The hardest achievements

Every achievement hunter has wondered at some point “what is the hardest achievement there is?”. You don’t have to worry anymore my fellow Tibian, in this article we’ll discuss what are the most difficult ones.

What defines the difficulty level?

Referring to anything as “difficult” is highly subjective. What is easy for one individual may be hard for someone else and vice-versa. Of course, there are some limitations when it comes down to Tibia. Those limitations are mainly defined by three aspects: price, availability and dedication. Let’s discuss those aspects one by one.

Price

Starting with the most iconic item that is also part of an achievement: Ferumbras’ Hat (and the Alumni achievement). Have you ever wondered why is it so expensive? For older tibians, once upon a time Ferumbras was a real challenge and most players wouldn’t risk going near the citadel. Now he just dies very quickly and some lucky person gets the hat to sell or to use as an addon, twice a year. Of course there is also the quest boss, but the probability is very low and he can only be challenged every 2 weeks.

The same thing also applies to several other items related to achievements, from which we can mention as examples:

Achievement	Expensive items consumed
Alumni	Ferumbras’ Hat
Vortex Tamer	Crackling Egg + Menancing Egg
Running the Rift	Mysterious Scroll
Exalted Battle Mage	5 Sturdy Books + 20 Epaulettes
Hot on the Trail	4 Fiery Horseshoes
You Got Horse Power	4 Spectral Horseshoes + Spectral Horse Tack + Spectral Saddle
Unleash the Beast	The Skull of a Beast + Bracelet of Strengthening
Forbidden Knowledge and  Forbidden Fruit	Forbidden Fruit + Key to Knowledge + Forbidden Tome
Mystic Fabric Magic	Mage’s cap + Elemental spikes

If CipSoft suddenly decided that Ferumbras’ Hats were dropped by a normal spawning monster, soon the price would drop and the same applies to all items on the list. With those examples, it all comes down to availability, which is our second aspect to be discussed.

Availability

Let’s imagine the following scenario: unlimited money. You have unlimited access to Tibia Coins and even to real life money. What would prevent you from buying all the items listed in the previous table?

Notable items that everybody knows from bosses that everybody fights everyday are easier to find. But even with unlimited resources, would you be able to find 500 dry pieces of wood to buy? Or maybe 100 vampire tokens? All the needed items for the Glooth Glider mount? The Sturdy Books and Epaulettes for the complete Battle Mage Outfit? With several world transfers, maybe that would be possible, but would still require time and effort. Those two things combined are the definition of the third and final aspect.

Dedication

If you are not an achievement hunter, you’ve probably stumbled upon someone doing something quite strange and wondered “why is this person doing that?”. Well, chances are that he was doing something for an achievement. 

A level 1000 hunting water elementals? Someone walking back and forth on fire fields or underwater? A friend asked you to do the “A Pirate’s Death to Me” event with him? Or maybe to get the Port Hope lake dirty? All of those are perfect examples of try-hard achievements. They are not necessarily hard, but they will need a fair amount of time and/or money to be obtained. 

The best example of this specific difficulty aspect is the Nanny from Hell achievement. Any level 8 character without any money could fairly easily do all the required tasks, but this same character would take 5 years to get the achievement. It is not expensive and doesn’t involve any rare item or circumstance, it is just an yearly event.

The top 10 list

Ok, so if you’ve read the whole article expecting a list with the hardest achievements, we are not going to let you down! As mentioned before, this is highly subjective, but I am providing a list of the top 10 (actually 13 to be exact) hardest achievements, combining the three main factors explained above and their explanations on why.

• Exalted Battle Mage – the items are hard to obtain from bosses that are not oftenly killed, if not for accessing the last boss. If you are willing to go for it, you’ll need to do several transfers from several worlds to gather the items, pay a large amount of money for each and probably take months to do so. Of course, you can also set up your own team and fight the 4 mini bosses of the Secret Library (Ghulosh, Gorzindel, Lokathmor, Mazzinor) daily and try to get the addon items, but it will probably also take a long time.

• Hot on the Trail – it is still unknown how the loot of the Abomination works properly, but it is certain that it does not drop more than 1 Fiery Horseshoe per person and probably up to 3 per raid overall. You have to either be lucky enough in 4 raids to loot one of those or either have to negotiate on more than one server to have all of the 4 needed horseshoes. Since this is a very desired mount (even for a non-achievement hunter), the price won’t drop.

• Steppe Elegance, Falconer and Taskmaster – we have a whole article on bestiary and hunting tasks, but those three combine dedication and price at the ultimate level. Worth mentioning that completing Verminbane, Monsterhunter and Taskmaster will take at least 267 days (167 being for the last one), considering you complete 3 tasks per day (and have the additional task slot from the store)! Easy peasy!

• Fearless – this one is based on luck, but the problem is that you can’t try your luck very often. The world change is active around once every two weeks and you can click on a jar once per hour. The broken jars lead to Horestis and consequently to the Scorpion Sceptre, used to tame the giant scorpion. This is very profitable, making this achievement one of the hardest to obtain after it was discovered. Besides, it is also one of the achievements that took the most to be discovered. Talk about a mummy’s curse!

• Honorary Witch and Pyromaniac – we also have a complete article about the Bewitched event, but those two combine luck and price to a fairly high level. The ingredients are hard to put on the cauldron (given that there are lots of players there every 8 hours) and you can only do that on 12 occasions per year! The Dry Pieces of Wood can be put on the fire at any time, but finding all the 500 needed ones won’t be an easy – or cheap – task.

• Forbidden Knowledge – ask some friends of yours if they ever heard of a boss called “The Last Lore Keeper”. Ask them if they know there is a final boss for the imbuement shrines. Yes, most people don’t know or don’t care about this boss simply because he is not profitable at all. The mechanics are not trivial, it hits hard and you need a large team to fight it. Simply to (maybe) loot the Tome, Key or a Hammer of Prophecy and pray to find a buyer somewhere. Maybe that will change with the Bosstiary, but probably not much.

• Devovorga’s Nemesis –  this one is a nightmare for a lot of people. It is achieved by some people per year (from 5 to 10) that dealt the most damage to Devovorga. The problem is that this is a world quest, so most likely everybody on the server with enough level will be there. Chances goes up as you level up, but there are no guarantees what-so-ever. With the Bosstiary system, it will become even harder since more players want the entry every year. Maybe it would be wise to move to a less crowded server during the event?

• Knowledge Raider – this one requires a team, patience and some luck, but for a minimum of 8 days. In the Too Hot to Handle quest area, there are 7 tasks that you need to complete to advance in the quest. Doing 50 of those without failing any, grants you the achievement. If you fail any of them, the counter goes back to zero. The main problem is explaining to your team you need to continue doing those tasks after the last boss access is done. Not to mention that the creatures here hit very hard. My personal recommendation would be to do only the Gnomish Explorer and Wax Research and get it done in 25 days.

• Scourge of Death – like the one above, this one depends on your friends. If you have 3 people willing to literally lose some long hours of the weekend for no reason, then it will be a little easier. If not, probably you won’t find a team to do the quest with you. The event happens 7 to 9 times per year (one chance per month with some exceptions) only on weekends. The main problem is that each character has a soul mark that can’t be changed, so you would need to be real lucky for your friend to be of your marking or ask them to create new characters until one of them matches yours. The room also requires 4 players, so you can’t enter with less. Each run also takes exactly 7 minutes. Considering + 3 minutes to get the new pirates, it will take anything from 8 to 9 hours to complete the achievement. Real fun!

• His True Face – probably the most hated achievement of all achievement hunters. Simply because it is known how to obtain it during the quest and also very randomly by entering Armenius tavern. Some people have done it for years and still there is no consensus on how to obtain it, without being in a completely random way.

Once again, to define something as “the hardest” is very subjective, but this list certainly contains the thorn on a lot of people’s side. Two honorable mentions to make justice to the admins: Lucky Devil – not included because some people get it with very few water elementals/rusty armors –  and Umbral Master – the math average is around 2k Clusters per item, but it is entirely luck-dependent.

Missed any of your hardest ones? Don’t agree with the listing? Let us know in the comments below and let’s improve the listing together!