Hard thunder

If one mission can be said to embody everything that’s bad about Guild Wars then Thunderhead Keep must surely be that mission.

It was a major frustration to my first character, the Necromancer, two years ago. I’m not sure how many sessions or how many days I spent stuck there but it was enough to make me wonder if perhaps this Guild Wars thing wasn’t quite working out.

Oh yeah, it’s tough.

It’s tough simply putting a group together for the mission. If you managed to wrangle an invite from a group, chances are your group couldn’t find a monk. If the group managed to find a monk, chances are you couldn’t get some other profession the leader insisted on having.

And once underway, the frustration really mounts.

It’s very easy to run into more trouble than you can handle during the mission. It isn’t immediately obvious but there are many patrols that overlap. Engage one group and another group ambles along and engages you shortly afterwards.

The other frustrating thing about the mission is the close proximity of groups within the fort to each other. If you aren’t careful you can easily aggro multiple groups resulting in large scale health-degeneration. When that happens, all you can do is watch all those health bars turn from red to pink and rapidly diminish in length. Head-shaking is optional at this point; cussing is expected.

The final thing that makes this mission a right bastard is King Jalis Ironhammer, the Dwarven NPC you’re expected to escort. If he dies, the mission ends immediately. This is a major problem because his highness insists on meeting the enemy head on and will simply not let up. Retreating to regroup is not a viable option with this guy around.

Take all that into account and it’s easy to understand why Thunderhead Keep was and still remains a humbler of many a PUG. You don’t have to stay in the mission outpost long to bear witness to another acrimonious disintegration of a failed PUG. Typically, blame would be assigned, the accused would swear their innocence and everyone starts the whole LFG process once again.

With two years of experience under my belt, I can now beat the mission in Normal Mode without raising much of a sweat. Having known how frustrating it can be, I try to help out other players but the fact the mission is so damn long discourages me from offering my help regularly.

I did it yesterday to help out two other players and found both the mission and bonus were a snap in Normal Mode. It wasn’t even close to being a challenge even though one of the players made a concerted effort to live up to every single wammo stereotype there was. This was an actual exchange between the other two players:

Thunderhead Keep ver. Hard Mode, on the other hand, proved to be a pain.

I know the individual foes. I know the mobs. I know the patrol patterns. Yet because the foes are all bionic in Hard Mode — they’re better … stronger … faster — I had to rethink my party composition, builds, tactics and target priorities.

I tried it with a Hero/henchman team several times and managed to beat the mission in Hard Mode twice but I found it incredibly difficult to achieve the bonus.

To initiate the bonus sequence, you have to light two beacons which are quite a distance apart within a limited period of time. If you fail to light both beacons in time, you fail to achieve the bonus … assuming you make it to the end of the mission.

It’s apparently possible for one player to light both beacons in time but try as I might I couldn’t manage it. I even packed Illusion of Haste on my Mesmer’s skillbar specifically for this but still failed. After several frustrating sessions, I hooked up with an Elementalist and his Heroes and got both the mission and bonus handily. With three Searing Flames Elementalists and a minion master Necromancer in the party, we made short work of the Stone Summit, White Mantle and Mursaat. Thunderhead Keep was liberated and back in Deldrimor hands once more.