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Glory of the Venomous Raider: The Complete Season 2 Guide
The Glory of the Venomous Raider is Midnight Season 2's raid meta achievement, and it is the one every mount collector on your server is already chasing. Clear all eight boss-specific achievements inside the Venomous Abyss on Normal difficulty or higher and you walk away with the Crimson Venomfang, a striking crimson serpent mount that stops being obtainable the moment Season 2 ends.
This guide breaks down all eight achievements boss by boss, with the actual tactics early groups are using now that the raid is live, not the pre-launch guesswork you will find on most sites. Where a method has been confirmed on live servers, it is marked as such. Where the raid is still being solved, you get the working theory and what to watch for.
What you get for finishing Glory
Three things come out of the meta, and two of them are collectibles you cannot get any other way.
The headline reward is the Crimson Venomfang mount, account-wide, added straight to your collection the moment the eighth achievement ticks over. There is also a bonus most guides bury: the Ula'tek achievement, No Egg Scramble, hands you the Ula'took battle pet, a small green companion that is a reward in its own right. On top of that the meta is worth 25 achievement points.
The part that matters for timing is this. The Crimson Venomfang is a seasonal reward, which means it leaves the game when Season 2 closes out. There is no catching up on it in a later patch, no farming it off a vendor down the line. You either earn it during Season 2 or you do not get it. That is what turns Glory from a nice-to-have into a clock you are racing.
For reference, raid metas like this usually land with only a small slice of the playerbase, so the mount stays reasonably rare on the ground.
A quick note on the name (and why you are seeing two of them)
This trips people up, so it is worth clearing up before you plan anything. During the Patch 12.1 PTR, this achievement changed. Early builds called it "Glory of the Venomous Abyss Raider" and listed five criteria. The current live version is named "Glory of the Venomous Raider" and requires eight, one for every boss in the raid. A lot of boosting sites and older guides still show the five-criteria version with the longer name, so if you see both, the eight-achievement one is the current, correct list. This guide follows it.
Two more things people ask right away. Glory is completely independent of Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge, so you do not need either to earn it. And every achievement can be done on Normal, so you never have to touch Heroic or Mythic for the mount.
How to approach the meta
The bosses themselves are not the hard part on Normal. The hard part is getting a full group to respect eight separate achievement conditions instead of just tunnelling the boss down as fast as possible. One person soaking the wrong mechanic, or the group killing a boss half a second before the last condition procs, and that is the lockout gone for the week.
A few principles make the whole thing smoother:
- Assign roles before each pull. Several of these achievements need specific players doing specific jobs, like carrying a slime or holding an egg. Sort that out before you engage, not mid-fight
- Slow down. On a farm-level clear the temptation is to burst everything. Most of these achievements want you to hold a boss alive long enough for a mechanic to play out, so controlled damage beats maximum damage
- Know which ones are personal. A couple of these look like they complete per player rather than per raid, which means you can stagger them across weeks and drag stragglers through over multiple lockouts instead of needing a perfect single run
Now the achievements themselves, in raid order.
1. Well, Well, Little Sky (Nek'zali the Soulcoiler)
Requirement: Defeat Nek'zali the Soulcoiler after returning Kupamanduka to the Soulcoil Well.
Kupamanduka is a small venom-tinged frog sitting in the poison fountain just before Nek'zali's room. The Soulcoil Well is the fixture in the centre of the boss arena. The catch is that you cannot just walk up and grab the frog, which is where early groups got stuck for a bit.
Confirmed method (live): there is a skeleton vendor in the first room of the raid, off to the left of the entrance. Buy the Balm of Flies from it. Take the balm to Kupamanduka right before the boss room and use it there, which lures the frog out and makes him targetable. Right-click to pick him up and carry him into the boss arena. Once the fight starts the frog begins hopping around the room, so you punt him into the Soulcoil Well, then finish the boss. The achievement pops on the kill.
Watch out for: the rest of Nek'zali's fight is built around keeping adds out of the well, so getting the frog in without dumping unwanted mobs in there at the same time takes a little care. Assign one person to the frog and let them focus on it.
Difficulty: low, once you know about the balm. It is a setup step more than a mechanic.
2. Is Venom Stasis A Joke To You? (Entombed Sentinels)
Requirement: Defeat the Entombed Sentinels after each Sentinel uses Vitriolic Stasis to restore more than half its total health.
This is one of the two truly fiddly achievements, because it fights against how you would normally kill the bosses. Vitriolic Stasis is the intermission that happens when the Sentinels hit full energy and rush to the middle. During it, the lower-health Sentinel heals up until it matches the higher-health one. You need each Sentinel to heal a cumulative total of at least half its maximum health across the fight.
Confirmed method (live): do not damage them evenly. If you spread damage, neither heals much during a Stasis, and you will never hit the 50 per cent threshold. Instead, focus one Sentinel down until it is roughly 50 per cent lower than the other, then let it full-heal during the intermission. After that Stasis ends, swap the whole group to the other Sentinel and drag it 50 per cent below the first one, so it heals up during the next intermission. Once both have banked their healing, you kill them. If your numbers came up short, just widen the health gap again before the next Stasis and run it one more time.
Watch out for: the intermission ends early if you match all the shapes in the Helical Toxins mechanic. That means you do not want to solve the toxins too fast, or the Sentinel will not have time to heal, but you still have to match them all before the timer runs out. Time the toxin matching to burn most of the intermission window rather than closing it instantly.
Difficulty: high. This is the achievement most likely to eat an extra pull, so brief the group carefully and expect to re-run the gap once.
3. Accidental Inclusion (The Lost Explorers)
Requirement: Defeat The Lost Explorers, including Hoji.
The Lost Explorers is a group of tortollan NPCs, and Hoji is the one who is normally left out of the fight. The achievement is about pulling him in.
Confirmed method (live): there is a fish sitting on the platform near the coffin you open to start the encounter. One player needs to pick that fish up before the fight begins. When you engage, feeding Hoji into the encounter spawns an invincible add that throws spells at the raid for the whole fight. All you have to do from there is kill the boss with that add still active, and the achievement is yours.
Watch out for: the add cannot be killed, so do not waste time trying. Just play through the extra spell damage it adds to the fight and keep your healers aware it is there.
Difficulty: low to moderate. The only real requirement is remembering the fish before you start and surviving a bit of extra raid damage.
4. Kept You Waiting Huh? (Vashnik)
Requirement: Defeat Vashnik after killing the Solidified Snake Venom.
Yes, the name and the target are a Metal Gear Solid nod, which is a nice touch and also a decent memory aid for what you are killing.
Working method: the current understanding is that you hold Vashnik at the venom fountain long enough for the venom he spawns to build up and coagulate into a single large creature, the Solidified Snake Venom. When it appears, the raid switches to it and burns it down before returning to finish Vashnik. It may also require killing enough smaller venom blobs that they merge into the one big one. Either way, the Solidified Snake Venom has to die before Vashnik does.
Watch out for: holding the boss at the fountain for an extended stretch is likely to ramp up incoming damage, so this is one where you want cooldowns and strong healing lined up for the stall. Confirm the exact trigger on your own pull, since this is one of the fights still being nailed down on live.
Difficulty: moderate, mostly a healing and patience check rather than a coordination puzzle.
5. Jumping Through Hoops (Sszorak)
Requirement: Defeat Sszorak while jumping through each ring that appears.
Sszorak's whole gimmick is wind that tries to blow the raid off the platform. This achievement flips that hazard into the objective.
Working method: rather than bracing against the wind, you position yourself so that when the knockback hits, it launches you through one of the rings that appear around the arena. You need to pass through each ring that shows up over the course of the fight. It is not yet fully confirmed whether the rings are always present or need to be activated with a lever or button, which is a common wrinkle on these achievements, so check your room on the pull.
Watch out for: the wording reads like a personal achievement, completing per player rather than for the whole raid at once. If that holds, you do not need everyone to nail it in a single run. You can push a few players through each week and mop up the rest over multiple lockouts, which takes a lot of pressure off.
Difficulty: moderate, and much easier if you can stagger it across weeks.
6. Taking a Bite out of Slime (Twin Fangs)
Requirement: Defeat the Twin Fangs after feeding Ithraz four slimes in the correct order during Ravenous Feast. The order is Crunchy Appetizer, then Sumptuous Soup, then Tasty Blob, then Jiggly Dessert.
This is the most coordination-heavy achievement of the eight, because it needs four assigned players and a strict sequence.
Working method: the four slimes are found around the encounter and need to be picked up before the fight, one player carrying each. During the fight, Ithraz casts Ravenous Feast, and your slime carriers feed him in the exact order above. The critical rule is that a slimekeeper must not soak Ravenous Feast until it is actually their turn to feed, or the order breaks.
Watch out for: the slimes stick to their carrier for a long stretch, and current testing suggests they even follow a player through death, though feeding the boss while dead is obviously a problem. Keep your four carriers alive and make sure each one knows their slot in the order. One person feeding out of sequence fails the whole attempt.
Difficulty: moderate to high, entirely because of the coordination. Mechanically simple, socially demanding.
7. Watch Out Behind You (The Coiled Altar)
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Requirement: Defeat The Coiled Altar while every player in the raid is afflicted by Unnerving Fixation.
This is the other annoying one, and it grates because of randomness rather than difficulty.
Working method: Unnerving Fixation already happens naturally in the back half of The Coiled Altar fight. Hex Lord Malacrass possesses several players with Dreadmarch and tries to throw them off the platform. When you free those players by damaging them, Manifestations of Dread spawn and cast Unnerving Fixation on random raiders. For the achievement, every single player needs to have Unnerving Fixation on them at the same time the boss dies.
Watch out for: because the targeting is random, you may be waiting several cycles for the last few players to get hit, all while dodging the possession that tries to fling people off the edge. If the fixation turns out to pick targets in a predictable pattern, this gets much faster, but plan for a luck-of-the-draw fight where you deliberately hold the boss until the whole raid is covered. Do not push the kill until you have confirmed everyone has the debuff.
Difficulty: high, mostly a patience and survival check while you wait for the RNG to cover the raid.
8. No Egg Scramble (Ula'tek)
Requirement: Defeat Ula'tek before the Greasy Hatchling breaks. This is the one that also rewards the Ula'took pet.
Ula'tek is the final boss, and this achievement revolves around a big green egg.
Working method: the current read is that the raid picks up the Greasy Hatchling, an egg NPC, at some point during the fight, and the associated Greasy Hatchling debuff lasts 20 seconds on whoever holds it. The likely play is to pass the egg from raider to raider before each 20-second window expires, keeping it from breaking, all the way until Ula'tek is dead. Kill the boss with the egg still intact and you get both the achievement and the pet.
Watch out for: juggling achievements like this fail the instant someone drops the hand-off, so assign a clear rotation of who takes the egg next and call the passes out loud. Since Ula'tek was not fully testable before launch, verify the exact trigger on your first pull.
Difficulty: moderate, dependent on how tight the hand-off timing turns out to be.
Which achievements to prioritise
If you are pacing this across a few weeks rather than forcing it in one lockout, here is a sensible order.
- Start with the low-effort setup ones, since they barely change your kill: Well, Well, Little Sky, Accidental Inclusion and No Egg Scramble slot in with minimal fuss
- Handle Jumping Through Hoops next and stagger it per player if it is personal
- Save the two walls for last. Is Venom Stasis A Joke To You and Watch Out Behind You want a group that is warmed up and willing to slow down, since those are the two most likely to cost you a pull
One more raid achievement worth knowing
While you are in there, note that the Venomous Abyss also has a separate achievement called Comforting Da Spirits, which asks you to experience an Ancestral Vision and comfort trapped spirits around the raid. It is a Normal-or-higher raid achievement, but it is not part of the Glory meta, so it does not count toward the mount. Grab it for completion if you like, just do not confuse it for a Glory requirement.
Get the Crimson Venomfang without herding 19 other people
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Here is the honest truth about this meta. On Normal, none of these fights will end you. The thing that actually stops people from finishing Glory is not skill, it is coordination. It is getting a full raid to slow down, hold a boss at the right health, carry the right slime, pass the egg and wait out the Unnerving Fixation RNG, all without one person tunnelling the kill and wasting the lockout. Pugs fall apart on exactly that, week after week, until the season clock runs out and the mount is gone for good.
That is the whole reason a coordinated group is worth it. Our Venomous Abyss raid team handles the entire Glory of the Venomous Raider meta in a structured run where every achievement condition is planned and executed in order, so the Crimson Venomfang and the Ula'took pet land on your account instead of sitting behind a raid group that keeps clipping the kill. With the mount leaving when Season 2 ends, the window to lock it in is not open forever.
FAQ
HOW MANY ACHIEVEMENTS ARE IN GLORY OF THE VENOMOUS RAIDER?
Eight, one for each boss in the Venomous Abyss. All eight can be done on Normal difficulty or higher
WHAT DO YOU GET FOR GLORY OF THE VENOMOUS RAIDER?
The account-wide Crimson Venomfang mount, the Ula'took battle pet from the No Egg Scramble achievement and 25 achievement points
IS THE CRIMSON VENOMFANG MOUNT GOING AWAY?
Yes. It is a Season 2 reward, so it becomes unobtainable once Season 2 ends. It cannot be earned afterwards
DO I NEED AHEAD OF THE CURVE OR CUTTING EDGE FOR GLORY?
No. Glory is completely separate from AOTC and Cutting Edge, and it only requires Normal difficulty
CAN I COMPLETE GLORY ACROSS MULTIPLE WEEKS?
Yes. You do not have to finish it in one lockout, and at least one of the achievements appears to complete per player, so you can drag stragglers through over several resets
WHY DO I SEE TWO DIFFERENT NAMES FOR THIS ACHIEVEMENT?
The PTR version was called "Glory of the Venomous Abyss Raider" with five criteria. The live version is "Glory of the Venomous Raider" with eight. The eight-achievement version is the current one
IS IT ACCOUNT-WIDE?
The Crimson Venomfang mount and the Ula'took pet are account-wide once earned. The achievement itself is earned per character
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