World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is considered the best World of Warcraft expansion by many players. It added the new continent of Northrend, the Death Knight hero class, the Inscription profession along with Glyphs, and some new game systems like the Dungeon Finder. It was also the expansion that added Achievements, which are awards given out for completing difficult or otherwise significant tasks.
As in other games, achievements in WoW are a popular pastime for players who need a goal to work toward, or who want to show off their accomplishments. In fact, they often come with unique rewards, such as mounts or titles. As one might expect, however, the best rewards come from the hardest achievements, some of which are true tests of skill and endurance. These are the ten hardest achievements added in Wrath of the Lich King, for players who'd like to be ready for its Classic release.
10 Well Read
An achievement to read 42 different books around the world, although in the case of this achievement, "reading" the book only means opening it to the first page. This achievement is time-consuming, but not the worst of them, since there are certain areas where players can find several books at once. Notably, Stormwind Library and Scarlet Monastery contain several of the necessary tomes.
The main difficulty of the achievement is that at least one of the books will be located in one of the opposite faction's settlements, making its activation a risky task. With a guide, it should be possible to minimize risk and time taken, and Rogues and Druids can read without breaking stealth, making those classes ideal for claiming the achievement.
9 Frostbitten
This achievement requires the slaying of 23 rare creatures that appear in Northrend. Rare spawns can be difficult to track in MMOs since they can take a long time to appear, and players hunting them run the risk of their prey being killed before they can reach them. The ability to fly cuts down on travel time, but it still stings to have to track so many rare targets.
One trick to quickly identify the necessary creatures is to make a macro, a custom command that players can set up themselves. The right macro will automatically target any of the creatures listed within range, making it a solid strategy to fly across the continent while mashing a custom button. The setup is a little unusual for new players, but several Warcraft fan sites go into depth on the subject.
8 World Explorer
Exactly like it says, this achievement is awarded to players that explore the entire world. Even in the early days of Warcraft, with several fewer continents, this one took some real effort. Plus, WoWClassic (including the Lich King expansion) doesn't allow flight in Kalimdor or the Eastern Kingdoms, meaning most of the world must be explored on foot.
Using the map to guide progress is useful since unexplored areas are "greyed out". Unfortunately, this method isn't perfect: some explorable areas aren't marked on the map and have to be tracked with the in-game achievement menus. The plus side is that anyone playing Burning Crusade Classic can start on this achievement now since map completion carries over into Lich King. It's worth it, too, for the all-purpose "Explorer" title.
7 Accomplished Angler
Becoming a master fisher doesn't sound too bad compared to exploring the entire world, but the complete package of fishing achievements is trickier than it appears. This achievement requires a huge collection of fishing feats, requiring fish caught from every type of school, and one fish caught from an opposing faction's capital.
The real roadblock, though, is sub-achievement "One That Didn't Get Away," which requires the player to catch one of several rare fish. Unlike Frostbitten, it only takes one, but each fish has such a low chance of appearing, any one of them could take days of fishing to catch.
6 The Loremaster
Similar to World Explorer, this one requires a massive expedition across the world, but it's a lot more involved, requiring hundreds of quests completed across every zone in the game. Modern Warcraft, despite having more quests, makes the process simpler by highlighting quest givers and providing objective tracking. In Classic, however, players have to find everything themselves, or use addons.
It's not as deadly as World Explorer, since Alliance and Horde tend not to quest in each other's zones. It can also be worked on ahead of time, since quest completion is permanently tracked. It could use the extra time, too: no matter how one looks at it, this represents a huge time commitment.
5 Glory of the Icecrown Raider
For the most part, raid achievements aren't too hard to get. A group of overgeared players should have no trouble completing optional challenges in difficult encounters. Icecrown Raider is a little different, though: when Lich King Classic releases, it will be very difficult to overgear the Citadel. The achievement can be earned by beating the bosses on Normal mode, but they'll still take a coordinated group to pull off.
This achievement comes in two varieties: 10-player and 25-player. 10-player raids are easier to manage but require more responsibility from each participant, 25-player raids make it easy for strong players to carry weaker ones, but are harder to schedule and organize. Both are worth pursuing, since each version rewards a different version of the Frostbrood Vanquisher, a skeletal dragon mount.
4 100000 Honorable Kills
PvP tends to be the most difficult challenge in any game, as well as the most random. Several PvP achievements in World of Warcraft require rare victories, such as rounds in which the opposing team never scores, but these can happen anytime, even in randomly formed battlegrounds. The real difficulty here comes from raw grind.
The requirement for an honorable kill is fairly low. Players will typically get credit, even if they're only responsible for a portion of the damage on a killed enemy player. A hundred thousand of these, of course, will inevitably take a very long time. Current Classic players can work toward this one already, but the Lich King battlefield of Wintergrasp is a great place to hit lots of bunched-up targets.
3 Mountain o' Mounts
Mounts are a popular reward in World of Warcraft, often given out as a reward for maximized reputation with in-game factions. This achievement, however, requires 100 of them on a single character, which includes nearly every possible mount in the game. Therefore, this achievement requires Exalted reputation with several factions, several rare enemy drops, and high-value PvP rewards, as well as the cash to buy them all.
This is easily one of the toughest achievements from Wrath due to the sheer breadth of requirements. It makes a lot of sense to do other achievements first, since those are simpler and often award mounts themselves.
2 Insane in the Membrane
This classic achievement was added to see how far players would be willing to go. It requires maximized reputation with eight different minor factions. Reputation grinds are some of the toughest in World of Warcraft, often requiring days of kill farming. Making matters worse is the fact that two of the factions, Booty Bay and Bloodsail Buccaneers, are mortal enemies, requiring players to reach Exalted with one, and then take the other to Exalted all the way from Hated!
There are a few tricks for farming kills and reputation that apply here. The simplest is the human racial ability to receive increased reputation gains from all sources. But whatever the method used, this achievement will come down to grinding for kills for a very long time.
1 What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been
Despite its extreme requirements, Insane in the Membrane is still doable in a couple of weeks of focused grinding. That is not true of this last achievement: collect achievements from eight world holidays. There's no getting around the fact that the minimum amount of time it takes to earn this achievement is just under a year.
Most of the holiday achievements aren't too difficult, usually requiring a simple interaction with the festival stands set up for each holiday. Some require finding specific races or classes, which aren't guaranteed without someone willing to make an alternate character, and some require visiting several allied cities. Nothing insurmountable, but failing to meet even one of the requirements before the holiday ends prevents a player from earning this achievement for an entire year. That risk makes this the hardest achievement in WoW Classic.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic will be released on PC in 2022.