Thunderhead Keep Success

On my seventeenth try I finished the Thunderhead Keep mission. And I did it taking the advice of the guy from Norway that said I was pretty stupid.

I went to Thunderhead Keep and decided that I would try what one of the responders said to try to succeed in the mission - try it with henchies. Well, that was the stupidest thing I had ever heard of but I announced to everyone in the district that I was gonna do the mission with henchmen. One guy said I was crazy and I said you want to know how I am gonna do it; and then I told him. I said we would move slowly forward stopping after every fight to heal & recharge and that after we got in the fort we would fire off a few shots from the ballistas but would basically just sit at the top of the fort & wait for the monsters to come to us.

He said he had failed the mission about 10 times and that he was game to come if I would invite him. I did so and we proceeded exactly as I stated we would. And then we did. The king tended to wander a couple of times but for the most part stayed pretty much at the apex of the top of the fort. The monsters would come in wave after wave but would kinda hold back a bit while we fought other monsters. It seems that if you don't challenge them they will hang back a bit instead of swarming massively over your position. This is the discipline of henchmen.

Anyway, we did just that and lo and behold we did it. Once we had 4 deaths, including mine, but after that it wasn't too bad at all. It is scarey because you have failed a lot and think the mursaat and jade bows are too tough. But I think they cause you to overplay the game.

Anyway, I have posted about this a couple of times and just wanted to add a little closure to the subject. Thanks for listening and all the advice. Mine is probably not the only way to play the mission but, for a monk, well, it worked for me. Onward.

Congratulations!

I haven't beat it yet... but well i tried it only twice. May try what you did. Sounds interesting.

Good job. I like why have not gotten past this one yet. A the same part I've been too busy exploring to really spend too much time on missions.

Congrats!

Henchmen can be more useful in some circumstances since they typically don't aggro too much, (notice typically) and focus fire on the target you are attacking.

the henchmen groups seem to work pretty well when you are a monk, because you can heal a little more reasonably then the henchmen monks do, so its easy to keep the group alive

Henchmen are underrated....

Henchmen stupidity is predictable, human stupidity isn't.

I did all ring of fire and abbadons with henchmen, would have done all 3 with em but my guild was on so I the other with them.

Henchmen are far better than people.

I wanted to point out that my character was a healer monk so that there was actually 2 healers & 1 protection monk in the group. If trying this with any other character you might want to consider asking a monk to join you. Refer them to this post and tell them that it can be done.

But as said, with a different character and only 1 healer might have been different.

Congrats dude,
I too did EXACTLY as you did when I beat Thunderhead. I even got the bonus which others said was impossible with henchmen. Not impossible, as I have proved. Maybe you did the bonus too. I wouldn't doubt it. The discipline of the henchman make that level easier than those Rambo warriors who rush out the gates to take on forces before they enter the fort.
I found if I was quick enough I killed 10% of the forces with the forts armaments. Look over the walls and you see the scorched pieces of land where the ballistics fall, so easy targeting.
In the dwarf village past the fort I found a chest that had 600gp in it and noticed that If I went further in the map where the reinforcements come from there were 6 more jade armour sitting there (wasted them for fun).
I think that thunderhead has become my favorite map for building my cash reserve. I also got 2 black dye dropped there in the last 2 days.
On another note, I too am a healer, hmm.
Happy hunting.

ign
Lexa Stormbringer

thunderhead keep i gotta say was my most fun mission of all time. at the climax of the mission when you are defending the keep we had a healing boss spawn, and we were doing it with 7 PC players mind you. and we had no mesmer so she just kept healing herself. It was an epic battle of us trying to find SOME way to kill her off. we tried spiking, no game so what we ended up doing is grabbing one of the torches and luring her out into the artillary zone at which point 1 guy manned the turret while the rest of us spiked her. still took FOREVER to kill her. btw our party was 3 eles 2 monks and 2 warriors. so damage wasnt a problem she just out healed us.

I just saw this posting and it made me laugh. I did Thunderhead a while ago with my monk, but recently I re-did it a couple times for guildmates. After trying to run between gates and failing I remembered that the time we were able to finish we hit the approaching things alot with balistas which do really good damage. I couldn't think of any advantage to going anywhere near the doors when our goal was to protect the King, so why not just stay up there pound and keep our party together?

Anyway as we try it again before the mission even started I mentioned more than once that we should at least try to stay up with the King as one person in our group had failed at least 9 times doing it the other way.

As we enter the keep I mention it again, noone says no so I'm assuming we will try it. (I'm sure you can see where this is going) We kill the boss, we do the bonus and I'm the only non-hechmen monk and I'm up top with the King just like the plan, I fire off a couple shots with the ballista only I don't see anyone in my party. Then the health bars go down-down-down and I'm thinking WTF?!?. Turns out one warrior decided to run through the door and half the party and the henchies followed.

Withing 30 seconds most of the party is dead, the stadium is overrun and within a minute the King is dead!

I asked why they didn't follow the plan, and the only answer I got was, "sorry I'm just used to running out the door"

Luckily the next night they stayed up by the King and it was still difficult and long, but they made it through. We'll see what happens as I take my other characters through it...

I am glad to see that some others are confirming the viability of the "stay with the king" strategy. I have been thinking about the usefulness of having a couple of trapper rangers in the group along with the henchmen but have not refined my thoughts about this. But I am giving serious thought to traps helping in this mission.

I had the easiest time of my life there doing this:
2 warriors, 4 elementalist nukers (can sub a necro or a ranger but mostly you need meteor storm eles), 2 monks

at the end, we divided the team into two, 2 nukers and a monk to each set of catapults, and one warrior to stand behind the smoke phantoms near each gate, the fall back point would be the king if one side ever collapsed, no one died, king didn't get touched

Well good job to you.. I'm on my 109th try and still can't pass it... all most ready to quit the game over this....

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Well, after yet another disastrous PUG I decided to give the henchies a go after reading this at work earlier.

Lo and behold I got further than I ever had with real people.. I've just exited the game, I didn't finish the mission but it definately feels more doable now.

One question. How close to the end of the mission are you when this thing turns up? It proved my undiong, got it to 1/4 health and then it kept going back upto 2/3 or 3/4 health everytime we got it back down reckon i can take it with a bit of skill fiddling tho.

Evil evil evil Perfected Armor

Edit: Forgot to mention, I swapped to n/mo from n/e so I would be able to keep the king alive on the trek upto the keep - and it resulted in the easiest ascent I've ever had. People suck!

shamble you just got unlucky on which boss spawned for you. you were close to the end very close in fact. if you try it a few more times perhaps youll get a ranger or a ele boss, makes things a lot easier. i have found that having just 1 interrupter ability makes this whole mission a LOT easier because of healing bosses.

Man the Thunderhead Keep mission was 1 of my favorite ones right behind Aurora Glade.

I quite enjoy this mission, it's just frustrating that I've found it so tough so far with real people, I would have thought that the ascension missions would teach people at least the basics of focus fire and teamwork. Yet some teams I've had were a comedy of light and magic flying everywhere

Thanks for the encouragement Tinweasle, I'll be sure to try it again with henchmen - it was fun actually - enebled me to go at my pace and as always the mission is a good way of earning cash

Thunderhead keep was a fun mission, a bit long but fun.
I had friends on ventrilo with me doing it, they kept saying it had been made harder ina patch. We also had an idiot in our team who wasn't infused, it got to a stage the monks left him dead for 20 mins.

I died a few times with PUGs, although passed when I went in with guild mates. 4 henchmen, 4 players with teamspeak on and we beat it. Have yet to try it for bonus, but considerating how people complained we couldn't do it, we sure provide them wrong. (Lol, our henchmen were the tanks who did the up close fighting, the monks were the ones leading the tanks to the mobs and the ranger and elementist stood manning the catapults. It's not hard if you're able to keep everyone alive and able to kill them in a timely manner. ^-^)

Wee,
I finally did this on my 4th attempt with henchies.

It was tough, when the lvl28 random boss attacked (an Ele this time) we went down to4 people at one point, Managed to hold on through judicous use of putrid explosion and healing breeze.

After that it all went a bit easy, especially the last set of bad guys.

Die Confessor die!

Gee we did it with as grp of real ppl twice. Its fun.

Have 3 ppl at each gate. Me in the center going between the two for support.
My sis guarding the guy and firing the catapult, damaging a lot of them b4 they get close.

Ooooh....the horror! This mission took me about as many tries as it took you and it got me so frustrated!
But....finally! It seemed like we were winning...yes we were! We were gonna make the mission! THEN ... suddenly it freezes up.
I knew my dad was working on the network on his computer so I feared the worse....
- "Dad...you did not...by any chance reset the router....did you?"
- "Oops, yes."

>.<

Very, very, frustrating. Some guys from the mission talked to me later asking what happened and also: "oh btw we made the mission"....grrrrrr.
I completed the mission later that night.

congrats. and yea sometimes hencmen are better at certain missions. its funny that most people die at thunderhead keep in the beggining when your gettng all swarmed. but after that its funny if you noticed it that no more monsters come, or maybe 2 every 4 min. lol my whole group was bored

115 times but I beat the god damn thing... Woot
finally found a good group and the random boss's were better this time... that one unkillabe guy did not come!

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Only tried it once, without a human monk and the King died (and the party was doing pretty well realy, though the King ran down to kill some enemy's and that killed him). Now a bunch of guildmates wanna do the mission and I will atleast point out the 'Stick to king' strat.

I definitely prefer henchmen to real people on this mission. I beat it my second try on my E/Mo when it was just me and a guildmate's Me/Mo (note: neither of us were spec'd in anything monk; we were straight ele and mes). The henches gave us a slight bit of grief since a mesmer can't really just focus on one enemy and it threw the hench AI off a bit, but I could generally pull them back to the real target in time.

On my ranger character I haven't played it with henchmen yet. I know it's somewhat cruel, but I find it quite amusing to join a PUG with her (since she's my character with the strongest build, imo), tell them we need to stay with the king, and then watch them fan out so that there's no more than 2 people together in any one spot. Everyone dies and I, laughing to myself, do it again.

It's the funniest when they flame you 'cause camping the king is the wrong strategy. Heh.

You only need to look after the king on the way to the keep as he has a tendancy to run into the fray and get all kinds of icky crap on him like poison and lord knows what else.

A */Mo with healing breeze at +7 regen and Vigorous Spirit will be able to keep him upright with no trouble at all. Thisis how I approached it with a full henchie team:

Once at the keep, as son as the cut-scene finishes man the right hand catapult, kill or weaken the mob incoming - pick off anything that makes it through from the safety of the walkway over the entrance.

Kill the second lot on the same side using the catapults.

Run to the other side and help the undead on the left side, then fall back to the steps. (if you have the people to do it, keep one person on each cat at this point).

Fend off the giant herders and enslaved giants from the steps, I usually take out the giant herders first as i find them the most annoying.

Now you should be upto the first waves of Mantle and Jades. These will come in dribs and drabs of two, if you simply wait at the top of the stairs these are stupidly easy to take out, you should have at least 2-3 seconds between assaults from pairs. Resist the temptation to go down the steps and meet stuff.

Eventually a random lvl28 boss type will turn up. This is the part that always caused me the most trouble. If you're really unlucky you'll get a monk boss (feckhead the Undying i think he's called) I found this guy impossible to take down on this mission with henchies. Depending on your group this is much easier if you get a Ele, Nec or Wa boss.

For me the best approach was to take out the guys that he brought with him first (mantle / mursaat / jades) and then concentrate on the boss. You'll likely lose one or two team members at this point, don't panic, keep cool and plug away - once you kill the boss you will get time to ressurect. The only time I'd say you should erz while in this fight is if a healer goes down or your at 3 men - at this point a rez signet might be wise otherwise you're diverting fire away from a bad guy and endangering the group.

After this its all plain sailing of mantle and muursaat / jade in groups of 2-3. just stay with the king as after this point he tends to wander down the two stairways.

oh and don't e scared by the size of th final group - let them into the arean and they'll fan out and you can kill them one at a time while sitting back and smoking a hamlet or seomthing - they are pansies!

aye I got this mission completed.

We had a full PC group. 3 Warriors 1 Monk 1Me/Mo who went healing prayers 2 rangers 1 necro

We pretty much stayed in the middle and charged which ever side was getting assaulted. We had one ranger and the necro man the catapults and click there side of map if enemies were assaulting splitting if necesarry.. we had one close call when 2 large groups made it through both sides at the sametime but we dragged em to the middle and got em..

I had no idea it was gonna be that long of a fight though (my 3rd attempt).. great great fun..

oh and we spent 30 minutes going over strategy and changing out skills/spells to compliment the group shoot some of us chaged our attributes.. all in all this is what won us this mission the communication and the cooperation of us 8..

everyone seems 2 hav a problem with this mission i personally try every mission 1st with henchies...and i think its alot easier

Congratulations! I'm on my second character through the game, and it's stuck at Thunderhead Keep. I was able to get through in one try on my Monk--so I didn't realize how tough this mission really was for secondary support classes (like my Ranger who is so stuck). Being in that zone for more than 10 minutes brings me down, and it sucks when a game can bring you down, so I'm gunna try the henchmen today. Glad you posted.

smart people who know their characters, are paying attention, and are working together >> henchies >> dumb/immature people, afkers, droppers, bumrushers

Well obviously. The problem is that these are in even shorter supply than monks at the Keep

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He moved down the stairs on a couple of occasions when ii've doen this, so it's not a one off and I'm not even convinced it's a bug.

Finally made it with a great bunch of players!

Just for your information, we killed Confessor Dorian from the top of the fort, just behind the throne of the King. He was standing there with a few body guards, and we decided to attack. I cast a Favorable Winds druid, conjured frost on my arrows and then Barrage the whole bunch. When I noticed the name! Dorian. Oh! man, I was tempted to switch to my vampiric bow and steal his life forever! But he died, eventually. LOL

Our strategy: keep the group toghether and fight à l'unisson. Patience. One at the time. They all fell.

It was my 9th tentative. Finally.

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