Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

This achievement requires you to kill a total of 10,000 monsters across all your characters – if you get 5,000 kills with Alucard and 5,000 kills with Shanoa, you’ll be fine. Fortunately, there’s a nice way to track your kills on the ‘Select Character’ screen, so you can always check to see how far you need to go.

I’d recommend waiting to start grinding kills until after you’ve completed all the other achievements. You’ll obviously accumulate kills working towards the other achievements and the equipment you’ll acquire will make the grinding process that much faster, so try to do everything else first.

As for the actual grind, you have a number of reasonable options:

If you’re planning to grind by yourself, you should probably do so on normal. With your hard mode skills and equipment, you should have no trouble slicing through nearly every enemy on normal difficulty, leading to a much higher kills per minute than if you were to try grinding on hard. Of course, if you’re still looking to get some sweet loot, hard mode is your best bet, although you won’t get this achievement quite as quickly.

With that said, one choice for grinding by yourself is to run through the chapters over and over. You should be able to clear out an entire chapter (minus the boss) in 5-10 minutes, so it shouldn’t be too bad. To break the monotony a little bit (or, rather, shift its focus), you might want to consider some non-achievement related goals, like trying to collect souls for Soma.

You might also consider avoiding the bosses. Fighting bosses, even when you can easily destroy them with superior items, is probably more time consuming than they’re worth. Instead, you might want to have a suicide option prepared – traps are effective because they always deal the same amount of damage, or you can remove your armor at a book in the stage and then ram yourself into an enemy. The key is to make it as fast as possible, though, so if it’s easier to defeat the boss than to kill yourself, go for it. The power is yours!

A second choice is to find a place with a bunch of enemies, kill them, then kill yourself and start over. A couple of my favorites are the recurring Imps in Chapter 3 (located near the lever for the hammer and related re-cocking mechanism; they’ll stop spawning after you’ve killed about 50) and the Medusa Heads in Chapter 6. There are probably some other decent places, but I found those areas to give me the most kills per minute (about 150 kills in 7-8 minutes for the Imps, about 40 kills in 2 minutes for the first set of Medusa Heads).

A somewhat slower but much more entertaining option is to play with other people. Just join a team and get at it, choosing paths that will allow you to rack up the most kills. In Chapter 1, opt to take the right path to clear out the area under the boss (and kill a bunch of those Zombies along the way). In Chapter 2, take a minute to kill several Ghosts in the numbered rooms on either side of the map. You might volunteer to babysit the switch in Chapter 3 so you can keep killing those Imps, and you can take some time during Chapters 5 and 6 to dispatch some Medusa Heads.

No matter what you do, though, this achievement is going to be pretty slow going. By the time I’d finished all other achievements, I only had about 6,000 kills, and it took me on the order of 10 hours to get the rest of them. Granted, I didn’t spend that entire time solo grinding, so it could be done quite a bit faster, but it’s still going to be tedious and time consuming.

Quick summary:

- Try to do the other achievements first, as they will naturally contribute to your kills making the grind a bit shorter in the end.
- For solo grinding, either rush through the chapters or kill the Imps in Chapter 3 or the Medusa Heads in Chapter 6
- For grinding in a team, try to do things that will increase your overall kill count without distracting too much from the team’s objectives
- Consider working towards other in-game goals, like getting new gear, collecting souls with Soma, leveling Shanoa’s spells, or absorbing spells with Charlotte, to take your mind of the grind

One thing that no solution seems to mention but will save you time: you don't have to bother with killing yourself after you've emptied out your grinding spot!

Just hold A+B+X+Y+LB+RB for a second or two and the level will "fail," which is the same result as dying. You still keep your stuff and kills. It only works in singleplayer.

(Didn't want to post this as it's own solution but it's vital information that I didn't want to see lost in comments.)

I'll try and keep this short and sweet, since the achievement is pretty self explanatory. This solution should only be used if this is your last achievement left to unlock, unless you feel like putting yourself through more of a grind then you have to.
I just found this method for myself and am about half way to the 10k.
EDIT: done now!
Here's a quick breakdown
I personally think this is one of, if not the fastest way out there to rack up kills. At the very least it's one of simplest, since it involves standing there while enemies kill themselves!

What you'll need for this method
Character: Soma
Soul Equipped to RB: Buer level 9. (may work with lower levels but have not tested it.)
Required Game Progression: Chapter 6 unlocked

OR if you prefer Alucard here is an alternate means suggested by: Son of Kyuss Keep in mind that this solution was only edited at a later date to include Alucard, but because the process remains pretty much unchanged, the method I wrote for Soma is totally viable.
Character: Alucard
Spell: Soul Steal
Required Game Progression: Chapter 6 unlocked

Optimal Result of This Method: 37 kills per minute(slightly slower with Alucard)


Load up chapter six and proceed right. Kill the witch and jump up the platforms killing the thunder demon along the way. Jump up the next set of platforms in to the room with the 2 Sniper type enemies, kill them and move left in to the room containing the floating medusa heads. (Later Addition:If playing Alucard follow the same method as in the paragragh below but rather then using Buer, cast Soul Steal over and over. You will want to bring some MP restoration items as well as MP regen accessories such as Sage ring.)
This is where the Buer souls come in to play. For those unfamiliar this soul is one of the more handy ones, it creates a rotating shield of fire around Soma that damages enemies. It's dropped by the spherical enemies that roll across the floor. (check your in game enemy info for more specifics)
Hop on to one of the 2 lower platforms and deploy Buer. Now either just stand still, or Jump up and down so that the Medusa heads kill themselves on your fire shield. Once they have stopped spawning climb up and out of the Medusa room and kill yourself on the enemy directly to the right of the room.(If you aren't taking much damage, you may want to equip weaker armor)

There you have it. 37 kills in approximately 1 minute, give or take a few seconds.
(keep in mind this time is not reflective of load times etc. If you add that on it's a bit longer)

Slaughtervania - Rack up 10,000 enemy kills

This Achievement is to get 10,000 enemy kills across ALL your characters so you do not have to do this with any 1 character. The best option is to kill the Medusas in Chapter 6 on Hard. Why on hard? Because you want to run to the first medusa room and kill them until they stop re-spawning then kill yourself on the next enemy, trying to do that on normal you would need some spikes / fire to commit suicide.

With this method you can get 42 kills in ~ 1 & 1/2 mins including reloading. 420 kills in 15 mins... 1,680 kills an hour. This method is extremely boring, spending about 1/3 of it loading, but it is the quickest if you are going specifically for time.

The easiest way I found to do this was with any character (I used Shanoa) on Chapter 3. Clear the map of enemies then head to the sickle hammer that you use to knock down the boss. A large quantity of imps will spawn (two at a time). Just keep grinding this imps until they stop spawning.

Then run and jump (or Magnes if you are Shanoa!) and go to the lever that resets the Hammer. Kill the skeleton dragon and then rinse and repeat with the imps that start here. I was able to go from 6,000 kills to 10,000 kills in an afternoon just grinding this while watching TV on my computer. Good luck!