Utgarde Keep - Boss Guides The first version of the strategy guides for the bosses in the Utgarde Keep are now available! Reply With Quote. 2008-07-26, 08:26 PM #2. Utgarde Keep; Utgarde Keep. Previous; Next; Quick Info. Added in Patch 7.0.1 (Build #20979) Type: 0 bosses; Levels: 69 - 72 Expansion:?? Players Forum link; Wowhead link; Featured Screenshot. Login or register to be the first to upload a screenshot Additional Information. Drops (51) Quests (8) Achievements (2) Fishing (31) Comments. Utgarde Keep is located on the shore of Lake Cauldros in Howling Fjord. Utgarde Keep is currently inhabited by a Viking-like race called vrykul lead by the imposing King Ymiron. Utgarde is the vrykul’s. The Ride to Utgarde Keep 10 Replies The first Saturday night for the instance group after the launch of The Wrath of the Lich King found us wondering what to do. With a brand new continent to explore and ten more levels to grow, plus as yet unfinished content in the Outlands, the options were wide open.
Utgarde Keep
Well the day is upon us. We will all be headed to Northrend this evening. Well technically we will be headed to our favorite game store this evening and to Northrend early tomorrow morning. Antipas luckily got to play in the beta for the expansion and as a special treat for release night we are going to take a look at the encounters in the first instance you will be going to do once you reach Northrend. Utgarde Keep!
General Background
As I pointed out above, Utgarde keep is the first Instance you will come to in Wrath of the Lich King. While it is the name of the instance itself, it is also the name of the entire keep which also houses another instance for level 80 characters, Utgarde Pinnacle.
Utgarde Keep stands majestically, albeit a bit morbidly, above the shimmering waters of Lake Cauldros. It is inhabited by the mighty Vyrkul. These warriors are very reminiscent of the Valkyries of Norse mythology. They are said to serve their slumbering King Ymiron, Though they believe that Arthas will raise up the mightiest among them to serve in his undead army.
Now that we know a little about who, what and where Utgarde Keep is, lets forge ahead and look at the three bosses we will face here.
Prince Keleseth
The first boss in this instance is a Darkfallen named Prince Keleseth. He is the Scourge Overlord of Howling Fjord. He does your standard shadow bolt attack but also likes to summon a group of 5 skellies to help him out. He also casts a spell called frost tome that is a dot that ticks off on the players. Over its full span it does 8k damage which will leave you very close to dead and easily killable by the skellies or his shadow bolt. With a well geared group, burning down the tome and using crowd control on the skellies is the best route to killing him.
The tank should use keep spell reflect up when he can. Tanking the loose skeletons is your other major responsibility here. Prince Keleseth will summon more skellies as you kill them, this is why using crowd control on the adds is the most advisable route. If you can best this prince you will be rewarded with your random drop of Dragon Stabler’s Gauntlets, Reinforced Velvet Helm, Keleseth’s Blade of Evocation or aStone Keeper’s Shard
Skarvald the Constructor
The next encounter in the instance will be with a Vrykul named Skarvald the Constructor. He also gets pulled with a mob named Dalronn the Controller. The fight here is somewhat similar to the Romeo and Juliette fight from Kara. Both mobs will need to be killed at roughly the same time. When one dies it spawns a spirit form of itself that acts exactly as the real mob does, with one exception. It has no aggro table and cannot be tanked. So the advisable strategy is to dps Skar down to almost dead then kill the controller and move back to Skar.
When you manage to down this viking and his buddy you can have your loot and eat it too! Chestplate of Northern Lights, Skarvald’s Dragonskin Habergeon or Arm Blade of Augelmir
Ingvar the Plunderer
Ingvar the Plunderer is King Crap of turd island in this instance. He has many devastating abilities. Most of them have a cast time, allowing melee dps (tank included) to back away to avoid the massive damage he pumps outs. All casters need to stay at max range for the whole duration of this fight. One of his abilities is an AOE that interupts all casting, knocksback and does some serious damage. After you kill him once, Annhylde the Caller come trotting out and resurrects Ingvar as an undead minion of the Lich King. Basically he is now a super version of his first form. Same strategy as before but healing will be more intense for the latter half of the fight.
Kill this heavily armored block head and feel the satisfaction of having destroyed the defenses of Utgarde Keep. Bide your time and soon you will be able to assault the Utgarde Pinnacle! Oh, and before you hearth make sure you pick up the sexy loot! Holistic Patchwork Breeches, Overlaid Chain Spaulders or finally Ingvar’s Monolithic Cleaver.
This is a very fun instance to go hit right out of the gate. The loot isn’t half bad looking either! Until next time I hope you all have fun leveling up again and stay warm!
Introduction
Heroic Utgarde Keep is arguably one of the easiest of the heroics. With a team of experienced party members to surround yourself with the instance should go by pretty easily. Just get yourself a defense capped tank and a decent set of DPS who preferably know the boss fights and your on your way to a pretty carefree heroic run. Like with my Nexus suggestion I feel that 1600 is a solid number for starting most heroics but you can probably make due with 1-150 less than that.
Utgarde Keep Achievements
Trash Mobs
Most of the trash in this instance consists of Vyrkul and undead with a few dragons and wolves along the way. Luckily these Vyrkul don’t hit as hard as their angrier brethren in Utgarde Pinnacle. There isn’t much special you really need to do here. Watch for picking up more than one group on a couple tight knit fights and you should be fine just running with a riptide+2LHW combination on most encounters.
Wow Utgarde Pinnacle Entrance
The first section of the instance will consist of groups of Vyrkul, pull them carefully as to not aggro the entire first hall and you should be fine. The next room is the same deal, a couple groups of Vyrkul in close proximity – this will lead you to your first boss (Scroll down for boss strategy).
Next is the “dragon room”. Make sure when you encounter the dragons, that the tank faces them away from the rest of your party as to not get them caught in the cone of their fire breath. Taking down the dragons first then the Vyrkul generally works best. Clearing left half of the room and leaving the right is an easy way to cut some time off of the run. Next there are halls filled with undead, most of them are non-elite mobs huddled around a single elite. These halls are a breeze, but you might need to use your cleanse – the totem is a waste, just use the spell on the diseases. Then some more Vyrkul. Next will be the boss duo (Scroll down for boss strategy).
After this boss there are more Vyrkul and undead rooms and halls. Watch for patrols in the rooms with stairs as they usually have a Vyrkul with a pet dog moving up and down them and at one point there will be a roving group of Geists in a room with a set of stairs and some Vyrkul gatherings, Vyrkul stand in your way for the rest of the way to the final boss of the instance (Scrolldown for boss strategy).
Additional: For the most the instance is groups of Vyrkul in between bosses. So long as you take the CASTERS down first, you won’t have a problem, but they can really hurt your party especially if it’s melee heavy as they do a sort of corpse explosion type spell.
Prince Keleseth
This is the first and easiest boss of the instance. The strategy is pretty simple. Have everyone stack up on the tank, the only exception would be a hunter as they need a minimum distance to do adaquate damage, but even they should be standing as close as possible. If you have a paladin tank this fight is a breeze, all they have to do is keep concencration down, but other tanks can do just as well. The reason you stack is that there are going to be waves of trash skeletons coming at you in groups. They are more annoying than dangerous, but if they get onto a soft class you can lose them pretty quick. The best bet is that you draw them all into one area so the tank can just swipe them up as they keep attacking the boss. The other reason is that since there are in fact waves of mobs coming at you while you combat this boss you will have adds getting pieces of DPS as well as yourself from time to time and spamming chain heal makes easy work of it when everyone is standing right on top of each other. The only other quirk of the boss is that he will ice block random party members and the ice needs to be broken for them to be able to do anything again, this is very key if they ice block you – the healer, or rarely the tank.
Dalronn the Controller and Skavard the Constructor
This is probably the most interesting fight but can also be the most painful if your group isn’t up for the coordination challenge it can present. The basic idea behind the fight is that you are fighting two bosses at once. One is a caster who fires shadowbolts and the other is a melee who hits pretty hard. When you kill one, they come back as a ghost version of themselves, the difference between the ghost and the actual version is that the ghost has random aggro tables, so ocne you kill it they will essentially attack whoever they want. Which is why you want to take one boss to 10 percent health, then switch to the other boss and kill him, then go back to the first and finish him off. It’s a DPS heavy fight because of this. An additional note that your group should know is that the melee (Skavard) will do a charge move hitting people who are farther away and this resets his aggro table, meaning the tank will have to retaunt and gain more aggro after he does this. However, there is an easy way to get around this and that is to have your group in tight around the fight so he doesn’t have the space to initiate his charge. The second strategy is to kill one or the other and hope they don’t wipe you while they’re running around in ghost form. This is easy in normal UK, but in heroic it will rarely work unless you have over-geared DPS in the group.
Ingvar the Plunderer
The final and arguably the most difficult boss of the instance is Ingvar the Plunderer. You will exit the keep into an outside area of the instance which you will clear of Vyrkul on your way to him. Feel free to show off your Ghost Wolf form in the mean time. The battle area you will fight Ingvar on is a circular area with pillars around the inside of it. These can be used as key strategic advantages during the fight. You will want your casters at max range and near the first set of pillars you will see as you enter the area. These will help in case your tank doesn’t know what he’s doing. If you have shadow resistence buffs available, go ahead and take them. There are two phases to this fight. You kill Ingvar once and he will respawn and come back for a second round as a Scourge version of himself – meaning this is the hard phase. The first phase is pretty simple, he will do an AOE that does less damage the further you are away from it, which is why your casters are at range. It is a weak AOE so this isn’t a big deal just yet. Once you down him he will lay there for a while and will be rez’d by a Valkyree, when he coems back to life he unleashes a big AOE so don’t stand near him. When the tank picks him back up he’ll pull him to the furthest side of the circle away from the ranged. Now when he does his AOE (Dark Smash) it will be legitimate so your melee will take cover behind the nearest pillar. The key is that the tank tanks him facing the wall, not the group. The smash is mostly a cone so there shouldn’t be much damage being caused if they do this right as he stops in place once he starts casting. If your melee get behind a pillar they will usually take no damage at all. The main threat as far as damage goes however is his floating axe he will summon, it whirlwinds for a ton of damage and your tank should be tanking him away from it once it spawns. If it catches a soft melee they will basically die right off the bat. The save bet to heal this fight is to keep your tidal waves buff up from Riptide so you can keep everyone topped off with quick LHW’s. Keep earth shield on the tank and everything else should be fine. It’s not a healing intense fight unless the rest of your party members are failures. There is also a shout debuff he casts that will cause havoc if you are casting when it hits, so keep an eye on Ingvars timers. Deadly Boss Mod add-on really helps with this timing.
Utgarde Keep Map
(WORK IN PROGRESS)