Stuff like taming a Space Amoeba or genetically altering your species are accompanied by these badges of honor. You’ll get many achievements by playing the game normally – but a select few are locked behind so many layers of effort and chance that only 1 in 100 players will ever get them. We’ll be looking at some of these tough-as-nails achievements and discussing what makes them so tricky.
10. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Blorg
Inspired by John le Carré’s 1974 novel “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” – or maybe the 2011 thriller film adaptation – the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Blorg achievement asks players to complete 10 different espionage operations. Carrying out some operations throughout your game isn’t that hard. What’s hard is finding 10 different ones, as you only have access to nine before becoming Galactic Emperor or facing the crisis. Moreover, sometimes one of the operations will glitch out and not count toward the achievement no matter how many times you complete it, contributing to the low percentage of players with this badge of honor.
9. Pandora’s World
Thanks to its immense power and exclusive anti-planet weapons, the Colossus ship class is one of the most powerful and fun military vessels you can have in Stellaris. Pandora’s World asks you to use my favorite – the Global Pacifier – to encase a Determined Exterminator, Fanatic Purifier, or Devouring Swarm world in an impenetrable shield. This allows you to lock them in and protect everyone from their genocidal tendencies without having to genocide them, effectively removing them from the game. The difficulty lies in finding one of these empires still alive by the time you develop the Colossus, as they’re (understandably) not the most popular empire in the galaxy.
8. Retirement Home
Rogue Servitors are robotic caretakers created by a galactic empire who met their end before their creations, leaving them to fend for themselves. But deep inside, they still long to care for organics. The Retirement Home achievement can be acquired by absorbing 10 citizens of a Fallen Empire into your nation, effectively turning them into Bio-Trophies and caring for them as they wither away and watch their empire fade into obscurity. Ironically, the best way to achieve this is to go to war with a Fallen Empire and absorb one of their planets by force. Not an easy task in your average game.
7. Last, Best Hope
Defeating an Awakened Empire is not an easy task. But doing so in the particular conditions required by the Last, Best Hope trophy is near-impossible. This achievement requires the player to become the League of Non-Aligned Empires leader, then lead them to defeat an Awakened Empire. Since the league will only be available during a war between two Awakened Empires, you need to pray for this unusual situation in your game and maneuver politically to retain the presidency until one side overpowers the other. Then, you can attack. Don’t expect much help from your allies, either. If you’ve ever gone to war as a Federation, you know how uninterested they can be in doing anything useful with their fleets.
6. You’ve Been Served
Diplomatic bodies like Federations and the Galactic Community are better suited for political machinations and power-plays rather than military action. One of the most fun achievements related to the Galactic Community is You’ve Been Served, which revolves around abusing your diplomatic weight to break the intergalactic judicial system. This achievement asks you to force the vote to denounce an Empire that isn’t even in breach of Galactic Law and bring down the hammer of “justice” on them through heavy sanctions.
5. Humble Pie
There’s nothing quite as satisfying in life and Stellaris than thoroughly humiliating a bully. That’s just what the Humble Pie achievement wants you to do. To obtain it, you must win a war of humiliation against an empire with a Supremacist diplomatic stance, which gives them more naval capacity, less war exhaustion, and cheaper claims. However, that’s not even the hard part. What’s really difficult is finding a Supremacist empire to declare your rival and humiliate before they decide to declare war on you or switch their ideology. It’s possible to force this to happen with some smart game setup, but in a regular game, it’s rather unlikely.
4. Sic Semper Tyrannis
Becoming the Galactic Emperor is a challenging route, but it’s even harder for the AI to do it. This makes the Sic Semper Tyrannis achievement – which requires you to lead a successful rebellion against the Galactic Emperor – extremely difficult and dependent on outside factors. In a regular game, it’s almost impossible. The easiest way to go about this is to become the Galactic Emperor yourself, then cause a Machine uprising and choose to play as the rebels when given a chance. This will pit you against your former empire, so make sure you leave an easy path to victory open to the rebels.
3. Stay on Target
Stay on Target is a violent achievement that requires you to destroy an enemy Empire’s Colossus weapon while firing – a totally badass move worthy of being the climax of a Star Wars movie. You have four months to destroy the Colossus between the start of its charging period until it finishes firing on the planet. One of the biggest obstacles will be finding a hostile empire with a Colossus, given it’s a late-game weapon type. Your best option is a Fallen Empire, as some of them spawn with a Colossus. Then you need to worry about your fleet strength and firing range. After all, Colossi can move while firing, and you’ll have missed your chance if they escape the system before you manage the feat.
2. Outside Context
Outside Context is a deceptively complex achievement. You’ll get it by invading a primitive Earth during a world war. Easy, right? Well… let’s crunch the numbers. First, the Sol System must spawn, which happens 50% of the time. Then, it needs to spawn in the Machine Age – for some reason, it doesn’t work if they progress to this age naturally. That only happens 25% of the time. That’s a 12.5% chance that you can even attempt this in your game. Now, you need to race to find and claim the system before they nuke themselves to death or someone else gets to them. From this point on it should be smooth sailing – but you’ll probably have to restart many times before the stars align.
1. Raiders of the Lost Galatron
Statistically speaking, Raiders of the Lost Galatron is the single most unlikely achievement to get – and there’s little you can do about it. To get the most difficult Stellaris achievement to date, your Empire must acquire the Galatron – an epic relic contained in the Caravaneers’ reliquaries – by taking it from another empire. Whereas most of the achievements in this list have some sort of “cheese” mechanic you can abuse to improve your chances, there’s nothing you can do about the Galatron’s 0.5% drop rate – and the AI isn’t too fond of reliquaries anyway. Your only hope is to get it yourself, lose it in a war, and reclaim it. That’s easy enough, but you still have to get the Galatron first. Considering only six reliquaries can be bought per game, this will be a long and grueling process. Good luck!
