Thunderhead Keep Success on First Try

Oh no, another Thunderhead Keep thread. Of course you know the common strategies ... man the doors, stay in the center, use the catapults, stay with the king. I am writing to raise one more aspect that I feel has not been covered to the extent it deserves.

At the beginning of the mission, your team is given 3 extra warriors, the dwarfen soldiers accompanying the king. Typically, teams let them die within the first minutes of the mission. I put mending on each of them, and subsequently was able to use their services for the duration of the entire mission. This approach works for both PUGs and henchie teams. You need to keep an eye on the mending when you fight the mesmer elephants (I think they are spelled Heratics), they strip enchantments.

Obviously, you stay with the king after the animated sequence as that is where your 3 extra fighters hang out. Let your opponents rush in, and you are all set.

I found that double-clicking the king in between battles was helpful as he did not always return to "his spot".

<-- My successful henchie team. I am No. 5 from the left.

Henchmen are really good for that mission, by virtue of the fact that they don't question your called targets in the middle of battle and let everyone die.

I did THK first time with some guild mates and other peeps we picked up and it was one of the best missions I've been in. Everyone was cool, we all killed efficiently and did mission and bonus really easliy.

Guess I must have been lucky, but it was probably the best pug I've been in.

Rich

oh its easy being a monk.
old news.

now try it as warrior with hencheman only.

Well done but yeah try doing it as a war with henchies bloody hard took me a while

so what henchmen do you take exactly?

nick

I just beat it with henchies whenever I do it, I let the dwarves die. And I always play as a necro, henchies listen, so they're easiest to do it in my opinion. Beat it my first try, ONLY problem was we ran into the monk boss, and it took like 15 minutes to kill him. Other than that, henchies listen, it was pretty simple.

I did. It works.

Mesmer with an empty skillbar and henchmen. Also works.

Thunderhead Keep can... shock horror... be beaten. This isn't anything special, but hey, making threads is fun!

They're also painfully unbiased, and will heal everyone equally, instead of King Jalis particularly.

I did the mission with 4 humans/4 henchies, and again with henchies only. I think the best way to do it is with at least a number of henchies, because 8 humans have a real hard time playing together. The Monk henchies are ok, just keep near the king, and the king gets healed as well.

To Kicks66, when I did it alone with henchies, I took all henchies except the enchanter. I used the catapult only at the very beginning, to get the mob that just sits there at the start (west catapult). It pays to use it again a little later when the monk boss and his friends also sit there, but I missed the opportunity on this try.

The monk boss is tough, but I never had problems with him. When I did it with all henchies, I ran down to the door to meet him (it was obvious at the time that I could leave the king alone at this time) and was lucky enough to fight him right at the door. His big buddies couldn't get past, so basically me and the henchies could knock the monk down without much interference.

i did it but only after 23 times....i wont say anymore...

already have.did it on my first try after 20 something pug losses

The biggested challenge of Thunderhead Keep is not nodding off in the middle of it. Seriously though, the majority of it's percieved difficulty lies mostly in the human element.

Or that some teams can't read and try to do the bonus by lighting the torches, which makes the defend the King part harder.

U know i realised one thing - Thunderhead keep is like that pve filter in the beginning of tombs. In order to beat the whole of keep, usually u need a good llvl of communication between humans. And humans just suck at it most of the time.

I remember once, a group was actually using ts to start the mission. Go figure.

You don't need voice chat to tell other players to stick together by the King.

Likewise, you don't need voice chat to tell people to be careful with their aggro bubble so they don't cause adds.

Thunderhead Keep is a PvE filter for people who play like jerkwads.

Itried THK 5 times or so with a PUG, failed every time. Last night i tried with henchmen, and success. I almost peed my pants from exitement. It's so much easier. I'm W/Mo btw. All i did was put mending on the king, stay close with him, and kill all that comes near. walk in the park.

After playing this game for many months, and with 4 high level characters, I realize now that almost everything in this game is performed far easier with a team of henchmen only. Except for the rare case that your human team is composed of friends who play very well together.

However, I now find it very entertaining to redo many of the higher level missions (desert and beyond) by joining a random group of humans and seeing how they perform. If they are hopeless, I just grin and help as best I can. If they are leaderless and allow me to take charge, I do so (rarely happens, as I don't play warrior, and who listens to a mesmer or an elementalist anyway?).

Its really entertaining!

It's been said before, it'll be said again, this game has three levels of difficulty:

Extremely hard: PUG with bad human players.
Normal difficulty: Henchman team.
Extremely easy: Guild or PUG (yes it happens!) with good human players.

EDIT: FWIW, IMO Dunham is now more useful than Claude. Claude will spend his entire time giving blood ritual to the team-member with lowest energy = the warriors, while Dunham is now marginally useful since he will now cast several different offensive spells, not just ethereal burden over and over and over like he used to. His elite is crippling anguish, which is a decent snare, and he will frequently cast empathy on enemy melee troops.

I still don't get, what those 3 dwarven soldier were supposed to do, in original post. They go down after single spectral agony, no?