Kanred the Mage

This guide will walk you through the “Kanred the Mage” quest in Dungeon Siege II’s Broken World Expansion. We will go through all the steps to complete quest.

Map

Burk
Kanred

When you start up the Broken World campaign, you’ll find yourself inside the Dryad Outpost, and you’ll overhear a conversation between a man named Burk (#1) and a dryad named Yana. The pair will argue about a “rogue mage” and whether he should be “dealt with before anyone else gets hurt.”

Yana will wander off, but when you talk to Burk, you’ll learn that the mage, Kanred, is his brother, and that Kanred started acting strangely after a grandmaster mage came to tutor him. Burk will then ask you to track down Kanred and reason with him before the dryads hunt him down and kill him.

You’ll find Kanred at the southern end of the Blighted Hills (#2). He’ll start out neutral to you, but no matter what you say to him, he’ll end up attacking you.

Kanred can be tough to kill. He’ll hit you with three different death spells, including an area-affect spell at his feet (which you’ll see bordered by red “flames” on the ground). As long as you stay in mirror mode and keep your party out of the area-affect spell, then you should be able to wear him down, but Kanred has lots of hit points (54,000 on the normal difficulty setting), and so it will take a while.

When Kanred dies, four dryads will show up to absorb his power, and you’ll receive Kanred’s Broken Staff (Quest Item 1). When you return to Burk to deliver the news, he’ll tell you that the grandmaster mage came back during your absence, but that the people of the outpost chased him off. However, Burk will give you the other half of the broken staff, and together they’ll form Kanred’s Staff (Quest Item 2). You’ll now be able to use the staff to open up the magically-sealed doorways in the areas near the Dryad Outpost, which will come in handy as you try to track down the grandmaster mage in the next primary quest, The Mage’s Tutor.