DLC #84 - Battlefield 3 - Back to Karkand

Get your hardhat, you'll need it

Back to Karkand is the final piece of Battlefield 3 DLC, and also the toughest out of the five packages by a considerable distance, and, as with the other packs before, it also adds a further 5 trophies to the overall list.

The main focus comes from the addition of 4 old school maps, remastered specifically for Battlefield 3. There are also 3 new vehicles, and 10 new guns added to the package, all of which are catered towards the new trophies attached to the DLC.

As slightly touched upon already, this is by far the toughest of all the Battlefield 3 DLC packages, with skill, longevity and frustration all catered to in equal abundance.

There are a few easier trophies contained within this list too, including getting a kill with the Skid Loader, and taking a swim in the Oman hotel swimming pool, but the other trophies pack a much greater challenge, and end up being some of the most difficult trophies in the entire game;

Complete Warrior - Got a kill with the following weapons in a single life: Assault Rifle, Jet, Tank
Third Tour - Got a kill with each of the following vehicles: the BTR-90,  DPV, F-35
Gunslinger - Got 10 kills with each of the ten Back to Karkand weapons

The "Complete Warrior" trophy is a definite contender for the toughest trophy in the whole Battlefield 3 list, despite the fact that not all the requirements are actually that tough individually. Kills with an Assault Rifle, and a Tank are easy enough to come by, but the dealbreaker in this trophy comes through trying to obtain a kill in a Fighter Jet.

Jets have always been notorious for being difficult to obtain kills with in Battlefield, and there is no exception to the rule here. The biggest problem stems from the fact that all the Jets in this DLC can only be occupied by 1 person, and thus, getting the kill you need is entirely down to your own skill. You can't just jump into a passenger seat and obtain kills in the same way you could when you were striving for Jet ribbons in the main game list, which made it incredibly easy if you were in the same Jet as someone who was exceptionally good at controlling them.

Piloting a Jet is a tough enough task alone, but having to co-ordinate a gun at the same time makes it even more difficult. The Jets are also very weak, and easy to take down, especially in dogfights against other air vehicles such as Helicopters, and 1 shell from a tank will down a Jet instantly.

Even then, there is still a small matter of obtaining both an Assault Rifle kill and a Tank kill in the same life, and death at any point before that resets the counter, and you'll need to start over again. It is an incredibly frustrating experience, not to mention a potentially time consuming one, and will require alot of trial and error for alot of people.

The "Third Tour" trophy only really gets a mention for reasons already noted, due to the fact that it requires a kill from the F-35, which is the new Fighter Jet added to the game through this package. The BTR-90 is a Tank, and the DPV is a Buggy, which are easy enough to obtain a kill with in comparison, but this trophy will come down to that dreaded Jet kill and how long it takes you to actually earn one.

The "Gunslinger" trophy also contributes it's own challenges to the game, and, as exactly in the same way the "Show of Force" trophy in the Close Quarters DLC did, it requires you to get 10 kills with each of the ten new weapons in the package, achieved through completing a host of assignments tied to each of the new guns.

There's a good mix of time consuming and genuinely difficult tasks amongst these assignments. The more time consuming side of the trophy will see you spend an aggregate total of 6 hours playing across the new maps in the package (2 hours on each map), and accumulating over 300 kills using a range of specific weapon types, vehicles and explosives. The more challenging tasks include obtaining 2 kills with Mortar fire and destroying an enemy vehicle with a repair tool, and this trophy alone will bring the package up into the region of 10-15 hours in terms of a time estimate.

Even after completing all of the assignments to unlock all 10 weapons, you'll need to notch up a further 100 kills to actually fulfil the requirements of the trophy. 

This is without question the hardest DLC pack in the entire game, and possibly one of the hardest DLC packs available for any game in the Playstation library. There is a good mix of difficult and time consuming tasks, with alot of frustration contained along the way, and although the "Complete Warrior" trophy makes it hard to nail down a concrete time estimation, you can easily expect it to be within the 20 hour region, and possibly beyond.