I am a 16 level magician and i solo these guys. They all con red and they are a piece of cake as long as i dont get additional minos or muddys in my pull. Stratagy is simple. Summon pet, buff with burnout give him a summoned staff of warding. Summon up some throwing daggers for pulling(they tend to not attract so much attention as a nuke). I camp near the intersection north of the EK zone. It is very important that you command your pet to guard the camp area. If he wanders around he will get you in trouble. When I see a mino I rush toward it and pull it with a thrown dagger. I turn toward my pet and run to him. I fire shield pet after I pass him. Then I turn, target the mino and nuke him 3 times. That is one big dead pile of Minotaur. Lotsa XP since he cons red and my pet still has 50% hp. Med up and repeat. If by chance you pull more then one mino or more then one additional muddy, I suggest a quick gate to avoid a beating. Thats it. The area is never camped and you could sit there from 16 to 20 and move up very fast.
I was looking after an 18 Cleric friend in the Gorge for a few hours last night and made these general observations:
1. These guys are tough, but hit a lot less frequently than Muddite Elders. The Cleric (with holy armor, center and symbol up, plus my fireshield) was coming through fights with 20-40% health left, and they con yellow. Muddite Elders conned blue to her and did similar damage, but hit more often.
2. The horns drop pretty frequently, almost every time. Other loot is the axe (normal rarity for a weapon) and some coins, but never much.
3. These guys are rare, compared to the gorge minos, and are like buses: that is, you see none for ages, then two or three comes along at once. Aggro'ing one of these chaps will also bring any nearby muddites above green con. Nasty.
4. At 18, they were all yellow cons. She dinged 19, but I had to log immediately after, so I couldn't ask her what they conned then - but the above comments pretty much confirm they vary.
5. They die really fast. As in, they fall flat on their face really quickly, none of this flailing around doing a B-movie actor death scene. :)
Was in the Gorge for the past couple days. I got bored waiting for my group members to come back for their corpses. so decided to take these on. Well I rooted and then 3 lightening bolts did them in in a hurry. The key is to root them as far away as possible so if you get a fizzle or it breaks too soon then you can root again and repeat. Plus it helps that each lightening bolt did 125 Damage.
I had the chance last evening to take on a few of these in a small group (2 druids 16, 18 - 1 shaman 20) and although we were able to take them down, they did put up quite a fight. We could have really used a tank. They were hitting for around 40 on their good hits, and have a decent bash as well. Fights lasted about 45 seconds or so, with Shaman and Druid DOTs, a flame lick, and a couple of DDs thrown in for good measure. They especially didn't like me (halfling Druid). And on one occaision, aggroed on me till I backed off at 2 1/2 bubs of health when it was also only 1/2 down.
I killed several chasm minotaurs last night. I had gone to the Maze for that purpose.
Most of them were blue to my level 20 shaman. Two were even. So while 18 seems fine as an average or common level, Trickle is correct: some are a bit higher.
Incidentally, I never got anywhere near multiple plat in coin from a mino, but I did get some minotaur battle axes that sell to vendors - even with my fairly low charisma - for over 3 pp each. I'm still old-fashioned (i.e., untwinked) enough to consider that "good loot" from a mob.
In the 20 or so of these that we have taken over the last few nights, we had about 3 mino axes, and 1 drop multiple pp (a 1pp and change split in my group of 3). So I have experienced the multiple pp coin drop, it seems to be pretty rare.
I'm a level 11 Wood Elf Ranger and was hunting muddite minors, when the druid in my group decided we should try one of these guys, it missed alot but when it hit it hit hard, there is no way we would have survived if a level 38 shaman hadn't come along and healed and buffs me. For all the trouble it gave no loot and 3sp. Oh well, it gave me the rest of the xp I needed for the level =)
More often the not, you can usually loot 3pp+ off of these guys. And as for their level, I went from no exp in lvl 17 to lvl 18, and they were always yellow or red. Their level is not static as it shows above.
They have the same faction as normal green gobos, something that I found odd is they are still agro to my L35 druid, so it's either because I'm a halfling or it's my faction. One nice thing about chasms is the loot, nice loot for the level.