Excelsior

Forget using Detect Hidden, it is worthless. If memory serves me correct, if you attack the Shadow Knight with your pets by using the "All Kill" command, when he goes and hides, they will track him for you. Just use the reveal spell and target the tile in front of their noses.

Keep in mind when attacking the Dark father with your pets, you will become a target pretty quickly by all the mob spawns, not just your tank; so you better be ready to heal both. If you have issues doing both, you may have some trouble there. Once you call out "All Guard", then no pet is attacking Dark Father and all eyes are looking at you. If you can handle that scenario, then you should be good to go. If you are not sure, then I suggest you take your pets to the Vampire area outside of Umbra and try the Black Lich Lord there. If you can handle that, then Dark father is the same. It is just that BLL is better guarded then DF. You need to clear them out first, not an easy task. If you want to know how to handle the mobs ahead of the BLL using pets, I can let you know in another thread.

Good luck on your next attempt and may you get many drops for your efforts.
P.S. It is a lot faster and easier if you go there with help and usually more fun.

Another neat little trick is Bleed Attack. Use it before they hide, and they bleed out at the new location. Target the blood with reveal and youre set.

Detect hidden used to work well, but all of a sudden it stopped working one day. My belief is that it was removed by colibri for some reason as I used to use it exclusively with ease. The pet thing is the quickest method but there are some great ideas here from others that I havent thought of doing too.

thanks for all your help guys, the only interesting thing, is i did that black lich guy outside of umbra, and completely tore his face off, with just two mules, he didnt summon any baddies though...i dunno. he was probably scared of me.

and the arrow was pointing right at him

Most likely you were targeting the wrong square. The arrow points in the direction you have to move to get to your quarry. It DOES NOT point the foe himself. Just move step by step in the direction of the arrow to get to the spot he's hiding at. I think the arrow points to the north if you stand on top of him.

Thank you all for your help.

However, I must say, I completed my first two solo rounds of the gauntlet, and was quite unimpressed with it LOL, only two mules, and me, had no problems at all, though it did take a while to beat down dark father. But, my efforts for getting screwed the first time were not without reward, on my second trip, on the 5th boss, I got a Bone Crusher!