Dunes bonus in HM

Can this be done alone in HM, and if so, how? I remember there used to be a trick to kill a scarab and CC across, then rebirth party members across who sac themselves. Is this the only way?

Well, just did it today like that. You may want to reserve around 1 hours and have vampiric weapons + long bow, just in case when you can pull the boss.

Yeah it seems like tanking through 3 bosses, Scarab pop-ups and the Hard Mode defence part at the start might be a bit much to handle in just 10 minutes...

All down to the Rebirth trick it seems. Can be done on ANY profession now thanks to the Sunspear Rebirth Signet. You just have to make sure the first 1 you rebirth across has Rebirth (the spell).

Yeah I tried it the old fashioned way with a friend -- Defending for the first few waves and then splitting 4 for the bosses and 2 for defending. Didn't go very well, as the warrior boss tore us to pieces fairly quickly. You could bring a blind bot or something to shut him down, but either way 6 minutes or so to kill 3 bosses, scarabs and their guards with just 4 people doesn't seem likely. Even on normal mode there's not a lot of time to spare if you do it this way.

You don't need to sac. If you kill the first scarab there are other scarab popups that can be pulled by the person who cc's first, that is if everyone is willing to take cc as well.

What about just getting a bonding monk to keep the Ghostly Hero alive, while the other five go bonus hunting? Anyone given that a try?

Giving everyone [skill]Necrotic Traversal[/skill] works too, no vampiric weapon needed. Well, it works in normal mode at least, never tried it on Hard...

Got it done after. What I did was flag my 2 hench back by the ghost, and flag my 3 heroes up with me at the edge of the fort (so that my henchies wouldn't res sacced heroes). Anyway, got a scarab close to the cliff, killed it and CC'ed over. Put vamp weapons on the 3 heroes, disabled their res and self heals, and rebirthed them over with me. Before agroing the boss I released the global hero flag and headed right to get out of range of the fort. Play around with the flag and the 2 henchies will automatically teleport and start running to you. You just have to be careful of your movements as you want to avoid large scarab agros while in a group of 4. Their FoC spike is nasty. If you don't want to risk fighting scarabs you can probably just take your group of 4 and go right for the bosses as is. If you have something to shutdown melee and something to shutdown the monk boss it should be very doable with 4.

Did it yesterday. We used the old NT method, luring the boss, killing scarabs, 1 warrior, 1 SS and 1 healer warping in there, the rest of us staying behind. If the warrior takes all the damage and the SS and healer stay back it shouldn't be too hard, except for the monk boss. When that was done, the rest of us who stayed back had to kill the enemy ghostly and open the gate. Then the easy part came (well, it was supposed to be easy), and we died. But I already had the mission, so yeah. It's not that hard if you have a good party.

Where do you find an enemy to kill and use necrotic traversal on? I searched the perimeter of the "fort" looking for something to kill so that i could use Necrotic traversal, and couldn't find anything.

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Dumb question, where in Dunes can you see the scarab popups so that you can do neurotic transversal? Thanks.

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Bonding the ghostly works unless you ge the warrior boss spawning in the fort. He just overpowers the bonds. % people can easily take out the three generals in just a few minutes. My group had them dead in under 4 minutes, but the ghostly died just as we were coming back to help out.

So on 5th attempt enemy boss was finally close enough to aggro, as well as scarab pop ups. So using the necrotic traversal trick I moved myself and then my heros over and completed the bonus.

One thing worth mentioning, as I killed the second boss and started to attack the thrid boss, my two henchies that were left stranded inside of the fort suddenly appeared out of no where and joined the fight. I found that to be quite bizzare.

Had a group with a fire ele, two warriors one with Eviscerate the other with Crippling Slash, a dom mesmer (think so), and two monks (I was playing pure prot with ZB the other was LoD, can't remember the rest of his bar). After we killed the boss that comes into the base, I stayed back and kept the ghost up from wurm siege while the rest of the group took care of the bonus. We managed it with maybe 3 seconds left on the timer, so it was pretty rough.

Until the end all I was doing was healing the ghostly from the wurm siege, so I think it might be doable with hero/hench. After the first three groups of arcanist are dead, when the wurm to the east shows up, there is a break before the next group will show up. During this time you can kill that wurm before the other group will approach the ghostly. After killing the boss that shows up, you can take down the western wurm, then bolt back to the center then to the south to deal with the bonus. As long as you are quick enough, the ghostly shouldn't die from the group that eventually shows up.

On normal, that would work no problem. On hard mode, I managed to only get the second boss to about half health. I had no condition removal (use both monk henchmen with my three heroes) and forgot to bring something like Plague Touch (which I normally did on normal) or Mending Touch so Throw Dirt was rather annoying. Also, during the whole time defending until I was free to run to the bonus area my minion master had maybe one or two fiends at his side. I had forgotten that the Enchanted enemies can't bleed or have corpses, as opposed to the Forgotten enemies in Thirsty River that can bleed/leave corpses. Not having the ability to inflict a deep wound on the warrior boss really ate a lot of time (sever/gash ftl), and the almost permablind of throw dirt on a quicker recharge from the ranger (in addition to no deep wound).

I was using a minion master, communing/restoration rit to support the two monks (next time I'll remember Mend Body and Soul for blind/daze), and a Mind Blast/MoR fire ele. Myself as a dragon slash warrior, and as I mentioned the two henchmen monks.

EDIT: Tried it again, noticed that when you kill the first boss you will spawn a group of three forgotten cursebearers that will go and attack the ghostly. Obviously this leaves you with one of two options; kill that boss last, or kill him far enough to the west where the cursebearer's spawn and kill them. But, straying too far from the straight path to the bosses tends to spawn too many jade scarabs. I changed my warrior to /n for Plague Touch and Gaze of Contempt to deal with Kinetic Armour and Aegis which are a serious problem against the level 30 bosses that use them.

EDIT#2: Plenty of time to spare. Killing bosses spawns the groups that come to attack the ghostly. So basically, when doing the bonus, leave the bosses until last and you can save yourself a lot of sweating. I had a 1:30 to spare after doing the bonus; Splinter Weapon is so damn good.