With the Wrath of the Lich king cycle for World of Warcraft almost complete, it is time for everyone to finish up all of their achievement goals.  For many players that means finishing collecting...

With the Wrath of the Lich king cycle for World of Warcraft almost complete, it is time for everyone to finish up all of their achievement goals.  For many players that means finishing collecting all of the Heroic mode achievements.  This guide walks you through getting all of the achievements in the two 5-player heroic instances located in Ulduar. Those instances are the Halls of Stone and the Halls of Lightning.  Each consists of four bosses that must be defeated to earn the instance achievement and several boss specific achievements.

Heroic: Halls of Stone Achievement

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This is the standard achievement for defeating each instance on heroic mode.  Simply make your way through the instance (while on heroic mode) and kill all four bosses. Each boss requires a little bit of strategy, however being a mere heroic the strategies are generally pretty simple.  Brief explanations for each boss are given below, as well as more detail regarding the achievements that you can accomplish for each boss.

Krystallus – This is the first boss most players face, although you can fight them in any order.  When you come to the three way split in the instance simply turn right into the rock tunnel area.  When you get to Krystallus he is a very simple tank and spank fight with one big twist.  Occasionally he will place a debuff on players and then do an AOE knockback.  From the time you get the debuff you have roughly 6 seconds to separate away from other players.

As long as you spread out once you are knocked back you will take very little damage.  If you cluster up next to another player you are both likely to die.  Each time he knocks you back, spread out, wait for the shatter, and then go back in to DPS him.  Most groups will defeat him with only a single shatter phase, good groups can defeat him before he does a shatter.

Krystallus has no boss specific achievements.

Maiden of Grief – This is another simple fight with only a little going on.  In most cases it is a healer intensive fight unless the healer has HOTs available. The tank basically holds the Maiden of Grief in place until she places a large black void zone on the ground, then moves her away from it.  Occassionally she will cast the spell Shock of Sorrow which damages all players and then puts them to sleep for roughly 10 seconds.  When players see this being case they should all move into the void zone.  Any damage wakes them up, so if you time it correctly you will enter the void, fall asleep, take a single tick of damage, wake up, and then run out of the void zone. 
If your group has issues with damage taken and healing through this fight it is recommended that just the healer run into the void zone so that they wake up right away.  The fight is relatively easy once you know it.

Good Grief Achievement

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This achievement is very simply a DPS race, and it isn’t even a very hard one.  No different strategy is required, you just need to ensure you have DPS that are at least Naxxramas 25 geared.  I have seen the fight completed in less than 25 seconds on several occasions, so less than a minute is almost a gimme achievement with any amount of raid gear.

I like this achievement since it reminds me of Charlie Brown. I think of him saying Good Grief after Lucy pulls away the football for the millionth time. This achievement comes across to me as Charlie Brown (your group) getting his revenge on Lucy (the Maiden). Maybe it's only my overactive imagination, but picturing Charlie Brown beating down Lucy makes me smile!

Tribunal of Ages – This is a wave based fight where you need to escort Brann Bronzebeard to an archival room and then protect him from several waves of creatures.  The guards will appear from just outside the room and need to be grabbed by the tank so that players can DPS them down.  As the encounter continues the adds come quicker, in greater number, and the room defenses start doing more damage.  Any player that can misdirect to the tank (like a Hunter or Rogue) should do so to help control the adds.  Players with slowing effects can also help.  Because the fight is timed and takes a while, players should try to minimize damage taken to help the healer get through the fight with mana.  Once the room starts to use the third defensive measure (the laser beams) players need to watch for it and move away quickly if they are targeted.

Brann Spankin' New Achievement

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This achievement is one that is easy to get as long as you have players that are watching and preparing for each additional wave of guards.  The key things to do to earn this achievement is to tank the guards on the stairs right at the entrance to the room, and to always save AOE for when new guards are entering the fight.  Paladin and Death Knight tanks make quick work of this achievement, while Warriors and Druids may need some assistance.  As long as all the guards are damaged as they enter the room they will aggro on a player and not Brann, therefore they will never hit him.

Sjonnir the Ironshaper – Sjonnir is the last of the four bosses in the Halls of Stone.  To reach him you must successfully defend Brann and then talk to Brann to send him to unlock the door to Sjonnir’s chamber.  Throughout the fight adds are spawned from both sides of the room and need to be either killed or tanked along with the boss.  Also during the fight Sjonnir will put up a lightning shield that hurts anyone nearby.  It can be purged or stolen though, and as long as it is melee can stay in with the tank the whole fight.

The easiest method is to misdirect all adds to the tank and burst down Sjonnir as quickly as possible.  Alternately if you have DPS to spare or healing becomes an issue have a single DPS assigned to take out the additional creatures.

Abuse the Ooze Achievement

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This achievement confuses many players and is generally the hardest in the instance to complete.  This is because the Iron Sludges are not spawned as one of the adds, instead the oozes that are spawned while Sjonnir is between 50% and 25% turn into Iron Sludges upon touching Sjonnir.  This means that you need to burst him down to 50% and then stop all DPS on him while you wait for oozes to spawn.  Once they do, allow them to reach him and become Iron Sludges, and then dispatch them.  Once you have killed five of them return all DPS to Sjonnir to kill him and get your achievement.

Heroic: Halls of Lightning Achievement

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As with the Halls of Stone achievement this is the standard achievement for defeating each instance on heroic mode.  Simply make your way through the instance (while on heroic mode) and kill all four bosses. The bosses in Halls of Lightning are a little more difficult than Halls of Stone, but with just a little bit of strategy you will be ready to waltz your way through the instance and earn this achievement.  Along the way look at the individual boss achievements as well, done correctly you can finish the instance with four achievements completed.

General Bjarngrim – The general is the first boss in the instance and patrols around the first walkway that you come to.  To fight him you first need to clear the guards around the section of walkway where you want to fight him.  This is usually the right hand lower side, but can be either side.  Once the area is clear, wait for him to patrol near and have the tank engage. 

Once the tank is engaged you simply need to have him faced way from the group, since he has a frontal cleave attack.  He will have two adds with him that need to be killed first, as they heal him.  Once they are down DPS should switch to him.  Every once in a while he will whirlwind attack hitting everyone around him, so melee DPS needs to watch for this and back away.  Also, when he cleaves he applies a mortal strike debuff to the tank, so healers need to watch for it and heal through it.

Lightning Struck Achievement

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This is only slight variation from the normal fight, and one that many players complete by accident.  It is also a great achievement since it probably is paying homage to the AC/DC classic Thunderstruck. Before General Bjarngrim patrols to the outer platforms he stops at the inner ones and becomes buffed with an electrical charge.  This charge allows him to do more damage which makes the fight more healer intensive.  It really isn’t that hard though, so go for it the first time through.

Volkhan – This is another simple fight.  Every once in a while Volkhan summons two Golems who have their own aggro table.  When they reach 1% they become brittle and will freeze in place.  When Volkhan stomps it will cause any brittle golems to shatter and explode.  This explosion causes a lot of damage to anyone near the golems, so when you see shatter being cast, everyone should run away.

Shatter Resistant Achievement

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This is another relatively easy achievement that you have two choices on how to achieve it.  The first is to simply burn Volkhan down faster than he can summon out and detonate two groups of Golems.  This is pretty easy to do with any raid geared group.  The second option is to have a player grab aggro on the golems and run them away from Volkhan.  As they take damage they slow down, so drop them to 50% or below and anyone can kite them easily.

Ionar – Ionar is a lightning elemental that often breaks into balls of lightning that chase players down before he reforms. This is an annoying fight for many groups.  Not because it is difficult, but because it can take a significant amount of time.  There are two methods to defeat him.  Both involve avoiding him when he becomes the balls of lightning, which can not be harmed.  Some groups spread out on his platform and just dance around the lightning which randomly chases players. Other groups choose to run back down the hall in the direction that they came from and wait until he reforms.  Both methods work, the first is faster, assuming players can react quickly and stay spread out.  

Loken – The only difficult part of this fight is deciding if your group can out heal the Lightning Nova or if you need to clear away from him.  If everyone in the group has over 16,000 health it is strongly suggested that everyone just stay in melee range of Loken the whole fight and eat the lightning nova.  If not everyone in the group does, then players with less than 16,000 must run away from Loken when he starts casting Lightning Nova and then run back into melee range as soon as he has finished.  Either way as soon as Lightning Nova damages everyone, the healer gets all players health back to maximum in preparation for the next nova. Other than that it is a DPS race.

Timely Death Achievement

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This achievement needs everyone to be in raid level gear and to just burst DPS Lokin down.  You can finish him off very easily with only mediocre DPS of 2,500 DPS per DPS player.  If you have a hunter for a nature resistance aura, and an AOE healer it helps a lot.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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