For posterity I’ve decide to rewrite this as it applies to T1, and leave the rest included in the event that the Wild Hunt returns next year sometime. Since Hunters Vale was added to T1, it has been dumbed down quite a bit and simplified. I’d imagine people that read the original guide at the bottom of the page would likely get confused as some things are not happening as I described. No worries. I’ve since run HV quite a few times and refined the limited strategy needed to finish it quickly.

/start t1 refresh

I think I would recommend the T1 Hunters Vale instance for R8 and up, just for the sake of gear. If you’re a good little soldier, you’ll have both your Decimator pieces and a handful of Vengeance (or if you read my Twink Guide, you’ll have much better stuff than that). Every time I’ve run this instance recently in T1, you really only need one tank, and one healer. None of the bosses really scratch a decent tank with a shield, and healers don’t have much of a problem keeping themselves, and everyone else, alive through much of it. One thing I would mention, WP’s are not the greatest group healers. If you bring one, you’ll probably need a second healer as well. Divine Strike only goes so far..

Upon entering the vale, Kurnous starts jabbering on about how pathetic you are, and you’ll never survive, etc. etc.. This first thing to keep in mind, is to control your bloodlust just a LITTLE BIT. Killing the innocent bunnies and deer make the instance significantly tougher as you have to fight the wandering trees. If no one in the group harms innocent animals, these treekin stay incorporeal. You still have to fight the lesser treekin however. 

A handful of champions will take you to the first miniboss, a duo of large treekin. These are bonded, and will switch back and forth. They do a nice sized knockback, so have your tank with his back to the wall so he keeps aggro. It’s not a tough fight, but this is better than getting bounced all over the place. The treekin will swap back and forth regenerating a bit of health while they’re inactive, so the faster you do your damage, the shorter the fight will be. Ok, that was a bit of stating the obvious.. o.o..

Anyway, next fight is pretty shortly after that. You’ll see a single red sprite hanging out in a clearing. The goal is to have everyone focus down the single sprite. You’ll get a ton of adds, but they drop very fast once you get the named one down. Quick and simple.

Next up is the giant treekin, this is the first “wing” boss as he drops a piece of repairable Carnage gear (the PvE set piece). For the most part no one is really going to need it, but for some classes it looks pretty cool (Witch Hunters get the duster length longcoat). You can single pull the lesser treekin and  blast them down fast enough. When you pull the big guy, your tank wants to have his back to the tree he was standing near. This boss also does a knockback and spawns two adds at the same time. The adds pretty much go straight for the healer, but they’re not a huge threat. Assign one DPS to clear the adds through the fight and you should be fine. After the fight, collect your loot, and attack the huge tree you’re standing next to. It’s your bridge to the next area.

This is usually where we pull out two guild standards, one guy in front of the group, and one guy following behind. The next three minibosses are essentially the same. You’re going to run through a bunch of mobs as they beat on you, head straight to the boss and kill her. The first set is dogs, the boss is on the right, the second set is wolves, the boss is on the left inside a cave, the third set is lions and the boss is on the left again. Sometimes things can get a little hairy when you get to the third set if your group isn’t well geared, and you may need to stop near the river to clear adds, but we’ve yet to have this problem.

Once you clear the three minibosses, you have another wing boss to fight. Just past the Lion Mother, there’s a wall of vines that you’ll need to attack to pass through. Make sure EVERYONE goes through at the same time or they’ll get locked out of the fight. Initially you’ll be fighting a male lion, after a little while he calls in a female lioness to assist him, she does not respond to taunt/hate. Depending on how the fight goes, you may need to switch DPS to the lioness. Once the lioness is under 50% she is perma-snared and whoever she targets can just kite her in circles until the male is killed. DO NOT kill the lioness first, or the male goes into rage and will probably wipe your group. With a well geared group you can usually kill the male while ignoring the female.

The male also drops a repairable piece of Carnage gear, in case anyone cares about that.

The next part is a puzzle, the same strategy applies so a copy+paste is in order…

Also, a guide for the Pillars. You’ll need at least 4 people to get this done right.

Reminiscent of the Temple of Ualatap PQ in Land of the Dead, you have to match symbols to standing on things. This took us a bit to figure out, and there’s a couple things to remember. 

-First off, the central pillar doesn’t mean squat except for blocking your view. 

-At the base of each outside pillar is a blank square stone. Someone standing on this lights up a symbol on the pillar. 

-While one person stands on the blank stone, another needs to go the to corresponding symbol.

– If done correctly, the corresponding symbol will light up underneath you.

– Also, after someone steps on a corresponding stone, the person on the blank stone needs to get the hell off before moving on to the next pair.

-Stepping on any of the other stones will grant you a nice blast of lightning. 

-At the end, there should only be three people standing on the symbols, and NO ONE standing on the blank stones.

The best way to do this is with 4 people on vent. Have one person stand on the blank stones, and the other three match them up one at a time. We had issues with trying to light up all the blank stones at once, and get all three people on the other stones at once. That didn’t work. Take it easy, do one at a time. You’ll probably get it done faster and without wiping.

Upon finishing, you’ll get to ride a bunch of Eagles up to the final boss lair. These guys will occasionally flip out and start spazzing all over the place. Just hold your left mouse button to avoid any epileptic seizures. Make sure everyone makes it up to the platform, as occasionally the eagles will drop someone to their death and /lol at you. Oh it’s hilarious when that happens. I laugh every time. Make sure everyone is inside the lair before approaching the boss, else you’ll be locked outside on that tiny platform. In the event this happens, just have everyone take a dive off the side, respawn, resummon your eagles, and try to be less fail this time.

Kurnous! Well, he’s supposed to be a god. To be perfectly blunt, I’ve solo’d tougher tanks than this guy. He does a medium knockback, have your tank pull him to a wall. Eventually he starts changing forms and is immune to everything. When he comes out of immunity he has huge absorb shield on and has changed into one of the forms. This is when you use your damaging morale abilities. Morales ignore the absorb shield, and if you have 4 DPS classes + tank slapping him with morale damage through two of his forms, sometimes you can skip his third form. It’s tank and spank all the way home, this “god” is a chump, not a champ.

Good luck on your rolls for that Hunters Cape! It gives you a 3m Elk form that increases your run speed by 50%. Pretty cool stuff!

/end T1 refresh

 Just to post something, I figured I would give a teeny tiny tidbit of a guide for finding the hunters in Lost Vale. There’s only six, so I remember them off the top of my head pretty good. I’ve only played the Order instance. Sorry Destro guys!

#1 Sorceress – Lying on the ground where you first talk to the boss at the beginning of the instance.
#2 Squig Herder – Maybe 300′ down the path at the first pull of dryads. He was orange for me, but still one of the hunters.
#3 Magus – There’s a nice mini fight against a duo of trees that switch back and forth. The Magus is on top of the rocks nearby.
#4 Orc – I believe halfway through the Wolf (or maybe Lion) swarm, there’s a small stream in the middle of the path. Follow this inland to find the Orc.
#5 Witch Elf – On the cliff-side just before the Lion Mother.
#6 ChaosSomething – Just after the duo Lion boss fight, this guy is just outside the circle of rocks.

Also, a guide for the Pillars. You’ll need at least 4 people to get this done right.

Reminiscent of the Temple of Ualatap PQ in Land of the Dead, you have to match symbols to standing on things. This took us a bit to figure out, and there’s a couple things to remember.
-First off, the central pillar doesn’t mean squat except for blocking your view.
-At the base of each outside pillar is a blank square stone. Someone standing on this lights up a symbol on the pillar.
-While one person stands on the blank stone, another needs to go the to corresponding symbol.
– If done correctly, the corresponding symbol will light up underneath you.
-Also, after someone steps on a corresponding stone, the person on the
blank stone needs to get the hell off before moving on to the next pair.
-Stepping on any of the other stones will grant you a nice blast of lightning.
-At the end, there should only be three people standing on the symbols, and NO ONE standing on the blank stones.

The best way to do this is with 4 people on vent. Have one person stand on the blank stones, and the other three match them up one at a time. We had issues with trying to light up all the blank stones at once, and get all three people on the other stones at once. That didn’t work. Take it easy, do one at a time. You’ll probably get it done faster and without wiping.

Kuronuos (or whatever)

This was a decent boss fight, though the Lion duo was ultimately more challenging. You only need a single tank and single healer if people do it right. There’s no rezzing allowed, so staying alive is really important. You’ll also need your spell effects maxed.

-Phase 1
 Simple tank and spank. DPS him down. Keep everyone alive.

-Phase 2, Portals
After getting beaten on for a bit, he goes into ghost mode and walks into the leafy doors at the outside of the room. Up to three of these portals open up and fire bolts across the room. The portals can be targeted, and when one drops you move to the next phase. I suggest letting RDPS target the portals when they’re firing bolts, and get everyone out of the line of fire. It’s not a one shot, but you can take a load of damage. Staying out of the center of the room is a good idea. Just hug the walls, and throw axes, swords, or shoot the damn things.

-Phase 2b Lightning Rods
After the bolts fire off a few times, the boss comes out of a portal (it was the one nearest to the entrance for us) still in ghost mode and starts throwing lightning rods around. They work similar to the Engi ability, and with graphics on full you can see where they’re going to hit before you start taking damage. This is the most vulnerable part of the stage. Just ignore the boss, and start pounding on the portal he came out as soon as possible. We managed to do this on the first appearance with RDPS on the portals during the bolt stage. If you don’t get it down the first time, the bolts start firing after he throws three lighting rods, and Phase 2 starts again.

-Phase 3 Polymorphing (start saving up your damaging Morales here)
This is where it got interesting, and we seemed a little confused. He comes back out of ghost mode all pissed off, and it turns into another tank and spank. Three (friendly?) mobs start running around, a dog, wolf, and lion. Eventually, he gets one of their symbols above his head. I think the idea is to click on one of the mobs that matches the symbol. You should probably assign one person to do this who can think clearly under pressure. Now, this didn’t really do anything for us as far as I could tell, but it didn’t last too long.

-Phase 4 Absorb,Absorb,Absorb
The cool thing about his absorb shield is that Morales ignore it entirely. We didn’t bother to wait this one out. After I fired mine off, I told everyone else to do the same, and he lost his absorb shield VERY quickly. It was up for a matter of seconds. He lasted only a matter of seconds longer than that.

Hope that helps some of you potential hunters out there. The instance is pretty difficult in T4 to get the timer finished. The Devs swore up and down they could do it with a group of R3X’ers, but I can’t see that happening. The Lion Duo is probably the toughest part due to the taunt/hate-ignoring female that runs in at 80% hp on the male. She can be CC’d and kited though. Hope you have some tough healers, she likes them special. The toughest part for us to beat the timer was just clearing trash along the way. 3 DPS, two Healers, and a Tank should do just fine. There’s no need for a second tank through any of it really.

For the three swarms, just rush past to the boss. Keep the healers in the middle of the group while you’re running, and try to stay off to the side. You’ll pull everything regardless of where you are, but as soon as the boss is down, they stop spawning. One other thing to note, for the Lion swarm, we stopped just after the river to clear mobs off of us. Not all of them since they endlessly respawn, but at least 3 champs and 6 normal mobs before starting to run again.