The Ironbound Proto-Drake is easily one of the best-looking mounts in World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King Classic, but acquiring such a beautiful mount isn’t easy. The drake can only be obtained by unlocking the Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player) meta-achievement. Which, in turn, requires players to complete no less than 13 different achievements while raiding Ulduar.

Related: Rarest Mounts In Wrath Of The Lich King & How To Get Them

Needless to say, obtaining the Ironbound Proto-Drake is far from easy, but it’s not impossible. This is not to be confused with the Time-Lost Proto Drake, which is obtained by other means. Provided you’re running Ulduar regularly with a good raid group, of course. If you are, keep reading because this guide will give you some useful tips and tricks on how to clear all the required challenges. The achievements can be completed in no particular order so don’t worry about having to do them in the order listed here.

Lose Your Illusion

You can unlock this first achievement by defeating Thorim on Hard mode. Activating Hard mode requires the raid to engage Thorim in less than three minutes after starting the gauntlet. Clearing the gauntlet in less than three minutes is pretty difficult in and of itself, but that’s nothing compared to fighting Thorim on Hard mode.

In this mode, you have to fight a supped-up version of the boss while Sif is still present and hostile. Sif is immortal so make sure to focus all your efforts on the boss instead.

I Choose You, Steelbreaker

This next achievement can be unlocked while fighting against the Assembly of Iron, a trio of bosses comprised of Runemaster Molgeim, Stormcaller Brundir, and Steelbreaker. To get the achievement you simply need to kill Molgeim and Brundir before killing Steelbreaker during the encounter.

It’s worth noting that each time you kill one of the bosses, the remaining ones get healed to full health and become more powerful. Steelbreaker is the strongest of the three, so you don’t want to leave him last under normal circumstances, however, that’s the only way you can get this achievement.

I Could Say That This Cache Was Rare

This is a timed event where you need to defeat Hodir before he destroys his first cache. This event happens three minutes after the encounter starts and can’t be stopped or delayed. The Hodir fight is pretty gimmicky so don’t even try going for the achievement without doing it on normal mode or checking out some walkthroughs first

Related: WotLK Classic: How To Get The Reins Of The Ice Mammoth

High DPS is the name of the game here so make sure your raid contains more damage dealers than usual for this encounter. Also, try to free the Mages first after every Flash Freeze to increase your chances of success.

Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare

Razorscale is a captive Proto-Drake you’ll encounter pretty early on inside the raid. Razorscale looks just like the Ironbound Proto-Drake mount. You’ll need to fight her while also dealing with waves of Dark Rune Guardian Dwarves.

To complete the achievement, you’ll need to get the boss to kill at least 25 of these dwarves. To do that, you’ll ideally need two tanks and your party needs to get the mobs to low health without killing them. Then, unleash Razorscale and position the dwarves in front of her so they get hit when she uses her breath attack.

Knock, Knock, Knock On Wood

This one is pretty straightforward. To get the achievement all you have to do is defeat Freya without killing any of the three Elders.

The Elders won’t attack when you engage Freya, so you can just ignore them and make a beeline straight for the boss. However, keep in mind that ignoring the Elders activates Hard mode, which makes Freya stronger.

Crazy Cat Lady

This achievement works similarly to the previous one. You’ll need to defeat another boss without killing her allies first. In this case, the boss is Auriaya and her allies are four panthers known as Sanctum Sentries.

The difference is that the Sanctum Sentries accompany Auriaya as she patrols Ulduar and there’s no way of engaging the boss without also aggroing the adds. The best way to complete the challenge is to bring some extra tanks that can hold off the sentries while the rest of the raid fights the boss.

Firefighter

Unlocking Firefighter requires your party to defeat Mimiron on Hard mode. You can activate Hard mode by pressing the red “DO NOT PUSH” button found behind the boss. Make sure you’re ready for one hell of a fight if you decide to push it because doing so will make this encounter significantly more difficult.

Related: WotLK Classic: How To Get The Mimiron's Head Mount

Not just that but the button also activates Mimiron’s self-destruct mode, which gives your party eight minutes to complete the encounter. Once the time is up, the entire raid will be wiped and you’ll need to try again. That button label was clearly there for a reason.

Heartbreaker

For this one, you’ll need to defeat XT-002 Deconstructor after destroying his heart. The heart becomes vulnerable when the boss reaches 75%, 50%, and 25% health, respectively. During that window, the heart can be damaged but only remains vulnerable for 30 seconds.Your party needs to be able to dish out A TON of DPS to destroy it in that short amount of time.

A big catch here is that XT-002 Deconstructor gets a massive buff to his health and damage once its heart gets destroyed. The boss also gets healed to full health and gains new abilities when that happens.

Disarmed

To get another step closer to obtaining the Ironbound Proto-Drake mount you’ll also need to complete Disarmed, an achievement that requires you to destroy Kologarn’s arms before finishing off the head quickly afterward.

When one of his arms is destroyed, the boss loses 20% health, so 40% once both of them are gone. You’ll want to get the head down to about 50% before destroying the arms. That will leave Kologarn with only 10% health left after his arms are destroyed. You’ll only have 12 seconds at your disposal to deal the killing blow and get the achievement, but that should be plenty of time to shave off the remaining 10% of health.

Orbit-uary

The Flame Leviathan fight is one of the most memorable boss encounters in Wrath of the Lich King Classic, perhaps even in all of World of Warcraft. But it can also be one of the most frustrating encounters, especially if you enable Hard mode, which is needed for the Oribit-uary achievement.

Related: WoW Classic: Mounts Only Available in Northrend

Flame Leviathan’s Hard mode has multiple tiers and this needs to be done on the highest one. To enable it, you’ll need to defeat the boss with all four Orbital Defense Systems active. Each tower gives the boss an extra ability and makes the fight progressively harder. Needless to say, activating all four will make the Flame Leviathan extremely powerful.

Stokin’ The Furnace

Stokin’ The Furnace is the easiest achievement on this list. The achievement just requires you to defeat Ignis the Furnace Master in four minutes or less.

This is definitely going to be a bit of a challenge, but there are no extra mechanics to worry about here. Just make sure the DPS is up to snuff and you’ll have this one in the bag in no time.

I Love The Smell Of Saronite In The Morning

This one requires you to defeat General Vezax after killing the Saronite Animus. The achievement can be a bit tricky if you don’t know how the encounter works but once you figure it out it’s pretty easy.

Throughout the encounter, General Vezax spawns a total of six Saronite Crystals. Normally, you want to destroy these crystals to allow casters to benefit from the mana regen. But if you don’t destroy them, the six crystals will eventually combine to form the Saronite Animus. Just let the Animus form, destroy it, and then defeat the general afterward and you’ll be good to go.

One Light In The Darkness

The final achievement needed for the Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 players) and the Ironbound Proto-Drake is One Light in the Darkness. This requires you to defeat Yogg-Saron with the assistance of just one of the four Keepers.

If you want to go for full bragging rights, you can attempt to defeat the Old God without the assistance of any Keepers. Doing so will grant you the achievement Alone in the Darkness, which also counts towards Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player).

Next: Awesome Side Quests You Need To Do In Wrath Of The Lich King Classic