World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

If you are looking to fill up your achievement points in Utgarde Keep, you will be sorely disappointed as there are only two achievements within the dungeon in addition to two meta achievements. That shouldn't stop you from enjoying all of the loot and amazing visuals though!

Heroic: Utgarde Keep
We'll start off with the easy part: Kill all the Bosses achievement, better known as "Heroic: Utgarde Keep." This is about as straightforward as you can get, as players need only to kill each of the four bosses (Dalronn the Controller, Ingvar the Plunderer, Skarvald the Constructor and Prince Keleseth) to receive the achievement. I'd say you can do them in any order, but you can't as each boss needs to be downed prior to moving on to the next.

It is critical to note here that the previous achievement is a requirement for the meta achievement of "Northrend Dungeon Hero" so sooner or later everyone goes to Utgarde.


On the Rocks
In addition to the general achievement listed above, there is a special achievement that separates the men from the boys called "On the Rocks." This is a difficulty achievement that you'll find in almost every instance in Northrend. It teases players who feel they have an encounter on farm status into trying it in a more difficult manner. These achievements are tough to get, and they are supposed to be. If you succeed in completing them all in Northrend you get a special meta achievement called "Glory to the Hero" which will reward you with Red Proto-Drake. Not too shabby huh?

I can see you saying "Medeor, I'd like that Red Proto-Drake, let me know how I can complete On the Rocks.” That's the spirit, let's get to it.

The achievement is gained through a special tactic against Prince Keleseth. Namely, the group must not break any of the Frost Tombs that the Prince places on the group. As you've learned from the boss strategies the Prince has an ability that places a Frost Tomb on a specific player in the group. Throughout the fight, there could be one, two or even three or more people encased depending on how long it takes to kill the Prince. In a typical fight, all DPS switches from attacking the boss to destroying the Frost Tomb and then back to the boss. To garner this achievement though, none of the Frost Tombs can be damaged and none of the group members can die if you all want to get it. There are reports of other group members getting the achievements while the person who dies in a Frost Tomb does not. Let's not try our luck and just get everyone through to the other side and we won't have to worry about it.

Overall Conditions and Concerns
How tough is it to live through this Frost Tomb? The heroic version of the fight causes players to take 400 damage a second for 20 seconds, thus 8,000 total damage. This in and of itself isn't too bad if the player is geared well from heroics and can withstand losing that much health. The issue really is two pronged:

• The Frost Tomb player is not contributing to the fight for 20 seconds and;
• The player in the Tomb needs attention (i.e. healing)

These two points alone don't seem very severe unless the person tombed is the main healer. More issues crop up if the main healer is tombed, namely that someone needs to heal the tank, and healers typically don't have much of a health pool so someone needs to heal the healer in the tomb. If anyone dies in a Frost Tomb, it is considered broken and so is your chance of getting the achievement on that run.

Strategies for Success
Any strategy for success is going to require multiple healers. These don't all need to be main-spec healers, but the tank is going to be taking damage in addition to the player in the Frost Tomb so it needs to be a competent healer. Damage must focus-fire on the boss to get him down as soon as possible. Since players won't be switching to break the Frost Tombs they should be pouring it on the boss.

The recurring skeletons will need to be picked up by the main tank and held. Keep someone on the lookout for the Decrepify disease to cleanse it. This part of the fight is more difficult without the use of AoE (AoE will damage the tombs and prevent the achievement), but you can throw a Priest's Shackle or other forms of crowd control on the skeletons.

Things to Watch Out For
Completing this achievement is different than just winning the fight. Essentially you have to do this fight with one arm (or player) tied behind your back. To complete the encounter in a way that adheres to the achievement, players can't do the following (as in DO NOT):

• Use PvP trinkets to get out of the Frost Tombs
• Use class specific releases such as Mages Ice Block or Blink to get out of the Frost Tombs.
• Damage of any kind to the Frost Tombs (even though they have over 7,000 hit points). This requirement keeps this encounter from being an AoE fest.

What Do You Get in the End?
And why oh why would you want to go through all of this mental anguish to get this achievement? Well, there are bragging rights of course, but more importantly, an excellent meta achievement in the form of ‘Glory of the Hero.” This achievement requires players to complete the difficult achievements like “On The Rocks” in all of the Northrend dungeons (20 achievements in addition to this one). Completing all of these will reward players with a Red Proto-Drake.