What the achievement asks
Beat the first eight challengers of the Path of Ascension on Loyalty difficulty. Ten points, account-wide.
Loyalty is the second of the four tiers, not the last, and at current levels the fights themselves are not the obstacle. The obstacle is the unlock order, which is genuinely confusing and which the game explains badly.
What you need first
Path of Ascension at rank 2. Rank 3 is not required, whatever else you read.
You also need materials for the crafting the challengers' capture quests demand. People finishing this recently report needing roughly fifteen to twenty of each reagent in total, not the fifty they stockpiled. Caretaker Caryn, the innkeeper standing near Poalone, sells a box of reagents, so almost nothing has to be farmed except the shards.
The unlock order
This is the part worth reading twice, because doing it in the wrong order looks exactly like the achievement being broken.
Beat the first six challengers on Courage, the lowest difficulty. You will get no achievement credit for any of this and that is correct.
Between those fights, take Dactylis's capture quests as they appear and craft what they ask for. That is what unlocks the later challengers.
Once all six are down on Courage, Loyalty opens on the first four. Beat Kalisthene on Loyalty and you finally see credit tick.
Killing her prompts Dactylis to offer the capture quests for the last two, Mad Mortimer and Thran'tiok. Beat those two on Courage first, then go back and finish everything on Loyalty.
Athanos is not part of this. You do not need to capture him.
The eight challengers
| Challenger | When Loyalty opens for them |
|---|---|
| Kalisthene | After the first six are down on Courage |
| Echthra | With the first group |
| Alderyn and Myn'ir | With the first group |
| Nuuminuuru | With the first group |
| Craven Corinth | After Kalisthene falls on Loyalty |
| Splinterbark Nightmare | After Kalisthene falls on Loyalty |
| Mad Mortimer | Once captured and beaten on Courage |
| Thran'tiok | Once captured and beaten on Courage |
The fights
On Loyalty they are quick. Pelagos is the soulbind people name for this, and the usual report is that challengers die more or less on contact with no charms and no preparation.
There was a long-standing bug where turning in the intro questline reset your Soul Mirror Shards to five no matter how many you had gathered. It was reported fixed in 2024, but there is no reason to stockpile shards before that turn-in.
If you started this years ago
A common state is having killed Kalisthene on Loyalty long ago and finding Dactylis silent now. That usually means an unfinished capture chain rather than a bug. Look up the individual quest chains and check which step you are actually on.
Where it fits
The Kyrian quarter of Shadowlands Dilettante, and the one to save for a spare afternoon. The other three are paced by daily and weekly locks; this one is not.