Return to the Surface

Quest Giver: Matthias Lehner – Naz’anak: The Forgotten Depths, beneath Icecrown Citadel

Objective: Use the portal to return to the surface, then report to Thassarian aboard The Skybreaker (Alliance)/Koltira Deathweaver aboard Orgrim’s Hammer (Horde).

Quick Facts

• Level: 80
• Chain Position: 7th quest in the Icecrown Citadel/Matthias Lehner chain
• Leads To: Field Repairs

Walkthrough

Matthias’s Farewell

• After applying the Faceless One blood disguise in the previous quest, Matthias tells you to leave: “You should leave now. You’ll find a portal behind me. It’ll take you to the surface. We’ll meet again. He’ll be looking for you. It’s only a matter of time until he finds you.”
• This is a warning and a promise. Matthias knows the Lich King will eventually find you despite the disguise, and he foreshadows his own later reappearances at the Court of Bones and Sindragosa’s Fall.

Using the Portal

• The portal is directly behind Matthias. It is a bright, shimmering visual effect and easy to spot.
• Click the portal to teleport to the surface near Icecrown Citadel.

Reporting to Thassarian / Koltira

• Fly to the Skybreaker (Alliance) or Orgrim’s Hammer (Horde) and speak with your faction’s death knight quest giver to turn in.
• Thassarian greets you with relief and humor: “It’s you! We thought you were a goner! That explosion of yours put quite a bit of hurt on the Scourge. Nearly took Captain’s Kendall’s eyebrows off in the process…”
• The Horde version from Koltira is slightly more somber: “We thought you were dead! We lost a few men in that explosion… but we sure put a hurt on the Scourge.”

Efficiency Tips

• Use the portal. Flying manually out of the pit is possible but slower and does not contribute to quest progress.
• The follow-up, Field Repairs, is available immediately from Thassarian/Koltira and continues the chain back into the Valley of Lost Hope.

Lore & Secrets

Narrative Transition

This quest marks the end of the underground Naz’anak sequence (quests 3-7 of the chain) and the transition back to surface operations.

The player has gone from a routine military demolition mission to discovering the Lich King’s discarded heart and meeting the ghost of his humanity. Thassarian and the Skybreaker crew have no idea what you experienced down there. The tonal whiplash between Thassarian’s eyebrow joke and the gravity of what Matthias revealed is part of the storytelling.

Matthias’s parting words (“We’ll meet again”) set up his reappearances later in Icecrown, where he shows you visions of Arthas’s past at the Court of Bones (killing his own soldiers), Sindragosa’s Fall (raising the frost wyrm), and the First Legion Forward Camp (the Arthas vs. Illidan duel).

These vision quests form the emotional core of Icecrown’s zone story.

Explore Icecrown’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Icecrown Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.