Halls of Torment – Phantom Needles Specialist Achievement Guide

In this guide I will explain my strategy on how I successfully completed this challenge/achievement since it can be quite tricky to do and requires some luck too.

Character Choice

All credit goes to Ice Scream !

I observed all unlocked characters and paid attention to their stats and only one that caught my eye was Norseman since his default critical hit chance was the highest of them all.

40 % crit chance is really good for beginning since you will able to scale your crit even more with passive traits.

Requirements

Now, that character has been chosen what is next on line in order to complete this particular challenge?

You will also need specific gear in order to sustain the damage and in this case i found something good that will help you survive even on Agony 5.

  • Helmet (Default)
    • +15% Block Strength
    • +15% Health
  • Wooden Ring
    • +0.15 base crit chance
  • Guiding Star
    • While attacking +30% attack speed, -20% movement speed
    • While moving -20% attack speed, +30 % movement speed
  • Maiden’s Tear
    • When you would take damage regenerate 20 % health instead. Recharges 90 seconds.
  • Pace Setter
    • For every 5 seconds without moving accumulated, you heal 1% of your max hp. (does not reset on move)
  • Defiant Plate
    • Grants 5 defense for 30 seconds after taking damage. Can’t go over 50 defense.
  • Fencer Gauntlets
    • Each time you block you have a 50 % chance for an additional attack that always crits.
    • +10 Block Strength

And certainly last but not least:

  • Mark of the Arrow
    • Allows you to pick Archer character traits
    • +0.10 base crit chance

Map

I picked Frozen Depths because in this specific map enemies feel a lot tankier than in previous maps.

Summary of gear. I unexpectedly gained two upgraded versions of current gear which probably I was more luckier but I intended to play with my starting chosen gear.

Additional Notes

Keep in mind when you will pick your first ability upgrade i would suggest you to to disable auto attack if you have it enabled, I did because it gives more chance to continuously attack same monsters over and over without killing them.

Preferably first upgrade would be needle split as it gives more chance to crit even more on nearby enemies.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 13990 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

7 Comments

  1. This achievement doesn’t really require you to min-max so hard once you unlocked phantom needles mastery III. I just achieved it with archer incidentally when I was unlocking the archer’s mark at Caverns. Only relevant items equipped are wooden ring and wind crown (no other equipment helps with crit chance/attack speed).
    The key is to grab every Pinpoint upgrade for phantom needles (+50% crit chance, available at Phantom Needles Level 3, 6 and 10 if mastery III is unlocked) and use at least one Reverberant Tinkture on it. Avoid any lvl 3/6/10 upgrade until you find Pinpoint.
    Other than this just grab general crit chance traits when you see them and phantom needles crit chance will be over 200% at the end.

    • Oh one more thing: Archer is better than Norseman at unlocking this achievement, because Norseman’s 40% starting crit chance affects main weapon only and does not increase the crit chance of Phantom Needles. Archer on the other hand gains bonus base crit chance on every 10th-level-up which does benefit Phantom Needles.

    • Oh I forgot Norseman’s weapon proficiency could give bonus crit chance for all physical attacks as an option (up to +50% if picked all of them), so potentially he’s a good pick too.

  2. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I increased attack speed, critical chance and critical damage. Phantom Needles DPS was 188 000 and final count more than 119mil damage. I increased everything I could to the maximum and still didn’t get the achievement. After my best run I found out that I only made a little over 2000 overcrits

    • Well, this requires a bit luck. If you have followed this guide then you will have to repeat it. Sure you can adjust this build if you find it not going in your favor. Perhaps pick different map. Friend told me that he played on caverns.

  3. Thanks very much. Your approach didn’t completely work for me, generally your build did but I just couldn’t do it in Frozen Depths, instead I chose Ember Grounds with Agony on and got it in about 15 mins. I also picked up and maxed Astronomers Orbs for protection as well as left my hammers auto-attacking, things get pretty dicey without. Also, first time I hit Agony 5, so that’s thanks to you too! By then end my needles had done over 100MM damage, another record for me.

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