this is supposed to be hard, isn't it?

Just in case anyone reading this doesn't know, in Hard Mode in GW, if you kill every enemy in the zone, you get a bonus and progress towards your Vanquisher title for that continent.  Hard Mode makes enemies move and attack faster, as well as giving them higher levels and faster skill activation.  Theoretically it's supposed to be hard, and in most cases, it is.

Not so much in the Desolation area of Nightfall.  There you have access to the powerful Junundu worms, which have 3000 health and a specialized skill set.  Enemies in the Desolation are balanced for humans and not Junundu, even in areas where you have to be in the Junundu to travel there because if you're not, you'll die.

The Sulfurous Wastes is one such area.  Perhaps most popular for being the area where you can farm Sunspear and Lightbringer promotion points the easiest (in Hard Mode), the vast majority of the zone can be cleared while in Junundu.  Even some of the enemies in areas of rocky ground, which Junundu can't tunnel through, can be lured close enough to the edge of a cliff where Junundu can take them out.

The rest, including a boss group, require a little strategy.  Since it was just me with heroes and henchmen, I took advantage of the ability to disable certain skills in each hero's panel to disable the one that makes them leave the Junundu.  Normally when you go into rocky terrain or use Leave Junundu your heroes and henchmen will leave their Junundu as well.  Disabling the skill on my heroes prevents them from doing that.

Also since Junundu have some close range skills, I disabled those as well.  I then flagged my three heroes near the edge of the one rocky terrain area containing the only groups I had to pull close to the edge to kill them, including the boss group.  I then got out of my Junundu and the henchmen followed suit (just as planned, I'd flagged them back as well so I could go pull).

Pulling was largely a success.  There was plenty of death when we got to the boss group, because I had to kill the boss twice since I neglected to take out the only enemy with a resurrection skill first.  It ended up being just me and the three heroes alive.  I ran back to the nearby wurm spoor and got back in my Junundu and we steamrolled the group.  Zone vanquished, half of the party dead.

Now might be a good time to mention my party composition.  I was playing my ranger.  I had three ranger heroes.  The henchmen were (in order going down the party window) dervish, elementalist, ranger, and paragon.  No healers!  Though the paragon henchman can heal somewhat, it's a losing battle.  On top of that, my primary purpose for being out there was to level up pets, and given that Junundu have their own skill set, I neglected to have real builds on myself and my ranger heroes.  The four of us only had Charm Animal.

Hey, what can I say, it works.

And here's a screenshot, taken just after I finished.  I was lolling too hard to get a screenshot with the HM vanquishing helmet on the screen, but you can see where I got the bonus and have the gold HM status effect instead of the red one.

Here's yet another screenshot. I was bored in a zone devoid of enemies, so I got out of my Junundu and ran out into the desolation to die. The desolation area puts the Sulfurous Haze environmental effect on you, which gives you maybe a couple of seconds to leave the desolation before it kills you. Also on your screen you see the text "No mortal can survive the Sulfurous Haze.", which is the entire reason for this next screenshot. As you can see, the pets are still alive. In the desolation. Whee.

lol.