Grim Dawn — The Lost Elder Quest Guide

It’s hard to believe that the full version of crowdfunding success story Grim Dawn has been out for more than two years now (and much longer than that if you count early access).

This classic ARPG experience is still going strong, with the Forgotten Gods DLC now announced and slated to land near the end of the year, which follows 2017’s Ashes Of Malmouth expansion.

There’s still plenty to do in the base game and first expansion, though, from finally wrapping up those optional Skeleton Key dungeons to snagging a few remaining quests that only appear when you reach higher reputation levels with Cairn’s factions. Below we cover how to find and finish the Lost Elder quest given out by the Rover faction.

Grim Dawn Lost Elder Quest

There’s more than one Rover camp, so make sure you go to the right place to begin this quest. You want to take the Arkovian Foothills rift (not the Old Arkovia rift leading to the main Rover area with the faction bounty table) and run just to the southwest to find the right camp.

Talk to Greven (the guy standing on the eastern side of the camp) to kick off this quest. If he doesn’t immediately offer it, finish a few other Rover quests first and then come back, and eventually it will pop up.

 Finding Greven at the Arkovian Foothills Rover camp

This is actually a really short Fedex quest that just has you grab an item and bring it back to Greven. After getting the quest, head to the northwest corner of this area of the Arkovian Foothills past the Staunton Mine entrance to find the dying elder Mathias lying inside a broken tower. 

There’s a possible bug here where you can’t pick up the talisman off the body. In most cases, this means you already have an instance of that item in your inventory (since you can only have one of this particular quest item). Check your inventory to see if it’s already there, or just restart the game and then grab the talisman.

 Finding the lost elder

From there, return to Greven by walking back or just by opening a personal rift, and return to the Arkovian Foothills main rift.

Now you have a choice to complete the quest: lie and keep the talisman, or choose to give it back. Either way finishes the quest and nets you the 2,500 experience (on Normal difficulty).

As a quest item, the talisman doesn’t reveal its stats until you choose to lie and keep it. On Normal difficulty, you get the Bone Talisman, which gives a 5% boost to the three main Cunning/Physique/Spirit stats and also has a unique ability to increase damage and energy regeneration for a short time.

On Elite difficulty you get the Ivory Talisman instead that is just an upgraded version of the same item, while on Ultimate, you get the Sacred Talisman. That one gives a 20% bonus to ALL damage and should absolutely be kept!

Taking either option is valid, depending on what you need at the time. If you keep it, you won’t gain any Rover faction reputation for completing the quest, but it’s not hard to make up the reputation points just by killing undead or finishing bounties. 

On the other hand, you will find much better items as random drops later on in Normal difficulty (and you can get boosts of this same nature using components), but if you need an increase to your attributes at this point in the game, there’s not much downside to keeping the talisman rather than returning it to Greven.

 The Sacred Talisman is worth it, though (thanks to the Grim Dawn wiki for the stats)

Need help picking a build or finding the devotion shrines to enhance your character? Check out our other Grim Dawn guides below:

• Masteries Class Combinations
• Inquisitor Builds
• Necromancer Builds
• The Absolute Best Grim Dawn Build
• Devotion Shrine Locations (Acts I and II)
• Devotion Shrine Locations (Acts II and IV)