The Hag Stone is an Infusion Tarstone looted from a bone chest on the upper level of the Infested Den — the dungeon you open by running the Cleansing Beacon activity at the Outskirts of Nochte beacon in the Ruins of Mammon; slot it into your Sidearm to spend Resolve infusing your shots with a status effect, then upgrade it at the Tarforge until that infusion becomes permanent.
The Hag Stone is one of the 75 Tarstones you can collect across Mortal Shell 2, and it sits in the Infusion category — the stones that coat a weapon to make it inflict a status effect, a bit like grease in other soulslikes. The catch is that most players go looking in the wrong place, because a couple of guides describe it as sitting “in a chest in the Outskirts” without mentioning that the chest is actually buried inside a dungeon branch. Here’s exactly where it is, what its infusion does at each level, and what you need before you can upgrade it.
Mortal Shell 2 Hag Stone details
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Type | Infusion Tarstone |
| Slot | Sidearm |
| Location | Bone chest, upper level of the Infested Den (off the Outskirts of Nochte beacon, Ruins of Mammon) |
| Core effect | Consumes Resolve to infuse the Sidearm with a status effect |
That’s the whole card for a returning reader — the one thing worth stressing is that the Location row points at a dungeon, not the open beacon area you fast-travel into. The route below makes that explicit.
How to get Hag Stone in Mortal Shell 2
Reach the Outskirts of Nochte beacon
Travel to the Ruins of Mammon and tag the Outskirts of Nochte beacon — some guides label the exact same hub “Outskirts of Mammon,” so don’t second-guess it if the name reads differently.
Run the Cleansing Beacon activity
Clear the beacon to unlock the Infested Den dungeon, which branches off the Outskirts interior rather than sitting out in the open world.
Push up through the dungeon
Work your way through the Infested Den and keep climbing — the chest is on the upper level, so ignore the ground-floor rooms.
Open the bone chest
At the end of the upper level, loot the distinctive bone chest to claim the Hag Stone — there’s only the one, with no alternate spawn.
The single biggest mistake is treating the beacon exterior as the destination: plenty of players sweep the open Outskirts area, never enter the Infested Den, and conclude the chest is missing. It isn’t — it’s inside the dungeon branch, up top.
What the Hag Stone’s infusion does
| Level | Effect |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Consume 20 Resolve to infuse the Sidearm |
| Level 2 | Infusion lasts 4 shots |
| Level 3 | Infusion lasts 8 shots |
| Level 4 | Infusion is permanent |
Slotting the Hag Stone into your Sidearm gives you an active infusion instead of a passive buff. Spend Resolve and your next shots come out coated in a status effect, letting a ranged build stack a debuff on a target before you close the distance. At its lowest level that coating only rides a handful of shots, but each upgrade stretches it further until it simply never wears off.
The one detail that isn’t nailed down is the exact status the coating applies — depending on which guide you read it’s listed as either Poison or a Trauma effect. Either way it’s a damage-over-time debuff meant to soften a target at range, so the way you use the stone doesn’t change; only the label on the tooltip is in question.
Upgrading the Hag Stone at the Tarforge
You can’t level any Tarstone the moment you find it. Upgrades happen at the Tarforge in Marrow Keep, and that machine only offers Tarstone leveling once you’ve unlocked it — and there are two ways to do that. You can find the Etching Needles quest item and hand it to Franz to open up tempering, or you can simply kill Franz, which also unlocks Tarstone leveling. Either path lets the Tarforge take the Hag Stone from its short starting infusion all the way to the permanent Level 4 version.
The Etching Needles themselves are the fiddly part. One route puts them in a chest right before the Magdalena, the Lady of the Woods boss fight — drop down when you spot Ruk past the bridge and turn right before the tunnel to reach a small side room with a bone chest. Another places them deeper in the Glutted Mire, the Corrupted Gate dungeon in the southeast. Check whichever you reach first; both are described as the same needle item that Franz needs.
Key One more thing worth knowing before you sink resources in: Balance Patch 1 (August 20, 2026) reworked Tarstones and the Tarforge economy across the board, buffing the stones and cutting Tarforge smelting costs while shifting the price over to Gloom. The upshot is that experimenting with different stones is cheaper now than at launch — and it also means any specific cost figures floating around from before that patch are out of date, so treat the exact numbers as unsettled and go by what the forge shows you in-game.
Fitting the Hag Stone into a ranged build
Don’t sweep the open Outskirts area for the chest — cleanse the beacon first, enter the Infested Den, and climb to the upper level, because that dungeon branch is the only place the Hag Stone spawns.
Related Mortal Shell 2 guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Hag Stone missable, or can you grab more than one?
There’s a single Hag Stone per playthrough, pulled from that one bone chest — no merchant sells a copy and no second chest holds a duplicate. It isn’t tied to a boss or a timed event, though, so as long as you eventually cleanse the Outskirts of Nochte beacon and clear the Infested Den, it’s still waiting for you; you just can’t stockpile spares of it.
Can the Hag Stone go on a melee weapon, or only the Sidearm?
Treat it as a Sidearm infusion — that’s how it’s slotted, and Tarstones are locked to specific equipment types rather than being universal. A couple of summaries describe it as a melee-weapon stone, which is where the confusion comes from, but its infusion is built around coating your ranged shots. If it isn’t showing up as an option on a melee weapon, that’s expected, not a bug.
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