Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Fast solution summery. If you have any question ill go into more detail

1. soon as the timer start press on the D-pad and summon your Uruks, Dominate them and get 12 locations on the map that are not in conflict,

2. Fast travel to Uduns Crossing Tower (Bottom of the map) Press and spin around and look for a Graug. If there is not one there fast travel again. ( you dont have to leave the tower just press on the map and fast travel again.) This can take quite a few attempts but is still very fast in the long run.

3. Once a Graug Spawns shadow strike / mount it . Now like the Lord of the hunt Trial. use the graug to kill the 12 captains. If any are afraid of Graugs and run shadow brand them as they run (you dont have to get off the graug to do it) get intel and kill.

4. Once the 12 are dead Go to all the conflict areas and Brand the remaining. use lintel on the war chief first and with what ever is left uncover the captains if needed. If you have to repeat step 1.

5. Hunt down the War chiefs. Any mission that requires you to kill Uruks to draw out a captain. Run into the Green zone on the map summon your 5 Uruks and press to kill them off. Do this as many times as needed.

My first attempt i completed it with 9 mins left. I Also screwed up and kill a 13th captain because i just could not brand him, so i had to get killed to bring up a new Uruk in the ranks. in return some of my branded captains became bodyguards too so that add a smaller amount of difficulty because they need to live. But took almost no damage in a battle

pressing this will consume your uruks but not your captain

Use the ring on combat masters only and warchiefs, every other captain can be beat by using to stun and combo or, to vault combo, or to stun, to vault, then combo.

If there are any loose uruks around when branding a captain use to brand everyone before you try to brand a captain.

This will likely be the hardest achievement in the dlc, but take comfort in knowing that it's much, much easier than the Test of the Wild. That said, you're still going to need a little luck, but knowledge and skills play a much larger role this time around.

For starters you'll need to remember that Celembrior plays a bit different than Talion as well as how he did in the dlc's campaign. Thankfully he's more like Talion in Test of the Ring, but he does have differences you need to note.

For starters when Celembrior aims his bow he does not get Focus, meaning time will not slow down while aiming. To compensate he doesn't need to charge his arrows, so each one shot will always be fully charged automatically. He also gets access to Shadow Brand ( + ), a move like Shadow Strike except it uses three elf-shot instead of two and brands the target. Like Shadow Strike, Shadow Brand can be chained to other uruks.

Secondly, Celembrior can summon five branded uruks to fight for him by pressing . This can also summon branded captains as one of the five if they are nearby. He gets health when you use Consume (). However, Consume WILL NOT KILL branded captains or war chiefs. This is very important, because Celembrior can't issue commands to branded captains and war chiefs. This means you can't start murders or riots, meaning you have NO reason to brand war chiefs in this trial. If you do brand a chief, you'll need to kill him by beating on him, since you can't use Consume. This will waste valuable time, so don't brand war chiefs.

Edit: As The Allslayer stated in the comments you can dominate, interrogate, and then kill war chiefs. This can help aid in gathering information. Just be very, very careful to select kill after interrogating if you chose to do this.

Thirdly, where Talion had three special meters he could fill for stealth, bow, and executions Celembrior has one. This is The One Ring, which combines all three abilities into one. Thus you'll have infinite fire arrows, executions, and become invisible when you use it. It also has the added bonus of negating the immunities of captains when used. To charge it up you'll need to dominate uruks. Any action that can brand works, so you'll have a lot of options. Branding caragors and graugs will also fill it.

By understanding Celembrior's abilities you'll have a much easier time with the challenges. The main goal of the challenge will be to kill 5 war chiefs and 12 captains. You don't need to worry about having them dead all at once thankfully. I killed one war chief and then took a No Chance arrow to the face. A branded captain filled the vacant spot, but even though five war chiefs were in power my tally still showed 1/5 war chiefs killed. Thus you just need to get the total needed number of kills.

You'll have three bonuses you'll need to meet. You'll need to brand a combination of eight captains and war chiefs, brand 50 grunts (any non captain uruk counts), and finish in 60 minutes. Remember that Celembrior can't kill captains and up with Consume, so don't brand the war chiefs, as you'll need to kill all five for the main objective. You'll have 20 captains running around, which should give you enough for the eight brands and 12 kills that you will need. Be mindful that you need eight branded captains/war chiefs at the end. You can't brand and then kill something, as that will only count towards a kill for the respective class.

Branding the 50 grunts will be done as you progress through the trial. You'll be branding to help refill The One Ring, and you'll likely brand quite a few to act as meat shields while dealing with captains. I would advise making use of Wraith Flash ( + when combo meter is red). When fighting captains, especially in forts and strongholds, you'll have a lot of uruks around. Two Wraith Flashes used back to back can convert a lot, which helps add to your total and creates more distractions, making it easier to deal with captains. In short, don't be to concerned about this objective, as you'll likely hit it with ease.

The 60 minute time limit is again the hardest condition, as you're going to feel pressured because of the clock. Still, you're going to have a lot more breathing room than in you did in Test of the Wild. Be mindful of it, but focus on kill/branding captains and war chiefs.

The trial itself is fairly straightforward. The map is smaller, and captains are much easier to find then they were in Test of the Wild. Be mindful that they are much stronger though, as they'll have power levels of 21+. You won't be able to take much punishment, so be mindful of their attacks.

Like in Test of the Wild your time stops while looking at the map and Sauron's army. You're going to want to get the intel on the war chiefs as soon as you can. Since you can't start riots you'll need to flush them out via their missions and you need to know what those are. Some will take very little time while others will take more. You need to know what you'll have to do so you can budget your time. War chiefs will not start with bodyguards, from my experience, so unless you die or fast forward time you should only have to deal with them you go for the kill.

When you go to kill a war chief always go with a full The One Ring bar. Once you flushed them out use it. I only used executions, and was able to kill Tumhorn, Skak, and Rug before it wore off while leaving Gorfe and Akoth near death. I completely forgot about fire arrows, so you may want to try spamming those instead, but it shows that fighting with The One Ring available makes the war chiefs cake. Keep in mind that all starting war chiefs will be vulnerable to combat finishers, so you can make use of those if you don't kill them when using your special.

Once you kill one war chief go off and kill/brand captains until you fill The One Ring again. Dominating uruks will also help towards your brand 50 grunts objective. Once it's filled go kill another war chief. Be mindful when attacking though, as you can run into captains while fighting the chief. The One Ring helps mitigate this a bit, as you can focus and kill the chief and then work on the captain, but if you can kill the captains in a fort/stronghold prior to starting a war chief mission you're highly encouraged to do so.

You're going to be going after captain's quickly, as speed is key. If you see one in a fort or country side kill him. I'd recommend beating him until he gets the green circle and then grabbing with and dominating with . Immediately grill him for information and revel a war chief, if you're missing them, or another captain if you've got all five already. Once done kill him or brand him. Keep in mind that you only need 8 captains branded and you can't kill them with Consume so try to balance your action between the dominating and murdering. If you notice any power struggles involving two captains, like an execution or duel, take advantage of it.

Finally, you may find yourself coming up short depending on how things have gone. I had one war chief left, with one branded war chief (I died and the captain was promoted) and six brand captains. I needed one more captain kill and one more brand, but I had no more captains, and fast forwarding time wasn't bringing in any replacements. If this happens to you simply find a group of uruks and let them kill you. This will promote one to captain. I had to do it twice on my successful run, so be mindful that you can do this if you're coming up short.

That's about it ladies and gents. You'll still need a little luck, and you may have to try the challenge a few times. Since you've had the patience to read to the bottom of this you undoubtedly have the patience to clear this trial. Give it a go, learn from your successes and failures, and before you know it you'll have another achievement to add to your collection.

I seem to be the odd one out here and although it probably didn't take me as long to get this one compared to Test of the Wild, I certainly found it more frustrating.

My second successful run.

Once again, we need to complete ALL objectives (both Primary and Secondary) in one playthrough to attain this one. These are as follows.

Primary Objective:

Kill 5 War Chiefs and 12 Captains

Secondary Objectives:

Brand 50 Grunts (Generic Uruks/Defenders/Archers etc.)

Have 8 Captains or War Chiefs Branded (At the same time, if one dies you must brand another).

Complete the trial in less than 60 minutes.

Now, I tried a few different strategies for this and came a cropper each time and eventually decided to think it through and do my own thing. You have to be quite sure of what you are doing on this one and messing up can cost you big time. I thought I was going to do it on the one I streamed on Twitch but buggered it up due to the order I had killed the enemies.

You will notice that there are 20 Captains and 5 War Chiefs (what's new?). The problem is though that these will be the ONLY Captains and War Chiefs in the game. Unlike in the main game, Uruks will not periodically be promoted from grunts to Captaincies (even if using the forward time ability at a tower) UNLESS you allow a generic Uruk to kill you and be promoted. Essentially what this means is that should you end up in a position like me in the video where you do not have enough unbranded Captains to make the quota (and killing branded captains would reduce your goal of having 8 branded) due to some being promoted to War Chief (and thus counting towards the 'War Chiefs killed' tally and not the 'Captains killed' one), you are essentially buggered as you will have to play out more War Chief missions (some of which are rather lengthy i.e 20 enemies killed without being hit) and constantly be stressing yourself out planning how you are going to get enough captains to complete it now that you're behind the curve and allowing yourself to be killed to generate more.

To mitigate for this we are going to hit all 20 Captains first, brand them if possible as you go but don't do anything too risky whilst trying to do so as we do have 20 attempts. So start off, start moving around dominating Uruks for information on Captains, if you find any intel or Worms use them to uncover the information on the War Chiefs until you have all 5, then use them on the Captains as it may make your life slightly easier.The enemies are much higher levels than in TotW and depending on your luck of the drawer, many captains may have frankly ridiculous perk sets (I commonly had Captains with invulnerabilities to Combat Finishers & Ranged Damage, who you couldn't jump over yet would have shields and have hatreds that would always seem to manifest just as I got them to low health as Carragors or Ghuls would conveniently show up, giving the Captain a fully restored health bar just by stamping his feet a bit in hatred of whatever it was he hated). This is unfortunate but you just have to work with it. Our ace in the hole however, is Celebrimbor's special ability 'The One Ring' which combines all 3 of Talion's abilities and, most importantly, negates all enemy strengths and immunities. This means if you do come up against a particularly hard bastard, use the One Ring and repeatedly use combat finishers on him until he drops. You get a reasonable amount of time in The One Ring mode which is good because you will often find yourself in situations with multiple Captains and/or dozens of Uruk Grunts. In these situations if you have the One Ring bar full you should have enough time to kill two Captains before the bar depletes and can also repeatedly use the AoE Brand attack (A+X) to brand large groups of enemies to both fight for you and contribute to the secondary objective. You should be using this ability a lot and if you see lone Uruks, be sure to brand them so that you are always going into a big fight against a Captain with a fully charged, or at least nearly charged, One Ring bar.

So that's your focus at the start, uncovering Captains whilst also branding them whenever possible. Once you have 8 branded Captains, do NOT brand anymore, just kill any other Captains from then on. I would also suggest not summoning Uruks if one or more of the summons is going to be a branded Captain (you'll know if they are as there will be a blue skull with a number of how many Captains will come in the bottom left corner where the summon bar is) as you run the risk of them dying and cocking things up for you.

Once you have the 8 branded and 12 dead captains, start doing War Chief missions. I had about 20 minutes left at this point I think. Most of the missions are reasonably simple, aside from the afore-mentioned 20 kills without being hit which is a pain if you have in come up in certain parts of the map as you can easily get swamped and it by far takes the longest even on a successful run. Seeing as all the Captains are dead, the War Chiefs will have no bodyguards and we should have already completed all the other objectives at this point. The War Chiefs themselves are all rather easy, especially compared to many of the Captains and you shouldn't have a hard time killing them, use the One Ring ability if necessary but don't muck about as you might be cutting it a bit more finely than you think or be set back unexpectedly. when you kill the last War Chief the trial will end and the achievement will pop.

In Short:

1.) Dominate Uruks to find locations of Captains.
2.) Move around killing Captains whilst branding them if possible whilst continuing with step 1 until all Uruks are revealed, 8 Captains are branded and the remainder dead.
3.) Start doing War Chief missions until they are all dead.
4.) Give yourself a pat on the back.

First stream (failed attempt but a few lessons learned).

Rune set ups to follow shortly.

Firstlly, if no one else finds this useful I will delete it but this is how I earned the achievement.
Second please be patient are remember this achievement is more luck then skill based. Now for the actual Solution.

Primary:
Kill 5 warchiefs and 12 captains
(if you are killed captains whom become warchiefs will not count as captains).


As stated the goals here are:
1) Brand 50 uruks (easy without trying using + , whenever you have a counter.
2) Have 8 branded captains or warchiefs AT THE SAME TIME (you CANNOT brand warchiefs for the achievement, BUT your captains can take their place and still count) / (if one dies the counter goes down).
3) 60 minutes (this is the actual challenging part).

What you want to do from the beginning is find an event ex) raid, feast, ambush etc. When you get there you want to brand the hostage. I would recommend using to jump over the captain hit him 5x to get your counter then use the wraith flash ( +).
- Doing so will you your first brand. And quite a few uruks.
- Make sure to DOMINATE the captain and discover the first warchief.
- Use all of your newly recruited uruks to find more captains, remember you can also summon 5 more uruks to dominate. You can uncover all 19 captains this way
- if you are low on health, press this will consume your uruks but not your captain (can still be used on captains)

Next you want to find a second event, branding all the captains on the way (not fast traveling) I would recommend using the wraith vision , captains are not hidden well in this challenge and can be found usually in the open with a couple of uruks.
- Brand the 8 captains before you kill the other 12 (in case one dies).
- Save the warchiefs for last, using this method I had all captains either branded or killed within 40 minutes.

I ONLY used the ONE RING power against combat masters(NO warchiefs are combat masters), every other captain I would jump over, hit until he used the execution move, and the used + to eat his health or used + to brand nearby uruks.
- If I encountered a combat master and didn't have the ring power I would summon my 5 uruks and brand all the nearby ones. (they do a lot more damage to captains then you can).

With this method the only really hard part is the warchief missions.
- for the 20 without damage, make use of arrows and your summon 5 (these kills count too) I would summon 5 let them kill who they could, then press to kill my uruks.
- I would use the same method on warchiefs as other captains because they have no combat mastery and you can abuse the execution move on him.
- one last thing to mention the ONE RING power actually slows down time, I used it to run from place to place a few times, you can go hundres of meters in a second or two, because the counter for 60 minutes is actually slowed down as well.


I tried every other method mentioned above and they didn't work for me. This is what finally worked, if anything is confusing or you have any questions feel free to message me or comment, this is my first real solution. Just trying to give another way to earn this ridiculous but rewarding achievement.
- This requires 75% luck and 25% perfected skills, if you mess up 9/10 you're better off starting over. This includes dying once, better to try again then waste more time.

A simple option if your struggling is when you spawn look for beast hunts.. Go to them, very good chance of a graug hunt (if not just brand that captain using x+a to get rid of followers and combat finished until green, then dominate, chief Intel, dismiss. Once you get a graug hunt, shadow mount and eat captain.. Now just run around map to using shadow sight periodically and munch another 11 captains (doesn't take long as there generally just walking about and often near each other) once this is done forward time. Spawn near a busy area and get killed by normal uruks twice (this promotes 2 captains as a safety net) now go to red uruk missions (if no good ones advance time) in this order executions of red captains by blue/red captains (easy 30second branded captain here!) duels of at least one red captain, ambushes off red captain (not by red to blue). Remember a+x to get rid of supporters so you can grab weakened captain and dominate, chief intel then dismiss. Once you have all captains branded, try and choose missions that mean all the chiefs captains are either dead or branded. I got to 8 Branded, 12 dead by 32 minutes. Then just hit the chiefs, you should have full ring power.. When he appears use ring and spam fire arrows... One down. Then on next chief go to one that you may need to kill a certain amount (not stealth one) build up ring.. Unless and kill using ring fire arrows spam.. And keep doing. I killed all 5 chiefs in 15 minutes(one was killed by his bodyguard whilst I was building up ring power!) .. Hardest part was getting them to arrive.

If you do die or by accident during a chief fight(but there so was if you've built up ring) a captain dies during a fight.. Make sure to keep last chief alive until you find one of the two spare captains to brand.

Anyway hope this helps...

Hi All. I will not repeat what other said, but easies way to get this done is to get intel from Uruks about all captans. After that brand 8 capitans as soon as posible and kill rest with Graug (find them using wrath vision). Just eat them quick:)

I finished this one in 48:13 without using a Graug at all. First thing you need to understand is that the timer pauses or slows down during certain events, such as when get a speed boost, using the One Ring, or when you have your map/stats menu open.

That's right: the timer completely stops while the menu is open (same for the Test of the Wild). This is super helpful for planning your strategy.

Second thing: save all power struggles for the end.

Spend the first 4 minutes summoning (), grabbing () dominating (), interrogating (), and executing () Uruks for info on ALL 20 Captains. If you're quick, you can knock this out in under 3:30.

From the starting point, open your map () and find the closest captain to your current zone or one nearby. While in the map, press / to mark the captain as your target. This seems to force them into the open, rather than waiting for a random appearance.

Run or hitch a ride on a Caragor to their zone, go into Wraith mode (), and find, identify () and tag any captains you see. Then simply charge their location and kill/dominate. I recommend dominating the first 8 captains, and using the first 5 of these to get intel on the Warchiefs.

After each captain is dominated or dead, open you map and find the next nearest one. Pick a direction to move around the map: clockwise or counter-clockwise. Move zone-to-zone in that direction, marking and sweeping all the captains in each zone. Sometimes, multiple captains in a zone will appear right on top of each other. This is where it gets fun (and saves time!).

While dominating captains, you can use their hordes or nearby Uruks to charge the One Ring. If you get set upon by multiple captains at once and tons of supporters/defenders/berzerkers, just activate the One Ring ( + ) and quickly stealth attack () all of the captains until they drop to one knee. If you haven't branded all 8 captains for the sub-goal, do NOT kill the captains as they drop. Once all of them that you need branded are down and weakened, fire off a Wraith Blast (+) to brand them all at once.

As you pick off the captains, the local warchiefs will lose their bodyguards. As soon as the nearest Warchief is unprotected, head to that zone. Clear out any remaining captains in the area (so they don't crash your murder party), and then launch the mission to draw out the Warchief. If stealth isn't required, let the Uruks light their signal fires and use Wraight Blast on the hordes to recharge the One Ring. If stealth is required, use Shadow Brand and Stealth Brand to recharge it. As soon as the Warchief appears, charge him, activate the One Ring and stealth attack/kill him.

DO NOT dominate Warchiefs, as killing them all is required for the main goal (despite being listed in the "Brand 8 Captains or Warchiefs" sub-goal). Getting back to a branded warchief and murdering them later is even harder than normal combat if you've already gotten intel on all the captains and other chiefs. With the "Gain Intel" option gone, you can't dominate-interrogate-kill them. Best you can do is shank them to death or use uncontested combat finishers, but good lord is this annoying.

Once all the Warchiefs are dead, finish your sweep of the map to clean up the remaining captains. Then head to the power struggles and take them out. Be careful when summoning your Uruks here: if you randomly summon a branded captain and they get killed, you'll have to brand the one in the power struggle to replace them.

I got lucky: my last power struggle was an execution by one of my branded captains against an unbranded one. Rather than wait for my captain to screw up the execution, I just went into stealth mode, snuck up the back of the execution platform, and assassinated the target for the achievement.

48:13, not a single Graug used. By getting info and marking all the captains, I was able to force them into the open in each zone and make finding them super quick. And by getting info on all 20 instead of just a subset, every captain that isn't in a power struggle shows up on the map during the first sweep. This strategy also works well with Test of the Wilds to draw out captains into the open, but there you definitely need to use a Graug for the time constraint.

If you really want a high score rather than just being on the leaderboard, you can use Death Threat instead of Gain Intel: it still gives you their location, but makes the target more powerful and gives you a higher score/better runes for killing them. It also surrounds them with a horde of annoying supporters you have to cut down. Great if you intend to use the One on everybody, but frustrating if you find combat with Celebrimbor difficult.