EGGuides (End Game Guides) is a new mini-project I’m doing to keep players involved and interested in End Game content. Feel free to let me know if you’d like to help out or get involved!
This guide may be old news to some of you, but to others the Sword-Hall of Dol Guldur is still a challenging and new experience waiting to be conquered! For this reason I’ve taken the time to break this Small Fellowship Instance down into an easy to read guide. This guide will be posted in Two Parts. Each part will cover an aspect of the instance challenge from Preparation to Boss Fight Strategy.
- Part I: Brief Overview, Group Composition, Preparation, Arena Layout and Knowing Your Enemy
- Part II: Strategy and Boss Fights
Its important to remember that each person has their own views on how instances or fights should be done. The strategies and techniques you use may be different from others. It’s always good to recognize that although one strategy may be faster, it may not always be the best for an unexperienced group.
PART I
Overview
Group Size: Small Fellowship
Bosses: Urcheron, Carchrien and Durkar
Time Length: ~30 Minutes
Location: Can be accessed by traveling East up the path from Helethir to the small Southern Gate of Dol Guldur. From there head East and pass under One gate and Two bridges. The instance will be located just past the fountain on the Left in a double door, alcove area.
Exact Coordinates: 14.8S, 42.2W
Rewards: LI Runes, LI Settings, A variety of armor, jewelry and shields and Medallions of Dol Guldur. Each time you complete this instance you will receive a total of 3 Medallions of Dol Guldur that can be bartered for Radiance armor at your class trainer or bartered with various NPCs for consumable items.
Group Composition
Depending on the level of experience you have with instances or end game content, you may be comfortable with less conventional group make-ups. The basic understanding for Trinity Combat System MMO’s is that you have 3 basic class pillars. The Tank, The Healer and the Damage (DPS) Class. These basic roles can be used quite effectively in almost any small fellowship group setting. Sword-Hall is no exception.
Conversely, this instance can be completed with almost any class combination if the players know their roles and execute them properly. Often, groups with more DPS will do better in the Sword-Hall, but this is not a rule of any sort.
Preparation
As in any instance or raid, preparation can be the difference between conquering your foes, or lying dead with your face in the dirt. This is no different with the Sword-Hall. As always, do your pre-run check list and make sure you have everything you’ll need for the fight.
Remember to get Pots or Salves, Repair Armour, Clear Bag Space and make sure your legendary weapons are ready to go. Its always best to have all potions or salves, but there are a few in particular that you will want for the Sword-Halls. Fear from Carchrien can drain your power and leave you helpless. For this reason remember to have fear removal ready. Wound is also useful for the First and Third Bosses, Urcheron and Durkar.
If you noticed, unlike many instances in End Game the Sword-Hall does not require Radiance. This allows players who have never run Moria instances to jump in and start working toward their “Tier 2″ Radiance set.
Its also a good idea to have Scholar made strolls to buff your group before the fight begins. Hope Tokens can also be smart to have around just in case your group wipes.
Arena Layout
Above is a diagram of the Arena Layout for the Sword-Hall. As you can see, the instance takes place in a circular room. There are no hallways, corridors or crazy areas to fall off. There isn’t even an issue of pulling the wrong mob at the wrong time. Sword-Hall is the perfect place to learn to push your class in a Small Fellowship setting. Remember that the map is oriented to how you see the Arena, but the directional compass notifies us that upon entering the Arena, we are facing West, not North.
First off, lets take a look at what is labeled and start to break down the way the fights work in accordance to the Arena.
A: The entrance tunnel that leads to the Arena. This gate opens and closes between boss fights to allow the group to leave.
B: The Southern gate is where the First Boss, Urcheron enters.
C: This Western gate is where the Third Boss, Durkar enters.
D: This Northern gate is where the Second Boss, Carchrien enters.
E: The first wave of Mobs for Phase 1 come from this door. Only one set of mobs will exit this door for the duration of the instance.
F: This door is the entrance for the second wave of Phase 1, and the first wave of Phase 3.
G: This door is the entrance for the second wave of Phase 2, and the second wave of Phase 3.
H: This door is the entrance for the first wave of Phase 2. Only one set of mobs will exit this door for the duration of the instance.
I: This position is known by some as “The Blood Spot” or “The Puddle”. During the Third Phase Boss fight with Durkar this location has a low chance of being hit by his “Shock Wave” attack. This is unknown why, but is widely used by players on most servers.
J: This is the location of the “Hard Mode Trigger”. This brazier can be activated upon entering the instance. This causes all bosses to enter the Arena at the same time.
Know Your Enemy
There are Six unique mobs in this instance. Three of which are signature. Depending on what phase of the right you are in, you will see One of the Three creatures come from the doors. Each phase has Two Waves. Each wave consists of Three mobs. The first wave of each phase has 1 signature and 2 normal mobs. The second changes to 2 signatures and 1 normal mob. Once the mobs have been taking down, the boss will enter and engage you. Here are the mobs you’ll be facing…
Phase 1
Guldur Warrior
4.5K Morale – 500 Power
Guldur War-Leader (Fire, Signature)
9k Morale – 800 Power
Note: These mobs can summon a Fire ability that moves along the ground. It can cause heavy damage to those who are caught standing in it.
Urcheron – (Fire! -Elite Master)
56k Morale, 5.9k Power
Note: This boss delivers a number of heavy damage AOE Fire attacks. The most dangerous is the “Creeping Fire” that move along the ground causing massive damage. If you find yourself in this fire… MOVE! Often, most groups don’t make it past this boss due to the heavy damage he deals out.
Phase 2
Guldur Morvul
4.5k Morale – 550 Power
Guldur Fear-Monger (Summoner, Signature)
9k Morale – 850 Power
Note: These mobs can summon bats that will attack in swarms. The “Channeler” needs to be interrupted or the bats will remain in the Arena until the cast time is finished.
Carchrien - (Summoner, Healer, Elite Master)
7.5k Morale – 5.9K Power
Note: This boss can both heal herself and summon up to 6 bats to attack your fellowship. The trick to this fight is correctly interrupting her heal and summoning. She cannot be stunned except by a Fellowship Maneuver. Often times, the bats will attack the healer because of the Threat Generated by healing the party. Sometimes a well places AOE attack can help to keep your healer alive! Her heal though, is the most deadly thing she has. By stalling out your company, she allows herself the time to beat you down slowly. Carefully regulate your power if you find yourself without a way to interrupt her. It is possible to fight through her heal.
Phase 3
Guldur Defiler
4.7k Morale – 550 Power
Guldur War-Leader (Healer, Signature)
9.2k Moral – 1.2k Power
Note: These mobs can heal each other. The healing is not significant, but can be a pain to overcome if your group is lacking DPS.
Durkar – (AOE Special, Elite Master)
9.4k Morale – 8.9k Power
Note: This boss has a very special attack that can wipe groups who are not aware of observant. The attack forces the ground all around Durkar to quake, sending lines of bone shattering damage out in every direction. In the visual Arena Reference image you can see that I is listed. This location is used by many players as a “Safe Spot” from this attack. If you are also comfortable moving around for this fight, it is possible to dodge his attack if you move quickly!
_________________________________________________________________________
Keep an eye out for Part II later this week.
Feel free to leave comments, questions or concerns. If I’ve stated something incorrectly please let me know so I can fix it! Hope Part I helps, and good luck out there!
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June 10, 2010 at 8:25 am
Nice write-up. One thing you should mention: If you take too long beating down the second wave of a phase, the boss will come after a certain amount of time, regardless if there still are mobs. We had a bad streak of interrupts and stuns on a second wave of Morvuls and suddenly Carchrien joined the fight, not very nice having to deal with her with unprepared…
Do you have any hints on how to do this one in “challenge mode”, i.e. no trash, but all three bosses at the same time? Our kin has tried it a few times, but the best attempt was getting one boss down.
June 10, 2010 at 10:17 am
GS and I haven’t done Challenge Mode yet, but I would imagine Veneration has. If he hasn’t, we have some kin members who have completed it and we can see if they can chime in.
And you are correct, all waves in here are based on time and not on the defeat of the prior mobs.
June 10, 2010 at 10:40 am
I haven’t seen Veneration’s Part 2 about strategies draft yet but I am guessing it will include Challenge Mode encounters as well. I know Veneration has done hard mode Sword-Halls successfully.
June 10, 2010 at 9:08 am
can you make one from dungeons hm?
cause that warden is a pain
June 10, 2010 at 10:19 am
We are strongly encouraging Tom and/or Azzbuk to do Warg Pens, Dungeons, and Sammath Gul guides. We are also open to reader submissions as well.
June 10, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Warg Pens is a pain. I’ve completed it in Hard-Mode a number of times, but its always still a pain.
I’m looking to do a guide for each Dol Guldur Instance first, then move to the Hard-Mode guides. The hard-mode guides will only need to concentrate on the particular aspect of making it hard-mode. (Thats a little different when it comes to SH though).
June 10, 2010 at 9:36 am
Great guide. You might want to mention about the corruptions though. While they do give a 15% incoming damage debuff to the bosses, they can also restore some morale/power if your group is struggling (especially on Urcheron).
June 10, 2010 at 10:24 am
Ah, good catch. And I like the name.
June 10, 2010 at 9:46 am
This is wonderful! I love seeing end game write ups. One thing of note on the first boss, Urcheron: A burg is great at interrupting his creeping fire induction. As soon as he begins squatting to the ground you can use exploit opening, marbles, hip+trip, etc. and it prevents him from conjuring his fire. Combine that with three yellow on the conjunction and you’ve got a leg up. There may or may not be a very small window for champs to interrupt this but I have not been able to do it, I’ve only heard rumors.
SH HM is a completely different story and it will challenge even the most seasoned players. It’s probably easiest with three burgs that can trigger all-green conjunctions throught the fight and keep everything interrupted. You definitely want to defeat Urcheron first followed by Carchrien then last Durkar.
I did it with the combination of a champ, hunter and RK. I was the champ and was traited for tanking (4 blues, 3 yellows) and equipped a heavy shield the whole time. The RK was traited for healing, the hunter for DPS. I tanked both Carchrien and Durkar (near the “safe spot” mentioned above) doing AOEs to keep aggro high on both and keeping Carchrien interrupted (the bats will interrupt the healers). The hunter was able to kite Urcheron and DPS him down whlie I kept the other two off our RK. Our RK was healing like a madman with lots of juicy HOTs on us. Shout-out to Decimma for his uber-healing!
If you’re tanking as a champ make sure you bring your heavy shield and have Invincible traited. If you start to get a big low (maybe 2-2.5k), check your power, fill it up with a pot if you need to then pop Dire-Need then Invincible, the ultimate-emergency skill, which will reset Dire-Need. Every player will need to pop everything they have early to keep themselves alive.
Oh and the title is awesome: Moramoth, Victorious Champion of the Sword-Halls!
June 10, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I have a Challenge-Mode write completed, but that will go out at a different post. I consider HM and Regular Sword-Hall to be an entirely different beast!
And yes, The title rocks! haha
June 10, 2010 at 10:24 am
Nice write-up, I’m looking forward to other articles in this vein.
The morale values for Carchrien and Durkar seem to be off, though.
June 10, 2010 at 12:26 pm
Nice guide Veneration, congrats!
June 10, 2010 at 12:56 pm
For those of you who enjoyed this article, I encourage you to take a few moments and let me know what other guides you would like to see.
Also -
If there are things about the fights that I may have forgotten, please let me know so it can be added to the article.
Part II of this Guide will be posted tomorrow. I’ll begin my draft of the most requested instance or raid at that point. I’ll continue doing these as long as the interest stays high.
I’m glad you all enjoyed the post. =]
June 11, 2010 at 2:33 am
UPDATE: –
Part II will be posted either late the 12th, or the 13th. A few loose ends need to be taken care of to insure that everything in my daft is correct.
Gotta do my homework so you guys won’t need to! =]
June 10, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Awesome write up! Great detail.
June 10, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Nice write up Veneration! I look forward to your other guides as well. So far I have done SH easy mode several times and almost completed Sammath Gul once (we kept wiping on the last boss, oh well). Anyway, SH easy mode is a good one in that it is quick and not terribly difficult and can be done with a number of different group make ups. you don’t really need a dedicated healer, for example, to do it. I’ve done it with 3 tanks, myself (a Warden) and 2 Guardians. Also, I’ve done it with myself, a Guardian, and a Hunter. Pretty much we have this one down to a science. I want to try hard mode sometime soon and look forward to your hard mode write up to get some ideas on how to do it. Thanks again!
June 10, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Oooh, nice article mate, keep them coming! My partner and I have yet to reach endgame, but these guides will sure come in handy when we do so that we don’t look like total noobs when tackling these dungeons for the first time
June 11, 2010 at 8:28 am
Great to see this and a good job so far!
For information on Urcheron you CAN interrrupt the first creeping fire if you manually target him as he comes up the ramp and AS SOON AS (<—key) he stops…STAMP/CLOBBER/KICK him. On my guardian I never miss now on that first one.
Looking forward to more of these, well done
June 11, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Thanks for this piece of info – I’m going to give this a try next time I get in there
June 11, 2010 at 10:28 am
nice job Veneration!
Since you are looking for requests on upcoming guides, I would vote you continue doing all the DG instances in both normal and challenge mode, that will certainly keep you busy
Nice tip ReGryffyN, I’ll have to try that next I’m in there on my Champ!
June 11, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Excellent! I would like to add that the blood stain indicated is not 100% safe, on more than one occasion my Warden has been hit there.
There is however, a bone pile adjacent to the left side of the indicated “H” door. The bone pile provides a lift up off the actual ground providing a guaranteed safe spot to stand (for all you hunters, minstrels, etc.). In all the numerous times I have run the SH, this spot is left untouched.
Even if you have the tokens and such from the SH, the IXP runes will level any item you have, and fast. Not to mention the relics you can save up on to combine. This means don’t be afraid to help out someone running if even though you got all you need from it!
June 11, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Great article, but not including corruption removal is a bit of a miss here. Each boss will grant the small fellowship a buff when their corruption is removed. If I recall correctly, the first boss grants morale regen, the second boss power regen, and the third boss a damage mitigation.
It’s not a small buff either, on my minstrel I can usually run the second boss in warspeech full time with the power buff you gain from removing her corruption.
Looking forward to the HM guide!
~Celeb (Sell-ehb, the rebel elven minstrel)
June 11, 2010 at 7:30 pm
I chose to leave the Corruption removal out of this part because its a boss strategy mechanic and not really a overview specific part. Too much info can be a bit daunting to some players, so I didn’t want to overload the page.
Thanks tho for making sure it’s all there for me! =D
June 25, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Corruptions can play a major factor, but if you look closely at them, they give the bosses a debuff while they are on. I usually only remove or call for a removal when the need arises.
Boss 1: Fire guy: gived a HoT to all those in range on corruption removal
Boss 2: Morroval: Gives power over time to those in range
Boss 3: Troll: Gives a reduction in incoming damage. We usually ignore the corruption on this boss as the debuff on him seems to be more beneficial than the buff removing his corruption gives.
June 25, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Great guide, definitely helpful for those that aren’t familiar with the instance.
Once things to note is that the first boss’ fire trail seems to go after those who do not have aggro on him first. So if a DPSer gets it they should run away from the group and keep the trail following them. If the trail bounced it will ramp up in magnitude and become extremely painful. I’ve used this to successfully 2-man this on my warden with a Champ. As soon as he does his fire trail the champ would run a ways away from me, while staying in range of Conviction.
Hardmode isn’t much different, except you’ll want your main tank either holding just the fire guy or the Morroval and Troll. This keeps the others a ways away from the tank (we usually position the main tank on one side of the fire boss’ door and the others on the other side of the door to keep the fire from bouncing around too much. It’s a little tricky to start with 3 bosses up, but once the fire boss is dropped the others are relatively simple in comparison.
April 27, 2011 at 5:40 am
This is a great title. But do you know how to do this in challenge mode please? Some help would really help me now…