Windstone Fortress - Act 1 Story Quest

Windstone Fortress is the 9th Story Quest of Act 1 and begins immediately after you finish the Secret of the Azunite Desert. For the very first part of this quest you will have to venture up the long staircase that you just came down and speak with the Azunite Ancestor in the same room where you previously solved the mirror puzzle.

The Azunite Ancestor will open up a new path for you to follow which will take you to Windstone Fortress. Along the way you'll pass a few Teleporters which you'll want to grab as well as two Incantation Shrines, one of which will be nearby/involved in the Arinth's Legendary Staff Side Quest. If you're playing on Veteran or Elite you can grab the Focusing Stone for this quest right now since you'll be able to talk with the Spirit involved.

Once you arrive at Windstone Fortress your first task will be to locate Captain Dathry and speak with him. He'll give you the Windstone Fortress Outer Vault Key and fill you in on the current situation.

You'll have a few available Side Quests that you can complete now that we're in Windstone Fortress. The Half-Giant in the pit named Sartan will be a companion that joins us after we finish this quest, just speak to him now to accept the quest and later to recruit him.

Available Side Quests:

The Imprisoned Half-Giant
The Missing Squadron

For the next portion of this quest you'll have to solve a rather easy puzzle to proceed. Inside of the Windstone Fortress Vault you'll find numerous Hexahedron piles and sockets. Any of you who did the Secrets of the Elven Shrine Side Quest earlier will already know where this is going.

Basically you will need to pick up the correct color Hexahedron from the pile and put it into the same colored socket to open the door and proceed. You'll encounter many puzzles like this throughout the game so get used to doing it and what to look for.

Each room is rather straight forward, there will be some enemies and a pile of colored hexahedrons which you'll put into the appropriate socket. In the third room you'll find Lieutenant Namyek who will drop the key you need for the inner vault area. Once you're in the inner vault area you'll want to collect all the goodies you find and click on the blue fire in the middle of the room to update your quest.

Nearby you'll find a secondary treasure vault which is unlocked by putting 4 Purple Death Hexahedrons into the sockets in front of the door. When you're done exit the vault and speak with Captain Dathry to clear the northern route of the rubble. Also before leaving you'll want to finish up The Imprisoned Half-Giant.

When you run through the area Captain Dathry cleared you'll be swarmed by enemies and it'll be a very fun fight. It'll also be a test of your gear/Skill Point distribution - my first characters that were super gimpy all almost died here multiple times. This quest will end when you enter the Temple of Xeria on the otherside of the courtyard and the next quest, The Temple of Xeria will begin.