Withering Heights Quest — RuneScape: Dragonwilds

Withering Heights released with update 0.10 on 15 December 2025. The wiki lists it as the sixth primary quest and the second in the main storyline, which it names Kuldra’s Saga. It picks up after the player’s victory over Velgar, the poisonous earth dragon, and pushes further into the continent rather than sideways. If you have not fought Velgar yet, the General Velgar page is the one that comes first.

The reason this quest matters beyond its own rewards is the door it opens, literally and otherwise. It is the gate on Fellhollow: the wiki states that players need to have completed Dragon Slayer and partially started Withering Heights to access the region, and the official 0.10 post frames the same gate from the other side, as a matter of speaking to the Wise Old Man after Dragon Slayer. The walkthrough page puts that in the context of the wider route, and the Fellhollow page covers the region once you are through.

Type

Primary quest, sixth of its kind, second in the Kuldra’s Saga storyline

Released

15 December 2025, with update 0.10

Start point

Speak to the Wise Old Man near Ashien’s Watch

Requirements

Dragon Slayer

Required items

None

Recommended

Good armour and weapons, plus food

Enemies

Rotsworn and ordinary zombies, skeletons and green dragons in numbers, then Imaru

Blocks

Black Knight’s Fortress is listed as requiring this quest

The quest begins with the Wise Old Man near Ashien’s Watch. The wiki records what he tells you: that he has been studying a mysterious door covered in strange necromantic runes, and that he passes you the password for it. On the video guide’s version of the same opening he stands in Fractured Plains, which is a genuine disagreement between the two sources and is recorded as one below rather than resolved here.

1. Speak to the Wise Old Man

   This starts Withering Heights itself. You need Dragon Slayer finished first.

2. Use the first dialogue option at the door

   The wiki notes it is option 1 that opens the door. On the other side is the Forgotten Temple.

3. Take the temple lodestone for granted

   One is already here, so you are not spending your own vault core and Law Runes to get a return point into the region.

4. Climb the steps and speak to Death

   Death explains who Imaru is and what has happened to Fellhollow. The video guide describes him sitting on a throne in the church, and notes the temple follows a single path.

5. Let Death finish talking

   He has one more thing to say, and it opens his store — soul fragments buy exclusive rare items that cannot be obtained through vestiges or ordinary play.

6. Follow the right-hand path to Postie Pete

   He is the one who explains how to cross into Fellhollow, which is the wither water river.

Death’s store is worth a second look before you move on, because it is one of the few places in the region where soul fragments have a use. If you are already thinking about gear, the armour guide tracks where the quest and shop pieces sit relative to the crafted sets.

Walking into the wither water builds Wither on your character. Just before you finish the crossing you enter the soul rift state, and that state is what lets you use the nearby spectral door — the door is not a puzzle, it is the reward for letting the meter fill. On the other side is Bleakfields Valley, one of the regions that make up Fellhollow.

From there the wiki is blunt about the priority: find a fountain immediately. They are marked on the compass with visible blue beacons, and the reason for the hurry is that Imaru has sensed your arrival. The longer you stay in the state the more danger you are in, and the tormented souls — human, wolf and otherwise — start appearing at growing power levels. The video guide fills in what the state actually does to your controls and your options.

How you enter it

Build the Wither meter to 100%, by interacting with hazards such as wither water or by taking hits from withered enemies

Timer

Five minutes from the moment the state begins

First 30 seconds

No spectral enemies appear, and spectral platforms and doors can be used

Middle phase

Lost souls spawn and grow stronger over time, then ghost wolves join in and make survival much harder

Last 100 seconds

Imaru begins hunting you and attacks roughly every 10 seconds

Timer reaches zero

Imaru drags the character into the underworld for an instant kill

Purifying is a two-step process rather than a button. You attack the spectral tangles around a pool with your weapon until they break, then interact with the pool — the video guide presses E — to cleanse your soul and return to the normal world. Because the timer keeps running while you fight the vines, arriving at a pool late is worse than arriving early. The map and locations guide is the place to check where the region’s landmarks sit relative to each other.

Once you are standing in Bleakfields Valley, the objective is to find Cathan. The wiki places him nearby, on a cliff, floating beside three stone tablets covered in strange markings, and it is worth interacting with the tablets as well as the character: the video guide notes that touching all three updates your map and reveals the locations you need to visit. Cathan then tells you what the fragments are and sets the objective that makes up the rest of the quest.

There are only three fragments — grief, rage and despair — and holding all three is what unlocks the way into Imaru’s Tower in the centre of Hope’s Fall. The video guide’s summary of the middle act is a fair one: each location applies a different kind of obstacle, some a puzzle that removes a magical barrier and others a boss that has to be defeated before the fragment is reachable.

The grief fragment sits behind a divine barrier. The wiki’s description is that four pillars nearby hold it in place, and the corresponding shrines can be activated in any order to dispel it. Once all of them are lit — the video guide notes each shrine glows when it registers — the barrier drops and you can walk into Emberwood Village and take the fragment. The order below is the wiki’s order rather than a required one.

• Shrine to Guthix — in the druid circle to the west. The wiki’s version: defeat the green dragon in the area, which can be safespotted with ranged attacks but requires you to be at least 150 metres away so the dragon does not attack, and the altar will not allow interaction until the dragon is dead. The video guide’s version: sprint into the stone circle, interact and run back out, since this shrine has no puzzle or dialogue attached and is the quickest of the four.
• Shrine to Saradomin — atop a lone rock in a small lake, described by the wiki as north-east and by the video as south-east of Emberwood. It is damaged and missing its symbol. Both sources agree on the fix: find the missing piece down below — the video places it just north of the shrine, in the lake — then return and interact to repair and activate the altar.
• Shrine to Armadyl — on a small island in the river, a short distance east of where you fought the green dragon. Three ghosts have suffered a grave injustice and you have to solve the crime. The wiki prints the shrine’s own text, which explains the task. This is the one players get stuck on.
• Shrine to Zamorak — inside a temple. The gate is locked, so the way in is over the top: use Windstep or build your way up and drop in through the roof, then jump down to the altar. The video guide calls the building a ruined church surrounded by rot. A lever near the altar opens the temple gate so you can leave through the door rather than climbing back out.

The Armadyl shrine resolves through a fixed sequence of dialogue options, and both the wiki and the video guide give the same four answers in the same order. If you are stuck, this is why: the answers have to be selected in sequence, not assembled from the clues.

1. “There was a mass murder.” — option 3
2. “Because they thought it was funny.” — option 2
3. “The snickering ghost.” — option 3
4. “They found it too funny.”, matching the motive — option 3. The wiki notes the option about the weather also works here.

With the barrier down, the fragment is in the middle of the village, and the video guide gives one warning that the wiki does not: picking it up spawns several enemies nearby that attack immediately. You can fight them or simply run, and the guide’s own approach was to run, on the grounds that nothing about the fight advances the quest.

The rage fragment is inside the Vekchenven Kara vault, which the wiki places underneath a waterfall in the Lake of Lost Souls. You fight through the dungeon and defeat a zogre at the end to reach the shard; once the zogre is down, the fragment is yours. The video guide adds the two pieces of housekeeping that matter on the way out: after the boss the cage opens, and interacting with the cursed seal inside it is what registers the fragment for the rest of the quest. It also advises collecting the vault core and looting the chest before you leave, since the vault is not somewhere you will want to backtrack to.

The despair fragment is in Silverthorn Keep, and this is the closest the quest gets to a straight assault. The wiki lists what stands in the way on the climb: rotsworn zombies, skeletal archers, rotsworn warriors, rotsworn marauders and ordinary zombies, with a green dragon directly in front of the fragment. Interact with the curse seal and the fragment is yours. The video guide’s advice on the way up is that you have three options and all of them work — fight everything, run past it to save time, or kill the dragon specifically for its loot before moving on.

If the keep is where your gear starts to show its limits, the problem is usually material tier rather than level. The materials guide covers what the later tiers require and the weapons guide covers what each tier actually hits for.

With all three fragments collected, the seals on Imaru’s tower at Hope’s Fall break. The wiki describes the entry as interacting with the seal on Imaru’s lair, choosing option 1 to dispel the curse, and stepping inside. The video guide is blunter about what that means in practice: the boss fight begins the moment you step through, so restocking, sharpening and healing all have to happen before you open the gates.

The arena is described by the wiki as four purifying pools surrounded by wither rot, with Imaru rising out of the river in front of you. The wiki’s warning is that she phases in and out of the soul rift state and heals herself by devouring souls, which is the detail that explains the rhythm of the whole fight.

Bring

Food, drink and power level 5 gear (wiki); the video adds a sharpened weapon, runes if you cast, ward stones and stamina-regeneration consumables

Arena

Four purifying pools, wither rot across the ground, Imaru rising from the river

Phase one

Attack the heart while dodging fire breath and the shockwave from every landing

Soul rift phase

Imaru rifts, you must rift too to damage her, then purify within roughly 30 seconds

Also watch for

Wither stones erupting from the ground, and adds spawning around the arena

Phase one is a damage race on the heart. The video guide describes fire-spitting attacks aimed at wherever you are standing, so the answer is to watch the animation and roll out of the way rather than try to out-run them, and it notes the pattern will feel familiar to anyone who has already fought Velgar. The second recurring mechanic is the shockwave: every time Imaru lands, an underground wave crosses the arena, and the response is a dodge roll timed as it reaches you. The video calls this the most frequent mechanic of the fight, so it is worth learning the timing early.

From time to time Imaru enters the soul rift state. The video guide is explicit that you have to be soul rifted yourself to keep damaging her at that point. The sequence it teaches is: follow her, land a few hits to stun her, then head straight to a purification pool. Overstaying is the mistake — the video puts the window at roughly 30 seconds before Imaru can kill you outright in that phase. Once you are cleansed, the priority shifts to the enemies that spawned while you were away; the video warns that chasing Imaru and ignoring the adds is how the fight goes wrong.

Wither stones are the third mechanic. They push up out of the ground and explode after a short delay, and the video notes that being caught in one both hurts and raises your wither meter — which matters, because a full meter rifts you whether you intended it or not. The video’s practical advice is to stay close to the dragon rather than at range, since most of the fire attacks are harder to dodge from a distance, and to treat the wither meter as something to check constantly instead of only when a pool happens to be nearby.

When Imaru dies you receive Imaru’s head, and taking it back to Death completes the quest. The sources disagree on one practical detail: the wiki tells you to keep one free inventory space so the head can be collected, while the video guide reports the head going into the inventory automatically. Emptying a slot before you enter the tower costs nothing, so the safe reading is to clear room for it either way.

Handing Imaru’s head to Death completes Withering Heights and grants the Withering Heights reward pack. The wiki lists the contents of the pack as the Tome of the Undying, an undead draconic visage, the Dragoncurse shield, and access to a new type of masterwork recipe — the dragoncurse shield itself. The shield sits at tier 5, so the armour guide is where its place in the shield ladder and the use of the visage are covered.

Reward pack

Withering Heights reward pack

Contents

Tome of the Undying, undead draconic visage, Dragoncurse shield

Recipe

Access to a new masterwork recipe for the dragoncurse shield

Unlocks

Black Knight’s Fortress is listed as requiring this quest

Region

Fellhollow access was already granted on first arrival, and stays unlocked on every world

The unlock worth planning around is the one the wiki files under Required to complete: Black Knight’s Fortress lists Withering Heights as a prerequisite. That makes this quest part of a chain rather than a side branch, and it is also why the entry requirements are worth reading before you set out — the walkthrough page keeps the order of that chain alongside the rest of the main route.