting to do. When zoning in, you always face the direction you were facing when clicking the orb so once in try to fight right there or move away from east (more on that later) and get things sorted out. If you haven't been aggroed, look around, it is possible the pathers were momentarily out of line of sight.

The infamous East wing pather

Now there's another danger. If you stay and fight on the platform the pyre golems won't aggro as they have no line of sight on you. The east wing has a mob that paths out its door and stops right next to the steps for a little while. If you fight too close to those stairs he will aggro. He will not bring the pyre golems with him so that's good but the east wing is the hardest and mobs in there are lvl 50-54, which means they hurt and they summon. So you want to make sure you're not taking your zone in fight too close to east stairs. I believe if you fight at zone in you're fine but if you move around you'll have to keep track of where East is at all times. The symmetric four-way nature of the room can get very confusing so max sense heading is almost mandatory. I had a helot skeleton aggro me as a 54 chanter and he resisted both AE stun and root so this pather can turn a trivial fight into a nightmare.

Moving on

So once you're done cleaning up the 2 mobs at entrance, you can either kill the pyre golems until the entrance guards respawn, if you got a candle (key dropped by feasters) you can move to north wing, or you can levitate down to the Charasis Basement. If you do the entrance golems you can kill the north/west/south pairs. Most people let go of the east ones due to the pather but also because the stairs leading up have a pit trap making things a bit more complicated. Quite frankly, if you have enough time to kill the 2 entrance roamers, the 3 pairs of golems in 20 minutes with time left to tackle the 4th set, you're probably too strong for the entrance and should move into basement or a wing.

If you want to do golems, respawn time is 20:30 so when you kill the first entrance guard start a timer. Get ready for respawns when the timer is almost up or you might get a surprise HT... or two.

Trains

Every wing has pit traps leading to basement. If a player falls/jumps down (there are a couple reasons to do this) while being aggroed, it will trigger a chain reaction. The mobs will start running toward entrance and bring all their friends which causes you to get insta gibbed if you're caught in it. Also some necros/enchanters will take pets from the easier wings to go fight in harder wings. If a wipe occurs, the pet will reset and walk back to its wing. I've once found myself in the way of a weaponized and hasted loose pet while recovering, I didn't last long. Not much you can do but my best advice is as soon as you notice something isn't right, just gate/FD/Camp to be on the safe side. I've had numerous instances of "that's odd but not a big deal" followed by me getting multi-harmtouched from behind. It is not super common but it happened enough that when I notice anything unusual I just don't wait to figure out what's going on anymore.

Another thing to note: people will zone in and move into the wings. Every wing entrance has a pack of 4 mobs close to the door. While they don't have a line of sight with the golems, if a group pulls them close to the door while you're just outside, you may end up on the aggro table so watch what people are doing around you.

Welcome to charasis! It sounds like a terrible place but you can get excellent exp without all that much competition so the dangers are worth the hassle.