Zones
Splitpaw Lair
The gnoll underground stronghold beneath South Karana. Cousins of the Blackburrow gnolls run a multi-level cave system with named champions and a deeper boss tier.
- South Karana
Splitpaw Lair is the gnoll underground stronghold reached through the gnoll camp in South Karana. The Splitpaw clan are cousins of the Blackburrow gnolls — same Karana origin, same Karana grudge against Qeynos — and the lair functions as their main fortified holding south of the Qeynos region. The dungeon is a multi-level cave system with named champions throughout and a deeper boss tier in the lower halls.
It is the natural mid-Classic step up from Blackburrow. A group that cleared Blackburrow at level 8–14 will find Splitpaw at 15–35 a clean continuation of the same gnoll-faction storyline, with bigger pulls, harder named, and a noticeably more dangerous boss tier. The zone has had multiple revamp passes in EQ history — The Last Camp runs the era-correct classic version, not the SoL adventure-instance variant.
Content
- Splitpaw gnoll warriors scaling 15 to 28 across the upper caves
- Splitpaw shamans — caster pulls, the dungeon's main mez priority
- Splitpaw champions — named warriors with class-flavored loot
- Lower-hall named in the deeper boss tier, level 28 to 35
- Quest hand-ins for gnoll-faction and Qeynos-faction characters
- A handful of camp clears that work as static-group XP rotations
Why bother
Splitpaw is the cleanest mid-Classic dungeon with a single, coherent faction story. Every named ties back to the Splitpaw clan, the loot drops are flavored to that faction, and the dungeon respects the player's progression — the upper caves teach the patrol patterns, the mid-zone named test crowd control, and the deeper boss tier rewards a group that can hold a multi-add pull without losing the tank.
The faction lever matters too. Killing Splitpaw gnolls moves Qeynos guard faction in the right direction for any character that wants Qeynos as a home city, which makes the dungeon a useful follow-on for characters who farmed Blackburrow earlier. On The Last Camp the any-race-class doctrine widens the door — an Ogre Cleric or a Halfling Shadow Knight can run the dungeon for the loot just as cleanly as a canonical Human Paladin, and the gnolls do not check race when assigning hostility.
Using it well
Mez the shamans first. Splitpaw shamans land slows that will stretch a fight long enough for a second pull to wander in, and the dungeon's geometry punishes slow fights with patrol overlap. A group with one solid crowd-control class — Enchanter, Bard, even a competent Druid root rotation — clears the lair noticeably faster than a brute-force composition.
Pull camps deliberately. The cave layout has narrow choke points that work in the group's favor only if the puller respects the patrol cycle. Bringing a tracker or a stealth class shortens the named-camp wait dramatically; without one, plan on rotating through the named-spawn locations on a longer cycle than feels efficient.