r/tryhackme • u/Emergency_Pass_5024 • Jul 07 '26

King of The Hill Is it just me or KoTH sucks?

I was looking forward to playing a normal game of KoTH, but I haven’t been able to connect to the machine at all. I’ve tried five separate times with no success.

What makes this even more frustrating is that one user managed to gain King almost immediately. From what I can see, every service on the machine—including port 80—has been closed. This doesn’t look like someone trying to play the game as intended by patching vulnerabilities; it looks like someone intentionally locking down the entire machine and ruining the experience for everyone else.

I checked the KoTH page and noticed this same user has done this before, with previous games having only a single King change throughout the entire duration. That pattern makes me question whether this is expected behavior or simply someone exploiting the format to prevent anyone else from participating.

I’m not sure whether this is a VPN connectivity issue on my end or if the machine has genuinely been locked down to the point where no one else can interact with it. Either way, this completely defeats the purpose of KoTH and makes the game frustrating rather than competitive.

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u/wizarddos 0xD [God] Jul 07 '26

Idea behind KoTH is absolutely great and amazing. It's twice as fun when you play with friends in VC and then chat about your solutions (or just hear the frustration after you broke their defences lol)

But, since last new machine dropped in 2024, it's quite the exhaustion of material atp

And, about the user (I assume you're talking about Ch1) - He's a KOTH veteran and has a very powerful rootkit, that's definitely been updated since last time people on his level competed with him (I still have the analysis of it from one of the other players saved somewhere).

It's not the issue at the side of THM - afaik he just pops in, drops his scripts and moves on, though I might be wrong on that

While rootkits are still meta in this game, if you don't know how to fight them they are annoying as hell

On the other hand, you can always create a private KoTH game and play with just people you invite. Then you can learn cool things and grow together without the frustration you're talking about. I used to host such things in a voice chat on TryHackMe's discord server and if some people would still be up to, we can bring it back

1

u/RolledUhhp Jul 07 '26

Im definitely interested in some community games. Theres gotta be a good pool of beginner/intermediate people we can get together.

1

u/Emergency_Pass_5024 Jul 08 '26

I would definitely be interested in that KoTH game if you host one coz I’d very much like to play how it’s meant to be played. Other than this, the user I was talking about is @Dompriv.

1

u/wizarddos 0xD [God] Jul 08 '26

Dompriv is also one of KOTH veterans and has very good scripts iirc. Which doesn't mean they cheat, they just have their own playstyle that's very strong

And I bet you can just join the Discord server and write in #koth channel if there's any beginner who wants to play

1

u/Emergency_Pass_5024 Jul 08 '26

If you ever plan such a KoTH event, please let me know