Quick Facts

Series

1.	Three Lights in the Darkness (25 player)
2.	Two Lights in the Darkness (25 player)
3.	One Light in the Darkness (25 player)
4.	Alone in the Darkness (25 player)

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Videos

Comments

Comment by 195063

A reference to the game "Alone in The Dark", the original of which was based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

Comment by Yuka2

This is Yogg-saron's Hardest Hard mode , if for some reason , your guild manages to do it FIRST on your realm , your e-peen wil grow by getting the title "<Name>, Death's Demise.

Comment by 112652

This is also not part of the new 'Glory of the Raider', one watcher being the preferred option. This suggests this is noticably more difficult.

Comment by Arathanar

This achievement is NOT required for the Ironbound Proto-Drake. One keeper alive is.

I shudder to think how hard this will be.

Comment by SgtShinobi

Considering that if you do the fight with no keepers, you lose (compared to a fight with all 4 keepers)

40% additional damage dealt (All four Keepers give a 10% damage buff)
20% Increase Healing (Freya)
20% Increase Movement Speed (Mimiron)
20% Reduced Damage (Hodir)
20% Increase Total Health (Thorim)

Information taken from http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=851

Comment by pyrokin

It is worth mentioning again that this achievment isn't even required for Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar Raider, one keeper is (Heroic: One Light in the Darkness). This says to me that blizzard didn't what to totally block the meta achievment for all but the algalon-elite level raiders. Therefore I expect this hard mode to seriously be one of the hardest encounters in ulduar, up there with Heroic: Firefigher and Algalon himself.

And I have to say examining the effects of zero keepers on the fight doesn't do anything to dispell that belief.
Copying from odok's excellent comment on the Heroic: One Light in the Darkness page.

Freya -- Resilience of Nature and Sanity Well
Mimiron -- Speed of Invention and Destabilization Matrix
Thorim -- Fury of the Storm and Titanic Storm
Hodir -- Fortitude of Frost and Hodir's Protective Gaze

Therefore for this fight reletive to having four keepers there are the following differences:

You will be WITHOUT all of the below which are conferred by the permenant buffs from the keepers (copied from SgtShinobi up the page)
40% Increased damage dealt (All four Keepers give a 10% damage buff)
20% Increased Healing (Freya)
20% Increase Movement Speed (Mimiron)
20% Reduced Damage (Hodir)
20% Increase Total Health (Thorim)
Also, throughout the fight you will be deprived of an extremely useful safety net: Hodir's Protective Gaze. This means that if you die, you die. This may not sound like much because for most other bosses this is the case but it is useful and will be missed.
Then there is the lack of Sanity Wells meaning there is no way to restore your sanity at all during the fight. None. this means everyone must be very careful not to be driven insane, making sure to avoid unnecessary sanity loss, and even then the number of randomly targeted sanity reductions make it so you could just get unlucky.
Once you reach Phase 2 the fun really begins. ALL of Yogg-Saron's tenticles attack two times as fast and cast four times as fast as they would if you had Mimiron's Destabilization Matrix. This massively increase the need to control the number of tenticles with high dps and will be extremely challenging considering that you have lost +40% damage from the keepers.
Lastly in Phase 3 it all gets chaotic. Without Titanic Storm the Immortal Guardians are just that, immortal. They can and should be reduced to 1% health because the more HP they have the harder they hit but they cannot be killed and must be offtanked.
They are especially dangerous because they have several ways to heal themselves. Empowering Shadows is cast by Yogg on a preselected guardian and as the guardian cannot be killed to prevent this healing an offtank will need to drag the selected guardian away from the pack and Yogg-Saron so only it alone is healed. And these mobs have a powerful Drain Life which will make them incredably dangerous as more and more spawn.
This transforms what was a fairly tranquil Phase into a mad dash because I honestly do not think any group could endure long against a horde of immortal monsters that keep healing. AoE will probably need to switch to the pack of monsters (although if they are tanked close enough to Yogg he can be hit at the same time) to keep their health down so the tanks can last.

TL;DR, this fight looks like a real badge of honor and the cool title it gives for realm firsts will merit a huge amount of prestiege. Good luck to anyone who tries this, you'll need it.

Comment by 26767

Having done the Yogg-Saron encounter a few times with varying amounts of keepers, this achievement makes me want to cry just thinking about attempting it.

Comment by 46059

Add to that the Buffs mentioned in the previous post and the fact that Yogg even with all 4 watchers helping is quite tough, making this Achievement truly truly hardcore, I doubt many servers will have the realm first completed before the next raid instance launches.

Seeing as a lot of guilds have One Light in the Darkness now, it is only a "short" amount of time before guilds kill Algalon and start to work on this Achievement for their titles.

Comment by 331744

Now proved to be harder then Algalon

Comment by 163544

They are especially dangerous because they have several ways to heal themselves. Empowering Shadows is cast by Yogg on a preselected guardian and as the guardian cannot be killed to prevent this healing an offtank will need to drag the selected guardian away from the pack and Yogg-Saron so only it alone is healed. And these mobs have a powerful Drain Life which will make them incredably dangerous as more and more spawn.

This isn't true. We're not sure of the mechanics behind it yet, but it certainly isn't just one guardian that gets it. If it was, this wouldn't be that big a step up from One Light.

EDIT: We now believe that he casts this on a number of Immortal Guardians equal to one third of the total amount which have been summoned so far, at least when there are no keepers up.

Comment by 267615

The extra loot dropped by him is indeed http://www.cuckhead.com/?spell=63796 a hefty reward for a hard achievement.

Comment by Crasht

Easy strategy for Yogg + 0

1. Bring a flashlight.

2. Turn on the god damn flashlight.

Comment by SpartanCaliber

Not exactly true. You forgot the base for both crusader aura. Such that a normal person goes at 100% movement speed and does 100% damage. If you have a 100% mount (mere simplicity and that all 80's have 100% mounts on land.) with crusader aura granting a 20% increase -> (Normal movement + Mount) x Crusader -> (100%+100%) x 120% = 240% speed, such that you're riding a 140% mount. The damage is calculated correctly however.

So you will lose 1.10*1.10*1.10*1.10 extra damage = 46.41% extra damage instead of 40%, which can change the whole fight.

Comment by Nerxedion

Wait...
You are not alone in the darkness... there are 24 more raider to help you. ^^

To those who are rating me down: it is a joke

Comment by sonicknight

Honey turn out the light

Comment by 338600

This achievement and fight is based on a game called Eternal Darkness for the Nintendo Gamecube I believe. In that game you had a sanity metre. And if it got to zero it was pretty much game over. And the closer to zero this sanity metre got - your toon would get scared, jumpy, see things that were not there (pretty much hallucinate), and other such things a really scared person would see/do.

Comment by 664443

Alone in the Darkness has become easier in the meantime, but it's still not an easy achievement. It's harder than most of the ICC heroic encounters. Even in full 264 gear or better. But you have one big advantage now: You can nuke phase 3!

Step 1: Survive phase 1 and 2.
If too many people die, abort the try. You won't have enough damage in phase 3. Keep your combat rezzes for really good trys and use them and the end of phase 2.

Step 2: Minimize your loss on sanity.
Don't panic if you lose sanity. Psychosis is random. You can reach phase 3 with 100% sanity. And you can get to 0% sanity, even if you didn't make any mistakes. It's pure luck. Avoid messing around with malady and brainlink. You'll need the sanity for phase 3.
Another important thing in minimizing sanity loss is, needing as few portal phases as possible. You can do it in 1 portal phase in 10 player mode and in 2 portal phases in 25 player mode. Don't use heroism/bloodlust in the brainroom, or other cooldowns. You'll need them in phase 3. Use 3 melees and 1 ele-shaman, moonkin or shadow in 10 player mode. The caster heals while the melees kill the tentacles. When the tentacles are done, he will do damage on the brain. 8 melees + 2 healer in 25 player mode.

Step 3: Get a good transition into phase 3.
If it's likely that you must leave the brainroom at 31%, then slow down the damage a little bit earlier. We had it once, that dots brought the brain down to 30%, while we had 1 freshly respawned crusher tentacle and a corrupter tentacle, when we entered phase 3. This will be a wipe! You won't have the time to kill remaining tentacles in phase 3.
If the brain is already very low when you enter the brainroom for the last time, slow down the damage! The range DPS will still be on the remaining tentacles outside. Give them as much time, as you can. Communicate in Teamspeak/Ventrilo/etc to know, what's happening outside. The range DPS should have killed all tentacles and gather at the entrance. That's where the melees will come out if they leave the brainroom. So the entire raid will be together when phase 3 begins.

Step 4: Kill and loot!
Phase 3 has started. Everyone is alive? There are no tentacles left? The entire raid is grouped together? Good! You're not far away from your kill. Pop heroism/bloodlust + all your other CDs and nuke Yogg. Don't care about the adds. People that are low on sanity should stop damaging Yogg and focus on the adds. The adds will do less damage, if they're not on 100% life. This will give your mates a little bit (not much) more time to kill Yogg before the raid gets overrunned by the immortal guardians. No one should be overtaken by Yogg. A player that does (nearly) nothing is better than a player that fights AGAINST you.
Tanks (we did it with 1 tank in 10 player mode and 3 tanks in 25 player mode) must just keep the adds away from the healers. Tank them AT LEAST 20yards away from Yogg. It is a common misbelief, that you should keep the adds low and interrupt, so they don't get healed. You can interrupt drain life. But that's not the source where most of the heal comes from. It's Empowering Shadows (Empowering Shadows). And that's how it works: Yogg marks 1 (10 player) or 3 (25 player) immortal guardians. They get a huntersmark over them and will be renamed to "marked immortal guardian". 10 seconds later, they get a buff and heal everything in 20yard range. Even Yogg! That's the reason why you have to tank them 20yards away from Yogg. If you don't do that, Yogg will get healed for more than 2 million life (25 player mode). The only way to avoid that, is taunting them and kiting them away from the other adds. This is not easy. Especially not in 25 player mode, where you have 3 marked immortal guardians. That's the way how it was done back in patch 3.1. Don't do that. Just nuke him, how described!

Comment by 664443

Yogg got a new ability with patch 4.0.3a. People that get traped by constrictor tentacle, will be thrown up in the air, when the tentacle gets killed, and receive about 50% fall damage. This got us into some troubles, when we killed Yogg+0 again, shortly before the release of Cataclysm.
But this will not be a big problem at Level 85. If you're playing right, you won't drop that low, that you have to worry about the 50% fall damage. Cataclysm makes many wotlk boss mechanics absolutely trivial. Hitpoints got multiplicated by more than 5. In the last 2 addons, the hitpoints have only been doubled. Visit Algalon again, and you'll laugh about his collapsing stars and big bang. We have also done Yogg+0 at Level 85. It was a oneshot.

But don't think you'll PUG that, with 25 (or 10) green/blue geared (with no enchants/gems on the items, of course) retards from the tradechat, that have never seen anything higher than Saurfang on non hc mode. A friend told me about a PUG that had more than a douzen wipes at Yogg+1. 25 Lvl85 characters wiping on Yogg+1... I don't understand how that is possible. But well, you know how some people are.

If you really want to PUG that, do it via calender invite. Get friends, friends of friends, friends of friends of friend, etc. If you still have to fill some slots, get people from the tradechat that have killed at least Yogg+4 (look up on armory if they say the truth). If you don't find people who meet this criteria, get at least people that have ICC hardmode experience pre cata or ToGC experience pre ICC.

That's the way I've done it in late WotLK, and it did work. So it should work now as well.

Comment by 166807

As of Cataclysm release, the mount (Mimiron's Head) won't be 100% drop anymore.
The drop rate has been highly decreased.

Comment by 53873

Managed to Pug this ach at 85(25 man).After 4 wipes i managed to do this with randoms.Need a lot of explain and nerves, but if u think of the 1% drop chance of the mount u go on.

Comment by Aerokinetic

Just got this and Drive Me Crazy tonight with my guild on our first try, no deaths.

Second guild on my server to get Alone in the Darkness :D

Comment by 696346

This achievement became easy to pug with a team of 20 or more raid finder+ gear. You can burn down the boss before sanity becomes a major issue.

Comment by smackthekids

Now officially solo'able!
Just did it today as an ilvl 562 Fury Warrior solo.
Because of the mechanics of having 0 keepers up, the fight is still absolutely brutal, and took a good number of attempts to beat it solo.

Rather than brag, anyone looking to solo this must have excellent movement and awareness capabilities. The small tentacles can not get off their cast(s), specifically black plague. This will cause a long debuff that CCs you, making you vulnerable to more debuffs, inability to avoid certain sanity losses, and not enough time on the brain or Yogg in the final phase before you are overwhelmed.
Even making it to the final phase with over 75+ sanity left, you must have insane DPS before the unkillable adds wreck you; as you will have ALOT of adds after 45 seconds into the last phase.

Good luck! And go get your solo Mimiron's Head!

Comment by Allara

I was able to easily one-shot this achievement as a hunter at level 90, as of patch 6.0.2. It does require some knowledge of the fight. You still have to kill guys near Sara at the beginning to proceed to Phase 2. I had a pet, so I was able to easily get out of Constrictor tentacles. I also knew to click the portals, to avoid facing the mobs/tentacles in the vision, and to kill the brain as quickly as possible. That took one trip through. Then in Phase 3, I was able to completely ignore the spawning mobs and just DPS Yogg down. For this phase, you still need to turn away during Lunatic Gaze.

Beyond those items, it's easily soloable now.

Comment by pouchhead

My brother and I just duo'd this on a 556 Marks Hunter and 553 Fire Mage. Since the stat squish, damage on lower level mobs is insane and it is VERY doable now that 6.0.2 has dropped, but still requires knowledge of the fight to accomplish. We had never done the fight before, so it took us three attempts to get down. But on the 3rd time, we had no problems at all. No mount drop this week, but it's going to be very easy now to take the hour (yes, 25m Ulduar can be cleared easily in the that time now) out of every week to go and try to get the mount.

Happy hunting to all who try!

Edit: As of the hotfix that was deployed on the evening of Oct. 16, damage in legacy content was nerfed and mob damage was buffed and this is just as hard (if not harder) as it was pre-patch. What a shame. My hat's off to Blizz once again: if it's not broken, make sure it is.

Comment by elbizarro

ELEMENTAL SHAMAN:
Pretty simple.
Position yourself in the edge of the pool, where portals spawn. Finish two tentacles with earthquake and enter portal. DPS visions and burn CDs in the brain.
Back to Yogg I just used 2 casts, turn my back... 2 and turn... And he is dead.

I think all classes can do the same.

Comment by Frostbite64

Just soloed tonight as a 556 elemental shaman with the legendary cloak. This was probably one of the most frustrating and difficult things I've done solo for two main reasons.

One: STUNS! Malady of the Mind and Black Plague paired together with the tentacle throwing you around in the air can be super annoying. There is no rhyme or reason behind how black plague stuns. Sometimes it will go seven seconds without stunning you, other times it will be constantly interrupting you.
Two: Luck. Most of Phase 2 is luck with how the tentacles spawn and what the corruption tentacles hit you with. Right before phase two starts, drop an Earthquake at your feet to kill the constrictor tentacle that picks you up. Prioritize corruption tentacles over crusher tentacles and try and kill them all as soon as they spawn.

Phase 1 is pretty faceroll, just get a few mobs and kill them on top of Sara. Phase 3, what worked for me was completely ignoring the adds. Keep pressure on the boss and make sure you turn around when lunatic gaze happens. Keep pushing the boss during the healing stages and he should go down before you get overwhelmed by adds. If you can help it, try not to use your cooldowns when you are in the brain chamber, it will just make pushing the boss in phase 3 easier. But ideally you want to kill the brain in one entry to the chamber so if you have to blow cooldowns do so.
Hopefully this helps elemental shamans or any other class trying to solo for the mount or fragments of val'nyr. Good Luck!

Comment by natassja72

Shadow Priest

Here is how I've done it on my second try (6.0.2. prepatch, lvl 90):

First phase, with Sara, is trivial, just one shot the mobs that spawn.
On next phase I used Fear Ward and made extensive use of Shadow Word: Pain, which is the best way to deal with tentacles, because it's instant, deals damage upfront and has no facing requirement. You can spam it and need not to worry about mana, because in 6.x.x we no longer go OOM. I also used Halo. Make sure to stay near center, so you can easily click portals once they spawn.
Once inside, just one shot the yellow mobs with single application of Shadow Word: Pain and make sure you have Devouring Plague ready to throw on brain when you get to him (it's a room adjacent to the one you get teleported to after clicking portal). At that time, I still had roughly 24 sec remaining before timer ended, so I applied DoTs and mind flayed a few times - that killed the brain and last phase began so I got teleported outside.
Now on this last phase don't worry about the Immortal Guardians, they will not kill you, and also they are not killable. Use them to apply SW:P for instant Mind Blasts on Yogg (pick Shadowy Insight talent for this) to build orbs for Devouring Plague and just keep DoTs rolling on boss. I wasn't really paying attention to Lunatic Gaze, because my Insanity stacks were still very high and I preferred spending my free time inbetween stuns on damaging the boss. This phase lasts too short to pick MindBender (you will not use it twice probably), so I preferred ShadowFiend.

Comment by Taus

In trying to solo this to mount farm I'm getting ridiculous amounts of sanity loss before I'm even out of the first tentacle. I'm faced away at all times, but I'm still getting hit for 8% at a time probably about five times right off the bad. Anybody running into this?

Comment by Tarika

Looks like on 100 it's not just easy, but pretty much done passively without knowing what to do. I actually missed end of Ulduar when it was actual, and never bothered to get to those achievements ever since. I killed Yogg a few times in high level pugs, but without really knowing what's going on.

And here I just went to collect some old achies, looked up there is one to do it without titan buffs... So I took none, expecting to at least see how it goes and to probably wipe. Done the 9 guardians achievement along the way.

And then, from my POV? Some tentacles spawn, I kill them... more spawn, I kill whatever's up... for about 5 min. I had no idea how to move forward. Eventually I noticed portals up (yeah, never seen them before, but thanks to its sound pretty sure they spawned at least 4 times before).

It got me ported to the throne room, where I killed a few yellow mobs, loosing about 30 sanity... then found out there's a big thing to kill at the end. Ok, done with that. Returned to see unkillable mobs spawning and my sanity dropping fast. But boss by that time was at about 30% (still not sure how).

Just burned it down and, to my surprise, the achi popped up.

My point is... yeah, you can probably do it now. :) If even my poorly geared (for lvl100) prot paladin could get it by accident, you surely can too. Just don't take the titan buffs and consider you have it.

Comment by Nironimus

As a warrior, the tentacles grabbing you can be very annoying - since most attacks require a specific position, and dangling upside down is not the right one.
I found that an easy tactic is to position yourself where the portals will spawn and just wait for them. When they are announced, pop Bladestorm and kill the tentacle that is squeezing you, and click a portal while bladestorm is still active. This gives you the most time in the brain chamber.

Comment by Dianora

Just ran this thing through with all 10 of my level 100. The biggest headache now is to wait through the fear. You can pretty much one shot the brain stage and come out and one shot the boss with sanity to spare. I don't think I was ever below 85% sanity.

Comment by adamfazai

WoD

Easy and fast way to Kill Yogg-Saron and get this achievement also the mount (Mimiron Head:
I avoid some bosses to reach Yogg-Saron fast

- Enter dungeon (25man)
- Talk to bran, jump on the bike and move fast -with speed boost (no3 action bar)- to the first boss, kill mobs then jump out of bike and fight the boss easily.

- Then go straight forward to Robot boss XT-002 (u can avoid 2 bosses on the way Razorscale and Ignis)

- Use Teleporter to "Antechanmber of Ulduar"

-Move forward (kill mobs on the way) and take stairs up to Kologarm
(here you can avoid two bosses as well (Assembly of Iron and Algalon)

- Kill Kologarn and pass him on the bridge and enter the main Ulduar Circle

-There is a Cat Lady boss "Auriaya" that you can kill her anytime as she passes, when u kill her the Teleporter on the Conservatory of life (the green jungle place) will be activated and u can jump to Mimiron (one of the 4 good bosses that u have to kill in order to open Yogg Saron Prison)

- From right enter the hallways and kill each of the "good!" bosses and free them :
If u need the mount u SHOULD NOT talk to any of these bosses for their help against Yogg-Saron: Hodir, Thorim, Freya and Mimiron

1. Hodir on halls of winter (note that he drops 2 loot chests on left and right of the room) exit after u kill him, come to main hall, enter second hall on the right where Thorim is
2. Thorim: enter the hall "Clash of Thunder" Kill mobs on the way till u reach the boss main hall.
You can see him standing up there-u should reach him and bring him down to start a fight:
- kill all the mobs, then on your left side of the room u see a door with a lever. if all mobs are dead u can click lever, open door, and go all the way to the boss, he will jump down
fight him and free him and come back to main circle hall
3. turn right and enter the green garden place where Freya is, better to kill mobs along the way and engage her fast and kill her.
on the way back if u already killed "Auriaya the cat lady boss" u can see the teleporter is activated and u can easily use it to go to "Sparks of Imagination" where Mimiron is (this takes less time than u take the train to him
4. Enter Spark of Imagination and engage Mimiron, 4 phase fight :
first three, each are a fight that u have to fight a part of a big robot, and finally he combine altogether and bring him down fast (PS: Dont push that buttom behind him that says do not push this bottom, if u do u will have a hard version of the fight that takes long.
After u kill him use portal again to Conservatory of Life

Now all of the Guardians are free and they are standing on the hallway, If u want Mount, do not speak to them to gain their help.

- Enter the Halls of memory (behind Freya), kill mobs and open the big door, go down and Kill General Vezaxx, the last boss before Yogg-Saron

Yogg-Saron: (u need to know that there is no worry for u to kill him, it is very easy)
Rule: If u lost your sanity (from 100 to 0) u will die, but dont worry ;) Sanity is a buff that u got from the boss as soon as u enter his room, u can see it near your map

- Go to the pool, and kill the mobs that Sara (the lady in the middle) spawns.
Look at her dialogues (red ones) as soon as you see: "I AM THE LUCID DREAM" get out of the pool.
The head of Yogg-Saron comes up, but still u cannot kill him, kill tentacles
If a tentacle gets u, simply right click on it to attack it or your pet comes to your help
**** You need to know when the Portal phase starts, it tells u if u have DBM
As soon as portals opens, jump on one of them
you will be in one of the couple of possible places, but the mechanics are same
Here is the most important part, u need to kill all the "Neutral NCPs" there, they have a yellow health bar on them, when u kill them (fast) u see the inside Mind of the Yogg-Saron (like octopi or something)
Kill it fast, and take the portal out (or u get out automatically)
U can Nuke the weakened Yogg-Saron now and loot him.

Good Luck

Links

Alone in the Darkness (25 player)

Defeat Yogg-Saron without the assistance of any Keepers in 25-player mode.

Alone in the Darkness (25 player)

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