Guild Wars 2 Final Preparations Achievement: All 8 Steps and Castoran Creatures

Final Preparations is a collection-style achievement tied to The Burden of Seeing, the seventeenth chapter of the Visions of Eternity story. It asks you to attune yourself to Castora’s magic before accepting the wizard’s power, and it spreads its requirements across several maps rather than keeping them inside the instance. Tucked inside it is a separate achievement, Final Preparations: Castoran Creatures, which sends you around Eternity’s Garden to find five friendly animals.

Quick answer: Complete all eight attunement steps in the Final Preparations collection after The Burden of Seeing. One of those steps is Castoran Creatures, which needs five friendly creatures found around Eternity’s Garden.

Final Preparations achievement requirements and rewards

The achievement sits under Visions of Eternity: Code of Creation Mastery in the Hero panel, and it pays out in two tiers. Progress is tracked as a simple counter, so you can stop and resume between steps.

Achievement	Requirement	Points
Final Preparations (tier 1)	Perform 1 step	1 AP
Final Preparations (tier 2)	Perform 8 steps	1 AP
Final Preparations: Castoran Creatures	Find 5 creatures	1 AP

Both entries count toward the Code of Creation meta, which needs 25 of its 27 achievements and hands back the Relic of the Last Tyrant along with a mastery point. That makes Final Preparations one of the cheaper boxes to tick on the way to the meta, since none of the steps involve a timed or no-death condition.

All eight Final Preparations steps and locations

The steps are not confined to one map. You will bounce between Castoran zones, the Eye of the North, Eternity’s Garden and the Leyspring Hollows underground, so keep a flying mount and a full waypoint list handy. The order below is the most travel-efficient sequence, but the collection does not enforce one.

Open the map and waypoint near Starlit Weald, then fly across the forest into Skyshroud Canopy. Land at the marker, speak with the NPC there, pick up the item on the ground and hand it back to finish the first errand.

Waypoint to Shipwreck Strand and mount up toward Guarded Glades, following the shoreline past the waterfalls and cliff arches until the next marker appears.

A glowing New Event Nearby marker in the game world while flying toward the next objective — A “New Event Nearby” marker along the flight route — ignore it and stay on the collection marker. Image: ArenaNet

Set down on the beach beside the giant crab, talk to the NPC standing there, then interact with the glowing artifact half-buried in the sand. Handling both takes the counter to 3/8.

The player character standing beside the large crab creature on the Guarded Glades shoreline — The shoreline encounter at Guarded Glades, where the glowing artifact sits on the sand. Image: ArenaNet

Fast travel north to the Eye of the North. Walk into the inner sanctum, approach the NPC beside the pool and sit through the dialogue until the step registers.

Waypoint to Eternity’s Garden and clear the Castoran Creatures sub-achievement in full. Finding all five animals counts as a single step in the parent collection, pushing you to 5/8.

Travel to the Hall of Assemblage waypoint in Leyspring Hollows and glide down through the stone corridors. In the water-filled chamber below, accept the /yes emote prompt to meditate.

Descending into the glowing underground passages of Leyspring Hollows — The descent into Leyspring Hollows, where the meditation prompt waits in a flooded chamber. Image: ArenaNet

Follow the blue-lit flooded tunnels to Doyen’s Adytum, fly up past the waterfalls to the upper balcony, and interact with the burning golden doorway.

Flying through the blue-lit flooded tunnels leading toward Doyen's Adytum — The tunnel route toward Doyen’s Adytum and its upper-level door. Image: ArenaNet

Continue down the golden corridor beyond the door to the grid puzzle panel on the wall. Interacting with and solving that panel completes the eighth and final step.

Final Preparations: Castoran Creatures — all five locations in Eternity’s Garden

All five friendly creatures live in Eternity’s Garden, and each one is found by searching a specific corner of a named area rather than following a map marker. Interacting with a creature ticks the counter immediately, and the five are spread far enough apart that waypointing between them beats flying the whole route.

#	Area	Where to search
1	The Mothmarsh	Northern fringes
2	Ley-Drowned Quarry	Southern area
3	Ley-Drowned Quarry	Northern underwater section
4	The Deepwood	Northern corners
5	Temple of the Blessed Mantle	Southern beaches

The Mothmarsh creature is a friendly moth sitting above the treeline, so approach it from the canopy rather than the marsh floor. The Ley-Drowned Quarry holds two separate creatures, which is where most players lose track of their count — the southern one is on land, while the northern one is a friendly crab resting on a submerged ledge.

For the underwater crab, fly out over the northern water in the quarry and dive straight down to the ledge instead of swimming in from the shore.

The Deepwood creature is a beetle hidden in the dense red canopy in the north of the area, so fly slowly through the treetops instead of skimming above them. The final one sits along the southern beaches below the Temple of the Blessed Mantle, out in the open once you drop to the sand.

How to confirm the achievement completed

Open the Hero panel and look under Visions of Eternity: Code of Creation Mastery. Final Preparations shows a running counter, and the objective text flips from “Performed 1 Steps to Prepare for Accepting the Wizard’s Power” to “Performed 8 Steps” once everything is done. Castoran Creatures tracks separately and completes when it reads Found 5 Creatures.

Because the creature hunt counts as one of the eight steps, you cannot finish the parent collection without it — if your counter is stuck at 7/8 and the puzzle panel is already solved, the missing piece is almost always a creature you never touched. Once both entries show as complete, the achievement is banked toward the Code of Creation meta and you can move on to So Be It, the chapter that follows The Burden of Seeing.