Hmm. Probably to pick off the Hill Giants and minions on patrol in the surrounding countryside to get some extra XP to hopefully get over the hump. Failing that, doing the same thing by approaching through the orcs and working on taking out the fortress while avoiding the main bulk of giants.

We were properly leveled when we went through and taking out the orcs, then going in and taking out the hill giants in the cave by the stockyards before going down and taking out the Ettin and bugbears in the pigpens was enough that we felt we needed to retreat after rescuing the captives that we had gotten to.

If we hadn't rescued any captives, then we probably would have killed the Hill Giant butcher and then gone up to the kitchen, rescued the halfling there from the goblin chefs, and then finally decided we needed to retreat long enough to have a Short Rest at least.

Our initial plan before the captives was to kill our way in through the orcs, down through the under level, then out to the other side to eliminate the hobgoblins before we tangled with the main mass of giants or tried to lure elements of the giants out where we wouldn't have all of them engaged at once.

Turned out that there were a lot less rooms in Grudd Haug than we had thought.

If I were sitting in the room, I would advise them to go in through the east, go in through the cave entrance, and clear out the bottom level, likely short-resting after the first Hill Giant fight depending upon how good your Wizard is at Hypnotic Patterning them and how good your party is at quickly killing a lone hill giant while takingm minimal damage. Then continuing on until the entire understory of Grudd Haug is nothing but the party, its minions (none of them can recruit those boars, can they?), pigs, and corpses.

After that, depending upon how they feel, harassing the giants or attracting their attention to send the gobbos on down to see what's going on down in the basement would be the next move, that or waiting until night time and going up into the hall and out into the western watch tower part to try to stealth kill the hobgoblins under cover of Pass Without Trace.