This guide belongs to Dulfy. All credit to her, you can visit her website for the original guide: dulfy.net
Bitter Harvest
This is a pretty short instance and I believe all of the achievement can be done on the first run. However, Untethered is currently bugged and there isn’t a good trick I am aware of to bypass this bug.
Line of Fire – 5 pts
- Reward: 3 Crystalline Ore
For this achievement you just have to kill the two Mordrem sharpshooters stationed to the left that you would not otherwise kill if you just followed the story path.They are right after the first cutscene where you tell Kasmeer to scout ahead. Simply glide to them at the located indicated below and you should be able to reach them easily. Do not try reach them from the side as it is not high enough for you to reach them.
Air Superiority– 5 pts
- Reward: 3 Crystalline Ore
This should be done at end of your story instance as the game places a checkpoint near the top of the moving helix and you can just keep trying this achievement until you get it. It isn’t a hard achievement, you just need to fall through the cracks and reach the bottom. Given there is a time limit of 10 seconds, you can deploy your glider maybe once or twice if you feel that you are about to die on the way down.
Untethered – 5 pts
- Reward: 3 Crystalline Ore
According to the description you just need to get to the top of the moving helix without getting hit by the orange circles that spawn tendrils. However, this is not true. You must comply with the following requirements.
- Do not die once in the instance.
- Do not get hit by the orange circles on the way to helix.
- Do not get hit by any of the mobs.
Basically what you can do is via one of the two ways. If solo, you need a stealth class (i.e. thief or mesmer). You start the instance and run all the way to Zoija without killing any mobs (the vine wall to Zoija opens automatically once you arrive at the area). Do the part to free Zoija and Logan then invis your way up the helix, running around the vine walls and avoiding the orange circles.
If you don’t have a stealth class, you can get someone to clear the path up the helix and you just run up after. Of course the same requirement still apply such as not dying even once during the instance and don’t get hit by any of the orange circles.
Hearts and Minds
The achievements in this instance are fairly frustrating since you need to do this long instance multiple times and one of the achievement does not have a restart button so if you screw up you will need to redo the whole instance over and over with unskippable cutscenes.
Dream Warrior- 5 pts
- Reward: 3 Crystalline Ore
- Perquisite: Completing the Hearts and Minds story instance one to unlock it.
To get this achievement, you will need to run this instance a total of two more times after the initial story version. You can only recruit two allies per instance, forcing you to run the instance again for all three.
Braham will trigger the Blighted Eir fight. The big thing with this fight is killing Blighted Garm first and then Eir will try to revive Garm. You will get the chance to do max melee dps to her when she is rezzing Garm. Eir has a sniper like attack that is easy to avoid if you are moving, a fire circle attack that applies stacks of burning, and Garm will try to immobilize you. Bring a ranged weapon and kite Garm down while pay extra attention to the fire circles and use condition cleanse to remove the stacks of burning and immobilize as needed. Swap to max DPS melee weapon for your class once Garm is down and Eir tries to revive him.
Canach will trigger the Blighted Canach fight. For Canach you will want to bring some crowd control abilities like stun/daze/knockback to break his breakbar at end of the fight as the shield that the real Canach give you is bugged and doesn’t do anything to Blighted Canach’s breakbar. With Blighted Canach you have to watch out for his grenades. The big yellow circles are his burning and bleeding grenades while the small ones are his stun grenades.
Caithe will trigger the Blighted Pale Tree, which is one of the most annoying bosses out the three. Every 25% The Blighted Pale Tree will become invulnerable and summon adds that will walk to her. If you do not kill these adds and they reach her, they will give her a stacking buff that increase the damage of the charged up attack that follows after this invulnerable phase. The charged up attack does have a long animation so you can try to time that and dodge.
Past 75% the Blighted Pale Tree will uses her circular attack which is basically an expanding orange circle that gets bigger and bigger as she gets lower in HP. Below 25% is the “enrage phase” where she will keep spamming her circular attacks while constantly spawning adds that will walk up to her. Basically you need to kill her quick before her damage get buffed up too much that she one shots you.
Migraine – 5 pts
- Reward: Crystalline Ingot
- Perquisite: Completing the Hearts and Minds story instance one to unlock it.
You can unlock Extreme Mode by interacting with the orb next to Trahearne. This extreme mode is designed for 5 player parties and be prepared to spend hours on it. I would advise you picking Braham and Canach as they are much easier than the Caithe option as Pale Tree requires some really high DPS checks in extreme mode. If anyone in the party dies during a fight, they can only watch from above and cannot rejoin the fight.
- Blighted Eir: Brings lots of condition cleanse as the fire circles give you tons of burning stacks (5-80 stacks). The goal here is to burn Garm first and basically focus on surviving when Eir uses her fire circles. Once Garm is killed the first time, Eir will revive him to like 25% HP (sometmes Garm will regain full HP) and your goal is basically kill Garm quick forcing Eir to run back constantly to revive Garm. If you kill Garm fast each time, Eir won’t be able to use her fire circle attacks and you can just dps Eir when she revives Garm and repeat this like 10 times to finish the fight.
- Blighted Canach: For Blighted Canach you need everyone to bring utility and skills that can break defiance bars. Some classes are really good for this like chronomancers (F3 shatter, gravity well, Tides of Time, Daze mantra etc) and Revenant (staff #5 skill). Blighted Canach has a really long breakbar in extreme mode that requires everyone to use their break bar abilities. Don’t even bother with standing behind Canach or use his shield in extreme mode as they do not work. Just focus on breaking Blighted Canach’s bars and the fight isn’t too hard.
- Blighted Pale Tree: I have not attempted Pale Tree in extreme mode but from what I heard from other players this fight requires very high DPS check and need a good party composition that can dish out quick burst damage. The reason it needs high DPS check is because of the adds that will explode if they reach the Pale Tree and the explosion is map wide and undodgeable. Additionally, past 25% adds will spawn continuously and either you kill them fast enough or your party will take massive damage (info courtesy of Arrow/Ather).
Flights of Fancy- 5 pts
- Reward: 3 Crystalline Ore
- Perquisite: Completing the Hearts and Minds story instance one to unlock it.
This can be a pretty frustrating achievement since the Retry Mote on Mordremoth fight does not reset the achievement so if you failed it you will need to repeat the whole instance and watch the unskippable cutscenes again.
The requirements for this achievement is to not use the shield bubble that protect the NPCs, not touch the ground, don’t get hit by rocks and avoid the torment orbs that spawn in the third flight phase.
There are three flying phases to the Mordremoth fight. The first phase is after you killed the two Blighted NPCs and is fairly easy as Mordremoth does not throw rocks at you. All you need to do is to make sure you get airborne in time by running (not jumping) into one of the updrafts that spawns. After that it is simply a matter of staying in the air by using the updrafts until the air phase is finished.
For the second phase, it gets a bit harder as Moreremoth will throw rocks at you. I personally find a couple things that helps with this. Lean Gliding Techniques may give you enough airspeed to avoid some rocks but it is a hit or miss. If you are high enough in the air, you can try to drop and redeploy your glider when you see a rock coming. Additionally, flying a good distance away from Mordremoth may help as rocks will have a longer travel time and you may hit an updraft while the rock is traveling to you and avoid the rock completely.
Third phase gets interesting since not only Mordremoth will throw rocks at you, he will spawn spawn orbs in the air that will attempt to damage you. If you get hit by even a single orb, you will disqualify for the achievement. The goal here is to completely avoid the area these orbs are while dodging rocks from Mordremoth and hope you don’t fall down to the ground for whatever reason.
There is a way to “cheese” this achievement and get it done easy by having the person needing the achievement killing themselves before the flying phase of the Mordremoth fight and they can just chill while rest of the group finish the fight.
