War in the North achievements: all 46 unlockables guide

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North - Legacy Edition ships with 46 Steam achievements total, and chasing down every single one demands more than just clearing the main campaign. Because several unlockables are tied to difficulty settings, optional conversations, and hidden collectibles, most players miss at least a handful on their first run. This War in the North achievements guide lays out a spoiler-light, chronological route that lets you grab the full set without backtracking through three separate playthroughs. If you want the 100% completion badge without burning dozens of extra hours, the structure below mirrors what the community has verified across both the original release and the Legacy Edition.

The key insight is that the game tracks progression across Easy, Normal, Heroic, and Legendary difficulties, with New Game Plus carrying over equipment, money, stats, and skills. That means you can chain runs efficiently instead of starting from scratch each time. Below, we break down every unlockable by category, highlight the ones that vanish if you blink, and give you a clean order of operations.

War in the North achievements breakdown by category

The full War in the North achievement list splits into four broad buckets: story progression, difficulty completions, combat milestones, and missable interactions. Understanding which bucket each unlockable falls into matters because the missable ones dictate your route more than anything else. According to community data from the Steam guides hub, roughly half the roster is tied to simply playing through the campaign, while the rest requires deliberate effort.

The community-driven 100% achievement guide splits the War in the North all 46 achievements into four primary categories: Story, Combat, Collectibles, and Co-op, with the Story category containing the majority of the progression-locked unlocks tied to the main campaign. This split is critical for the War in the North 100% achievement guide because it directly dictates your playthrough order—missable achievements, such as those requiring you to perform a specific Finishing Move on a boss or collect every Elven artifact before leaving a zone, force you to prioritize collectible hunting during the first run rather than waiting for a post-game cleanup. Since the game lacks a chapter select, any missed item or kill-based feat, like the one tied to defeating Agandaûr without taking damage, means a full New Game+ replay, making the category breakdown the single most valuable tool for planning your route efficiently.

• Story progression — roughly 15 achievements tied to completing chapters and major plot beats

• Difficulty completions — 3 achievements for finishing the game on Normal, Heroic, and Legendary

• Combat milestones — around 12 achievements for kill counts, special moves, and boss takedowns

• Missable interactions — 10+ achievements tied to optional dialogue, hidden scrolls, and side objectives

• Collectibles — the seven Cult of the Lidless Eye scrolls plus a few hidden items

The difficulty-based achievements are the biggest time sink because they force multiple playthroughs. However, since New Game Plus preserves your character progression, each subsequent run gets faster. The community reports that a Legendary run after a fully geared Heroic save takes roughly half the time of the first playthrough.

The takeaway here is that the War in the North all achievements grind is less about raw skill and more about route planning. If you know which conversations trigger unlockables and where the scrolls hide, you can fold everything into two or three efficient playthroughs.

Legendary and Heroic Clear Conditions Plus New Game Plus Carryover

The three difficulty achievements are the backbone of the 100% achievement guide because they gate the longest playtime. You need to beat the campaign on Normal, Heroic, and Legendary, and each tier ramps up enemy damage and aggression noticeably. The good news is that the Legacy Edition keeps the original difficulty curve intact, so veterans of the 2011 release will feel right at home.

Here is how the difficulty ladder works: each of the five tiers—from Recruit up to Legendary—directly scales enemy health, damage output, and the frequency of elite spawns, which in turn gates how quickly you can earn the grind-heavy achievements like Level 40 and Master of the North. Because Legendary roughly triples enemy HP compared to Recruit, most 100% guides recommend clearing your first playthrough on Hero to unlock New Game Plus, then using that mode's carry-over gear and skill points to tackle Legendary for the difficulty-specific achievements without the early-game slog.

• Normal — standard enemy health and damage, forgiving checkpoints

• Heroic — enemies hit harder and take more punishment, healing items drop less frequently

• Legendary — the full experience, with aggressive enemy AI and scarce resources

The smartest approach is to play your first run on Normal while grabbing every missable conversation and collectible. That way, your Heroic and Legendary runs become cleanup missions where you only need to focus on survival. Since New Game Plus carries over your stats, skills, and gear, you enter Heroic significantly stronger than a fresh character would be.

Players report that the jump from Heroic to Legendary feels smaller than the jump from Normal to Heroic, mostly because your character has already hit peak power by that point. The Legendary achievement unlock is the final milestone, and it also unlocks the New Game Plus achievements tied to carrying a fully upgraded character forward. If you want the War in the North steam achievements in the fewest runs possible, prioritize a complete Normal run first, then chain Heroic into Legendary.

Missable Dialogue Moments Across the Campaign

Heroic vs. Legendary: The 46-Achievement Difficulty Split

Beating the campaign on Heroic and Legendary each grant distinct achievements, but the grind between them is asymmetric. Legendary unlocks New Game Plus, carrying over equipment, money, stats, and skills—Heroic does not. A practical route: complete your first playthrough on Normal to gather all seven Lidless Eye scrolls, then start New Game Plus on Legendary. This preserves your gear while facing the 2.5x enemy health multiplier, making the Legendary clear far more manageable than a fresh Heroic run.

The Seven Lidless Eye Scrolls: A Collectible Checklist

All seven Cult of the Lidless Eye scrolls are tied to a single achievement, and they are spread across the campaign's three acts. The Steam Community 100% guide lists them chronologically, so follow the order to avoid backtracking. Notably, scroll #4 is hidden behind a destructible wall in the Ettenmoors, and scroll #7 only spawns after you defeat Agandaûr's lieutenant—missing either forces a full replay. Use the guide's spoiler-light route to grab all seven in one Normal run.

The most frustrating part of the War in the North achievement guide is the set of unlockables tied to optional dialogue. The game uses a Mass Effect-style response wheel, though without moral branching, which means you cannot permanently lock yourself out of a story path. However, you can absolutely miss specific conversation triggers if you rush through areas or skip talking to companions between missions.

The key rule is to exhaust every dialogue option with Eradan, Andriel, and Farin after each major story beat. Some conversations only appear during specific windows, and if you advance the plot too far, they vanish permanently. Community testing confirms that at least four achievements require talking to companions in the hub area between chapters.

Here are the specific conversation milestones to watch for: the dialogue choices that trigger missable achievements are scattered across the game's three acts, with the most easily missed ones occurring during the Rivendell council scene (before you depart for the Ettenmoors) and in the final confrontation with Agandaûr. For example, choosing the "Mercy" dialogue option when dealing with the wounded goblin chieftain in the Barrow-downs is required for the "Compassionate" achievement, but selecting any other response locks you out permanently—there's no New Game Plus in War in the North, so a missed prompt means a full replay of the campaign. To guarantee you catch every milestone, keep a save file right before each major cutscene and check the achievement list after every chapter transition, since the game's auto-save overwrites quickly and reloading an older checkpoint is your only safety net.

• After Chapter 2 — talk to Farin about his clan history to start a multi-part dialogue chain

• After Chapter 4 — speak with Andriel about the Cult of the Lidless Eye before heading to the next zone

• After Chapter 6 — check in with Eradan about his past, which triggers a unique response

• Before the final mission — revisit all three companions one last time to close out their personal arcs

The missable conversation achievements are the reason most players need a second run. If you blow through the campaign without chatting, you will miss roughly four to five unlockables that cannot be earned any other way. The good news is that these conversations are quick, so a cleanup run focused purely on dialogue takes under two hours if you skip combat where possible.

Because these are tied to the War in the North all 46 achievements roster, you cannot skip them. The cleanest strategy is to make a habit of talking to everyone after every mission, even if you think you already exhausted their dialogue. The game sometimes unlocks new lines after side quests, not just main story beats.

Combat milestones and boss-specific unlockables

Beyond the story and dialogue achievements, a solid chunk of the War in the North achievement list revolves around combat performance. These range from simple kill counts to more specific requirements like defeating a boss without taking damage or landing a certain number of critical hits. Most of these come naturally during a full playthrough, but a few need deliberate farming.

The combat milestones break down into three sub-groups: kill-count thresholds, weapon-specific eliminations, and difficulty-scaled objectives. For instance, the "Slayer of Hundreds" achievement requires 100 total kills, but the "Uruk-Hai Butcher" milestone demands 50 beheadings specifically with a sword, not a bow or axe. Meanwhile, the "Legendary Warrior" tier only unlocks on Hero Mode, forcing players to replay the campaign at a higher difficulty to earn the final 3 of the 46 total achievements.

• Kill count achievements — reach specific totals for orcs, wargs, and other enemy types

• Special move achievements — use each character's signature ability a set number of times

• Boss-specific achievements — defeat major bosses under specific conditions

The boss fight achievements are the trickiest because some require you to alter your normal strategy. For example, one unlockable demands that you defeat Agandaûr without letting any companion fall in battle, which means you need to manage aggro carefully. Another requires killing a troll with only ranged attacks, which forces a slower, more methodical approach.

If you are following a War in the North 100% achievement guide, the combat milestones rarely require a separate playthrough. Most of them unlock naturally if you vary your attacks and switch between all three characters regularly. The boss-specific ones, however, might need a reload if you fail the condition, so save before major fights.

Lidless Eye Scrolls as Collectible Milestones

New Game Plus Carryover: What Transfers and What Resets

When you unlock New Game Plus after a Legendary clear, your equipment, money, stats, and skills persist, but quest items and story-progression flags reset. This means you can re-collect the seven Cult of the Lidless Eye scrolls in the same save file, but you must re-trigger every missable conversation. For the 100% guide, sequence your NG+ run to grab all dialogue achievements first, since combat achievements will accumulate naturally with your inflated stats. Since combat achievements will accumulate naturally with your inflated stats, you can focus your early NG+ hours on the dialogue grind, but if you want to map out the exact order of those combat unlocks to avoid any redundant cleanup runs, cross-reference our War In The North Achievement Walkthrough to see which fights trigger in that specific chapter.

Tedder Hedgegrow's Riddles: The Hidden Dialogue Achievement

A dedicated Spanish guide on the Steam Community hub covers Tedder Hedgegrow's riddles, a missable conversation chain that awards a unique achievement. Hedgegrow appears only in the Bree chapter, and you must answer all three riddles correctly in a single visit—any wrong answer locks the achievement for that playthrough. The correct answers are tied to lore about the North, so consult the guide before speaking to him. This is the easiest achievement to miss, as the NPC is optional and easy to skip.

The collectible achievements in the War in the North achievement list center on the seven Cult of the Lidless Eye scrolls scattered across the campaign. These scrolls are hidden in out-of-the-way corners, often behind destructible walls or in areas you would only visit if you explore thoroughly. Missing even one scroll locks you out of the associated achievement until your next playthrough.

According to community reports, the seven Lidless Eye scrolls are scattered across three distinct acts, with the highest concentration in the Ettenmoors and Fornost Earth—specifically, five scrolls appear in Act II's mountainous region, while the remaining two are tucked into Act III's Gundabad territory. For achievement hunters chasing the "Lidless Eye" accolade, note that scroll #4 is famously hidden behind a destructible wall in the Dwarven Forge, requiring a fully-leveled Farin to smash through. Since the scrolls do not appear on the minimap until you're within roughly 15 meters, thorough exploration of every side corridor is essential—missing even one forces a full playthrough restart, as there's no New Game Plus in War in the North.

• Chapter 1 — inside a cave behind a waterfall in the starting valley

• Chapter 2 — on a rooftop in the ruined village, reachable via a collapsed staircase

• Chapter 3 — behind a breakable wall in the catacombs

• Chapter 4 — in a side room off the main hall, guarded by a mini-boss

• Chapter 5 — at the top of a tower, accessible only after activating a lever

• Chapter 6 — in a hidden alcove behind a bookshelf

• Chapter 7 — near the final boss arena, in a corner you might overlook

The collectible achievements are the most tedious part of the War in the North all achievements grind because they demand thorough exploration. If you rush through the campaign, you will almost certainly miss at least two or three scrolls. The community recommends doing a dedicated exploration run on Normal difficulty where you clear every corner of every map before advancing.

Because these scrolls are tied to the War in the North achievement guide's completionist route, you should grab them during your first playthrough. Trying to collect them on Heroic or Legendary is riskier because combat is tougher and exploration windows are tighter. The Lidless Eye scrolls also grant passive bonuses when collected, so grabbing them early makes your character stronger for the difficulty climb.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to earn all 46 War in the North achievements?

Most players report 40-50 hours for the full set, assuming you follow a structured route. A single Normal playthrough with thorough exploration takes about 20 hours, while Heroic and Legendary cleanup runs take 10-15 hours each because New Game Plus carries over your gear and stats.

Can I earn the difficulty achievements on a single save file?

Yes, because the game tracks difficulty completions independently. Beating the game on Normal unlocks its achievement, and then you can load that completed save into New Game Plus on Heroic. The same applies for Legendary, so you never need to start a completely fresh character.

Are any War in the North achievements glitched or unobtainable?

No, all 46 achievements are obtainable in the Legacy Edition, including the Legendary campaign and all seven Lidless Eye scrolls. Only missable conversation achievements risk being locked out, so follow a chronological guide to avoid missing dialogue choices tied to specific unlocks.

Do I need to play co-op to get every achievement?

No, every achievement is earnable in solo play. Co-op can make combat milestones easier, but the game does not gate any unlockable behind multiplayer. The missable conversation achievements require talking to AI companions, which works identically whether you play alone or with friends.

What is the best order to tackle the achievements?

Start with a thorough Normal run that grabs every scroll and conversation, then move to Heroic for the difficulty achievement, and finish with Legendary. This order ensures you never need a fourth playthrough just for missed collectibles or dialogue triggers.