Skill Sell-back and Specialization

Difficulty:  Minimum to Solo
Level Restriction:  25+
Timer:  2 Weeks - Changing Soon!
Can be Solo'd?  Yes
Rewards:   Specialization Gems, Untrain Gems, Attribute Redistribution Gems

Tired of an old skill and want to drop it?  Wish you had specialized a skill at creation?  Want to rearrange your starting stats?  The Empyrean Temples of Enlightenment and Forgetfulness can help you out!

Step 1:  Preparation.  Before you head out, you will need to pick up an Herb spell component from any archmage for each temple you are going to visit.  I suggest Hyssop - it makes things easier down the road.  Also make sure your burden is well under 200% - typically this isn't worth saying, but if you are planning on running a mule or trade character through these quests, it is fairly important.  It would also be nice to get your run speed up as high as it will do, as you will have to cover a good deal of fairly dangerous ground.  If you are a mule, trade character, or below level 40, it might be nice to have a personal protector go with you.  Also, be aware that untrain and specialization gems are on the same timer, so you will have to wait two weeks to pick up your other gem.

Step 2:  Getting to the Temples.  The two temples are located along Dereth's Prime Meridian - 0 Longitude.  The Temple of Forgetfulness is far to the north at 88.8N 0, while the Temple of Enlightenment is on the southern Landbridge at 84.5S 0.  If you are headed to the Temple of Forgetfulness, take the Far Horizons settlement out of Cragstone.  If you are going to the Temple of Enlightenment, you have more choices.  If you are planning on taking a slow, far-from-self-sufficient character, consider tying to Land Bridge Staging Complex, located at 86S 2.5W.  If you can survive the trip without any difficulty, try the Land Bridge Villas settlement out of Qalabar.  When you arrive at the coordinates, you will see a giant head on the landscape.  Greet it and it will ask you for an essence of something.  If you remember back to the days of spell components, you will recognize the names it says as the herb component of a spell.  Harass the head until it asks for the Essence of Malar, which corresponds to your Hyssop.  Give the head the Hyssop and you will be teleported into the anteroom to the dungeon.  If you have having trouble giving the head the Herb, take a few steps back and drag the bag of Hyssop around the screen until you see the Guardian's name show up.

Step 3:  The Temples.  Both temples are laid out in the same fashion.  You will need to jump down three times and either kill or run past three waves of Golems.  There are a lot of portals after the final jump and most of them take you back to the drop point.  Make either all lefts or all rights and you will reach the core of the temple.  Once you arrive, you will find numerous gems floating on the walls.  Look around for the one you want (or consult the map).  You may use the untrain gem immediately, but note that your racial skills cannot be untrained.  When you use an untrain gem on a racial skill, you will recover the XP you invested, but not the skill credits.  If you are using a specialization gem, the skill you are trying to specialize must be trained, you must have enough credits to specialize the skill, and your specialization skill total (the total cost of all your specialized skills, including the cost to train them) must not exceed 64.  Of course, you don't need to use the gem immediately if you don't want to.  If you are redistributing your attributes, you will need to journey to the other temple as well to complete the redistribution gem.  Combine one raise attribute gem with one lower attribute gem and you are set.  Each completed gem will move 10 points at a time.  You cannot take your starting attributes below 10 or over 100.

***NOTE***  The mechanics of this quest will be changing soon.  Instead of having a uniform timer on picking up gems, the Developers are considering a sliding scale, where you would receive your first few gems without a timer.  The timer would increase the more times you visit the Temples.  Once the changes are finalized, I will update this quest.