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Last week me and few others finally completed long journey of Glory of the Ulduar Raider (10 player). I know by now some of the challenge has weared off when everyone is wearing better gear and all that but it still was fun and at least somewhat challenging effort. By the time Trial of the Crusader rolled out I had got really tired of Ulduar… but after not going there for a while it felt nice and refreshing again which made this achievement all the more fun to do. It took fair few weeks since we really didn’t go there more than once a week for 3 hours with maybe couple exceptions. Extended raid lockouts really came handy with this since if we’d had to re-clear every time it would have taken way longer.

Now when I’m not so much tied up with *cough* Dragon Age *cough* anymore let’s take a look on all of the meta achievements required for this one.

Orbit-uary (10 player)

My least favorite fight with the most annoying way possible.. blergh. My role every time was just to be shot up Leviathan and destroy the turrets. Can’t say there’s much to it. I use Wild Magic Potion first time I’m up there but beyond that there’s not much to do than just blast away. When I was back at gunner spot on Demolisher all I pretty much did was shot down Pyrite and loaded it. Can’t really speak for other vehicles and how difficult they were since I’ve never done anything else.

Stokin’ the Furnace (10 player)

Speed kill and hence not much special to do… pew pew.

Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare (10 player)

This is one of those achievements you’d call ’silly’. Razorscale’s flame breath does 15k damage so you need to keep those Guardians alive and under 15k health. What you should do is just have one tank pick all Guardians, have someone DPS them a little but not too much since the NPCs also attack them and if you bring them down too soon you risk killing them. If you do not DPS Razorscale at all you get more tries on flaming the dwarves. You’ll most likely hit the enrage timer once and wipe, but on 2nd pull you miss only few dwarves and can do DPS on Razor too.

Heartbreaker (10 player)

You kill the heart and XT gains damage and health boost, gravity bombs spawn void zones and light bombs spawn adds to be killed. It’s only really about more intense healing, being more careful with gravity bombs and killing the spawning adds asap since they damage the whole raid when they’re up. Really simple all in all.

I Choose You, Steelbreaker (10 player)

Heh what am I going to say about this.. my job is always so easy. The challenge in this is for the healers and tanks.. so I as DPS don’t have much to worry about. Don’t die and dps as well as you can?

Disarmed (10 player)

DPS left arm down to low, DPS middle to less than 30% but not under 15%, keep killing right arm until Kologarn is under 30%, then kill both left and right arm under 12s from each other and you win. Can’t say there is much to it.

Crazy Cat Lady (10 player)

Do what you’d normaly except do not kill the cats. Once again nothing I as DPS didn’t have to worry about.

I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare (10 player)

Oh look a DPS race. Free mage first, try to stack buffs as well as you can, DPS the heck out of it and you win. Use Wild Magic Potion when you got storm buff, moonlight buff and lunar eclipse.

Lose Your Illusion (10 player)

Reach Thorim under 3 minutes, stay spread to avoid chain lightning jumping, stand away from walls to avoid blizzard, when you see lightning charge building up run away from that side of the room. Shapeshift if you got slow effect from Sif’s frost bolt. When running away from lightning charge it’s hard to keep the spread and avoid chain lightning but it would be worse to get hit by lightning charge. Just run back once it’s safe again and keep the optimal spread.

Knock, Knock, Knock on Wood (10 player)

Leaving the Elders alive mostly just means she and her adds will hit harder. You’ll do what you’d do normaly anyway.. just do it better. Although now you also need to free rooted people. As a druid you can just shapeshift out of them but not everyone has that luxury. I found it handy to have a macro with /target strengthened iron roots to quickly get them down.

In my opinion this is one of the harder achievements in Ulduar. It’s not overly complicated or anything but it’s a lot of different stuff you need to do which makes it very technical.

Firefighter (10 player)

Ok this was the hardest by far in my opinion. Very big awareness fight.. there’s tons of stuff that could kill you if you’re not paying attention. Also it is heavy on movement so as balance druid it was a nightmare.. we get very heavy penalty from having to move around and losing eclipse time. I really enjoyed it though. This for me felt greater than anything since Sartharion 3D back in the early Wrath.

I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning (10 player)

Err… what the.. This was way way easier than I would have thought. All I did was exactly same thing as on normal mode. Avoiding shadow crashes is very easy, only thing where you really have to shape up is when you got life leech and well.. that’s not so difficult either. My screen lights up like xmas tree when I got it so.. hard to miss and not move. I suppose it’s just how fast you pick a direction to run to. I think the challenge was again on the healers since they could not get mana back with the crystal pools.

One Light in the Darkness (10 player)

Had not seen this guy for a good while so it was somewhat about re-learning the encounter again. But then again… you do not have to do anything special. Do what you’d do on normal mode anyway, just do it better.

All in all it was really fun experience doing all these achievements. Now when they are done we’ve had couple tries on Algalon and so far.. well. It does not feel impossible but it needs some work. I’ll be sure to at least tweet about it if something fancy happens.

Thanks for everyone who participated in doing this stuff, including you special guest stars who filled in few times.