Just now, I tried to enter the Abyss through the Infernal champ spawn. You can no longer do so without havinf finished one of the quests the normal way. Kind of hard on a non-combatant (stealther)
Killing shades isn't combat? Fortunentally my stealther has 100 wrestling, so I gave him my only set of virtue armor and some healing potions. I ended up not needing the pots, but it took forever to kill one shade. Then I remembered one of Animal Form's types was a giant serpent...
You don't have to do the seer's quest - you can go straight to the shrine (the hunt-shades quest just points you in the right direction).
