Thunder keep

this mission was alot harder then when i did it with my ranger/ele is it just me>? Also... builds to get past this would be nice (im new to fourms)

It's easier. I did it four times this weekend. Prior to that I beat it within the first week and a half of realease.

Get yourself a group with a good leader, and listen.

If you are one of those that refuses to press "T", you do not deserve to beat that mission.

No 1. I make groups and i tell them ill call since no-one else will

No 2. Ive done this 12 times and yet to find a group to do good at the end (althoguh i was just in a group who killed perfected but we all died because only 2 people were left after that)

No. 3 its hard for War/Monks to get a group since there are so many to go around so i have to make groups (as said in No.1) thank you for your time my fellow warrior

P.S (I like to hit T but noone will ever attack called )

Well, I guess I should put this out there:

I like this mission, I play it all the time.

Give me a wisper in game we can go beat it and I will show you my tricks.

--All statements make under the assumption that the rest of the group is willing to follow the leader.

--I play this mission looking for a perfect damage hornbow. I would love one of the groups I play in to hook me up with one that drops for the group.

I guess I could write up a walkthrough, but it is easier to just do the mission.

I had a lot of trouble with this one, too. Even posted a msg about it. It isn't something I was able to do with hench, so I got into the situation of having to find a good team. That's the rub.

I did this mission about 15 times before completing it. About 12 times, ppl dropped in the middle of the mission or didn't listen to the team or bickered the whole time about what was the best thing to do. There was even a time when we had a freeloader. The player didn't move the whole time we were in the mission; we left him behind and tried completing it w/ 7.

There was just something about Thunderhead that I just kept getting on these teams. It's one of the problems with playing solo, but I'd never encountered it to such an extent, before. Guess I just got unlucky there.

However, if you discount all the problem teams I ended up on, I probably only made three or four attempts at it with good teams. It's a tough mission, but it can be done.

One thing I found useful was to bring along skills that slowed down and disrupted the bosses.

Whats both of your game names?

lol

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I will take note of these names, I'm there with my Elem..

So if by any chance I'm online, you can always whisper me, I love following target

<< ign

people usually refuse to get rangers in their groups so i rarely get into a group. so i end up trying the same mission many times b4 actually playing with a group and memorize the mission. i passed this mission 1st time i tried with a group because spectacularly all the group members listened to what i told em and did everything exactly as i said. believe me, we didn't have moer than 2 deaths all along the way. also... it is much ezier to beat if u don't try to do the bonus... get the dam' mission and come back for bonus later

Sometimes, there are groups that do not deserve to go thrgouh this mission. I just played this one time through with Defender Of Orth.

There was a lot of non-target following players on that team.

-Ele's casting firestorm on targets far away from the called target,
-Warriors (not Defender) spending half the battle standing nearby if they were not on the right target(it;s bad when I have time to type "press t XXXXX" and "fight with us"
-We lost due to a monk aggroing some unneeded Jade help in the mountian.

Wow and they blamed me for giving direction, and rushing, although there were exactly three calls about energy for the whole time we played and one of them was while in battle, as if we had a Necro with us to juice them.

Anyway, groups like that need to be left to die and restart with another character. They will learn how to manipulate the aggro bubble, call and follow targets, and maybe even beat the game. And in the end, will be worthy compeditors in the PvP ring.

Anyway, I stop this rant.

*****pulls hair, thinks about why he only farms in the day, and goes to work to forget about the horror

****why is T so hard to press?

*****I'm picking the target, and not just "c" closets target, I choose the appropriate??????

*****ohh let them play they way they want to, it's only a game, who really wants to win?


***I like to win

This mission is really not that bad if people play it smart. You can do the bonus at the same time as it must be done in the first 30 seconds anyway.

General GW Rules for Succes as Previously Stated:
1. All attck the same target
2. Do not aggro more than one mob at a time

When you have to defend the fort get one monk upstairs and two elementalists or two rangers to man and fire the catapults. They fire the catapults and do not stop unless the mob is at the gate nearest them. The monk runs back and forth healing the catapult operator and king as required.


All other party members stay in the courtyard and attack the mobs coming in either the East or West Gate. Having a second monk in the courtyard will make it pretty easy.

The catapults are the key as they seriously weaken or outright kill mobs before they get to the gate.

Chev, I'll be looking you up in game.

Just wondering; for the bonus you need to light the two beacons-> Does this make the mission harder? Didn't it say in the movie that it keeps the mursaat away or something?

The real keys to winning this mission:

1. Two people, with long range attacks, should man the catapaults. Just hammer away at them(click, click, click), using them over & over to pummel the mursaat. This alone will easily kill 50% of the waves of mursaat that you need to deal with, and weaken many others. Any big trouble that gets by the catapaults , the 2 catapault peeps can assist a little from the bridge over the gate.

2. One Warrior, one monk STAY AT EACH GATE ALWAYS. Even if it's empty, just stay there. It just takes one Jade blitzing in to whack the king before you know what hit you. The remaining 2 members are the assists.

3. For most of the battle it should be 2 manning catapaults, 1 warrior, 1 monk and 1 other at each gate. When one side needs more help, the 1 other should go to help the other side, and the 1 warrior & 1 monk should remain at their gate.

It helps to designate east and west catapault, and east and west defend teams on route to the fort. I usually bark out commands after clearing out the enemy groups leading up to the final fort. For the bonus, the 2 catapault people should run directly to the flame beacon on thier side, grap the torch and light the beacon as soon as possible, then start firing away on the catapaults. This is supposed to make the mission harder in that the mursaat start coming to the fort right away, but really isn't any harder if you man the catapaults well.

Also worth noting, if you wait to kill the first boss guy in the fort (BEFORE the cutscene) you can kill like 10-15 frost giants outside the fort with the catapaults on the one side.

Zilm, thanks for coming in and stating, in a rational way, why people have a hard time with this game.

I learned sometime in Feb. from a wise player that when a target is called, you attack that target. The only exception is Rangers and Mesmers ect. that are shutting down a healer healing the attacked, or shutting down a damage dealer that is doing a large amount of damage to the group. In advanced play yes, someone may be in charge of purely monk protection, but with PUGs this is extremely difficult.


Some notes on target calling:
I am attacking *.*, --means if you press "T' you will select that target.

Furthermore, if multiple targets are called if you press the target icon next to the person's name that you are supposed to be following, you will select that target.

And some more information: If you press ctlr+skill you are not calling targets. You will not see the target icon next to you name and any auto targeting that takes place is unreliable. I hate to see this, as it is a waste of infomation space inthe chat box, unless you are calling something such as pacifism, rend enchants, or the one I use, a W/Mo using a healing spell on yourself to notify the monks of what you have done. This helps to reduce the amount of double healing. I almost never play healer, but I have seen healers use this information box to communicate healing and protection to ensure that less double healing is done. THAT is the main reason that this box needs to stay stray from unnecessay "I am using aura of restoration bla bla bla"



The desert should have taught many players about the aggro bubble as well. I learned by being left in the desert by my group. I managed to fight solo with my first character a N/Ele, all the way to the next mission (Thirsty River, I think). Using the aggro bubble, much of this game can be "snuck around," or eliminated to one on one fights.



Great step by step.

I personally like to have three warriors, one at each gate, and one floating. The floating one, normally me, uses Sprint (Battle Rage, for me) to sprint to the next incoming group at the other door and use thier size to block them as well as their killing power to assist. That leaves one ? for the other and I like to have some serious damage dealing power there or some shutdown power, or even better a Ele/Mes with a few shutdown skills for the monk boss.


Yes this mission is harder with the bonus. I didn't know that there were Mantle in this mission till after I played the mission without the bonus for the first time this past weekend. My point, with a group that works together, the bonus is easily accomplished.

I even found that with a group that works well together you do not need to man the catapults. I like this because I am playing this mission for the Hornbow drops, so any MOB killed that far out will not give a drop that can be easily retrieved. That, of couse, really means that you have to work well together as a group.


And feel free to cntact me, but don't be insulted if I cannot help then and there, just keep checking back. Also, if the group refuses to play together, we will loose.

Hope this helps a little

Oh, my GAWD! You were left in the desert by your group! I hope you put every one of them on your ignore list.

Here's my own basic tenet on team play: You never abandon a player just because that player does something dumb or makes a bad move. This is my opinion, but unless someone is acting like a complete assh*le and not playing with the team, anyway, you should never, under any circumstances abandon that player. We've all been noobs, we've all made mistakes and we all will again. In fact, no one ever plays anything perfectly. Players always make small mistakes and sometimes large ones, but band together and respond as a team you'll almost always overcome those mistakes and kick PvE and PvP butt. (Even Thunderhead )

(That's it. I'll get down from my soapbox, now.)

I guess I didn't explain what happened correctly. Our monk left, the rest of the group sat around waiting to try to figure out what to do. The group decided to break up and I just stayed and fought my way to the point we were trying to get anyway, because I thought I could get somewhere and get all the drops, one mob at a time. I sold a lot of healing ankhs to the merchant that day.

Well here was the party I was lucky enough to find back when I did this mission. Thiis is pretty closely represented by another poster.

2 Ranger
2 Monk
2 Ele
2 Warrior

This was our strategy, and it worked flawless....in fact...very boring for the most part

1 warrior was in each door.
1 monk was above each door on the walkway
1 ranger was by each catapult
1 ele was by each catapult

Being one of the warriors, I pretty much sat there on my duff and brought what few mobs made it through the catapult into the ranger and Elementalists range. Not one mob made it in the door, in fact not one mob made it close to the door on either side. This mission was one of the easiest I have done and I am attributing that directly to the ranger who led us (for the life of me I can't remember the name - was a while ago). The hardest part of this mission was trying to stay awake for the 20 minutes you need to defend the fort since not much actually made it through the catapult.

An interesting note for us was that the final group appeared on the map ran part way to 1 door and turned around and headed to the other. Was an interesting little twist since no other groups did that.

I agree with the above posters. Specialy Chev and Sekk.

I will not repost their sage advice, but I will stress a single critical point:

Once inside the keep, do not, under any circumstances, fight outside or go outside to loot

Hold the gates with a war and a monk each. Two keep the ballista going at all times, and everyone not on gate duty support the hardest pressed gate, and look after the king.

Every time I've seen this mission go bad has been because someone went outside to fight or loot. Understand, please, do not go where the gate monk's heal can't reach you. Do not make your monk expose himself to the rain of stones or spectral agony for your looting sake.

If you can instill on any party this simple maxim, you'll pass this mission without any problems.

Im sad to say that i have given up recently on this mission. Ill probaly go back and try it tonight. But when ever we try to get a party going. there is no absolutely NO monks there. Then when we find 1. Its the kind that somehow made it through without listening to anybody. So mission starts. We tell monk that the KING is primary healing. We are second. So monk was doing fine until we got to keep. On one of the sides we were taking a lil heat so monk went and helped out and BAM king died. All of the groups ive been in people go outside to attack them before they get the gates. I tell them to get back unless they wanna get blasted by the catapults and thats what they are for. Do they listen..no.

So im gonna try to find a smart group tonight to finaly get past that mission. And i hate it when ppl say they will call and 1. they dont. or 2. they ask me how to call. annoys me how you can make it this far through game without knowing this key knowledge