Frostvault Dungeon Guide

Welcome to the Veteran Frostvault dungeon guide! (vFV)

This walkthrough will mainly focus on doing Frostvault on Veteran difficulty, you will also learn how to beat the last boss on Hard Mode (non-HM included as well).

If you are on normal difficulty, it will all be the same only a lot more forgiving.

Frostvault is one of the harder dungeons in the entire game, understanding the mechanics and teamwork is essential to beating this dungeon.

Table Of Contents:

• Dungeon Overview
• Dangerous Trash Monsters
• First Boss: Icestalker
• Second Boss: Warlord Tzogvin
• Third Boss: Vault Protector
• Fourth Boss: Rizzuk Bonechill
• Final Boss: The Stonekeeper

Dungeon Overview

Dangerous Trash Monsters

First Boss: Icestalker

This dungeon throws you right in the deep end! The first boss in Frostvault is already a bit of a PUG killer if done incorrectly, it’s very unforgiving if you don’t know what to do. Fortunately, by paying attention to the mechanics, we can make this fight a lot easier.

Overview:

• Don’t spread out! The tank should be facing the boss away from the group. The rest of the party should be behind the boss close to each other, gather up closely behind the boss.
• The boss will toss a random player in the air, after then he will start slamming that player, the boss needs to be interrupted or your ally will die. If we spread out too far from each other, we won’t have time to interrupt, stack up!
• Adds will spawn based on the boss’ health, reduce damage if you are getting overwhelmed.
• The boss will do a fairly large AOE slam, you need to block this, but you will be stunned. Avoiding it is better, if possible.

Mechanics

Toss in the air and slam (uppercut)!

The boss will randomly target a player and toss her/him up in the air. The targeted player will get stunned when landing, the boss will start to slam the player on the ground. An ally has to interrupt the boss at this point to break free the player on the ground and stop the boss from slamming. You need to be quick about this as you will lose your ally very quickly if left uninterrupted for too long.

This is part of why we want to stay close to each other through the fight. If a player is off to the side, we might not get there in time to interrupt before the player dies.

Adds

Every 10% of the boss’ health, adds will spawn. Make sure to stack close to each other, gathering up the adds so that we can deal with them quickly using AOEs. Do NOT start running around if you have aggro, stay put and trust your healer. Tank – you can taunt a few of the adds to alleviate some of the damage from your group.

The other reason we want to stay close together is that the boss will kill the adds that are close to him when he performs his uppercut, this will help a lot with the adds situation.

Large AOE

The boss will channel up a fairly large AOE, slamming the ground. If you do not block this, you will go down. If you block, you will survive but will be knocked back and stunned for a moment. The healer and damage dealers should try to avoid getting hit, the tank is best off blocking this and quickly breaking free to get out of the stun.

Second Boss: Warlord Tzogvin

The second boss in Frostvault ramps up the difficulty a notch. Being quick on your feet is good here, you will have to dodge some heavy attacks and stay away from rotating winds that circle the battle room.

Overview:

• Two players will get tethered together, you’ll get a notification and see a black line connecting you to another ally. You need to quickly spread apart to break this tether or you will die.
• The boss will charge players with a heavy attack, you have to roll-dodge this! If the boss turns around and faces you, get ready to dodge, he will charge really fast.
• The boss will emit flame waves, every player will have a red ring underneath their feet. Make sure not to stack or you will wipe, block and keep those heals coming!
• Adds will be coming from the sides, they perform bad heavy attacks. The tank should try to chain these in or range taunt.
• The boss will summon whirlwinds rotating around the edge of the room, while doing this the boss will perform a whirlwind attack in the middle, forcing you to run in a circle around the edge avoiding the winds.

Mechanics

Tethered

Tzogvin will cast a tether between two players, you will see a dark line between you and your ally. You need to quickly move apart to break this tether. If you don’t, you will start taking large amounts of damage.

Charge Heavy Attack

The boss will randomly charge a player and perform a heavy attack. Blocking can work if you have enough health. I recommend dodging as it is much safer. This will happen really quickly so you have to pay attention to the boss at all times!

The boss will turn and face the player he is about to charge, if he is looking at you, immediately get ready to dodge! I recommend dodging when you see him turning around just to be safe, you don’t have a lot of time!

The tank should avoid dancing around to make it easier for the other players to see when the boss is turning, keep him still and stay calm.

Flame Waves

The boss will reach up above his head, jump up in the air and start blasting out flames as he lands. Everyone will be targeted with a small circle underneath your feet. Make sure not to stack on each other, hold block and the healer should make sure to get some heals in to keep everyone alive. Stay close together but do NOT stack on the circles underneath you.

The boss will shield at this point – damage dealers will need to damage through that shield, only then will he stop performing the flame waves. Max DPS on the boss when the flames start!

Adds

Adds will be coming in from the sides, the tank should make sure to chain pull these as they will kill squishy players quite easily. Range taunt is good as well but chain pulling is preferred.

Winds and whirlwind

The boss will summon blue winds that will move around dealing tons of damage to anyone touching them. Two of them will be circling the edge of the room, and one will be chasing a random player. Just keep moving. You will always be running counter-clockwise around the room.

The boss will start channeling a whirlwind attack, the radius of this will grow very large. When this happens you need to move to the edge and run around avoiding the edge winds. Just keep circling until the boss is done.

After the boss is done he will immediately charge a random player, get ready to dodge!

Third Boss: Vault Protector

The Vault Protector is probably the hardest boss in Frostvault, most pick up groups (PUGs) wipe here. The trick is to understand how the lasers work, which can take a few tries, give it some practice and we can do this.

Overview:

• Make sure to read the Lasers section, you won’t survive without fully understanding them 🙂
• The lasers are time-based, NOT health-based as some suggest. Slowing DPS on the boss will NOT result in longer periods between lasers.
• Dealing with the adds is important, make sure to nuke the adds as best you can. Prioritize the sphere over the spider.
• Keep the boss in the middle of the room to make the laser phase easier.

Mechanics

Lasers

The boss will crouch down and put up a shield around it, this is your queue that the lasers are about to appear. A laser beam will be traveling across the room, the ONLY way to survive it is to hide behind the boss. You cannot jump or roll-dodge through the laser.

To understand which side of the shield we should position ourselves at, we have to identify WHERE the laser is coming from. There is a little machine traveling along the wall which is emitting the laser. By looking carefully at each end of the laser, you can identify where the machine is. On one end the laser will be hitting the wall, showing a glowing/splashing effect. The other end will have the machine. See the images below for reference.

You want to be on the OPPOSITE side of the shield from the machine emitting the laser to not get hit. Ie – on the same side you see the splashing red against the wall.

As the boss’ health depletes, you will get several lasers, one after the other. It is important that we position the boss in the middle of the room to make avoiding this easier.

The lasers will ALWAYS appear in a circular pattern, this means that you always need to move 90 degrees clockwise or counter-clockwise around the shield for each laser. The direction is random, however, once the direction has been established, it will keep rotating in that direction until the laser phase is over.

It will take some practice so allow for a few wipes here.

Adds

There will also be two adds spawning throughout the fight, a Dwarven Sphere and a Dwarven Spider.

The dwarven sphere is the biggest threat, it will shoot out an earth-shatter attack at the player with aggro that will one-shot any player it touches (except the tank). You can try blocking it but it is best to avoid it altogether. Damage should be focused on the dwarven sphere.

Tip: There will be electric balls rolling across the fight room. When you touch any of these they will explode and stun you for a short moment, you’ll also take quite a bit of damage. If a dwarven sphere is close to the ball when it explodes, the dwarven sphere will immediately die. If you are struggling with killing off the dwarven spheres, you can use this trick to get rid of them quicker.

Killing off the adds is the highest priority, always.

Fourth Boss: Rizzuk Bonechill

The fourth boss in Frostvault is actually pretty easy, but there are some mechanics to watch out for. Once you understand how to approach this fight, you’ll win quite quickly.

Overview:

• The tank should taunt the big Ice Atronach (Avalanche), and leave Rizzuk alone. Pull the Avalanche to the side and let Rizzuk stay with the damage dealers, keep them apart.
• Whoever gets aggro from Rizzuk will need lots of heals but it will still be easier this way.
• The Avalanche will lock the tank into a ring of Ice, this is why we want to keep it away from the group.
• Rizzuk needs to be interrupted when he is channeling, or we will wipe.

Mechanics

Ring of Ice (Ice Prison)

The Avalanche will put up a ring of ice around itself and the tank. Don NOT try to roll-dodge out of this, touching the ice will one-shot you. The will be some quite interesting cone AOEs which you need to avoid while staying inside the ring of ice. Do your best at avoiding getting hit, but do NOT touch the outside of the ice.

Chilling the air

Rizzuk will start chilling the air (you will get a warning prompt on your screen). At this point, make sure to spread out and block. You will be stunned momentarily. An expanding AOE circle will start growing underneath everyone and go off once it reaches its max radius. If you overlap each other’s circles, this will kill you right away.

Other things to keep in mind

Fairly large vortexes of ice will spawn on the ground. No worries though, these are static and will be easy to avoid.

The Avalance will perform AOEs and cone attacks. Keep it away from the group and be prepared to block tank!

Rizzuk will start channeling – he needs to be interrupted asap when he does! Otherwise there will be ice showers raining down and we will wipe. He usually does this after teleporting so ranged interrupt is handy here.

Final Boss: The Stonekeeper

The final boss in Frostvault has a lot of mechanics and phases. There is no DPS check or anything like that though, as long as you follow the mechanics, you will be fine.

Overview:

• Each arm needs to be destroyed before you can damage the boss itself.
• The party should choose which arm to destroy first and stand behind it. The tank should stand still and hold the boss.
• Adds will spawn after each arm is destroyed.
• Read the section about the rat phase to understand how to deal with it.

Mechanics

Arms

The boss has two big arms. One flame arm, and one rotary blade arm. It is generally recommended to kill the blade arm first as it will punish the tank hard with a bleed DOT. However, if you are finding that the flame ability is killing your tank quicker, consider taking care of the flame arm first.

Every time you destroy an arm a dwarven centurion will spawn. The tank should taunt the centurion and let the damage dealers finish it off.

Now you can start damaging the boss, go as hard as you can, there is no penalty here for high DPS.

Spinning flames

The boss will start rotating and shoot flames from his arms, you need to run around the boss, keeping pace with it to avoid the fire. It’s a one-shot if you touch it. Not too complicated, just keep moving. The boss will spin exactly 360 degrees, so you should end up right where you started.

There will be either lightning balls rolling in or a spinning blade moving around the platform during this phase. Do your best to avoid them. If you get hit by a lightning ball you will be stunned and most likely end up in the fire, very bad!

After the rat phase, the boss will be spinning twice as fast during the flame phase.

Rat phase

Once the boss reaches 50% health, he will clam up and green circles will appear around the platform. Walk up to one and synergize to be transformed into a rat and be teleported underneath the fight room.

Our job here is to turn off four shock conveyors (they look like metal orbs).

Each player should move up to the electrical ball in the middle and press (1) repeatedly to build up the Ultimate ability, save this for later.

Rat Abilities:

• 1: Use at the center to build up your Ultimate
• 2: Ressurrect – If an ally’s rat gets destroyed, get close to it and use this ability.
• 3: Speedboost – Useful for boosting past the flame traps.
• 4: Healing ability, long cooldown so stay safe.

Everyone should now turn around and follow the path directly behind them (everyone should take their own path). There will be streaming lights along the floor, you want to follow these. Beware, there are traps such as fire from the walls and spinning blades. Stop and wait for them to disappear if you encounter any.

Once you get to the end of the streaming light there will be a bright orb. Move up to it and use your Ultimate to deactivate it. There will be four of these, one for each person. If one person gets killed, someone needs to go back to the center, fill up Ulti and deactivate the person who died’s sphere.

As you disable all spheres (shock conveyors), you will be transformed back to your character and return to the main fight room.

If anyone dies during the rat phase, I recommend resurrecting before you disable all the Shock Conveyors. If you don’t the person will return to the main fight and you’ll need to resurrect while dealing with the boss – not fun 🙂

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I hope you enjoyed this Frostvault dungeon guide! I do my best to explain the mechanics in detail with pictures and maps, if you found anything unclear or if you have a better method – please drop a comment or send a message 🙂

For more veteran dungeons guides like this one, check out our dungeon guide section!

/Ponty – ESO handle: @pontypants if you need help 🙂