Overview
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 9/10
- Offline: 20/20 (400)
- Online: 0 (0)
- Approximate amount of time to 400: 50 hours (Depends on Skill Level)
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2+ (Many Partial)
- Number of missable achievements: Many (See Introduction)
- Do cheat codes disable achievements?: No Cheats
- Does difficulty affect achievements?: No
- Glitchy achievements: None
- Unobtainable achievements: None
- Extra equipment needed?: 1 Extra Controller
Introduction
Welcome to Spelunky, a 2D platforming game with randomly generated levels and achievements that require tons of skill and patience. Be warned, you will die hundreds of times while attempting to get every achievement. It is extremely difficult, but it is also one of the most addictive Xbox Live Arcade games on the market.
Many of the achievements will require full playthroughs of the game and you will most likely want to attempt them on individual playthroughs, resulting in much more than the minimum of 2, so these achievements are technically missable. Getting all of the achievements in just 2 playthroughs would require an extreme amount of skill and is almost impossible. It's in your best interest to follow the rest of the roadmap and be patient when it comes to Spelunky's achievements. It is possible to get everything in less than a few hours, but it will reasonably take you 50 to 100 hours, possibly more.
Step I: Unlock All Shortcuts & Practice
It is recommended that you unlock the shortcuts to each level and practise them extensively before attempting a full playthrough. To unlock the shortcut for to the Jungle, see Mines Shafted; for the shortcut to the Ice Caves, see Jungle Jammed; and for the shortcut to the Temple, see Ice Creamed. Once you unlock the shortcuts, you can access them by heading to the room on your left in the starting area of the game. If you begin in a level by using a shortcut and die you will start at the beginning of that level. You can also unlock the achievements for reaching each level and completing the game by using shortcuts.
As soon as you unlock the Jungle shortcut, you should start from the Jungle and attempt to clear it until you unlock the Ice Caves shortcut. Now work at that until you unlock the Temple shortcut and play until you complete the game from there. After completing the game once you can decide if you want to start attempting full playthroughs, or if you want more practice.
By the end of this step you should have at least:
- So It Begins for beating the tutorial
- Mines Shafted for beating the Mines
- Jungle Jammed for beating the Jungle
- Ice Creamed for beating the Ice Caves
- Made It for beating the Temple / game
- Seen A Lot for completing 50% of the journal
Step II: Complete the Full Game Multiple Times
When you've practiced enough to fully understand each level, what items you'll want in them, how to kill the enemies and avoid the traps, you can begin the full playthrough phase. There are quite a few ways you need to complete the game or things you need to do within playthroughs and you can complete them in any order you want, but I recommend this order:
- Ironman unlocked with all completion achievements
- Her Favorite for receiving the Kapala
- Casanova for rescuing 10 damsels
- Eternal Life for obtaining the Ankh
- Public Enemy for killing 12 shopkeepers
- Big Money for earning 500,000 score
- City of Gold unlocked with To Hell and Back and possibly Big Money
- To Hell and Back for reaching and beating Hell also possible unlocked with Big Money
- Good Teamwork for completing the game in co-op with 2 survivors
- Speedlunky for completing the game in under 8 minutes
- Low Scorer for completing the game without earning score
Step III: Rescue Remaining Characters & Mop Up
By this point you can consider yourself a master of this game and a pretty fine gamer at that. It takes some serious skill to get where you've gotten, so let me help you finish up Spelunky. This is what you will probably have left at this point, but if there's still something you don't have, go back and get it first:
- The Entire Gang for rescuing all characters
- Seen It All for completing 100% of the journal
- Addicted for starting 1,000 adventures
Check out this thread for locations of the remaining characters and work your way to finishing that off. See this thread for a list of all the journal entries and tips on where to find them and complete them. Now if you haven't died 1,000 times by the time you've gotten here, bravo. It's likely you will already have this achievement, but if you don't, start up an adventure and get dying.
Conclusion
Spelunky is quite a hard game, but after lots of practice it should get easier for you. Follow the guide for tips on the more challenging parts of levels and you shouldn't have too many problems. If you're still missing an achievement see a video guide to understand exactly how to do something. Good luck!
[x360a would like to thank Spock for this roadmap]