The Hole

The Hole is the deep dungeon at the base of Paineel — a multi-tier vertical complex carved into the Odus bedrock and never fully reclaimed by the Heretics who claimed to rule it.

The descent is the layout. Players enter from the Paineel platform and work down through ring after ring of progressively older construction: Heretic patrols on the upper tiers, undead nobility in the middle chambers where the original Erudite city was buried, and at the very bottom a dragon-tier encounter that has been on The Last Camp's "respected long-clear" list since the server opened. Movement between tiers is on foot down ramps and ladders, no shortcuts, which is part of why the zone has earned its reputation as a real commitment rather than a quick run. Lighting is sparse — Heretic torches in the upper levels, then darker as the construction gets older.

Camps

• The old-city floor — the densest level. Rock golems, elemental harvesters, wizards, channelers, and the bejeweled and muck-covered elementals pack the buried ruins alongside the spirits of the old city. This is where most of the zone's population sits and where the construct/elemental tier rotates its mini-named.
• The heretic temple — fallen heretics and erudites, templebound spirits, and a wandering caster patrol guard the crypt that holds Keeper of the Tombs, Dartain the Lost, Niltoth the Unholy, Commander Yarik, and the Ghost of Glohnor.
• The named construct ring — a tighter cluster anchored by Slizik the Mighty, Caradon, Stonegrinder Minion, and Gibartik, walled in by rock golems and elemental warriors.
• The deep tier — the scalekeeper line (Nortlav, Master Yael) sits at the bottom, tied into the dragon-aligned faction the descent has been building toward the whole way down.

Named NPCs

NPC	Level	Respawn	Notes
Master Yael	56	~7 days	Deep elemental-tier named; Minions of Underfoot
Keeper of the Tombs	55	~5 days	Heretic crypt guardian; on Heretics faction (audit-corrected), TAKP-canonical timer
Caradon	55	~3 days	Old-city named
Dartain the Lost	55	~24 hours	Heretic temple
Jaeil the Wretched	55	~6 hours
Polzin Mrid	55	~4 hours
Urwenae the Cold	55	~4 hours
Slizik the Mighty	54	~17 min	KOS-assist (audit-corrected faction)
High Scale Kirn	53	~4 hours	Ranger; TAKP-canonical timer + class restored
Retseth Tretse	53	~17 min	Animated construct
Tzitzi the Crazed	52	~17 min
Commander Yarik	51	~17 min	Spell list reverted to TAKP
Nortlav the Scalekeeper	51	~7 days	Minions of Underfoot (audit-corrected faction)
Niltoth the Unholy	51	~17 min
Irslak the Wretched	51	~17 min
Initiate Sirlis	51	~20 min
Ulrik the Devout	51	~17 min
Ikurenm the Sly	51	~17 min
Ghost of Glohnor	50	~17 min	Undead; resists and immunities corrected to TAKP
the Ghost of Kindle	50	~17 min

The old-city floor also rotates a set of elemental and construct mini-named — Gibartik, Rocksoul, Stonegrinder Minion, Stonesoul the Unmoving, Kejar the Mighty, and Schnozz the Flighty — on short timers inside the shared spawn rotations. Full creature data is in the Hole bestiary.

Primary factions

The Hole splits cleanly between the things that simply want you dead and the things that answer to something older underneath.

Faction	Role	Active NPCs
KOS-assist	The elemental and construct army — kill-on-sight, assists across the floor	55
Minions of Underfoot	The dragon-aligned deep tier (Nortlav the Scalekeeper, Master Yael, Slizik the Mighty)	33
Truespirit	The spirits of the buried old city	4
Heretics	Keeper of the Tombs and the crypt line	1

A recent TAKP-canonical audit corrected the deep-tier faction wiring: several named (Slizik the Mighty, Master Yael, Nortlav the Scalekeeper, the Keeper of the Tombs) had been keyed to synthetic placeholder factions that resolved to nothing, so kills there moved no standing. They are now on their canonical KOS-assist, Minions of Underfoot, and Heretics factions — the deep tier cons and reacts the way the descent's lore implies.

Why bother

The Hole is one of the few Classic dungeons that still rewards a full group at endgame. The undead nobility are mez-resistant enough that bards and enchanters earn their keep, and the named drops include several pieces that compete with early Velious gear for casters and clerics. Necromancers in particular treat the middle tiers as a near-mandatory stop for level 49+ spell research components, and the deep chamber is one of the original "your guild has arrived" markers from the Classic era.

Lore-wise, the descent tells the whole story of Paineel's founding without ever spelling it out. The Heretics who broke from Erudin built their city on top of what was already here, and what was already here is what kills you on the way down. Players who finish a deep clear and then go back up through Paineel tend to read the city's surface architecture differently afterward.

Using it well

The Hole punishes single-pulling failures harder than most Classic dungeons because the corridors are narrow and the patrols loop. A puller without snap-aggro tools — bard, monk feign, ranger pull — turns the upper tiers into a long evening. Cleric mana management on the middle chambers matters too; the undead nobility can chain-cast through a complete heal cycle if the tank doesn't have an enchanter slow on the right target.

The Last Camp's any-race-any-class rule changes the deeper-chamber math more than the upper tiers. A Vah Shir Cleric or Ogre Paladin holds up fine on the named undead, and a Dark Elf Warrior with shaman-buff stacking can tank the bone golems past where canonical gear breakpoints would predict. The zone scales to level and resist gear, not to race tradition, and the layout's verticality means small flexible groups often clear deeper than full canonical raid setups that get bogged down by pull paths.

The undead here are now true undead under the hood — the audit restored their canonical immunities, so they cannot be charmed or pulled with ranged attacks, and rogue Hide works against the patrols again. Plan pulls around feign, snare, and snap aggro rather than charm or kiting.

Notable drops

• Heretic high priest gear — Cleric-tier robes and focus pieces
• Bone golem weapons — magic-imbued melee, holds value into early Velious
• Sealed-vault rares — caster best-in-slot Classic-era pieces
• Dragon-tier loot — endgame weapons and stat pieces at the deepest chamber

A pair of exploit-grade drop rates were corrected to TAKP-canonical this audit — a wanderer's spellbook page and a flighty fiend's research components no longer drop at inflated rates — so the middle-tier research grind now matches era expectations.

Getting there

• From Paineel: on foot down the access shaft at the city's lower platform
• From Erudin: Toxxulia Forest → Paineel → access shaft
• From Plane of Knowledge: Nexus → Toxxulia → Paineel → access shaft

Related

• Paineel
• Erudin
• Toxxulia Forest
• Stonebrunt Mountains
• Necromancer
• Shadow Knight

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Verified TAKP-canonical via crushbone-zone-audit on 2026-05-26. Bestiary entries at /wiki/bestiary/hole.