This quest can be difficult to complete depending on your group and how good they are, but before you consider passing it up, the rewards are most definately worth the work.

the door to the boss is not locked!

the only thing that is locked is the back door to the instance, for which you need the Workshop Key

This quest is the killing the final boss in Gnomer. It is a bit tricky.

As you have your dps hit the boss, you have to have someone run around push the red buttons that the walking bombs come out of. If you don't, the bombs will simply explode on party members. Which puts the group into a wipe after a couple of bombs in a short amount of time. If you have the bombs under control, then the rest is just tanking and dps.

Thermaplugg has around 9500 to 10000 HP, but hes elite, so it goes painfully slow...

Oh, and the punchcard quest doesnt shut anything down. You still have to kill the mines and alarms, which is really easy because they die with one searing pain.

Its not that hard... i can kill the tiny mobs before the guy that drops the workshop key by myself and im a 34 survival hunter... if i could get a good party then i could beat it... i almost did it with a lvl 32 hunter 30 priest 26priest and 27 warlock but they all decided to hearth in&nbsp the middle of the instance... i dont get why everyone thinks its sooo hard.

Does anybody know what the buttons do around the gnome king?&nbsp Somebody told me they stop the bombs that spawn during the fight but I pressed them all before the fight and nothing happened, the bombs still came.&nbsp Is there a certain order to push them or are they just a red herring?

The workshop key is in the area with all the planes on the center platform.&nbsp Its one of those spider mech looking things and the mob is named Electro-somethingrather.&nbsp

Whats the horde equivalent to this quest ? nice stuff but walkin in ironforge is bad for my health :X

The best way to defeat this bastrd is to have a strong tank, healer, and players with lots of stamina. Tank just worries about pounding him..healer does the rutine...and others just press the red buttons to deactivate bombs that he calls up.
Easy!

And oh...'bout those dark iron mines...when the dwarf dops it...just start to hit the mine and deactivate it.

I have Been Thru This Instance Like 10 Times Its Not Really that Hard. in my opinion there is one hard part in the whole thing and that is the group of 4 or dark iron dwarves like second to last mob before the boss. it is really great to have like 2 rogues for this good dps for the last boss and that dark iron dwarf part the 2 jus sap 2 of them then its like a 5v2 instead of 5v4. those alarm things are easy on the 4th yell about 3 or 4 guys come to kill you. there was only one time (and it was really weird) about 25 guys came at us out of no where but that usaully doesn't happen. the best group for this i think is 2 rogues, good preist, paladin or warrior, and a mage or hunter. as long as everyone does there part and knows how to play the last boss is too easy. and those bombs don't to much damage i jus let them hit me :P. the boss drops 2 blues a mail sheild and a mail shoulders i beleive

my group:
32 priest
33 pally
33 rogue
34 warrior
33 lock

No wipes just destruction, No need to push buttons against thermaplug just have everyone focus there attacks on him until he dies. WIth a good healer and tank this instance was a piece of cake.

What realm are u on?

I just thought I should add, as I had read the other posts wrong. There are at least 6 buttons (maybe a few more) to be pushed in a circle around the centre where Thermaplugg is.

And to see if the buttons need pushing, the machines start crackling with energy.

Edited, Thu Mar 3 19:53:35 2005

You have to keep pressing the buttons, have 2 people on your team that only press the buttons.

Basically the tops of the bomb towers light up before they drop, when this happens push the buttons.&nbsp

PS. the bombs don't stop immediately after the boss is dead, so if you need to res someone lookout for bombs.

1-st you should find tinker labs.Then find the elevator and go down, there will be a narrow passage to the train way. Then go down this trainway and you'll find him, he will be in the Tinker Court.

PS:
sorry for my bad english

PROBLEM:
Myself a 25 Rogue, my partner a 25 Hunter knew that we could never do this at our level even if we got more players our level range, so we recruited the following folks.
Level 50 Rogue
Level 37 Warrior
Level 36 Druid

We began clearing the dungeon then working through the instance. We had no problems and the non stop zero downtime fights were fun and easy *UNTIL*

The alarm bombs began spotting us.
For those of you who have done the lower parts of Gnomeregan are familiar with the little Bomb mech patrollers I am sure.

"INTRUDER ALERT!" etc etc followed by a massive train of mobs some 10-60 seconds later to wherever your location is= TGW (total group whipe out)

The first time this happened we were like OMG.
The second time we started killing those things the moment we saw them, the little bombs would still see us some distance away (30 yards=/-) so even though we would immediately rush and kill them in 1 hit, they would still get their yell off.

Doing this seemed to buy us more time, but not much. We even tried the technique of stealthing in to kill the bombs before they woudl see us and the little things would spam their alert message everytime.

Thus after 8 TGW due to the massive trains that followed these alarms, we still pressed on but eventually we gave up.

We obviously are doing something wrong, and that leads to my question.

QUESTION: Is there some way to de activate these things prior to continuing our search for Mekgineer Thermaplugg?

What tactics have you and your friends used to deal with these?

Where is Mekgineer Thermaplugg located, are we simply in the wrong region?

Thanks in advance for any useful or helpful replies. Myscha the sleddog

I went in two different times.
First group: lvl 32 rogue, lvl 32 pally, lvl 32 hunter, lvl 28 priest, and a lvl 32 warrior.
Second group: lvl 31 mage, lvl 60 priest, lvl 60 mage, and lvl 33 pally.

Neither time did we make it past the mobs with mines.

Does anyone know if the punchcard quest should be done in unison with boss quest? Seems like those control panels should be able to shut down a lot of the robotic alarms in the dungeon. Just a thought. If you try this ... please, let us know how it works for ya. -)

Also Thermapluggs door is not locked and by his door walks an RARE ELITE monster named Dark Iron Ambassador...ok drops but you have to go through a couple of mine setting dwarfs to get him. I say its worth it. If you really dont need quests bring someone in your group that has the Workshop Key that drops from the Electrocutioner 6000. I found out somemore things on my second or third trip there..When entering the front portal of instance you can skip a lot of it and go directly to the Clean Zone or middle of instance by jumping on the huge gear in the front. Good Luck!

Pressing the buttons stops the bomb. So have 1-2 Members running around stopping the towers while the others attack ThermaPlugg

is there an easier way of getting to him, i tried with a full 5 member party all above lvl 30 and we got totalled 3 times in the corridor to his chamber. we'll be fighting two mobs then for no reason about 20 come from nowhere at us! Whats happening is this a glich that i should report or am i just doing something wrong?

-Akiri

sooo... press the buttons or no? having a really hard time beating this.

Edited, Thu Dec 23 23:51:43 2004

where is he

Exactly how much HP do these bombs have? I read that they have low health but how low? Why should u kill them one by one after u have pulled him to the entrance if u just can kill them with a couple of AoE?
I like the idea of the bottons and I am thinking of doing it( I am a paladin) but the problem is that if I go to push them the rest of my group we get wiped(well i just have some bad expierence:P) and if I stay and help I cant be sure that the'pusher' will do it wright. I just like to do everything by myself cause of the huge amount of noobs playing WOW and these seems undone here:)
And how much dmg do these bombs do?

Quest is actually attainable at 26. Great for twinks.

can i obtain this quest at 29 so I can use the triprunners for twink gear?

for one thing...in my group we didn't even press the buttons. We were all level 35 or 36. The trick is to take a priest with you to do the mission. While the rest of the party fights with thermaplugg the priest just continually heals. Its the most effective way to do it. But if u press the buttons then the bombs don't come for every button u press. There are a lot of buttons and u need only one person to press them continually.

Having done Therma a few times now, here's what we did and it worked like a charm. Forget the buttons...takes too much running around, etc.

We pull Therma to the doorway, so the bombs have one route to get to us. Have one person with a good ranged attack (mage is great for this) just concentrate on knocking off the bombs as they head your way, the others concentrate on Therma (with hopefully a healer keeping an eye on the fighters).

We've used this method a couple times now and it works like a charm.

where is he located?

a good strategy for the bombs is to have either a mage or hunter either use bolt or shoot them. usually one or two hits will kill them

We've just had the 20 strong spawn just now. Took out a level 35 Paladin and level 41 mage out straight away. They chased me, a level 54 Hunter, right the way from the ramp down to the Boss, back past the workshop key Boss, back through the slime filled room and back to the Clean Room. They caught up with me there because I turned round. If I hadn't, they would have chased me back to the instance entrance. I've posted a ticket to the GMs to see what they say and I'll post the response back here.

Tomofinland - Hunter lvl 54

The first couple of times I faced this guy, the grouped got wiped. The trick is to have 2 people on each side of the room strictly push buttons to stop bombs. Use the tank, healer, & nuke to fight Thermaplugg, other two just keep pushing the buttons and he'll go down fast

i wear those pants hehe..got em from him

He's level 34 (Elite).

We wiped and when we came back, there were half a dozen bombs standing around Thermaplugg. I had engineering, so I ran up and dropped a mithril frag bomb on them (the 8 yard in diameter bomb). The bombs have low hp, so it killed them all and thermaplugg followed me back to the door where we killed him. My toon was a hunter, so I did feign death after dropping the bomb to escape. Obviously not everyone can use this strategy, but I mention for the benefit of those who may find it helpful.

I went in last night with a full group, and we did well until this fight. The bombs just killed us. Are there good tactics here? Do the bombs have many hit points (can we just kill them before they get to us)? And what do the buttons do?

Is there a way to get to this fight quickly if you've been through the instance before?

If you have the workshop key, you can get in via the workshop door (and hence the instance) near where TechBot and the 'A' card machine can be found.

Ok, beat Thermaplugg on the first try so i thought i should just mention what we did.

We had 3 group members, levels 38, 40 and 45. None of us had done this before so maybe our tactic is good. You DO have to kill the bombs or they'll eventually kill your group.

You enter the room and see Thermaplugg in the middle surrounded by towers with Buttons. Pull him to the side, and have someone press the bottons on the towers. I just pressed them as I ran around the room. But the ones that are glowing and crackling are the ones that are going to drop bombs.

Once thermaplugg was dead, the bombs stopped running after us and the towers stopped dropping them.

It was hella easy. But the only reason i even knew about the bombs was from reading the top posts, thanks guys=)