Enshrouded Hollow Halls Guide: Bone Keys, Locations and Rewards

Hollow Halls are Enshrouded's long-form dungeons, and 1.0 added two more of them rather than reworking the concept. The new gates opened in the Albaneve Summits and in the Veilwater Basin. Entry follows a chain: you craft a Bone Key for the Hall you want, and the official 1.0 notes tell you to hold back enough resources to craft the key for the next Hall in the progression. What changed for everyone in 1.0 is the cost side. Opening chests in the end rooms of Hollow Halls is 25% cheaper, and the weapons found inside were reworked so they hit Hollow enemies harder while still working outside the Halls.

• Two new Hollow Halls arrived with 1.0: one in the Albaneve Summits, one in the Veilwater Basin.
• Bone Keys are crafted items, and they follow a progression order rather than being random loot.
• End-room chest opening costs were cut by 25% in 1.0.
• Hollow weapons were reworked to be effective against the Hollow and outside the Halls.
• Ectoplasm now also drops from defeated hounds and Hollow melee fighters inside the Halls.

What a Hollow Hall actually is

A Hollow Hall is a sealed complex you clear in one run: corridors, locked doors, chest rooms, and Hollow enemies that were built around the location rather than placed randomly. The official changelog is blunt about the difficulty, warning that the Hollow Halls are "best visited with dependable friends", and that line is worth taking literally on your first visit. There is no matchmaking layer that will fix a bad composition for you.

Two systems give the Halls their own identity. The first is the locked-door and locked-chest layer. Higher-tier locked chests and doors now need Archaic lockpicks, a lockpick tier that starts appearing in Cinder's Cradle, so a Hall run late in the game is also a lockpick check. The second is the reward layer: Hollow-specific weapons, Ectoplasm, and end rooms whose chests cost resources to open at all.

The Halls are optional content in the sense that the main quest line does not force you through them, but they are not cosmetic. They feed the crafting loop with Ectoplasm, and the weapons inside are a real upgrade path rather than a sidegrade.

The two new Halls and where they sit

Both new gates were opened by the 1.0 update, and both sit in regions that were already high-tier before the patch. The official changelog plays it for a joke with the Veilwater Basin location, suggesting you bring a snorkel.

Hollow Halls are not new to 1.0. They arrived during the early access period and became a recurring content branch, and the 1.0 update closes the chain off with two more locations in the areas that final progression runs through. A player finishing the story now walks past Hall gates instead of having to detour for them.

If you are still working out the region order around those gates, the biome progression matters more than the Hall itself. The Albaneve Summits gate sits deeper into the level curve than the Veilwater Basin one, and the enemies guarding the entrance are a preview of what is inside.

Bone Keys and the progression order

Bone Keys are crafted. That single fact shapes how you should run the Halls: you cannot brute-force your way through the whole chain with loot you happen to have, because the key for the next Hall has a material cost. The 1.0 patch added a tooltip to Hollow Hall journal entries and to Bone Key item details to make this explicit, telling players to keep some resources on hand to craft the key for the next Hall in the progression.

In practice that changes two habits:

• Stop dumping every crafting material into base upgrades between Hall runs. Keep a buffer for the next key.
• Read the journal entry you pick up inside a Hall. The tooltip text is the game telling you what to prepare for next.

The exact recipe amounts are shown on the item in game, and the 1.0 notes confirm only the progression behaviour and the new tooltips rather than a full material table. Treat any recipe list you find online as something to verify against the item tooltip before you commit materials to it.

Chest costs and what drops after 1.0

The 1.0 patch touched loot globally, and the Hollow Hall end-room change is the one that saves you the most resources per run. Everything below is taken from the official changelog rather than from community testing.

Two of those rows interact with Hollow Halls directly. The 25% end-room reduction means a full run needs noticeably fewer materials to reach the same number of chests, and the Archaic lockpick line means a Hall entrance can stop you for a reason that has nothing to do with combat. Archaic lockpicks begin in Cinder's Cradle, so the new biome is effectively the unlock gate for the late Halls.

Gold coins are the quiet addition. They now appear in chests all over Embervale and are requested by Survivors as an exchange resource, usually for vanity items. A Hollow Hall clear is a decent coin run on top of everything else, because the chest density inside is higher than in most overworld camps.

The reworked Hollow weapons

The official wording on this change is short but specific: Hollow Hall weapons were reworked, and the goal was to make them work particularly well against the Hollow themselves, while also being effective in combat outside the Hollow Halls. Before the patch, the Hall weapons were a mixed bag, and the rework is aimed at the exact problem of a weapon that is only good in one dungeon.

What the patch notes do not give you is a per-weapon stat table, and no official breakdown of new perks or numbers was published with 1.0. Two related changes are documented and worth knowing:

• Weapons overall had their stats and perks improved in a broad pass, with new models for many weapons that previously shared a mesh with something else.
• Weapon gems were rebalanced in the same update, so a Hall weapon slotted with a gem looks different in 1.0 than it did in 0.8.

The practical read is that Hall weapons are now worth carrying out of the dungeon rather than leaving in the chest. Test one against a normal camp before you decide, because the anti-Hollow bonus is the headline and the general-purpose performance is the part the notes are quieter about.

Ectoplasm after 1.0

Ectoplasm remains the resource that ties Hollow Halls to the rest of the game, and 1.0 moved it in three directions at once.

• More sources: inside Hollow Halls, Ectoplasm can now also drop from defeated hounds and Hollow melee fighters, not just from chests and containers.
• Lower demand: the amount of Ectoplasm needed in spell charges and arrow recipes was reduced, and it was also reduced for Hollow Hall furniture recipes.
• New use: the Ectoplasm Block is now a tier 2 building material, which turns a dungeon drop into something you can build a base out of.

That combination is unusual for a patch. A resource usually gets either more plentiful or less needed, and 1.0 did both, which suggests Ectoplasm was being gated behind too few enemy types. If you were avoiding Hall runs because the Ectoplasm grind felt bad, the 1.0 numbers are the reason to revisit them.

Official source: Release trailer, changelog - Enshrouded 1.0

For the wider loot context, the Steam store page and the official Enshrouded site both host the launch material. The 1.0 trailer is also worth a look if you want to see the new biome before committing materials to a Hall run.

FAQ

Can I run a Hollow Hall solo? Yes, but the official changelog warns that the Halls are best visited with dependable friends, which is a strong hint that the encounters are tuned around a group. In single player expect longer pulls and more careful use of the exit.

How do I get a Bone Key? You craft it. The 1.0 notes added tooltips on Hollow Hall journal entries and Bone Key details to remind players to keep resources for the next key in the progression.

Where are the new Hollow Halls in 1.0? One gate opened in the Albaneve Summits and one in the Veilwater Basin, both with the 1.0 update.

Do I need Archaic lockpicks inside a Hollow Hall? Higher-tier locked chests and doors now require Archaic lockpicks, and that lockpick tier starts in Cinder's Cradle. A late-game Hall run is therefore also gated by your lockpick progress.

Why are end-room chests cheaper now? The official patch notes reduced the cost of opening chests in the end rooms of Hollow Halls by 25%, explicitly to reduce the resource grind during a Hall run.

What is Ectoplasm used for in 1.0? Spell charges, arrow recipes and Hollow Hall furniture recipes, all at reduced amounts after 1.0, plus the Ectoplasm Block, which is now a tier 2 building material.

Related Guides

• If the Hall fights keep ending your runs, start with raw survivability and stamina handling: Enshrouded Melee Build Guide

• Ectoplasm feeds spell charges and arrows, so know what the recipes now cost: Enshrouded Crafting Guide

• The +5% legendary chest change is the reason Hall chests feel different in 1.0: Legendary Gear in Enshrouded 1.0

• You cannot build a base inside every Hall, but the 1.0 no-build changes are worth knowing: Enshrouded Base Building Guide

• Sparkworks Guide: Enshrouded's Logic System Build your own trap rooms and puzzles the way Hollow Halls do it.