Walkthrough for The Weakling, The Warrior, and The Wanton (Unchained)

Dreary place

Outside of raiding and PvPing, one of the best ways to get better gear is by gathering Rare Trophies that can be traded in (with gold) for purple gear.  One of the easiest Unchained instances to gather rares is Dead Man's Hand.  It generally takes longer than Island of Iron Statues and Refuge of the Apostate but is easier than both and significantly easier to access than the latter.

All a player needs to access this (and Island of the Iron Statues) is the Turan Adventure pack (which costs 1300 Funcom points or 6300 for the Jewels of Turan version which has several additional features including the Sand Demon combat pet).

To start the quest, talk to Artus in Ardashir.  The first time this quest is run, there's some extra steps (that I won't cover here) that set up the story for the recurring section.  After the first run through, the island only has four recurring quests.  Despite not paying much in silver (four to six silver, compared to 10 to 12 for Khitai quests), these are fairly easy to complete and in your general path through the island.  The fourth quest is available on the island but since completing it takes you off the beaten path, it's not covered here although it is pretty straight forward.


In the Unchained mode, the mobs are all level 82 (compared to 83 for Forgotten City, 84 for Refuge, and 84 for Iron Statues).

Drostan

You arrive on Dead Man Island standing next to half a row boat (don't ask) and near the Beach rez pad.  Make your way towards the first X identifying Quartermaster Drostan.  You'll have to fight through his Thugs (melee), Lurkers (melee) and Marksmen (ranged).  Avoid the water as it does some fairly significant damage acid damage while you're touching it (about 1500 per hit).  As you approach Drostan (located at 355, 613), patiently pick off some of the roving mobs including the one that seems to always be urinating into the acid pools (interesting note: he doesn't zip up as he runs towards you, so the urine stream of urine comes too!).  There's a small group a short distance away that you can avoid pulling aggro on if you don't move to the far side of Drostan but can be aggroed by the roving mobs.  Use the pillar by Drostan to break line of sight on the Marksman.

After a brief conversation with Drostan, it ends how most do in Age of Conan, with someone trying to kill you.  It's a pretty straight forward fight with Drostan casting Pernicious Purulence, which does poison damage.  At 75% he decides to emulate Simon Pegg as the fat boy runs away to 357, 557 where he regains his courage and tries to fight some more.  As he's running, you can charge him and damage to him.  However, during this time a slow debuff (+50% hinder movement) is periodically applied to you so it's unlikely you can sustain damaging him as he jogs around the lake.  At the base of a stone building, inexplicably built at the edge of one of these acid pools, he'll summon minions who are really more annoying than damaging.  At 50%, he runs upstairs to 343, 536 where additional minions will show up, up to a total of five.  After killing them off, no more appear, but you don't have to kill them to finish off Drostan.

There's one normal mob, named Drostan's Occulus outside the building, who has been putting the hinder movement debuff on you.  I'll often kill him out of general ill-will to anyone that's been hitting me with hostile spells.  Ignoring him or killing him doesn't seem to make a difference in the difficulty of the fight.  This mob is green before you attack Drostan so you can't take him out in advance.

On the balcony, where Drostan makes his final stand, you can just whack-a-mole with him and his minions until he's down to 25% at which point he surrenders and throws his cohort Accalia under the proverbial chariot.  A hittable chest appears that contains some potions, maybe a traveler's pouch or two, esteem tokens, and a mastery vial.

Accalia

Leave the crater and head up the path towards the center of the island.  After fighting some snakes and boar, you'll see a small cottage and the Hillside rez pad (559, 491).  As you descend into this valley, you can opt to finish off the "Where there were No Graves" and "Slaughter of the Savages."

At the edge of the swamp, near one of the bodies, when you engage the Hellish Savage, the game often freezes up for a second or four.  I'll sometimes skip burning that specific body and will finish the quest selecting one of the other ones once they reset (usually after killing Accalia).

The swamp has areas of high mob density which can create some minor issues for some classes.  You can either advance slowly or just run like hell until you flag the Swamp rez pad at 665, 411.

I think the safest way is to attack the pair of savages just past the bodies, move back towards the swamp to take out the merciless savage and then follow the backside of the large rock (killing a Hellish Savage and a few boar).  You'll pass the non-hittable savage (which is part of another once only quest in Dead Man's Hand) to get to the rez pad.

There's also a hittable chest at 641, 378 holding a combination of potions, bags, tokens, and vendor trash.


Work your way around the savage's buildings towards where you start seeing Accalia's guards.  There's one lookout (ranged) near here.  If you go left in this area first there's another hittable bag at 706, 369, this one's called Pirate's stash. You can see it's particle effect if you have world particles enabled.

Work your way along the edge of this area until you get to a wood framed canopy.  This area also gets congested by patrolling mobs so if you're not careful you can end up in a battle with four or five opponents.

When you first enter the clearing, there will be a Accalia's Warden on your left.  Take her out before talking to Accalia.

When combat starts the ability to watch out for is "Abhor the Weak" which has a fairly large radius of attack and stuns you for several seconds.  When you see that spell being cast move away quickly (about halfway across the area is usually enough).  Otherwise, it's a pretty straightforward tank and spank type fight.  Accalia's other ability is Bloodthirst which grants her +75% damage for 15 seconds.   Her attacks do slashing damage.

She would be more formidable if her gear wasn't +Magic Damage

At 25%, she tires of you beating her up fighting you and casts Easy Prey that basically kills you.  Go ahead, call her a hacker and a cheater in Global.  You wake up in the courtyard that's now empty of Accalia but has a hittable chest with more random stuff in it.

Now head back to the town you started in.  You can either go along the outside of the island (it's like the 101 highway in California except with more violent occupants) or back the way you came.  Either way, if you aggro some of these mobs they'll chase you all the way back to town.

A fun feature of Dead Man's Hand is that if you try and swim you get one-shotted by a shark.  So unless they add flying mounts (and for the love of Hyboria I hope they don't), you're running or riding.

Vayaspara

Vayaspara will be standing outside the tavern/whore-house/pirate-pickling facility located at 625, 594.  Several of her topless whores will be throwing things at you (even if you paid last time).  Clear a few out so you'll have room to fight.  You may also want to take out a hostile mob (Behafrid) inside the tavern, so you don't have to deal with two enemies during the final battle.

One strategy is to kite her when she casts Abyssal Moan, a DOT spell that does unholy damage in a cone shape (hat tip to cins on the forums) - Circle-strafing is a good way to avoid the damage.  Darkness Within, is her other basic attack and it also does Unholy damage.

She also hits you with a stacking -10% miss/Fizzle chance called Ravenous Debauch which lasts for two minutes.  It's a good idea to wait for that to expire before attempting the final boss.  Per Roddam on the forum there is also another hittable chest upstairs in the tavern that is a good use of time while you wait for the ravens to finish circling you.

At 25% she also surrenders and says your real enemy is in Artus' ship nearby.  To her right will be a hittable chest with more goodies.

Alternate path around the island

Per gcustoms on the English forums:

An easier way is to hang a right when you enter the crater and go around the perimeter of the crater, stopping when you get to the rock that you can't jump over, at this point you should be close to drostan, take out the one marksman crouching beside a rock. Then take out the four patrols and one marksman by the geyser where Drostan runs. Then exit the way you came and to get to Accaila you go around the perimeter of the island, this will pull minimal mobs and allow you to get to Accaila in good time and with only having to kill the four scouts that patrol into her "Area" you can also reset mobs by jumping on the first canopy Accaila is facing.

This is much faster but will yield a little less treasure (big whoop) and you won't finish the other two fodder quests (also big whoop).  Here's Slith's screen-capture run following a similar path and a youtube video of a similar run.

Artus' Ship

Located at 649, 888 is a ladder into the ship where you'll face one of the three bosses in a new battle.  There's a different strategy for each, but as your character powers up, they basically all become tank and spank.  Some are harder for some classes than others but it seems to luck of the draw as to which you'll get.

Drostan on Artus' Ship

Drostan now does unholy damage (guess poison wasn't working too well for him).  He casts Veils of Vermin that summons a bunch of rat minions.  Battle him by the barrels and position yourself so you can hit him and the rat pack concurrently.  Battle the rats down, focusing initially on the largest of these rats (which is enlarged with the Cheating Rat spell).  That one rodent will do fairly significant damage.  Rinse and repeat until he drops.  AOE spells should be saved for when the rats appear, but melee classes like the Bear Shaman and Dark Templar can usually withstand the onslaught easily enough.  I haven't tried this on a sin, but I imagine it's fairly difficult.  On the forums, cins pointed out that you can jump on the high ledge from ballista which keeps you out of range of the rats, which seems like a good tactic for ranged attacking characters like casters and rangers.

Accalia on Artus' Ship

She still has Abhor the Weak but not also, at 75%, 50%, and 25% will take off to attack some prisoners which, if she finishes, will give her a huge buff.  If you click on one of ballista it will save the prisoner (you did good!), stun her and remove the buff if it's there.  If you click on the lever near one of the prisoners, you'll free them and get "Instill Power" that gives you +20% damage mitigation and +20% damage (this also seems to kill the person you just saved, which sort of defeats the purpose of saving them).  Honestly, it's not really worth going for, unless you're struggling with the battle.  Accalia can interrupt you with a single white hit, so it's only viable while she's stunned.  Each ballista is only usable once so mentally keep track of which ones you've used.

Vayaspara on Artus' Ship

There's a non-descript wax figure that's they say looks like you near the stairs.  This is a pure DPS race.  You can slow the melting of your wax figure by clicking on barrels at the top of the stairs but there's some debate if this feature works or not.  I've found it helps and that was collaborated by cins.

The warnings you get for the figure melting are:
1. Was begins to gently pour down the sides of the doll
2. Blatant deformities in the likeness of the doll begin to appear
3. The Voodoo Doll is melting at an alarming rate
4. [Something about a relentless assault] < - If you see this, you're probably boned.

I'm speculating these are at 75%, 50%, 25%, and 10% health on the Voodoo Doll.

 If you use AoE attacks, you can get the Fire Girls Vayaspara summons to attack you (hooray?) but that keeps them from damaging the wax figure, so that's nice.  Per cins the fire girls have a fire aura which damages the doll so collecting them does give you more time.

If she doesn't die by the time the wax figure has taken so much damage you die a horrible fire fatality.  I have killed her at the same time the figure melted.  I rezed at the nearby rez pad but couldn't re-enter the ship. So you may want to have a resurrection potion active on this one, or intentionally die if you don't think you can get her down fast enough.

Each boss drops a chest with either a blue mastery vial (purple ones used to drop but I haven't seen any recently), two to three Rare tokens, a random blue item, and a mix of esteem tokens, patroller's kit, and potions.  There are some pets that drop from Accalia (panther), Drostan (rat), Vayaspara (spider).  After the battle, exit the ship, and return to Ardashir to receive your cash rewards.

Including the rewards for the quests and vendoring the raw jade and other trash you find, each run through Dead Man's Hand should net you about 50 silver, 25 Esteem Tokens, 2-3 Rares, and 125,000 Mastery (plus Mastery for killings mobs).

In 18 runs, I received 3 rares each time.  The range for monetary rewards was 49 silver, 10 copper, and 99 tin to 74 silver, 80 Copper, and 32 Tin with an average of 59 Silver, 10 Copper, and 99 Tin.  Esteem tokens dropped in a range of 19 to 33, with an average of 25.06.

The final boss was Accalia seven times, Drostan four times, and Vayaspara seven times.  Three panthers, one cunning rat, and one black widow pets dropped.  (With such a small sample size, it's hard to tell what the real drop rate is and if there's a bias towards a certain boss or bosses).

Anything missed that should be added?

Updates:
07/15/14 - Updated showing alternate (and shorter path).  Hat tip to gcustoms, Roddam, and cins with a bunch of great information to add to this guide.  Thank you!