How to complete the new Battle for Azeroth meta achievement, coming in patch 11.0.7

With the release of patch 11.0.7, in addition to heading to the Siren Isle to advance the main story of The War Within, those of us who are completionists and achievement hunters will hopping into portals that take us back to Zandalar and Kul Tiras to do a new Battle for Azeroth achievement.

At the end of Dragonflight, the all-encompassing expansion-wide achievement A World Awoken was added which rewarded players with an extremely good boy mount, Taivan. At the same time, Shadowlands got an equivalent achievement, Back from the Beyond, rewarding the most ambitious Maw Walker players with Zovaal’s personal Shadebeast mount. I’ve already started a first draft of which achievements will likely be required a future The War Within meta achievement, even though we might not see it drop for a year or more.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that such achievements won’t solely be added going forward , since the next content update adds a meta achievement for the Battle for Azeroth expansion. Let’s dive in to it and find out which achievements will be easy and which are hydra-headed grind monsters that you should probably start right now.

Battle for Azeroth: A Farewell to Arms

The new achievement, A Farewell to Arms, rewards Jani’s Trashpile. Jani is the loa of discarded things, and throughout BFA we found him in various heaps of garbage sticking up for the less fortunate. We don’t know too much about this mount yet, but it looks like a ground mount that transforms your player rather than one you ride atop (in the vein of Sandstone Drake).

The achievement itself essentially requires you to complete just about all of the stuff that BFA entailed. You’ll be headed to three zones each on Zandalar and Kul Tiras, plus the island of Mechagon and the curiously dry seafloor zone of Nazjatar. You’ll need to conquer all of the dungeons and raids, find treasures, feed dinosaurs, read books, eat mushrooms, and /love a whole lot of critters.

How much work you have cut out for you depends on what you already have accomplished. If you’re a long-time player and you’ve already got your Fourth War ribbons, you might just need to fill in some of the corners. If you picked up World of Warcraft for the first time after 2020, you may never have set foot in any of these areas — but don’t panic! Now that Battle for Azeroth is three expansions old, your level 80 characters will feel like demi-gods as they blast their way through these achievements in significantly less time than they required when they were the current end game content.

How to complete the Battle for Azeroth meta achievement

To start, you’ll need to clear eight of the dungeons and all four and a half of the raids. Don’t worry, you won’t need to complete the “Glory” meta achievements that consist of all of the wacky ways to win each boss battle. Just running through the instance and smashing every boss will get you Battle for Azeroth Dungeon Hero as well as the five raid achievements:

• Uldir
• Battle of Dazar’alor
• Crucible of Storms
• The Eternal Palace
• Ny’alotha, the Waking City

Luckily these raids are now very solo-friendly, so you should be able to breeze through them with minimal headaches. Pick your favorite of the raids to work on Dressed to Kill: Battle for Azeroth, as you’ll need to collect four full sets of transmog. Included in that achievement are the four seasons of PVP sets, so if you get sick of slogging through Uldir you can always spend some Marks of Honor at your War Headquarters (Mugumbala for Horde, the docks in Boralus for Alliance).

Each of the eight main zones has its own meta achievement, which includes hunting rare mobs, collecting world treasures, completing world quests with twists like time crunches, and doing all of the fun zone-specific stuff that makes World of Warcraft more than clicking on animals and turning in quests. These will take quite a bit of time, even following individual guides for all of the components.

The good news is that a mid-level meta achievement is getting added for the six zones across Zandalar and Kul Tiras, I’m on Island Time, that awards a Honeyback Hivemother mount. Mechagon and Nazjatar have existing meta achievements that award a Mechacycle and crab mount, respectively.

You’ll need to play through all of the story of the whole expansion — a tall order, considering that this content was originally spread out over 27 months. Make sure you’d got your diplomat shoes on, as you’ll be required to reach revered with the six main factions. Some components are easy to knock off the list, like exploring the map, completing world quests, and professing your love to all the critters you see.

Another big set of items on the checklist are all of the end-game content meta achievements. These are some of the tasks that you might spend weeks (or more) grinding the same content or waiting for the right drop.

• Expedition Leader for gathering Azerite on Island Expeditions (thankfully with the PVP component removed)
• Full Heart, Can’t Lose for upgrading your Heart of Azeroth
• Black Empire State of Mind for defending the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and Uldum from N’zoth’s assaults
• Through the Depths of Visions for repeatedly preventing Horrific Visions of Stormwind and Orgrimmar from becoming reality

Buckle up for island-based fun

The best advice that I can give for trying to tackle this monstrosity of an achievement is to keep in mind that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Unless you have a head start from putting hundreds of hours into the game during Battle for Azeroth, it will take a long time to accomplish everything on the list.

What part should you focus on? You’ve got to at least get the main story out of the way before you can advance much further down the checklist. Unlock some end-game content and add it to your weekly list of things to do in The War Within. Frustrated by the next Delve tier? Head over to Uldum to blast your way through invading void forces while you’re practically invincible.

Use the rewards within the overarching achievement as checkpoints. Don’t be afraid to step away from the expansion for a week (or much more) if you’re growing weary of the Kul Tiras seafaring soundtrack.

Mostly, it’s about getting started and staying organized. Sit back and watch the expansion’s cinematic trailer (definitely in my top three), make yourself a checklist, and get to work.