Middle-earth: Shadow of War
72 Achievements
1,500
70-93.5h
If You Can't Beat Them
Recruit an Orc after he's killed you three or more times.
20
2.31%
How to unlock the If You Can't Beat Them achievement in Middle-earth: Shadow of War - Definitive Guide
In Act II, You will quickly gain the ability to dominate Captains from one of the first story missions. Once you have this ability, you can potentially get this achievement.
Let a random orc kill you ONCE to be promoted, and a SECOND time as Captain. There will be a good chance that the THIRD time he kills you he will already be a Warchief or get promoted to one so be ready to perform some requirements to draw him out. Also be aware that when you see him for the 4th time, he will likely be too high of a level to be dominated and added to your army, you will need to dominate him and follow the prompts to Shame him ( after dominating him, to lower his level), and then you will need to probably find him a 5th time to get this achievement.
ORIGINAL SOLUTION:
After you pop the achievement by dominating him (), feel free to put the difficulty back to Normal or whatever mode you like. Please keep in mind that even on Gravewalker, I had my execution by an orc interrupted by a Random Savior, but it was much less likely. I was saved on Normal every time (maybe 8 in a row), and then when I bumped up the difficulty, I was saved on Gravewalker once in around 5 times being executed. Trying to die in a video game should not be this hard!
*If this solution helped you in some way, please vote positively. If you think it needs improvement, please let me know how in a private message or by leaving a comment.*
Also, I'm not sure how the game determines whether the orc will humiliate you or kill you, but it seems that each orc is predisposed toward one or the other. If you get down to your last chance and the orc chooses to humiliate you rather than kill you, then they'll most likely keep doing the same thing every time. Find an orc who chooses to kill you outright rather than trying to get one to change its tune.
Edit: TA says i've unlocked it but it refuses to unlock on my xbox. I've even tried forcing it.
As others already stated you just have to wait until Act II, where you get the ability to dominate captains. Just get killed by a random orc and find him again. He will be promoted to captain. There is a high chance that he gets promoted to warchief when he kills you again, so you have to lure him out and shame him to decrease his level. If you don't do that he might just become overlord, making the whole process very difficult to handle. Get through a few cycles of getting killed and shaming the guy afterwards until you got killed three times.
After having been killed for the third time the captain/warchief may have a higher level than you have, so dominating him is not possible anymore since you need to have at least the same or a higher level to be able to this. If that happens to you too you have to level up a bit before you start the last quest to dominate him. Leveling up also got easier with the patch, because killing random captains now provides a lot more XP than before.
To unlock this achievement you will need to dominate an Orc that has killed you at least three times. You will first need to find an Orc and let them kill you. Once you have done that, that Orc will advance in level and if they weren't a Captain beforehand, they will now become one. Then you need to find them again and let them kill you again, then a third time after that. Be careful when you're trying to have them kill you that it is that one Orc that delivers the killing blow or else it will be another Orc that claims the kill. Keep running into them and try to stay away from any other Orcs in the area.
Once you have been killed by the same Orc three times, find him for a fourth time and then beat him until he is broken, then dominate and recruit him. Be sure to check the details of the Orc before proceeding, you don't want an Orc that has either 'Iron Will' or 'Unbreakable' traits as you cannot then dominate and recruit them. As soon as you recruit them the achievement will unlock.
A few things to be mindful of when attempting this, remove any bodyguards assigned to you and consider killing off your followers, some of them may have traits that ambush the enemy orc which will complicate things when they are trying to kill you. Additionally when you are about to be killed a random Orc may appear and instantly kill your attacker, this orc cannot be killed but the chances of him appearing seem to be very low, I have only encountered him once during my entire playthrough.
Nevertheless once the same orc has killed you 3 times, seek him out again and dominate him, which will unlock the trophy.
1. You let an orc kill you, an ordinary one, maybe in a crowd, maybe one on one - whatever you like. Attack him a couple of times, after killing him he will get some kind of coolness, or like me, he will become supreme. (So that your mysterious saviors cannot kill him with one blow later...)
2. Let's go after him, he is already the captain, here try to stay one on one, using the chance to fight back past.
3. Next, he has already become a leader for me, we fight again, take advantage of the chance (we press the wrong button) and voila: three kills!
We go after him again - we disgrace him and then we recruit him. Depending on the level of your hero, of course, you may have to dishonor again. And the trophy is yours!
BUT!!!
Along the way, we get the “ Sworn Enemy ” trophy ( Fight the same orc in the sworn enemy quests three times without killing him .). This is now a very important orc in your army, take care of him))
Further on in the game we make him the ruler of the fortress as soon as it is possible in the game and... voila another trophy - “ Up the Career Ladder ” ( Help an ordinary soldier become a ruler ).
All this can be done in Chapter 2 at the very beginning, as soon as you have returned your ring.
As they say, three in one shot.
And not the first time - by mistake he killed the first candidate, the second candidate was killed “out of nowhere” by Bruz. It might be worth pursuing this trophy after Bruz's quest line.