Overview
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 5/10 [Achievement Difficulty Rating]
- Offline/Online: 55 [970]
- Online Only: 1 [30]
- Approximate time to 1000: 24-28 hours [Estimated Time to 100%]
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1 [2 recommended]
- Missable achievements: Yes - "You are too young for that!", "Set a Wolf to Mind the Sheep" and "It came for the dessert".
- Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes - Scenario Mode
- Unobtainable/Glitched achievements: No
Introduction:
Reprise your role as Van Helsing, the fearless monster hunter, the star of this unique action-RPG set in an alternative Gothic-noir Europe (although we really shouldn't ignore his charming, but deadly ghost companion, Lady Katarina). It’s time to return to Borgovia where you had already liberated the land from the tyranny of mad science, only to ignite the spark of a civil war, then grudgingly led the Resistance against the military genius who tried to destroy everything you had been working for. However, while you fought an army of mechanical monsters and defeated General Harker, you suffered betrayal from your mysterious ally, who tricked you and obtained the most powerful artifact, the hidden death of Koschei the Deathless.
Step 1: Fearless Campaign
Make sure to have this post handy as you play through the game to get all the miscellaneous achievements and relics. I did not go into great detail for those achievement descriptions, as it is easier to follow the maps. Between missions, ensure you are sending your Captains and Chimera on missions. For the most part, the game is fairly easy, even on Fearless. The first level or two will be difficult until you get some skills leveled up. There are a number of viable builds for Fearless, but I personally used the Black Widow build for Bounty Hunter. However, I made one huge change, which was to leave Katarina in melee mode to tank for me (rather than ghost mode as he suggests). If you put points into damage and survivability for her, you can then sit back and snipe enemies with little danger. Once you complete the game, you should have the majority of the game's achievements.
If you're ballsy, you can combine this with Step 3 and make this a Hardcore character to get both things done at the same time, but I would not suggest it. Some bosses can one-shot you, and the Clockwork Keep area is tough with its swarms of helicopter robots that can all hit you at once for the same effect - a death and a quick trap back to the beginning of the game.
Once you finish the story, you can drop the difficulty down and work on the Tower Defense missions. They don't expire and you can continue to play after the story is complete.
Step 2: Scenario Mode
Scenario Mode is entered from the main menu, but you can use the character from Step 1. Start a Scenario on Fearless after unequipping your cape, armor, boots, and gloves. Turn off the "auto-powerups" option in the menu if you had it on. If you manage to complete the first map without dying, you'll get all three achievements that require Fearless difficulty. If you die, keep going and finish then do a second one with your equipment back on and try not to die that time.
After that, you'll need to do 20 total Scenario maps (you can do up to three in one campaign). You'll get the 100 special enemy kills along the way, and should finish up the 25000 rep achievement, and 10k kills achievements as well.
Step 3: Co-Op
You need to play the game with 20 other players for one achievement, but this can actually just be the same person 20 times if you want. Join a game with someone and check the achievement tracker. Once it ticks up, disconnect and both go back to the menu, then start a new game together for another tick on the tracker.
Step 4: Hardcore Campaign
Start a new character and make sure you check the "Hardcore" box in the creation menu. You can use a duplicate of the character you used in Step 1 so you'll be familiar with how it plays, and you can go through the story as quickly as you'd like. Do be careful not to rush and get swarmed by too many enemies though. On Casual difficulty, you should have little trouble though, and if you do die there is a trick to saving your character. See the achievement description below for that.
[XBA would like to thank The Pants Party for this Roadmap]