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....

Quote: Originally Posted by Vampyre

Quote: Originally Posted by Vampyre

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.