Titan Quest Anniversary Edition: Chaos Dungeon & Hardcore Dungeon Guide

Chaos Dungeons/Hardcore Dungeons are the new content added to the latest patch of the Eternal Embers expansion of the game. They are meant to be an extra challenge for those who already fully completed the game and want to put their build and gear to the ultimate test against hordes of very powerful mobs, for a chance of getting a lot of exclusive items.

There are three of those, and they are located each on a different act, and also separated by difficulty (Normal, Epic and Legendary), but lower difficulty ones can be accessed in higher difficulties.

This guide will attempt to give you a bit of insight on how to find these dungeons, and what to expect from them.

To access these dungeons, you’ll need the following:

-Find the Chaos keys from farming bosses
-Extremely good quality equipment and build, specially on Legendary difficulty

You don’t need to have any of the DLC to access these dungeons. The keys needed will drop even on the base game.

You also don’t need to finish the game to access the dungeons, you can get to them as soon as you find them on your new character in each act and have the keys (handed down from another character). BUT it’s highly recommended to do so because even the Normal one can be quite challenging to a Legendary Lv70+ character with poor equipment, even if enemies are only Lv33.

You’ll need to get those item drops before you can get to the dungeons.
They are dropped by end bosses of each act all the way to Act 6 (Eternal Embers), and from the orbs you can purchase in Helos for Electrum in the temple. I haven’t found keys dropping from Tiamat in Atlantis, but if they do drop there, let me know.

Each key will come with a number: 1/3 is the yellow one, 2/3 the purple and 3/3 the blue one, and you need a complete set to open a dungeon. They also resemble the look of the charm backgrounds, representing the difficulty (bronze for Normal, silver for Epic, and gold for Legendary), although if you go to another difficulty to open the gate, you still need to use the same ones (i.e., you need to use the Keys to The Fissure of Chaos to open the dungeon in Greece even on Legendary difficulty).

You can only carry a single copy of each key on your character’s inventory – for example, if you pick up a Key to The Fissure of Chaos 1/3, you won’t be able to pick up another; but you can pick up any of the other 1/3 keys. Your stash can hold as many as you can fit in it, both storage and transfer. So, whenever you find one key during a farm, make sure you store it right away, and only bring them when you need them to open a gate. Keys can be transferred and used by anyone.

Be aware though, the keys are single use, which means you’ll need to farm another set every time you want to open a dungeon on a given difficulty. If you open a dungeon, you’ll need to farm the keys AGAIN for that given dungeon if you want to open it in another difficulty – for example, if you open the Greece dungeon on Normal, it’ll stay closed on Epic and Legendary; same if you opened it on the other difficulties.

The dungeons you open will stay open forever.

Key to The Fissure of Chaos

These are needed to open the Fissure of Chaos gate in Act 1 Greece.
They can drop from all Telkines, Typhon, Hades and Surtr on all difficulties, and from Electrum orbs.

Key to The Chaos Serpent’s Domain

These are needed to open The Chaos Serpent’s Domain in Act 2 Egypt.
They can drop from all Telkines, Typhon, Hades and Surtr on Epic and Legendary difficulties, and from Epic Electrum orbs.

Key to The Remnants of Chaos

These are needed to open The Remnants of Chaos in Act 4 Hades.
They can drop from all Telkines, Typhon, Hades and Surtr on Legendary difficulty, and from Legendary Electrum orbs.

To open all dungeons in all difficulties per character, you’ll need:

• 3 sets of the Key to The Fissure of Chaos (9 keys)
• 2 sets of the Key to The Chaos Serpent’s Domain (6 keys)
• 1 set of the Key to The Remnants of Chaos (3 keys)

For a total of 18 keys.

Each dungeon is located on a different act. Here’s where to find each one of them.

This one is pretty easy to find, and if you’ve been playing the game recently, might’ve stumbled upon it accidentaly already.

If not, teleport to Delphi. From there, backtrack all the way to the previous revival fountain. Go north towards the waterfall, and keep going until you find the gate.

You can access this dungeon in all difficulties.

This one is a bit more hidden.

Teleport to Memphis. From there, go north through the Gate of the Palm.

From there, go in a general north eastern direction, until you can find a cavern dot on your map. Go towards it, then when you reach the cave entrance, go north until you find a small raider camp.

There’s a secret passage hidden by the trees and cliffs. You can go through it.
If you are having problems, you can click the stretch of land on the other side and your character will move through it (marked with an X on the next picture).

Then, just follow the path – it’s pretty linear. You’ll find the gate in the end.

You can access this dungeon in Epic and Legendary.

Teleport to the Styx. Go all the way to Charon, defeat him, and you’ll immediately find a revival fountain. Right above the fountain, there’s a secret passage similar to the one in Egypt through the roots and rocks.

After the passage, just follow the linear path all the way to the end to find the gate.

You can access this dungeon in Legendary only.

Before entering a dungeon, you should be aware of a few things.

• You CANNOT teleport away from anywhere inside the dungeons, including pressing K to respawn on a fountain. Once you get inside, the only way to leave is finishing the dungeon (either completing it or reaching the point of return), dying, or exiting the game;
• If you die once you’re inside a dungeon, you cannot recover your Exp tomb. It’s lost forever;
• Once you either finish or die in a dungeon, it’ll become unavailable for that session of the game. You’ll need to reload your character from the main menu to do another attempt.

It’s very important that you are light enough on inventory so you can loot everything inside the dungeon, and also have enough healing potions, scrolls, etc as you may please, because you can’t get out to restock. In general, only the Egypt dungeon has extra chests to find.

Mobs in the dungeon don’t drop anything aside from healing and energy potions, money and some devices may drop a charm (Mechanical Parts, depending on difficulty). Mobs also have a chance of dropping the exclusive new respec potions too, but they are notoriously rare.

Once you are on the main chamber of the dungeon, you may use your keys on the corresponding panels on the walls to open the door. Remember:

Once you use a key, it’s gone and you’ll need to farm it again if you need it!

Reminder that once you unlock a door, it’ll be open forever FOR THAT DIFFICULTY. So if you unlock a door on Normal, you’ll need to use the same set of keys to unlock it again on Epic.

Panels to insert Keys of The Fissure of Chaos

All the dungeons are somewhat linear. The layout isn’t randomly generated, and the types of enemies found within are also set.
All three are divided in two parts. In the midway point of each one of them, you’ll find two crystals prompting you to choose.

Crystals in Fissure of Chaos

• The red one will prompt you to exit the dungeon prematurely, opening a path or portal leading you to a treasure with some loot and a teleport to the outside.
• The green one will prompt you to continue forth, opening a path that leads further to the second part of the dungeon (and the boss).

  Every time you defeat the boss and finish a dungeon for the first time per difficulty, you’ll get a small upgrade to your stats. These are all random and can range from attributes, bonus resists, to less damage from some enemy archetypes.

  

All three dungeons will pit you against a massive horde of enemies through a very linear path, all the way to the end.

The enemies you find are reskins of other enemies encountered in the Act the dungeon is placed in, but with much higher stats, new skills and even different races and properties than the usual.

You need to be very well equipped and well specced or else enemies will murder you. Here’s a general overview of each dungeon so you know what to expect.

You can access this dungeon in all difficulties. It requires a complete set of Key to The Fissure of Chaos items.

This dungeon may seen straight forward at a glance, but it’s comprised of a very long winded and twisty map you need to navigate very cumbersomely, map visibility kinda sucks due to the red filter, and it’s stuffed to the brim with enemies. Notable ones here are the Cyclops who can disrupt you, the Maenad archers who can cast the extremely dangerous Study Prey debuff, and Boarmen that can freeze you. Most enemies here are of the Magical species including the boss, so bonus damage and/or protection against them is recommended.

At certain points in the dungeon, you’ll find a locked gate that will require you to activate a lever nearby. There’s 2 of those in the first part.

 

The second area is more of the same, but underground. There’s another locked door with a lever right close by. This part of the dungeon is dangerous due to the area with traps that launch elemental damage. Be careful!

The boss is a big satyr. Once you beat the boss, it’ll drop a boss orb and a shower of loot will drop. Exit by the green gate right near the exit.

If you decided to exit prematurely in the minotaur statue, take the green gate that pops up; it’ll take you to a small room with a chest containing some loot and the exit teleport. You can see this room in the rest of the dungeon, but can’t access it.

You can access this dungeon in Epic and Legendary difficulties. It requires a complete set of Key to The Chaos Serpent’s Domain items.

This is my favorite dungeon of the lot – it actually feels like a dungeon and some effort was put into it. The path is relatively straight forward, but some rooms will feel like they have no exit; search the walls to find secret passages that lead to the rest of the dungeon.

Enemies here are mostly undead, the bane of Life Leech builds; but there’s also some living creatures like jackal men and snakes. The name of the game here is poison – some of these mummified hyenas will cast a massive cloud of poison that can kill you extremely fast even if you have max poison res (80%). Be very careful with them.

This dungeon also has a TON of traps. Try to maneuver through them, they do a lot of damage.

The dungeon doesn’t change much even after the midway point.
The boss will be a reskinned Tiamat, but much more powerful. You need to kill all three heads to win. Once you defeat it, you can go through the passageway to a chest containing your loot and the exit.

You can access this dungeon on the Legendary difficulty only. It requires a set of Key to The Remnants of Chaos items.

The final dungeon is the most straight forward, but also the hardest due to the massive amounts of dangerous mobs – pure archer hell with tons of Archens. Enemies here are also very found of Energy Leech, with Empusas having that annoying AoE spell that can drain your entire Energy bar twice over. Again, all enemies are Magical, so prepare accordingly.

This dungeon also has the locked gates/lever gimmick. It shows up three times again, two in the first part and one in the second.

 

The boss is a reskinned Cerberus, with the same poison floor damage gimmick of the original. It has a breath attack that does MASSIVE DRAIN DAMAGE and will kill you in seconds regardless of defenses, so if you see it moving its head backwards, move away! When killed, it will also produce a shockwave to try and kill you with it – it doesn’t do much damage but be careful.

Defeating the boss will drop a boss orb with your loot. Exit through the portal.

These dungeons drop a lot of exclusive loot that’s only available here.

Bosses, along with dropping a ton of random Epic and Legendary items (depending on difficulty), will also notably drop parts of the new sets Immortal Hero and Blessing of Chaos, a STR and a INT focused set, respectively. Lower difficulty HC dungeons will drop Epic versions of the set, and higher difficulties will drop Legendaries, but all parts of the set can intermingle with each other – getting a blue helm and a purple accessory will count as two parts of the same set and grant bonuses, for example.

There’s also two new relics that you can assemble and place on your items: Essence of Order and Essence of Chaos.

   
They have other completion bonuses

From random mobs, you can very rarely get the new respec potions – each one for one of your stats, and one that respecs all stats at once.

   
There’s more to find!

I also found a new item called Stone of Mastery, a consumable that gives you +4 for all skills for 1 minute.

 

Hardcore Dungeons are also a great way to rack up kills for the achievements that require 500k kills, without cheating. It can be a semi decent, mindless way to farm Exp, too.
Don’t forget that clearing each dungeon on each difficulty for the first time will grant you random stat upgrades!