There are two instances located in the predominantly troll held zone of Zul’Drak.  Both of these instances are filled to the brim with trolls just waiting for you to send back to their graves.  In Drak’Tharon you are likely to have to send them back to their graves since many of them are undead and serve the Lich King.  In Gundrak you get to learn a little more about the Ice Trolls and find out how they have been fending of the Lich Kings power in the area.

Heroic: Drak’Tharon Keep

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 of the 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.

Trollgore – This is the first boss in the instance and is almost a pure tank and spank.  The only complications are his consume ability and the additional trolls that come down the stairs throughout the fight.  Consume is a stacking 5% damage boost that he gains for each player that his Consume ability hits. It hits anyone in LOS of Trollgore every time it is cast, which is roughly every 15 seconds. Also, if any of the trolls reach Trollgore he will turn to them and hit and kill them.  Then later on he can cast Corpse Explosion and cause significant AOE damage to anyone nearby. 

The tank should hold him in the center of the room to allow a ranged player time to kill the incoming trolls before they reach Trollgore.  Past that just DPS him down before his Consume ability stacks past the healers ability to heal the tank.

Consumption Junction Achievement

To get this achievement you have two options. You can play it safe and use LOS to avoid letting Trollgore stack Consumption, or you can use big DPS to just burn him down before he gets 10 stacks.  With most groups at this stage in the game, just DPS him full out and you should be able to earn the achievement.  To do this you need to burn him down within 30 seconds or he will reach 10 stacks. Since he does not do much damage initially, many groups have the healer DPS to start with to help out.

If you do not have the DPS have the tank find a corner to tank him by and when players see Trollgore casting Consumption run around the corner to avoid it.  He will cast it every 15 seconds.  Using this method you have a significantly longer amount of time to defeat Trollgore as he should only gain 1 stack from being in LOS of the tank each time he casts Consumption.

Novos the Summoner – This fight is made up of two phases.  The first phase has additional creatures being summoned from the top of the stairs and running down into the room to help in the fight.  Periodically crystal handlers will spawn in the two halls leading into the room and enter the fight.  While this is happening Novos is protected by a force field that prevents all damage, until four crystal handlers are defeated.  Once four have been defeated his shield will disappear, the adds stop spawning, and phase one ends.

Once phase two starts all players switch to Novos and DPS him down.  He has no aggro table and is not tankable so everyone just needs to go full out on him.  He will cast spells at random players and summon undead to assist him.  Avoid any AOE spells he uses, heal and decurse affected players while killing him.

Once you are on phase two it’s a simple fight.

Oh Novos! Achievement

This is probably the simplest of the achievements in Drak’Tharon Keep.  Simply station a player on the stairs that can AOE DPS and burn down the adds as they enter.  Many groups will accomplish this without even trying for it.  The adds do not hit hard enough for most players even to need to worry about being healed, especially if you have a blood DK assigned to the stairs.

King Dread – This big dinosaur gives some groups issues, however he really is a big pussy cat.  The two main abilities to watch for are Grievous Bite and Bellowing Road, other than that he is a tank and spank.  Grievous Bite is an attack done to the tank that causes a large amount of bleed damage per second until fully healed.  Bellowing Roar is an AOE fear that sends everyone running.  Also throughout the fight he will summon raptors to assist him, if you have not cleared out all of the closest ones.

Simply have the tank pull him out of the room so that when fears take place players are not running into additional raptors or out of line of sight.  Also make sure the tank gets healed to full as soon as Grievous Bite occurs.  If those two things happen it is an easy fight.  Later in the fight when you do get additional raptors, just let the tank establish aggro and then burn them down.

Better off Dred Achievement

To accomplish this achievement you basically ignore the normal logic of the fight, minimizing adds, and instead pull as many as you can handle each time he finishes a fear.  The best way to do this is have the tank pull him into his pen and immediately get the 2-3 raptors nearby.  Have DPS drop them as quickly as possible and then grab additional raptors one at a time.  If you have a Hunter or Rogue that can misdirect to the tank even better, but any ranged DPS can pull the next raptor and then run past the tank and let them taunt it off of you.  Kill six raptors before you finish off King Dred and you will have this achievement.

The Prophet Tharon’ja – The Prophet is a large winged skeletal serpent found at the top of the keep.  The fight is broken down into two alternating phases.  The first phase is a simple tank and spank encounter where he is tanked in the middle while DPS works on defeating him. 

Occasionally he will cast Curse of Flesh and become mortal and turn everyone in the group into skeletons; this is phase two.  While in skeleton form players have four abilities.  They have a melee attack, a taunt, bone armor, and a drain life attack.  The tank needs to use the later three to hold aggro and last through the incoming damage.  The rest of the group uses the melee and drain life attacks to do damage and heal themselves.  While in phase two he will also drop poison clouds on the ground that do significant damage.  Make sure everyone moves out of these clouds and the phase is easy.

The fight rotates between the two phases until you have defeated the prophet.  Once you have you will earn the Heroic Drak’Tharon Keep achievement and can find your way out by dropping through the broken stairs at the far end of the platform.

There is no boss achievement for this fight.

Heroic: Gundrak Achievement

As with the Drak’Theron Keep 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 of the bosses. Keep in mind that on Heroic Mode Gundrak has an extra boss that is not available on normal mode.  Along the way look at the individual boss achievements as well. Done correctly you can finish the instance with five achievements completed.

Slad’ran – This serpent based boss is a complicated fight that hampers many groups progress through the instance.  The Tank must hold aggro on the boss while DPS runs in and out of range of the poison nova that he casts.  While attempting to avoid the poison players also need to deal with the many serpents that get summoned in to help Slad’ran throughout the fight. 

The snakes that are the biggest issue are the constrictors that attack players.  They stack up on a player and restrict movement and abilities over time, all while doing damage.  To deal with these you need to have a DPS assigned to kill them as soon as they appear.  Many groups will assign an AOE player and group them up by the tank and AOE them down from range.

Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes? Achievement

Taken straight out of one of my favourite movies, this is a personal achievement, not a group achievement.  While in this fight I can almost picture Dr. Jones saying the line.  If you do not get snake wrapped during the fight you will earn the achievement, regardless of the rest of the group.  This achievement is easy if you have solid AOE DPS in the group.  It can be made even easier with an AOE tank to attempt to hold all the constrictors as they are killed, however with a solid AOE DPS or two the snakes will die before they need to be tanked.

Drakkari Colossus – This is an alternating two phase fight that requires the tank to be on their toes since the colossus resets agro at each phase shift. The first phase involves fighting the Colossus itself, which is a pretty simple tank and DPS affair. When the Colossus gets to 50% living mojo will pour out of him and charge a random player, this is phase two.

In phase two the living mojo needs to be taunted back to the tank while DPS works on killing it.  During this time the mojo will place mojo puddles under random players.  These do a large amount of damage and last for roughly 15 seconds.  Players need to watch for and avoid these puddles.  Once the mojo is dropped to 50% it will merge back into the colossus.

You are back to phase one, and need to drop the boss to 1% health to re-enter phase two.  Once you do you can kill the living mojo to finish off the fight.

There is no boss achievement for this fight.

Moorabi – Moorabi is a very simple fight since he just needs to be tanked and DPS’ed down.  While he does have a stun and can transform into a mammoth he really shouldn’t present any issues to players.

Less-Rabi Achivement

This is one of the trickier achievements not because of difficulty but due to timing and lag.  To achieve it you need a few players that are capable of interrupting such as warriors, death knights, rogues, shaman and paladins, but really anyone that can pull of an instant interrupt is perfect, and the more the better.   He will first attempt to transform into a mammoth at 50% so have someone watch for it and be ready to interrupt it.  This first transformation is a long cast time, roughly 1 second.  However, once you interrupt the first cast he will attempt again every 5 seconds and the cast time drops in half.  This means that the longer you take to kill him the harder this achievement becomes.  If you take long enough that you have to interrupt it a fourth time it is almost instantaneous and very difficult to do. With enough DPS you should be able to defeat him before he attempts to transform the third time.

Eck – Eck is a boss that is only available on heroic mode in Gundrak.  Once you have defeated the three previous bosses you can find him by going down the tunnel that opens in Moorabi’s room.  Eck is a gorloc and behaves in much the same way as the morlocs that you fight through to get to him.  He will occasionally jump to the second highest threat player and switch their threat with the tanks. When this happens the tank needs to taunt Eck back to them. 

Eck has a frontal cone ability that applies a buff called Eck Residue.  This buff lasts for 1 hour or until death and really does nothing either positive or negative. It is only really important for an achievement with the last boss, however since it doesn’t hurt to get the buff (other than a little damage from the poison cone) you should get in front of Eck and get it.

Eck does not have an achievement directly associated with his defeat.

Gal’darah – This is the final boss of the instance and is a troll that can turn into a rhino.  The fight is relatively simple with the tank holding aggro while Gal’darah is in human form, while DPS watches and clears out from whirlwinds.  When Gal’darah changes into a rhino the situation reverses and everyone should get close so that they do not get charged and knocked back.  Also while in rhino form he will impale someone on his horn at random.  While this occurs that player will be out of the fight for roughly 8 seconds and taking damage.  Work through the two phases as he switches back and forth and you will have cleared the instance.

Share the Love Achivement

This achievement requires that every single party member gets impaled.  This is a little tricky since Gal’darah will not impale the person on the top of their aggro list.  This means that the main tank will never get impaled normally.  So to do this achievement you need to have a party member that is capable of off-tanking for enough time that the main tank gets impaled.  The best group to do this with is a healer, tank, DPS, and two that can off heal and off tank.  Start off with the off-tank tanking and everyone DPSing very lightly until the tank and any number of other players gets impaled.  Once the main tank gets impaled they should pull aggro and let the off-tank get impaled.  Once everyone has been impaled, kill Gal’darah as normal.

What the Eck? Achievement

This achievement is simply defeating Gal’darah while you still have the Eck Residue buff from Eck.  Since Eck is normally done right before Gal’darah most players will still have the buff anyway, just don’t die on the way.