Drak’Tharon Keep Guide

Drak’Tharon Keep 74-76

Drak’Tharon Keep is located in northwestern Grizzly Hills, inside a large fortress.  It can also be accessed on the opposite side of the fortress, through southwestern Zul’drak.  Drak’tharon is a troll dwelling, housing a fair number of bats and lizards, with the taint of the scourge felt throughout.

Quests:
“Cleansing Drak’Tharon” is the final quest in the long chain involving Drakuru, found in Granite Springs, and involves interacting with a brazier just after the final boss.  “Search and Rescue” is given by Mack Fearsen, also at Granite Springs, and has you find the NPC Kurzel, who is inside one of the cocoons in the spider-infested room early in the instance.

Boss Strategies:

Trollgore
Trollgore has a simple disease he puts on the tank that increases physical damage taken by 15%, and a Crush ability that deals 150% normal melee damage.  His main abilities, however, deal with the corpses of non-elite mobs that will plague you as you fight him: he can either use Corpse Explode, dealing significant AoE damage to anyone near the corpse, or Consume a corpse, doing a smaller amount of damage to anyone nearby and increasing the damage he deals from all other attacks.  Consume can stack infinitely high, so it’s imperative you DPS him down quickly before he begins hurting too much for the tank and healer to keep up.

Novos the Summoner
Novos starts off the battle casting an impenetrable shield around himself.  Standing near him will cause you to take damage, so do not.  The nearby staircase will start spawning weak non-elite scourge who can and should be killed quickly.  Occasionally Novos will summon an elite Crystal Handler from of the other two entrances to the room.  They don’t do much damage and fall relatively quickly.  Killing one disables one of the orbs around Novos maintaining his shield, so if you keep the flow of Scourge in check while waiting for the four Crystal Handlers, you should be in good shape when Novos himself is activated.  His abilities are standard Lich abilities: Frostbolt on a random target, an AoE slowing Blizzard, Wrath of Misery (a curse that deals shadow damage over time), and an Arcane Blast that does a moderate amount of damage and knocks the target back.  His damage is not high, so killing him is a fairly simple matter.

King Dred
This huge Devilsaur can easily come with a few unintended raptor adds when you pull him, so take care when clearing and be sure to kill any adds first if you do get them.  King Dred’s attacks focus solely on the tank, but he hits hard.  Piercing Slash does 125% normal melee damage and reduces the tank’s armor by 75%; Mangling Slash does the same 125% damage and causes increased damage from bleed effects; and Grievous Bite is a powerful bleed effect that stays on the target until fully healed.  The healer should be quick to top off the tank when Grievous Bite is applied.  In addition Dred will occasionally fear the entire party for four seconds, so be sure to keep the tank stocked with HoTs or a Fear Ward so he won’t die during the time everyone is unable to act.

The Prophet Tharon’ja
Tharon’ja is arguably the first truly unique boss in Wrath of the Lich King.  In skeletal form, he uses Curse of Life, a curse which does heavy amounts of Nature damage, but cures itself if the afflicted drops below 50% HP.  Eye Beam and Lightning Breath are simple single target damage abilities, and Poison Cloud does damage in a small area and should be moved out of.  The trick to the fight is that Tharon’ja will use Decay Flesh, turning everyone into a skeleton with the same four abilities: Slaying Strike, a normal damaging melee attack; Touch of Life, which steals life from the enemy; Bone Armor, which absorbs about 4200 damage before breaking; and a simple Taunt.  All group members are largely equal here, so players should each be taunting when their Bone Armor is up to spread out damage that each member can heal with Touch of Life.  Keep up the cycle and there should be no problems.  After a certain amount of damage Tharon’ja will return everyone to their normal form and the process repeats until he is defeated.