Lords of the Fallen is a third-person action role-playing game developed by Deck13 and published by Focus Home Interactive. Released in 2014 for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, the game takes heavy inspiration from the Souls series in both its challenging combat and open-ended interconnected level design. While Lords of the Fallen is very much enjoyable as a straightforward playthrough beating the main story, achieving true 100% completion proves to be an enormous grind that tests patience and perseverance.

Collecting All Items

One of the main components to reaching that coveted 100% completion is collecting every single item in the game. This includes weapons, armor sets, crafting materials, consumables, and more. With over 150 different items to find scattered throughout the massive world of Lords of the Fallen, tracking them all down can feel like an impossible task. Many are well hidden in out of the way areas or dropped by uncommon enemy types. Lower level items may not seem worth picking up at higher levels of play, so backtracking is required.

A number of spreadsheets and websites have been crafted by the community to aid in checking off items as they are discovered. Constantly referring to checklists helps ensure nothing is missed. Certain enemies only spawn at particular times or locations, requiring multiple playthrough cycles to catch them all. Rare crafting materials need luck farming the right zones over and over. Overall, grabbing every item takes many hours of dedicated searching and routing through each nook and cranny of the oppressive environments.

Maxing Out Equipment

Along with collecting every weapon, armor piece, and accessory, maxing out their upgrade levels creates another major grind. Blacksmiths allow improving equipment with materials collected in the world, strengthening stats to survive harder challenges. However, top tier upgrade components come later in the game and at sparse intervals, necessitating repeat playthroughs simply focused on scrounging enough resources. Farming common crafting drops from enemies in bulk becomes dreadfully tedious.

Rarer divine and ethereal variants of equipment provide near endgame power levels when boosted to maximum upgrade limits. But the divine and ethereal versions themselves are no easy finds, often deep in New Game Plus cycles. Completely maxing out armor, upgrading multiples of the same weapon type, and achieving the pinnacle stats on every piece of gear takes a herculean effort. Test Your Luck stones from late stage bosses offer the best resource boosts, so consistently besting them adds to the whole ordeal.

Conquering All Challenges

In addition to collecting every item and upgrading all equipment, achieving the Lords of the Fallen 100% tasks players with triumphing in every single challenge the game presents. This means fully exploring every zone to find all waypoints and shortcuts. Locating and activating every bonfire site rest area helps endure long dungeon crawls. And most critically, defeating every boss and mini-boss combat encounter, including variations spawned from New Game Plus cycles.

Some boss battles like Lord Krush or Lord Ghalt provide legitimately difficult tests of skill even after dozens of attempts with optimized builds. Special conditional requirements like no-hit challenges on bosses or slayer medals for rapid kills multiply the endeavor. All side quests need completing to experience story resolutions and character fates. PvP online activity opens another avenue for accolades through arena wins or invasions against other players worldwide.

Earning All Trophies/Achievements

The final primary goal driving dedicated completionists is acquiring every achievement and trophy available on the game platform. These meta-rewards represent tangible proof of conquering every facet. But some necessitate extreme dedication, rarely seen stats, or huge time investments beyond a standard playthrough. Gold medals on all slayer contracts, finishing New Game Plus cycles on harder settings, earning max level, crafting every item - these unlockables push tenacity to its limits.

Secret trophies/achievements add welcome surprises uncovered by dedicated sleuths deciphering clues. However, multiple variations exist that are seemingly impossible without coordination and cooperation between players across different versions and regions. 100% completion may technically not require every single achievement, but the desire to fully 100% the whole experience down to its coded meta level rewards proves irresistible for completion fanatics.

Handling the Grind

Pulling off 100% completion in Lords of the Fallen is a monumental task tested by boredom, frustration, and temptation to abandon the goal partway. Maintaining momentum and motivation through the swaths of repetitive grinding requires strategic breaks, variety between activities, and inspiration from community achievement sharing. Some tips include:

• Tackle multiple objectives in parallel to avoid burnout on one singular grind
• Mix in casual PvP sessions or relaxed exploring/farming runs
• Partake in community challenges, speedruns or challenge runs
• Listen to podcasts, audiobooks or music while auto-piloting farming tasks
• Share progress and strategize with others going for 100%
• Take short breaks if frustration mounts and come back reinvigorated
• Celebrate milestones to keep the end goal feeling achievable

The rewards feel incredibly satisfying for those conquering every facet of Lords of the Fallen. Bragging rights, a sense of mastery, and the pride of seeing the game completely laid bare make all the grinding worthwhile in the end. Just don't burn out partway - pace yourself, take breaks, and enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

Is it Worth It?

For those asking if achieving the full 100% completion, obtaining every achievement, experience every element, and maxing out stats across the board is worth the monumental time investment - ultimately that comes down to individual preferences. Lords of the Fallen offers a robust 20-30 hour experience just beating the main story and doing some optional content.

Taking the game to its fullest extreme through additional New Game Plus runs, rare farming, rare item hunting, and achievement hunting balloons the playtime up to well over 100 hours potentially. Some feel burnt out pursuing every minute detail. Others find immense satisfaction in fully conquering and dissecting every element.

While not strictly required to enjoy the core of Lords of the Fallen, true completionists derive immense pride and sense of ownership from leaving no stone unturned. Just going for 100% also allows continued gameplay, challenge runs, and strategic optimizations well after the core experience concludes. It's a grind certainly, but immensely rewarding for those who can stick it out to the finish line.